Thirty years after the Equal Pay Act was signed, women workers are paid about 30 percent less than what men get for the same work, and experts say that progress toward closing that gap is “excruciatingly slow.”
The persistence of the problem is discouraging for most women who seek equal treatment in the workplace and a particular burden for the many women who are their families’ primary breadwinners.
Experts say some women may need to look at how they handle the pay question with employers.
Since the Equal Pay Act was signed, women workers have made only modest progress in improving their pay level in comparison to men, from about 60 percent in 1963 to about 70 percent now, according to census figures.
A recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau showed the gap in dollars for men and women with equal educations. For example, the median income for white women with at least bachelors’ degrees was $30,520, but men with the same educations received $43,690.
The Equal Pay Act was designed to cover men and women who worked in the same kinds of jobs. A Supreme Court ruling limited it to “substantially equal work under substantially equal conditions,” and in practice the law primarily covers people working basically identical jobs.
After years of “very public discussions around this issue, there’s been excruciatingly slow progress in this area,” says Rad Eanes, a psychologist with Personnel Decisions Inc., a consulting firm in New York.
“The reason that there is still a pay gap is unfortunately fairly simpand that is sex discrimination,” says Leslie Wolfe, executive director of the Center for Women’s Policy Studies in Washington.
It has been a difficult problem for women’s groups to deal with, in part because of other pressing issues and because it is complex.
The pay gap is “not as high a priority as it should be, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that it’s a complicated issue dealing with economics, which tends to intimidate people,” says Susan Bianchi-Sande, executive director of the National Committee on Pay Equity, a national advocacy group.
“You don’t have to do an economic analysis on a sexual harassment problem. Everybody relates to that, but this is more complicated, so it’s more difficult to deal with.”
Wolfe says there has been some progress at entry-level jobs:
“You have people who graduate from college at the same time and they get jobs in the same industry and the men and women have almost the same salary at that entry level.
“But as time goes by, the men get promoted faster and their salaries go up faster and the pay gap widens. The higher you go, the wider the gap. It’s very depressing after all this time to see the persistence of the gap.”
Wolfe says the situation is better in jobs that in the past were considered “women’s work-nursing, teaching etc., but the really sad news is that there is beginning to be a pay gap as men enter those fields. They’re beginning to get paid more and get promoted faster.”
Some observers attribute the pay gap to women taking time out from their careers for pregnancies and raising children, but Wolfe says studies that have considered those patterns still showed a significant pay gap:
“When you control for all of that and educational levels, there is still a pay gap that has to be attributed to sex discrimination.”
Eanes says line managers in some companies still have “this notion of the male as the breadwinner of the family, and as such somehow they require a larger wage.”
But “the truth of the matter is demographics don’t show that at all,” he says. “There are many, many more women who are single parents and who are the major family breadwinners than there are men who have primary parental responsibility.”
“Part of it too is an issue of how women approach jobs and salaries,” says Elaine Eisenman, vice president of Personnel Decisions Inc.
“In terms of socialization, women have really been socialized not to be aggressive on money issues and so see salary issues as something they can’t pursue or push or which they’re not entitled to talk about. They tend to be much more tentative about salary or try to avoid it completely,” while men see it “as part and parcel of negotiating for a job.”
Women should approach the issue not only knowing their legal rights “but also believing that what you’re offering to the company is of value and deserves equitable compensation, as opposed to acting as if you’re lucky to be paid,” Eisenman says.
“In some ways it may behoove the woman to come in even more prepared than her male counterpart with why she deserves this amount of money based on her track record, with more evidence in terms of past work experience or revenues that she has generated for prior employers and the like.”
Eanes says that also would help the hiring manager, who may want to give a higher salary but who might have to convince people higher up in the company.
When women sit across the table to negotiate their pay, “their focus should be completely on the job they have done and they can continue to do,” he says.
Even with such strategies, Wolfe says, “it’s a difficult question because there are only certain things that women themselves can do because they’re not the ones who do the hiring, firing and promoting. The last resort, but one that women should be aware of, is to file a sex discrimination complaint.
“But I do think one of the things that women in a company can do is communicate with each other to change the salary schedule that’s inequitable or improve the work and family policies, or whatever,” she says. “You cannot expect an individual woman in isolation to change the situation.
“A lot of people suggest that women get more education, more training, do more to fit in, to try to become superwomen who can work 12 hours a day, etc. I think that’s probably not so healthy for men or women.”
Wolfe urges women to “communicate with each other and then, in a positive way, deal with the vice president for human resources or whoever to see what kind of changes they can make.”
“There’s no reason for a woman in 1993 to accept that pay inequity without taking some action,” Wolfe says. “There are lots of people around to be helpful.”
