Caryn McTighe Musil

I was in college when President John F. Kennedy signed the landmark Equal Pay Act into law. Like many in my generation, I was majoring in a “women’s major”—English—without realizing what that would mean to my economic future. In that period suffused with Camelot’s glow, I thought the march toward a shining new world of equality would be linear, triumphant, and quickly endorsed by everyone. In 1963, women earned 59 cents for every dollar earned by men (National Committee on Pay Equity 2009). But that would equalize in a few years’ time now that the disturbing facts had been made public—I was sure of it.

After forty-seven years and two more generations of women in my genetic line, women in the United States still earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men (National Committee on Pay Equity 2009). At that rate, forty-seven years from now and potentially five generations of women later, equal pay for women is likely to remain elusive, with women continuing to work as hard as men for less compensation. That is simply too much to ask of my granddaughter—and of her daughter and her granddaughter.

Why Equal Pay Matters: It’s More Than Pocket Money

AAUW’s study Behind the Pay Gap argues that getting a college degree improves what women can earn but does not eliminate the pay gap. As early as one year out of college, the report explains, “women working full time earn only 80 percent as much as their male colleagues,” and within ten years, “women fall farther behind, earning only 69 percent as much as men earn” (Dey and Hill 2007, 2).

While pay inequities are influenced by choice of major, major alone does not explain inequities in pay. According to AAUW, even when men and women select the same major, the pay gap surfaces within one year after graduation. Even in women-dominated majors, where one would expect women to achieve pay equity, women are still only earning 95 percent of what men earn. In mixed-gender fields, the inequities can intensify: among biology majors, for example, women earn only 75 percent of what men earn, close to the 76 percent women earn compared to men in a male-dominated major like mathematics (Dey and Hill 2007, 2).

This issue of On Campus with Women explores why such gaps persist, how higher education itself may be contributing to the problem, and what some remedies might be. Addressing this conundrum has benefits at both individual and societal levels. For individuals, equal pay for the same job, the same training, and the same credentials is a matter of equality, dignity, and fairness. For society as a whole—and this is especially true when developing countries are taken into account—equal pay typically ensures bedrock democratic values like opportunity and security, not just for women but for the partners and spouses with whom they might live, the children they might have, and the extended family members who might rely on them. In the United States, 77 percent of all mothers with school-age children work, and 62 percent report that they earn half or more of the family income (Women Employed 2010). Consequently, what women earn affects a webbed network of dependents for whom a women’s equal pay can mean better health, better education, and better futures. Working women also consume goods and pay taxes that contribute to public investments at the local, state, and federal levels. Equal pay for women, then, is not a private matter, but a public one.

Practice Makes Perfect: Moral Rehearsals for Equality

This OCWW issue is full of practical advice that can contribute to closing the gender pay gap, from encouraging more women to consider and remain in STEM fields, to counseling women across majors about their economic options, to disaggregating data by race and gender to uncover and eliminate discrimination. I want to suggest some additional strategies rooted in student learning that might accelerate the chance of reaching pay equity.

Give students the intellectual skills to detect inequities. It is important for multiple reasons that students develop the critical capacities to examine their world through a democratic lens. Every student should expect to sharpen these capacities while in college, through both academic study and participation in campus life. Students should be able and inclined to ask, What is equal opportunity, and how do we measure its availability? How does one sift through the many contributing causes that lead to disparities in pay? How does unconscious bias affect pay gaps, and how can we recognize it? For what systemic reasons might equality be denied, and what systemic policies and structures can remedy inequities? How do gender, race, and other markers potentially intertwine in patterns surrounding economic inequalities? What historical examples illustrate how such patterns have appeared in the past?

Organize assignments that challenge students to gather data and assess what it tells them, using the campus as a starting place. A community-based research project can begin right on campus. Invite students to design individual or group research projects in which they gather data from public university records, focus groups, and peer campuses to investigate such things as how salaries are determined for different campus jobs and how those salaries change with promotions over time. Are cafeteria workers and secretaries, for example, paid less than groundskeepers and facilities repair workers, and if so, why? Do racial patterns emerge, and if so, to what effect? As a rule, who works in different job categories? Does the dean of the Medical School make more than the dean of the School of Education, and if so, why? Do business and science faculty make more than English and history professors, and if so, why? Does gender segregation exist within units and departments and at different levels? If so, to what economic effect?

Move from the campus to local and global communities of inquiry. Organize group research projects that examine the effect of women’s income on different economic communities when women are the key breadwinners. How does a woman’s income affect her family’s options? For a single woman with children, what is the impact on her dependents of her receiving 12 percent less income than a man over a lifetime?  In developing countries, how would society benefit if women were offered the same pay as men for the same work?

Offer students experiential opportunities to explore their implicit biases. Have students take the Implicit Association Test (www.implicit.harvard.edu), designed by social cognition psychologists to measure implicit beliefs and attitudes that one may be unaware are operating as interpretive frameworks.  Have students talk with one another about what they discovered about their responses. What do they think contributed to their developing these biases? When did they begin to understand their unconscious responses in relation to personal experiences and larger societal patterns? How might these attitudes play out if one were a banker deciding whether to loan a person money for a house or a car? Have students design an experiment for their peers in which participants evaluate two resumes to determine at what pay level each applicant will begin his or her job. Switch the Jane Doe and the John Doe resumes and see if students rate them differently.

Expand students’ understanding about women and gender. The first step toward countering implicit bias is becoming aware that it might be operating. Another way to reverse bias is to learn more about the group about which one might have unconsciously absorbed negative or inaccurate information. There is evidence that some of the gender pay gap is attributable to conscious or unconscious devaluing of women’s worth or capabilities. Thus offering students myriad ways to deepen their understanding about women in all their diversity could be a means of alleviating gender bias. Students should expect professors across disciplines and levels, in general education and in the major, in women’s studies courses and beyond, to include opportunities to learn about women and gender.

Engineer equality. Create opportunities through classwork or in campus activities where students might assume responsibility for setting policies and practices that would help produce greater gender equity in pay. Design an exercise where students function as interviewers for a company and establish hiring and promotion policies that help ensure greater pay equity. Have students examine existing pay patterns for coaches of men’s and women’s athletics teams and devise policies that would improve pay equity. As part of an entrepreneurship project, have students invent a company whose policies ensure that gender equity in pay persists over time.

These and other academic and cocurricular designs could help students reflect on their own behaviors and biases, develop skills to detect pay discrimination, and practice analyzing policies and making suggestions for improvement to those in charge. The capabilities to gather and assess evidence, develop critical analysis, draw from historical analyses and quantitative compilations, and apply new knowledge to address complex world problems are marks of a liberally educated person. The propensity to question the acceptability of a world where gender pay gaps are the norm is the ethical cherry on top. At the moment, my two-year-old granddaughter would prefer chocolate sprinkles. But when she grows up, she will like pay equity even better.

References

Dey, J. G., and C. Hill. 2007. Behind the pay gap. Washington, DC: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. www.aauw.org/learn/research/upload/behindPayGap.pdf

National Committee on Pay Equity. 2009. The wage gap over time: In real dollars, women see a continuing gap. www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html.

Women Employed. 2010. About the issues: Facts about working women. www.womenemployed.org/indes.php?id=20.