Press on Pay Equity & Discrimination

The White House’s Use of Data on the Gender Wage Gap (June 5, 2012)

iwpr — 2012-06-08T20:11:19Z

"For people interested in more information, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research has put together a handy guide showing some of the differences between some of the data sets."

Women Get Paid Less than Men for the Same Work (April 30, 2012)

iwpr — 2012-05-04T12:35:00Z

DR. HEIDI HARTMANN, INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN'S POLICY RESEARCH: You're welcome. It's a pleasure. Thank you.

MADDOW: I know that you at the women 's -- Institute for Women's Policy Research , you have done some of the most important and most highly publicized work on this issue. Is there any way that the idea of a gender- based disparity is something that depends on how you look at it? Is this something other than a blunt truth about the American economy ?

HARTMANN: Well, I mean, you obviously have by far the better part of the argument. You've got the Census Bureau and I might mention, the Bureau of Labor Statistics agreeing with you. Oh, also, I could mention, the U.S. General Accountability Office . I think what the issue is for the Republicans is that they believe that that's not -- no matter how big the wage gap is almost none of it is due to discrimination. And, of course, these numbers from BLS and Census Bureau are not really talking about discrimination. But the GAO study that I just mentioned did. They said that even when you put everything you can possibly think of in the regression equations, the statistical analyses to try to make that gap go away, you can't explain at least 20 percent of it. Now, most other studies place the part you can't explain as a quarter to a half. So, a large part of the gap probably is due to discrimination. But that seems to be what the debate is. And, you know, when you ask can the Republicans convince women they don't live in the real world ? Probably not, because almost every survey that's ever been done of working women , when you asked them about their job, like 95 percent say my biggest problem on the job is lack of equal pay .

MADDOW: In terms of just making it very clear, what you were talking about there about doing a statistical regression analysis on these things, controlling for other factors -- I spent a long time going through the Republican side of this argument today just trying to understand how you could look at these very blunt numbers and come up with the opposite truth. What you're saying basically is when you control for things like the number of hours worked, you're still getting a gender based pay disparity that is not explained by working a different number of hours?

HARTMANN: Right. Exactly. I mean, Alex seemed to believe if you put in working a different number of hours that would explain it. No, far from it. If you look at all workers and male and female in the economy, we know, let's say, during the childbearing years, about a third of women may be working part time . So count part time . Count how much women work. OK. I'm working part time . Only making $400 a week. Compare it to all the men, more of whom are working full time . You still get a wage ratio of 72 percent. So that means that that 77 percent isn't going to move very much if you suddenly remove the people where the men are working 44 and the women are only making 40. No. The number of hours explains a very small part of it. I mean, these regression analysis , they include occupation . They include your education, number of years of experience, maybe sometimes marital status, number of children -- just about anything you can think of. And you cannot make the whole gap go away. So there is discrimination. Now, those studies aren't even in a way counting the sex segregation that you opened your presentation with this evening. Those studies try to hold occupation constant. You have the data up there occupation by occupation . We have some equal occupations . You mentioned police officers and sheriffs. Women are only like 1 percent behind there. Amazing. But you go to financial managers, they're 26 percent behind. So, it is different within each occupation . But maybe why women don't go into police as much and go into nursing more is also discrimination. So, even the exercise of trying to decide how much of wage gap is due to discrimination and how much isn't is -- that's open to interpretation. That's why in Canada , for example, when they talk about the wage gap between women and men, they would use a number comparable to that 72 percent figure I gave you. They would use a number that says, well, look, at how much difference men and women earn in the labor market. I mean, if we believe men and women are equally competent, equally capable, also have to live and eat and support their families, we should be wanting a society where that gap is zero, where a man and woman are making the same amount.

MADDOW: How to get to zero seems like where -- that's where I thought we were on policy . Everybody agreed there was a gap, we're trying to get to zero, let's fight about how we all get there, with all the ideological biases and all the different places we come from. Instead to be denying that the gap is there has blown by mind. Dr. Hartmann , founder and president of the Institute for Women 's Police Research -- thank you very much for joining us and helping us understand this. I really appreciate it.

HARTMANN: You're welcome.

MADDOW: All right. General Motors is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead -- all thanks to Mitt Romney , turns out. Exactly how that is possible, coming up.

America's gender wage gap (April 17, 2012)

iwpr — 2012-04-19T18:30:00Z

"Full-time working women in America earned only 82.2% of men's median weekly earnings last year, according to a new report by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a think-tank in Washington, DC. Women earned less than men in almost all occupations. Only in the fields of "stock clerks and order fillers" and "bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks" did women make slightly more than their male counterparts. The gender wage gap (women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s) was most pronounced amongst CEOs and financial managers. Female chief executives earned only 69% as much as male bosses, resulting in $658 less in median weekly earnings."

Women Still Confront Yawning Gender Wage Gap - Study (April 17, 2012)

iwpr — 2012-04-19T18:45:00Z

"In most common occupations women still make less than men doing the same job for an equal amount of hours, according to new data released on Tuesday.

Overall they earn 77 cents for each dollar made annually by men and in some professions such as financial managers the number drops to 66 cents.

"These gender wage gaps are not about women choosing to work less than men - the analysis is comparing apples to apples, men and women who all work full time - and we see that across 40 common occupations, men nearly always earn more than women," said Ariane Hegewisch, a study director at the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), a non-profit research organization.

She added that the reasons are varied but discrimination law cases show that women are less likely to be selected for the best jobs, they get hired at a lower rate and don't get equivalent raises to men over the years.

"Discrimination in who gets hired for the best jobs hits all women but particularly black and Hispanic women," Hegewisch explained."

Pay Gap Persists in Female-Dominated Career Fields (April 17, 2012)

iwpr — 2012-04-19T18:25:00Z

"Tuesday marked Equal Pay Day, a day established in 1996 to symbolize how long it takes women to earn the same wages that men earned last year. However, a new study shows that the concept the day was founded on hasn't yet caught on, even in fields where women are a majority of the workforce.

According to a study done by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, among the 20 most popular occupations for women workers, they only out-earn men in one field: bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks. Among secretaries and administrative assistants, women make up 96 percent of workers but earn 86 percent as much as men. Likewise, women account for 85 percent of maids and housekeepers and make only 83 percent of what men in that profession earn. A majority of financial managers are women—54.3 percent—but they earn only about 66 percent of what men in that occupation make.

"Women are less likely to be hired into the most lucrative jobs, and—when they work side by side with men—they may get hired at a lower rate and receive lower pay increases over the years," says Ariana Hegewisch, study director at the Institute for Women's Policy Research and one of the study's co-authors."

Opinion: Women Need a ‘Ledbetter Moment’ for Equal Pay

iwpr — 2012-04-19T18:50:00Z

"Everyone seems to be at a loss to explain the difference, including the governor. But one thing is clear: Gould is not the only woman experiencing the negative impact of the pay gap. The problem goes beyond both state lines and career choice. From the corner office to the corner store, hard-working women often take home paychecks that are less than fair.

And with the secrecy shrouding paychecks, many women don’t even know that they’re victims. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 61% of employees in the private sector are either discouraged or prohibited from discussing wages and benefits. Besides, shouldn’t we assume that almost 50 years after President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, paycheck fairness would have caught up with the law?"

The Most Unfair Cities to be a Working Woman: Gender Pay Gap by the Numbers (April 13, 2012)

iwpr — 2012-04-13T18:50:00Z

"Ariane Hegewisch, a study director for the Institute for Women’s Policy Research with a particular eye on the pay gap says that in addition to the old boy’s club of the financial services industry, there are some cultural distinctions in Connecticut that play into the massive divide between men and women’s earnings in the state. “Connecticut has a high wage gap overall,” she says, “There are some traditional gender distributions at play.” She explains that better off women with highly-compensated partners often tend to work part-time or in lower earning jobs by choice rather than out of necessity."

Should you know your coworker’s salary?

iwpr — 2011-07-06T19:40:32Z

"Sharing salary details has long been one of the great taboos in Corporate America, ranking even higher on the list of 'what not to do at work' than getting drunk at the company Christmas party or crying during your performance review. But for more and more employees, it’s not just an office no-no. A new paper by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (hat tip to Leadership Lab) found that almost half of all workers in the U.S. 'are either contractually forbidden or strongly discouraged from discussing their pay with their colleagues,' making it harder for employees to discover whether they’re being discriminated against or not."

Tell Your Co-Workers How Much You Earn

iwpr — 2011-07-06T13:46:41Z

"According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, the pay gap between men and women is about 23 percent. But in the public sector, the pay gap between men and women is only 11 percent. In a new paper, the Institute takes a look at both public and private sector jobs and comes up with an intriguing suggestion about how to eliminate much of the pay gap in the private sector: make salary information publicly available."

Five Myths About Why Women Earn Less Than Men

iwpr — 2011-04-13T14:22:46Z

1. Women earn less because they enter low-paying fields and become moms.

While it’s true that men tend to enter higher-paying fields than women, that difference alone does not explain the gender wage gap. Even when they work in the same occupations, men earn more. For instance, the median weekly salary for full-time male pharmacists was $1,954 in 2009, compared to $1,475 for female pharmacists, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. And men even earn more than women in traditionally female-dominated occupations. For example, full-time female registered nurses earned an average of $1,035 per week, whereas men earned $1,090 — or an extra $2,860 per year.

10 Industries Where Women Earn Less Than Men

iwpr — 2011-04-13T14:18:45Z

"Do men conspire to keep the pay of the women at low levels? No evidence indicates that this has occurred. What about the theory that senior management purposely keeps men's pay higher? There is little proof of this either, though several legal cases make this claim.

'Alas, no one has those data, as companies tend to be very secretive about this," says Arian Hegewisch, Study Director at IWPR. "The best information in theory might be sex discrimination law cases against specific companies, but even there, unless cases are litigated by the EEOC, typically wage and salary data are kept under wraps.'"

Women Closing the Job, Wage Divide

iwpr — 2011-01-05T16:10:00Z

"Are women poised to surpass men economically? Feminist economists, who understand the complexities of the situation, are not making predictions.

'We have this little roadblock for women,' said Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women's Policy Studies: 'We haven't figured out how to get men pregnant.'

Her quip highlights the biological edge that favors men in the workplace: Many women take time off work to raise children while men continue to accumulate pay and promotions."

Pay Secrecy and Paycheck Fairness: New Data Shows Pay Transparency Needed

iwpr — 2010-11-28T22:15:00Z

Washington, DC—New survey data from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) shows, for the first time, the extent of pay secrecy at workplaces on a national level. The Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA), an update to the Equal Pay Act of 1963, has been scheduled for a vote on Wednesday, November 17 in the U.S. Senate. The act is designed to provide greater levels of wage transparency, allowing employees to discover instances of employer discrimination.

“It took Lilly Ledbetter most of a decade to find out that she was being paid less than men doing the same job,” said Heidi Hartmann, President of IWPR. “With the ability to ask about other workers’ pay, she might have discovered the wage discrimination far earlier, and could have sought a remedy without fear of recrimination.”

The survey of 2,700 adults found that 19 percent of employees say they work in a setting where discussions of wages and salaries are “formally prohibited, and/or employees caught discussing wage and salary information could be punished.” Another 31 percent of workers reported that discussion of wage and salary information “is discouraged by managers.” Wage and salary information is “public” for 27 percent of employees and the information “can be discussed” by an additional 16 percent of employees. An additional 7 percent did not know whether such discussions were permitted (Figure 1).

The survey was performed for IWPR by Precision Opinion with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation during September and October of 2010. The survey data were weighted to represent the national population distribution.

Pay secrecy is much more common in the private sector. In the private sector, 61 percent of employees are either discouraged or prohibited from discussing wage and salary information, whereas only 14 percent of public sector employees reported that pay discussions were either discouraged or prohibited (Figure 2).

“The gender wage gap in the federal government—with high levels of pay transparency—is only 11 percent,” said Barbara Gault, Vice President and Executive Director of IWPR. “The gender wage gap in the economy as a whole is 23 percent. Pay secrecy is part of the reason for this difference, and the Paycheck Fairness Act could help.”

Figure 1. ASK IF EMPLOYED: In some workplaces, information on co-worker wages and salaries is publically available, while in others a policy may state that wage and salary information is private, and that employees can be punished for discussing pay with each other. Where would you say your workplace fits here?

Source: Survey of Economic Security (2010) conducted by IWPR with support from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Figure 2. Percentage of workers who report that discussion of wage information is discouraged or prohibited by employer sector.
Source: Survey of Economic Security (2010) conducted by IWPR with support from the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) conducts rigorous research and disseminates its findings to address the needs of women and their families, promote public dialogue, and strengthen communities and societies. IWPR is a 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt organization that also works in affiliation with the women's studies and public policy programs at The George Washington University.

White House Promotes Economic Efforts for Women

iwpr — 2010-11-04T18:20:00Z

"As one of its closing arguments before the midterm elections, the Obama administration is highlighting the impact its economic policies have had on women.

A 32-page report released Thursday by the National Economic Council, a policy coordination arm of the White House, described scores of policies that it said had promoted women’s economic security.

Some economists who reviewed the report said the administration needed to go further.

Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, said: 'Nobody’s opposed to getting the deficit down in the long run, but we don’t want it to happen too soon because we’re still recovering from a very deep recession. We need to raise government revenues, we don’t need to cut entitlements.'”

Women still lagging men in salaries

iwpr — 2010-11-03T16:05:00Z

Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, said she's been studying the pay-gap issue so long that she's generally pleased any time the gap narrows. But when she tells young women about it, they're always shocked and wonder why it's not rectified immediately. "It's a question of how fast you think it should go," she said. But even she's been distressed at the slow pace since 1995. "We should have seen more progress in the past 15 years."