New Report on Gender Pay Equity
The National Committe on Pay Equity recently reported and their conclusions are covered in the Newsletter of the Association of American Colleges and Universities on women's issues, On Campus with Women. One of the articles in this issue is "STEM Major Choice and the Gender Pay Gap" by Andresse St. Rose, research associate, AAUW. Here is what she says to introduce the topic: "Over the past fifty years, women's increasing educational achievements have indeed helped to raise women's earnings and narrow the overall gender pay gap from 59 cents for every dollar earned by men in 1960 to 77 cents in 2008 (Institute for Women's Policy Research 2010). But although additional education has improved women's earnings, it has not created a level playing field. Ironically, the pay gap among some college-educated workers is larger than it is for the population as a whole. While college-educated women working full time earn 80 percent as much as their male peers one year after graduation, after ten years, they earn only about 69 percent as much as their male counterparts (Dey and Hill 2007). In part, these gaps reflect different choices made by women and men, such as the critical choice of college major. "
St. Rose goes on to discuss the effect of career choice on the pay discrepancy. Since some of the fields where women are most underrepresented are those where pay is best, lack of gender balance in pay partly results from the poor ability to recruit women to those fields. She says, "Within STEM fields, women's underrepresentation is particularly severe in majors like computer science, physics, and engineering-fields that include better-paying jobs after graduation, even compared to other mathematically demanding fields. In 2009, the average starting salary for bachelor's degree recipients in mechanical engineering was $59,000, compared to $50,000 for bachelor's degree recipients in economics (National Association of Colleges and Employers 2009)." She goes on to show, in a graph and a table, that most of the science fields have more gender parity in pay than the average for all jobs, but women amount to far less than 50% of the employees in many of these fields. She argues that it would help gender pay equity if more women went into STEM fields, based on this evidence.
I'm heartened to see that pay equity is better in sciences than in other fields, but I have to say that I've heard complaints about fairness of salary raises from R1 university excellent women scientists. In particular, pay scales can sometimes reflect more about number/size of grants than teaching and service obligations that women are expected to shoulder out of proportion to those expectations of comparable men.
What do you think?
a. Gender equity in pay seems to me to be pretty good in STEM fields
b. STEM gender equity in pay is probably okay, but I don't pay much attention to pay so I am not sure.
c. STEM gender equity in pay is way out of line according to my experience
C, according to a lot of people. Secrets of the universe: some women are not sure the anonymous posting can really keep people from finding out who they are (I think it can). So they email me and tell me, CCCCC! There are a lot of high quality women in science out there who are sure they are not being paid fairly. These are senior women, not pre-tenure women. It would go along with the survey we looked at with an increasing male/female divergence as the years after PhD increase. Thanks for emailing me your thoughts, friends, and I'll keep your secrets, but I can't resist sharing the overall message. Someone needs to look at fair salaries for women full professors in science at R1 universities.
cheers,
Laura
b. I feel like I'm running too fast to worry about things that I basically find extraneous. I don't compete for money. Why even answer these surveys? It just makes people feel bad about themselves.
I choose B too.
Woman seem to be busier than man. I could go around worrying about my salary, but I have to get my child to school, then get him to his activities, then to the grocery store, then home to make dinner, then clean up, etc etc. (my husband commutes on that awful 210, so I am NOT complaining about him). Somewhere in there I work at my impossible, never-ending job.
I just know a lot of males who don't have a commute, and don't have those extra activities. They can think about salaries. Fortunately, some of them do and they also think about the people around them (including me!)
That story from hmcbride is awful. Why would even a crazy man want to behave that way? He's ruining his own happiness in the long run, because now they are going to expect him to drop everything for work at any time they say so.
Hi Laura,
He's a former scientist who went into the business side of things. That behavior wouldn't be rewarded or even acknowledged in research, but in business, it's still the commitment that counts. It was certainly a strange anecdote that stood out for me. The Novartis case was shocking to me. I really didn't think it could be that bad for women in companies these days, but they are the exception that proved the rule! I'm glad they stood up for themselves. The decision certainly won't impact the company's bottom line. But it does shine a light on such behavior to show you can't get away with these days!
Hi Helen,
About your "super committed" guy, that is behavior that is destructive of the work environment for both women and men as far as I'm concerned. I can't believe it would be rewarded that way, at a company that otherwise seems to have enlightened personnel policies.
Shocking!
cheers,
Laura
Wow, I missed that Novartis decision. Evidently they were going to be hit with a 250 mil fine for mistreating 5000 women but they settled for 155.2 million dollars. The AP story said "At the May trial, nine women who were among 17 named plaintiffs testified about their efforts to advance in a company that favored men.
One witness said her district manager became so abusive toward female employees that he showed them pornographic images and invited women to sit on his lap.
Other witnesses described an “old boys’ network” that punished women who became pregnant, finding ways to spoil their careers, pressure them to take shorter leaves or to work while they were on leave."
Wow, pretty bad. And the fine is what the AP story called likely to have a minimal financial impact.
cheers,
Laura
Hi Helen and FBP,
This discussion is beginning to remind me of Clay Sharkey's rant again (see earlier thread if you missed this discussion). No one is going to notice how good women are and how valuable we are to our enterprises unless we speak up for ourselves. But it sure doesn't come naturally to us. That's why we need to practice, in front of the mirror if necessary.
cheers,
Laura
C. Women don't ask for more most of the time and no one will offer. The recent Novartis pay discrimination decision for women researchers illustrates how systematic the bias still is among scientists, even when they move to industry where HR is patrolling the system. I was discussing the stellar rise of one of my colleagues with two other women recently. He had left our company to work at another company on the East Coast because he didn't feel he was being promoted/appreciated. He left his wife and two small children to pursue this new opportunity. He worked like crazy for one year. He came back to our company with a big promotion and super package. He had "proved" his commitment to the senior management. He would leave his own family alone for a year if it meant moving up in the company. And none of us at the table discussing his story could see a woman going that far just to get a raise! When that is what is valued how would you change things?
C It seems to me like every time I think I get the criteria and have the qualifications to be promoted and paid more, some guy from outside is brought in and the criteria are changed. The system is rigged.
Well, in my small liberal arts college we get data on pay scales by gender from time to time, and it looks pretty comparable for men and women. Of course, research universities are looking for different people with somewhat different skills and I don't know much about what they value and pay well for. But it sounds like maybe it's not always fair.
cheers,
Laura Hoopes
c. At least according to my experience, women are expected to take on a lot of extra teaching, grad student recruiting and organizing, and committee work compared to men, and then they are often penalized for the lesser amount of research they have done. I'm doing pretty well, but when my male colleagues brag about their raises, it sometimes opens my eyes to how much better they are doing. FBP
