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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Are Moms Worth Less Than Dads? |
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by Holly Sklar
(No verified email address) |
11 May 2002
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Full-time working women earned a median income of $27,355 in 2000, according to the Census Bureau. Men earned $37,339. That's a difference of $9,984 a year, or $832 a month. |
Imagine if we celebrated Father's Day every year, but skipped one out of four Mother's Days. Ridiculous, you say? Moms aren't worth just three-fourths of Dads.
Tell that to American business. The typical full-time working woman earns just 73 cents for every dollar earned by the typical man.
In 1955, women working full time, year round made 64 cents for every dollar earned by men. It took four decades of seesaw movement to close the gap by a dime. Progress stalled after the all-time high of 74 cents in 1996. There's still another 27 cents to go.
Full-time working women earned a median income of $27,355 in 2000, according to the Census Bureau. Men earned $37,339. That's a difference of $9,984 a year, or $832 a month.
How would you like that extra money to pay rent, health care or childcare, or purchase your first home?
How about an extra half-million dollars? That's what the pay gap between the typical full-time working man and woman has amounted to since the Equal Pay Act was signed in 1963, says the National Committee on Pay Equity. That's not counting all the lost health or retirement benefits.
Jobs seen as "women's work" often mean low wages. Take childcare. Childcare workers generally make about as much as parking lot attendants and much less than animal trainers. Out of 700 occupations surveyed by the Labor Department, only 15 have lower average wages than childcare workers.
Most minimum wage workers are women, while nearly all top executives are men. There are only 11 female CEOs in the Fortune 1000--just 1%, reports Catalyst.
CEOs at major corporations surveyed by Business Week made an average $11 million in 2001, counting salary, bonus and long-term compensation such as cashed-in stock options. Minimum wage jobs pay just $5.15 an hour, or $10,712 a year for full-time work.
The average CEO raked in the combined pay of 1,027 moms making minimum wage. In 1980, CEOs made only 97 times as much as minimum wage workers.
The General Accounting Office found that the pay gap between comparable male and female managers widened in 1995-2000. An American Bar Association survey found that men were twice as likely as similarly qualified women to make partner in law firms. Pay gaps are found even in traditionally female fields such as nursing.
The typical full-time working woman 25 years and older with a master's degree makes $6,500 less than the typical man with just a college bachelor's. The typical woman with a doctorate makes only $2,000 more than a man with a bachelor's.
Working families lose $200 billion of income annually to the gender wage gap, according to the AFL-CIO and the Institute for Women's Policy Research. That's "an average loss of more than $4,000 each for working families every year because of unequal pay, even after accounting for differences in education, age, location and the number of hours worked."
Working families in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, Vermont and Wisconsin lose the most, averaging $5,000 a year.
The pay gap is especially hard on single mother families. If single mothers earned as much as comparable men, their poverty rates would be cut in half.
Pay discrimination helps explain why many women leave welfare, but not poverty. Most women leaving welfare get jobs with low wages and no benefits. According to the Economic Policy Institute, nearly half the families that left welfare between 1997 and 1999 for full-time employment experienced hardships such as going without food, medical care or housing.
Most Americans know that discrimination still exists. In a 1999 CBS News poll, 65% said the man earns more when women and men do the same work. In a 1998 Washington Post poll, 80% of women and two-thirds of men said women faced pay discrimination. More recent surveys have found strong support for making equal pay and benefits for women a top policy priority.
Congress should give families cause to celebrate by raising the minimum wage and passing the Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act, two bills that would strengthen the fight against discrimination.
Holly Sklar is coauthor of "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work For All Of Us" (http://www.raisethefloor.org). She can be reached at hsklar (at) aol.com.
Copyright 2002 Holly Sklar
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