<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by virgalao:
We are two middle age women working as a cook for an assisted living facility. We have seniority and more responsibility but the new young guy makes 50 -75 cents an hour more. This amount means a lot to us. We enjoy working with the elderly but this is turning us sour and is making our job more stressful than it already is. We are afraid that if we nothing we are part of the problem. Please advise.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
My response:
Welcome to the world of labor statistics and the unfairness toward equal pay for women.
Women get paid less because employers still discriminate in several ways.
Jobs usually held by women pay less than jobs traditionally held by men--even if they require the same education, skills and responsibilities. For example, stock and inventory clerks, who are mostly men, earn about $470 a week. General office clerks, on the other hand, are mostly women and they earn only $361 a week.
Women don't have equal job opportunities. A newly hired woman may get a lower-paying assignment than a man starting work at the same time for the same employer. That first job starts her career path and can lead to a lifetime of lower pay.
Women don't have an equal chance at promotions, training and apprenticeships. Because all these opportunities affect pay, women don't move up the earnings ladder as men do.
Equal Pay for Working Families:
National and State Data
Equal pay is a bread-and-butter issue for working families. More than two-thirds of all mothers in the United States work for pay. Two-earner families are today's norm among married couples, and a growing number of single women provide most or all of their families' support. Altogether, almost two-thirds of all working women and slightly more than half of married women responding to the AFL-CIO's 1997 Ask A Working Woman survey said they provide half or more of their families' incomes.
Little wonder, then, that 94 percent of working women in the Ask A Working Woman survey—almost every one—described equal pay as "very important;" that two of every five cited pay as the "biggest" problem women face at work; and that one-third of all women and half of African American women said that, despite its importance, they do not have equal pay in their jobs.
To better understand the wage gap for women and people of color in the United States and to better measure the price that wage inequality exacts from families and individual workers, the AFL-CIO and the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) jointly undertook a national study, including state-by-state breakouts, to analyze recent data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The study confirms many recent analyses, finding that women who work full-time are paid only 74 cents for every dollar men earn—or $148 less each week. Women of color who work full-time are paid only 64 cents for every dollar men overall earn—or $210 less each week. Going further, the study uses more refined techniques to explore the dimensions, and the full cost, of unequal pay.
Working Families Pay a Steep Price for Unequal Pay
America's working families lose a staggering $200 billion of income annually to the wage gap—an average loss of more than $4,000 each for working women's families every year because of unequal pay, even after accounting for differences in education, age, location and the number of hours worked.
If married women were paid the same as comparable men, their family incomes would rise by nearly 6 percent, and their families' poverty rates would fall from 2.1 percent to 0.8 percent.
If single working mothers earned as much as comparable men, their family incomes would increase by nearly 17 percent, and their poverty rates would be cut in half, from 25.3 percent to 12.6 percent.
If single women earned as much as comparable men, their incomes would rise by 13.4 percent, and their poverty rates would be reduced from 6.3 percent to 1 percent.
Working families in Ohio, Michigan, Vermont, Indiana, Illinois, Montana, Wisconsin and Alabama pay the heaviest price for unequal pay to working women, losing an average of roughly $5,000 in family income each year.
Family income losses due to unequal pay for women range from $326 million in Alaska to $21.8 billion in California.
The Size of the Pay Gap Varies by State
While the wage gap is much smaller than the national average in some states, the numbers do not automatically signal improved economic status for women. The primary reason for women's relatively improved status in many states is that the wages of minority men are so low. This is particularly true for the District of Columbia, Arizona, California, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
Women who work full-time are paid the least, compared with men, in Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming, where women earn less than 70 percent of men's weekly earnings.
Women of color fare especially poorly in Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming, earning less than 60 percent of what men earn.
Even where women fare best compared with men—in Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island—women earn little more than 80 percent as much as men.
Women earn the most in comparison to men—97 percent—in Washington, D.C., but the primary reason women appear to fare so well is the very low wages of minority men.
For women of color, the gender pay gap is smallest in the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Florida, New York and Tennessee, where they earn more than 70 percent of what men overall in those states earn.
Unequal Pay Hurts Men, Too
As the percentage of women in an occupation rises, wages tend to fall. Workers who do what traditionally has been viewed as "women's work"—clerical workers, cashiers, librarians, child care workers and others in jobs in which 70 percent or more of the workers are women—typically earn less than workers in jobs that are predominately male or are integrated by gender.
Both women and men pay a steep price for unequal pay when they do "women's work": The 25.6 million women who work in these jobs lose an average of $3,446 each per year; the 4 million men who work in predominately female occupations lose an average of $6,259 each per year—for a whopping $114 billion loss for men and women in predominately female jobs.
At the state level, women who work in female-dominated jobs could increase their salaries from $2,112 per year in Missouri to a high of $4,707 in Delaware if they had equal pay. Annual wage gains for women in these jobs would exceed $3,000 on average in 36 states. In 34 states, wages would increase by at least $2,500 for women of color in female-dominated jobs.
For men in female-dominated jobs, state average increases would range from $3,533 annually in the District of Columbia to $8,958 in Delaware if pay inequality was eliminated. Minority men would see increases ranging from $1,918 in Colorado to $7,996 in Alaska.
Unions Mean Big Pay Gains, Smaller Pay Gaps
Union representation is a proven and powerful tool for raising workers' wages, particularly for those most subject to labor market discrimination: women and minorities.
The typical female union member earns 38 percent more per week—$157—than a woman who does not belong to a union.
Unionized women of color earn almost 39 percent more—$135—than nonunion women of color. In fact, minority union women earn $45 a week more than nonunion white women.
Minority men who belong to unions bring home 44 percent more—$177—each week than nonunion men of color.
Unions also help close the wage gaps based on gender and minority status for their members. Women represented by unions earn almost 84 percent as much as union men, while unionized workers of color make about 81 percent as much as unionized white workers.
In the 35 years since the equal employment laws passed, women
