The Pay Gap Between Men and Women May Be Worse Than Previously Thought
Today is Equal Pay Day, the day we recognize that a woman will have to work a full fifteen months to earn as much as a man in a similar position earns in a year. Since the wage gap is 80 cents per dollar, meaning a woman earns 80 cents for every dollar her male peer earns, it takes women until April 2 to earn the same as men earn between January and December. Many women of color have to work even longer to catch up with their white men and their peers.
However, recent research suggests that we may have to postpone Equal Pay Day by a few more months. As Vox reports :
“A commonly used metric to describe gender wage ratios — a woman earns 80 cents for every dollar a man earns — downplays the problem of wage inequality because many women workers are not counted,” writes Stephen J. Rose, a worker. an economist and research fellow at the Institute of Urban Studies ; and Heidi I. Hartmann, IWPR founder and American University economist, argue in a report entitled “Still a Labor Market for Men.” In particular, women who temporarily left the labor force are not counted, often due to the fact that they took care of the family.
In other words: if you look at women’s careers over a fifteen-year period and include both years spent in paid work and years spent in unpaid care work, women earn only 49 cents for every dollar a man earns.
Yes, it’s like comparing apples and oranges, but that’s the point. People, regardless of gender, waste time at work to provide their families with unpaid work, lose both potential income and potential career growth. Since women are more likely to take on this unpaid work than men, time outside the labor force not only lowers the earning potential of an individual woman, but also contributes to a significant wage gap between men and women.
What about men who take childcare break or become unemployed? The study took into account:
While men are also punished for interruptions, the loss of earnings for women due to interruptions is almost always greater than for men.
Same way:
Among working women in this study, 43 percent did not receive a job for at least one year, while only 23 percent of men did not receive a job, indicating that absence of a job during the year is still common for women. but unusual for men.
If you are looking to narrow the pay gap, we have some tips to help you negotiate a higher starting salary or ask your boss about a raise. After all, Equal Pay Day is the kind of holiday that many of us would like it to disappear from the calendar in the next decade.