More than 40 years after the Equal Pay Act made it illegal for employers to pay women less simply because of their sex, there’s still no state in the country where a typical woman earns as much as a man.
You’ve heard this statistic before: A woman earns just 77 cents for every man’s dollar in the United States.
But before you let this often-quoted 2005 figure get you down, note that there are career fields and places in the country where women are catching up to and even out-earning their male co-workers.
Connecticut, for example, has one of the top ten best economies for women, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
Opportunity For All
“When we look at the wage gap in the past 15 years, it certainly has been narrowing” nationally, said Avis Jones-DeWeever, program director for the institute.
“Even though the gap has closed a little bit, it’s closed in almost half of the states because men’s salaries have gone down. We like rising tides to raise all boats. We want to expand opportunity for everyone.”
The nation’s salary gap narrows by just a fraction of a penny each year. The typical woman earned 77 cents for every man’s dollar in 2005.
That’s up slightly from 76.6 cents in 2002 and 73.7 cents in 2000, according to data culled from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Over time, those pennies add up to a pricey disadvantage for women. The AFL-CIO figures that the average 25-year-old woman will lose roughly $455,000 to unequal pay during her working life.
D. Mai Ling Ferraro, 34, is a speech-language pathologist who earned her master’s degree and is working toward certification that will put her on par with fully qualified men and women in her field.
They earn an average of $69,631, according to an industry magazine.
Women don’t negotiate their salaries effectively enough, said Ferraro, who earns $49,000 annually as a contract employee.
Instead, she said, women opt for other perks, including more vacation time or a flexible schedule that allows them take care of their children.
“Men don’t have to worry about those things, so they’re going for the dollar amount,” said Ferraro, who has two sons, ages 7 and 10. “Women are doing an excellent job of balancing family and work.”
But there are occupations where women can reverse the trend.
Technology is one of the few industries where top female executives are outpacing men in terms of pay.
Trend Reversed
Women information technology executives, including CEOs, CIOs, vice presidents and directors, earn 1.4 percent more than men in the same positions, according to a 2006 salary survey of 19,000 tech workers by Dice.com, an IT job site.
Sure, there’s still a salary gap among all technology jobs. Women in technology earned an average of 9.7 percent less than men in 2006, Dice.com found, but that’s improved from the 14 percent gap in 2002, when it began surveying IT workers.
“When you think about the types of jobs you have in the technology realm, these are all positions that are very skill-based,” said Scot Melland, president and CEO of Dice Holdings Inc.
“The women that make it to that level in those organizations are probably pretty exceptional performers, and that’s being reflected in their salaries.”
Salary ‘Fair’
Debbie Joy, a solution executive for CSC, an IT company, works out of her home. “For most of my career, I’ve always assumed I was making the same as men,” said Joy, 52.
“I think it’s been fair. I really felt like they [men] were not competition.”
Other factors, including who you know and how skilled you are, seem to play a bigger role in the paychecks of IT workers, she said.
There are other industries where women are outearning men.
In his book “Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap — and What Women Can Do About It,” writer Warren Farrell identifies 39 jobs where women make at least 5 percent more than men.
