Gender Pay Gap

Abstract

The gender pay gap, which refers to the fact that women earn less than males, is a persistent phenomenon that occurs in every country in the world. While researchers across disciplines acknowledge the existence of the gender pay gap, they do not always agree on causal factors. Sociologists tend to accept the view endorsed by feminists that the gap is due to societal factors such as the devaluation of women’s work and time away from the workplace while raising children; business-oriented researchers are more likely to blame women themselves, insisting that they choose lower-paying jobs and are less competitive than males.

Overview

The gender pay gap may be stated as a percentage of female-to-male pay, or it may be computed according to cents-per-dollar. Historically, the gender gap was accepted because of the notion that males were responsible for their families and should be paid a “family wage.” That designation was not, however, extended to single working mothers. Despite progress made by the women’s movement and the passage of laws banning sex discrimination and unequal pay, the gender pay gap persists. From the social science perspective, the gender pay gap is seen as a form of employee discrimination that punishes females who become mothers and devalues the worth of women’s work. Social scientists argue that males working in female-dominated occupations such as K-12 teaching and nursing make more than their female colleagues. Critics of the gender gap concept insist that women are less vested in employment than men, offering such support as the large number of women who work part-time rather than full-time. It is true that the largest gender pay gap is between women working part-time and males working full-time. However, there is a significant body of research to uphold the argument that the gender pay gap persists even when researchers control for such factors.

When comparing incomes of males and females working from 31 to 44 hours, females earn 92 percent of male wages. For those working over 60 hours a week, the gap increases to 82 percent. The lower wage that women earn during their work years affects them throughout their lives because retirement income is based upon work income, resulting in high poverty levels for women as they age. This is particularly true of divorced women living on Social Security who may be eligible to draw on an ex-husband’s social security only after he dies. Even among females with retirement savings, balances tend to be lower than those of males.

World War II was a turning point for American females who entered the workforce in large numbers. When the war ended in 1945, 34 percent of females were in the workforce, and they were performing jobs that had previously been held only by males. After the war, however, women were encouraged to return to homes and families, and the number of women in the workforce declined to 38 percent. The 1950s were characterized by the image of mothers with small children whose goal in life was to provide their families with the healthiest and tastiest food and the cleanest clothes. Television nurtured that image with shows like Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, and Leave It to Beaver, in which mothers never worked and were generally shown wearing high heels and pearls. Female participation in the workforce declined to 33 percent. At mid-decade, working women made 64.5 percent of what working males earned.

Between 1955 and the 1960s, the gender pay gap in the United States narrowed. Based on the average shrinkage rate of one-half of one percent experienced in the 1960s throughout the world, it was predicted that it would take until 2133 before the global gender gap was closed. The American gender pay gap remained fairly stable until the early 1980s. In the 1990s, it began narrowing again. From 1990 to 2010, women’s wages rose from 75 percent of male earnings to 79 percent. In 2009, median hourly wages for females aged 16 and over working full-time was 85.5 percent that of males. When broken down annually, the gap broadened to 77 percent. Some economists contend that a more accurate measure of identifying the gender pay gap is to compare hourly wages of males and females. However, computing the gender pay gap based on hourly wages fails to address other gaps such as those in benefits, bonuses, commissions, and stocks, all of which have been shown to contribute to the gender pay gap. Minorities disproportionately experience the gender pay gap. In 2024, Hispanic females made 55 percent of all male earnings; Native Americans made 59 percent; Native Hawaiians made 62 percent; and Black females made 64 percent. The gap was significantly narrower between White females (81 percent) and Asian females (90 percent) and males.

In 2021, the median hourly wages for females aged 16 and over working full-time was 84 percent that of males. On average, women working full or part-time, were making 82 cents for every one dollar earned by a man. The twenty-first century gender pay gap also continued to affect female earnings in other parts of the world. In 2021, in the European Union as a whole, the gender pay gap was 12.7 percent, meaning women earned 8. Full-time working women in the United Kingdom in 2023 made 92.3 percent of male earnings; but when considering all working women, the gap widened to 85.7 percent. In Canada, all working females earned only 83.7 percent of male earnings in 2022. The average gender pay gap for OECD countries in 2022 was 11.6 percent, meaning women working full-time earned about 88.4 percent of men's wages.

Applications

Experts agree that the gender pay gap is due in part to the tendency of women to work fewer hours than males and to take more time off for childbirth, childcare, family issues, and illness of a family member. Hilary Lips reports that mothers work 92 percent as many hours as fathers, but they take home only 53 percent as much money. When fathers are compared to males without children, fathers work 90 percent as many hours, but they earn 122 percent more. Males make up only 15.5 percent of part-time workers. Acknowledging the tendency of women to have different work patterns than men does not take into consideration the fact that women are still considered by society to have more responsibility than men to care for families and households. Nor does it consider the fact that women are more likely to be in low-value jobs, such as piecework, and are less likely to belong to unions. Many women take the only jobs available to them. A 2015 report by the Council of Economic Advisors revealed that at least 41 percent of the gender pay gap cannot be explained by such factors as educational level, experience, demography, job type, and union membership.

Immediately following college graduation, it might be expected that male and female salaries and work status would be relatively equal since recent female graduates would be unlikely to be married and have children, and males and females might be expected to have relatively equal qualifications for jobs. However, 60.5 percent of males but only 54.4 percent of females work full-time in the year after college education. The median annual salaries for males working part-time is $13,112 compared to $12,790 for females. Thirty percent of recently graduated females and 23.3 percent of males work more than one job. Among full-time workers, one year after college graduation, males earned median annual incomes of $40,000 as compared to $34,600 for females. Even in professions, the pay gap persists across fields, with females consistently making lower salaries than their male colleagues: biological sciences (75 percent), mathematics and other sciences (76 percent), health professions (76 percent), psychology (86 percent), publicity officers and social service (87 percent), business and management (93 percent), education (95 percent), and engineering (95 percent). History is the one exception, with females making 112 percent more than males. Females (47 percent) are more likely than males (39 percent) to leave college with student loans to be paid off. A decade after college graduation, males earned 60 percent higher salaries than females. Among law school graduates, there was only a small gap noted within the first five years of graduation. Fifteen years later, however, the gap had increased by 13 percent.

Feminists repeatedly insist that the gender pay gap is based in large part on the devaluation of women’s work. For instance, the most heavily female-dominated occupations are personal care and service jobs. Office and administrative support workers earn an average weekly salary of $619; healthcare support workers earn $471; and females, most of whom have a college degree, working in education, training, and libraries make $813. By contrast, in male-dominated occupations such as architecture and engineering, males earn an average weekly income of $1,949. Even in jobs that do not require a college education, such as protection services and extraction, males earn an average of $747 and $709, respectively. Evidence supporting the devaluation of women’s work theory has also been produced in laboratory settings in which students were asked to assign prestige to particular jobs. When told that a job needed feminine qualities, students consistently ranked it of lower prestige than jobs assigned manly qualities.

Even in high-profile, high-paying jobs, the gender pay gap has proved persistent. In 2014, when Sony was hacked and financial records leaked, it became known that Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams, the female stars of American Hustle, were making $1.25 million as compared to male stars Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale who made $2.5 million each. The pay gap increased when backend points, which are paid according box office receipts, were considered. The leak also led to the release of executive salaries, and it was revealed that of seventeen employees earning more than $1 million at Columbia Pictures, a division of Sony, only one was female.

In January 2018, the gender pay gap received another significant burst of attention when it became known that actor Mark Wahlberg had been paid $1.5 million to reshoot scenes for All the Money in the World, but Michelle Williams, his costar, had been paid less than $1,000 for her work. Wahlberg subsequently donated his salary to the #MeToo movement, which is devoted to shining light on the monumental issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault of women.

Issues

It was not until 2018, in the response to the #MeToo movement and major news stories such as the controversy over Donald Trump’s nomination of Brent Kavanaugh for a vacant seat on the Supreme Court, that researchers began to seriously consider the fact that sexual harassment may be a direct cause of differences in the treatment of women in the workplace that lead to disparities such as the gender pay gap. Frank Dobbin, a Harvard organizational sociologist who specializes in sexual harassment in the workplace and diversity training, argues that most women who become victims of sexual harassment leave their jobs either because they quit immediately in order to avoid unwanted advances, or they are met with disbelief or retaliation when they report the issue, which motivates their leaving the job at a later point.

Joel T. Nadler and Jane Stockdale take the position that the gender pay gap is due to market forces and individual choices made by women. In a 2012 study, they examined such issues as inequalities in the workplace, gender stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination, concluding that there is a disconnect between what academics are writing about gender bias and what they see happening in the workplace. They posit that the disconnect has occurred as the result of the tendency of academics to concentrate on stranger-to-stranger interactions, while most workplace interactions are between people who have at least some knowledge of one another. Other experts suggest that females in the workplace are faced with a “social glass ceiling” that begins in childhood and is constantly reinforced by attitudes on gender roles exhibited by media, peers, teachers, counselors, employers, and others. Such attitudes promote notions that females are weak, nurturing, deferential, affiliative, and passive, while males are seen as autonomous, aggressive, dominant, and achievement oriented.

Many experts have suggested that another possible explanation for the gender pay gap is the lack of women in boardrooms and in other decision-making positions. In 2010, for instance, females made up 47 percent of the workforce, but women held only 16 percent of board seats on Fortune 500 companies or served as corporate or executive officers. Throughout history, only 3 percent of heads of Fortune 500 companies have been female. Both biology and society work to limit female choices. Ambitious women may choose to delay childbirth or opt not to have children. For the majority of women who are mothers, at least some time will be spent out of the workplace, giving birth and caring for children. This may significantly diminish lifetime earnings for American women because the United States, unlike other developed countries, does not provide paid family leave.

Women’s rights advocates and some legislators suggest that the gender pay gap could best be addressed by open discussions about pay scales in the workplace since most women do not even know they are being discriminated against. Marlene Kim argues that amending the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to remove the ban on employee discussions about income would enlighten women about income discrimination at the time that it occurs. There is a precedent for amending federal acts to make them more responsive to the changing roles of women, as was done with the Equal Pay Act in 1963. Passage of that act allowed 71,000 women to collect backpay. Marlene Kim found that gender pay gaps have decreased in states where bans on pay scales have been lifted. In 2016, 61 percent of all private-sector workers were banned from discussing pay scales by either formal or informal policies, and a worker could be fired if an employer discovered that such discussions had taken place. Legislative attempts to abolish the prohibition by federal law have repeatedly failed to pass Congress.

The motivation for lifting the ban on pay scales arose in part from a 2007 Alabama case involving Lily Ledbetter who had worked in a supervisory capacity for Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company for seventeen years. She was informed in an anonymous letter that she had been making less than male supervisors doing the same job. When she left the job, she had been earning $3,727 monthly as compared with the lowest paid male who was earning $4,286 and the highest paid male who was earning 40 percent more than Ledbetter. A jury awarded her $3.5 million in backpay; however, the Supreme Court held in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company that her suit was untimely since she had not brought charges against her employer within 180 days of the time the discrimination occurred, as required by law. The first action taken by President Barack Obama when he entered office in January 2009 was to sign the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Terms & Concepts

Comparable Worth: Refers to the principle that jobs requiring relatively equal education, training, and skills should be paid equal compensation. The comparable worth movement arose out of such comparisons as teachers who were required to have at least a four-year degree being paid less than unskilled male garbage workers. Critics of comparable worth claimed that it would be impossible to compare distinctly different jobs.

Equal Pay Act: Act passed in 1963 after being proposed by President John Kennedy. The act prohibits paying males and females doing the same job or those that require “substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility” different wages. Employers have bypassed these restrictions by redefining male jobs so that they are not considered equal and are, thus, deserving of higher pay.

Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: New Deal Act designed to establish worker benefits such as the 44-hour workweek, a minimum wage of 25 cents an hour, and overtime pay. It has been amended a number of times to make it more responsive to the contemporary working environment.

Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: Passed by Congress in 2009, the act removed the time restrictions on filing charges that had caused Lily Ledbetter to lose her case before the Supreme Court despite clear documentation of pay discrimination. The act mandated the treatment of each paycheck as a separate violation and authorized retroactive compensation.

Pregnancy Discrimination Act: Passed in 1978 under the Carter administration, the act amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit pregnancy discrimination. This meant that employers were required to treat pregnancy as an illness, providing the same coverage to female employees as to wives of male employees, and banned the firing of employees because they were pregnant.

Social Glass Ceiling: A term coined by the Families and Work Institute to describe the differences in the ways that males and females are socialized and acculturated and the ways in which those patterns influence such factors as self-perception and self-esteem.

Bibliography

Beyer, S. (2018). Low awareness of occupational segregation and the gender pay gap: No changes over a 16-year span. Current Psychology, 37(1), 373–389. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=128397434&site=ehost-live

Billiterri, T. J. (2008). Gender pay gap. CQ Researcher, 18(11), 241–264.

Drolet, M., & Amini, M. M. (2023, September 21). Intersectional perspective on the Canadian gender wage gap. Statistics Canada. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/45-20-0002/452000022023002-eng.htm

Gender pay gap: Recent trends and explanations. (2015). Washington, D.C.: Council of Economic Advisers.

The gender pay gap situation in the EU. (2022). European Union. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/gender-equality/equal-pay/gender-pay-gap-situation-eu‗en

Higgins, M., & Regan, M. (2016). The gender wage gap.Minneapolis, MN: Abdo.

Kim, M. (2015). Pay secrecy and the gender wage gap in the United States. Industrial Relations, 54(4), 648–667. Retrieved September 18, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=109364808&site=ehost-live

Kochhar, R. (2023, March 1). The enduring grip of the gender pay gap. Pew Research Center. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-enduring-grip-of-the-gender-pay-gap/

Lips, H. (2013a). Acknowledging discrimination as a key to the gender pay gap. Sex Roles, 68(3–4), 223–230. Retrieved September 18, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=85284081&site=ehost-live

Lips, H. (2013b). The gender pay gap: Challenging the rationalizations. Perceived equity, discrimination, and the limits of human capital models. Sex Roles, 68(3–4), 169–185. Retrieved September 18, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=85284077&site=ehost-live

Nadler, J. T., & Stockdale, M. S. (2012). Workplace gender bias: Not just between strangers. North American Journal of Psychology, 14(2), 281–291. Retrieved from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=74620944&site=ehost-live

Ornes, S. (2018). The STEM gender pay gap. CQ Researcher, 28(31), 721–752.

Pham, X., Fitzpatrick, L., & Wagner, R. (2018). The US gender pay gap: The way forward. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 38(9/8), 907–920.

Suggested Reading

Auspurg, K., Hinz, T., & Sauer, C. (2017). Why should women get less? evidence on the gender pay gap from multifactorial survey experiments. American Sociological Review, 82(1), 179–210. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=121107022&site=ehost-live

Babcock, L., & Laschever, S. (2003). Women don’t ask: Negotiation and the gender divide.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Mandel, H., & Semyonov, M. (2014). Gender pay gap and employment sector: Sources of earnings disparities in the United States, 1970–2010. Demography, 51(5), 1597–1618. Retrieved September 18, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=99008130&site=ehost-live

Qazi, Q.-A., Ansari, N. G., & Moazzam, A. (2018). Women’s reaction to the gender pay gap: A study of the Pakistan telecommunication sector. Pakistan Journal of Women’s Studies, 25(2), 133–149. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=134104630&site=ehost-live

Quintana-García, C., & Elvira, M. M. (2017). The effect of the external labor market on the gender pay gap among executives. ILR Review, 70(1), 132–159. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=120605958&site=ehost-live

Understanding the gender pay gap: What’s competition got to do with it? (2010). ILR Review, 63(4), 681–698. Retrieved September 18, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=52293362&site=ehost-live