Science Jobs Have Better Pay Equity
Dear friends of women in science,
Sonia Pressman Fuentes sent me her AAUW update featuring a new Commerce Department report based on analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey and Current Population Survey. You can read a summary of it here.
In the report, they discuss their findings that pay equity is better in sciences than in many other fields, supporting previous data collections by the AAUW as given in the report Why So Few. Therefore, if we want to help women achieve dollar-for-dollar pay equity with men, a strategy would be to increase the number of women going into/staying in science! Some factors that might contribute to the low number of women in science fields are "lack of female role models, gender stereotyping, and less family-friendly flexibility in the STEM fields."
The fields they included in their analysis were "professional and technical support occupations in the fields of computer science and mathematics, engineering, and life and physical sciences," comprising some 50 different coded occupations in the survey data.
Do you think that working towards pay equity is a useful approach to increasing women in science, or do you think we should focus directly on attracting and keeping women in science for their own sake, interests, more intrinsic rewards?
cheers,
Laura
Hi Marian,
If you download the pdf of the Commerce Dept report, you'll find Figure 3 shows a 14% gender wage gap in STEM jobs compared to a 21% gender wage gap in non-STEM jobs. So women in STEM jobs get 85% rather than 79% of what men get, according to this report. However, I agree it can lump together fields where this is less true with those where it is more true; it's just an overall average apparently, but it does exclude part time workers or people under 16.
cheers,
Laura
Laura,
I'm a bit surprised by your data. My recollection of the 2008 census info that the AAUW was using is a bit different, or maybe I just focused on different fields.
I seem to recall that women in math and physical sciences only earned 70%-75% that of men in comparable jobs.
However, that's tangential to your point -- I'm not sure that increasing pay for women will increase the number of women in science. However, I wonder if it might get them to stay once they are there
I believe that child care is the most important issue to solve, and if we solve pay equity as a side issue at the same time, it's frosting, not the main point. I really like all the studies you cite where making science teaching and jobs more humane works better for both women AND men. I wish as more women reach the top, that's what they would work for.
Hi Christi,
I was thinking we could help with pay equity by working to increase the success of women in science; I hadn't imagined how more pay would affect the women who are considering quitting the field.
I have known more men who will put up with a non-ideal job for high pay than women who will do it. But maybe today's women are more interested in pay equity than I think. I think that we need science to change, to become more people-friendly, more family-friendly, and more involved in helping others if we really want to get more women to stay in the field. I'm sure you agree!
cheers,
Laura
Hi Laura,
I don't think pay equity in itself is enough to attract women to science and engineering, but I think it's an added incentive for girls and women who are interested in STEM for other reasons to really think about pursuing it.
We don't want to be like Congress, never working well with others, and AAUW has taken a strong lead on this issue. I think we can work with them without losing our direction on the other issues.
Hi Laura,
I don't know. Sometimes when allied issues come along and people jump on them, all the air goes out of the main effort. I'd hate to see us lose focus on eliminating sexist remarks, increasing diversity of award recipients, child care, etc and just work for pay equity.
MKS
