|
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Women's paychecks don't reflect success
Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||||||
 |
Also on this page: The New Gender Gap | |||||
Improving pay for women should be a higher priority than trying to figure out why there is a gender gap between students' performance, some women's advocates say. Women are earning more college degrees than men, but they still earn less money. Advocates say that until women earn the same as men the academic achievement of men does not matter. "The picture cannot be complete until we understand why they are entering education at a higher rate and why they are not succeeding equally on the outside," said Sarah Standiford, executive director of Maine Women's Policy Center, an advocacy group for women's issues. Standiford said women may be dominating some of the professional degree programs now but they are not dominating the highest-paying spots in their professions. Many more women than men don't have health insurance and earn wages that are below poverty level. Although the wage gap has narrowed in the past few decades, women still lag far behind men when it comes to earnings. In the late 1970s, women earned 62 percent of what men did. Today the gap has narrowed to about 76 percent in Maine, and 78 percent nationally. Susan Feiner, an economist and director of the women's studies program at the University of Southern Maine, said women's educational attainment is not what narrowed the pay gap. "It is not because women's wages have gone up," she said. "It's because men's wages have gone down." The gap in earnings between men and women with a college education is slightly greater than it is for less-educated workers. The gap narrows for younger women, with women between the ages of 20 and 24 earning 94 percent of the pay earned by men in the same age group. Just why women are outperforming men in education but still earning less money is not clear. Some point to the fact that women take more time off from work than men to care for families or congregate in relatively low-paying job sectors, but research is inconclusive. Feiner believes it is both deliberate and unconscious discrimination and social conditioning. "If you went over to the technical high school I would bet you would find boys in mechanics and plumbing and you would find girls in hairdressing," she said. But it may also be that the impact of women's academic achievement over men has not yet shown up in the workplace. Women are still not entering some of the high-paying job sectors, such as construction and maritime jobs, a trend the Women's Resource Center at the University of Maine is trying to reverse. Sharon Barker, who heads the center, said anti-discrimination legislation and women's strides in education do not mean that discrimination no longer exists. Instead, she said, it is much more subtle and even unintentional. Barker said women still have to be stars in their professions to reach equity with men. She said she is looking forward to the day when a mediocre woman can succeed as well as a mediocre man. "It feels counterintuitive. Women should be doing better by now; laws have changed, a lot of opportunities have opened up," Barker said. Staff Writer Beth Quimby can be contacted at 791-6363 or at:
|
||||||
TODAY: Maine's boys are lagging behind girls in the classroom, and there are signs that the gap is widening. (
enlarge
that compares the performance of students in one state with that of students across the nation or in other states.
