Ithaca Journal, February 22, 2011, Tuesday

Ithaca Journal

February 22, 2011, Tuesday

Ithaca Journal

Gender pay gap's closing stalled
Discrimination, family roles cited as factors

Although the gender pay gap has narrowed dramatically in the past few decades, women are still earning on average 80 percent as much as men, according to a recent talk at the Tompkins County Public Library by Francine Blau, professor of industrial and labor relations and labor economics at Cornell University.

Women have been staying in the workforce longer, thus accumulating more skills and increasing their qualifications. The difference in years of work experience between men and women has decreased from 6.6 years in 1979 to 3.5 years in 1998. Women have also upgraded occupations, moving out of clerical and service jobs and into professional and managerial positions. Growth in the health and service sectors along with a decline in manufacturing has also favored women, Blau said.

Despite the huge strides women have made, which largely occurred in the 1980s, progress has slowed in recent years, and the pay gap does not seem to be going away, according to Blau. The explanation does not seem to lie in education, as women are actually surpassing men in education attainment. Work experience, on the other hand, remains a contributing factor, as women are still likely to have their careers interrupted because of childrearing. Women are also continuing to congregate in lower-paying occupations and industries.

"But when you control for work experience and education and a variety of other factors ( ...) you usually find some difference that cannot be accounted for," Blau said. This suggests that gender discrimination, whether conscious or unconscious, continues to exist in the labor market.

Discrimination has also been inferred experimentally. A 1996 study, for instance, found that at high-price restaurants, female applicants had an "astronomically lower" chance of being called back for an interview compared to their male counterparts, even though both test groups had submitted fake resumes with equal qualifications.

The percentage of women in the workforce remains around 75 percent, compared to 90 percent for men. Blau believes that in order for women's participation in the workforce to further increase, the problem of combining work and family has to be addressed.

"Fundamentally we're going to have to change men's gender roles," Blau said. "As long as it's women that have the primary responsibility for family, I think it's always going to disadvantage them to some extent in the labor force."

Pat Sims, who sat in the audience, mentioned after the lecture that she is noticing a reversal of gender roles. Her son is planning to stay home and work part-time to take care of their upcoming baby while his wife stays on the fast track as an IT specialist.

Fellow audience member Alene Wyatt added that her son had also stayed home for a few years while his wife was going to graduate school.