The Gender Wage Gap: True Rap or Crap?

As the current economical infrastructure continues to progressively decline, various stimulus plans are being drawn up to reverse this direction.  Such plans by President Obama include road and bridge maintenance, and the installation of green programs that will direct energy resources away from oil and emissions, and toward alternative energy resources.  As you can imagine, such programs and installations will be opening lots of doors to hired applicants in construction, repair, engineering, agriculture, and forestry.  That’s all great and everything, but…

 …… how many women do you know that have jobs in any of these fields? 

While one or two of you may be raising your hands, the majority of you aren’t, because the answer is, less than 9% of women work in the construction industry, and less than 12% work in engineering.  While the present economic stimulus plans may create a ton of jobs, very few of them will be employing women.

In case no one has noticed, women have been losing jobs at the same rate that men have, and maybe even faster.  Given that women make up 45-46% of the national work force, that’s nearly half of the population that is essentially being completely overlooked in job expansion plans for the economy.  Human capital, which is a basic building block of the economic infrastructure, is where many jobs held by women exist – healthcare, child care, education, and social work.  These are areas that should be built up alongside of construction, engineering, and agriculture.  But of course, you can’t just draw up a few blueprints, lay the orange cones out and start glueing highways together in order to build up these kinds of industries.

So, impoverished single women and those with children continue to desperately work two and three jobs, often at odd hours, and struggle to find child care in order to be able to work.  Without an increase in jobs for women, the only alternative is to raise welfare funding to support families and individuals such as these, who only want the same opportunities that any man has.  The right to work is a very simple and necessary liberty, and yet the economy is quickly turning women away from this right, and handing it over to men that already have statistically proven advantages in gaining employment.  Many educated women remain unemployed, having no choice but to depend upon local and state assistance just to survive, meanwhile, a man without a G.E.D. can easily obtain a landscaping job, or some other type of well-paying hard labor employment.  Factory, welding, construction – these are all jobs that can easily start at $15.00/hr or more.  Basic jobs for women that require no education, and pay as much as construction jobs do, are almost non-existent.  Even most administrative support jobs, that are primarily filled by women are getting more demanding, and paying less.   The average local administrative support job requires some college education, and does not pay more than $10/hour -  many pay only around $8/hour.  Women that are just starting out are finding it more and more difficult to find work in this field, for instance, because the demands for experience and proven work history are increasing as the economy suffers, because employers do not want to risk hiring unreliable, inexperienced, or otherwise “risky” hires, due to the money it costs to train a new employee.  So where does that leave women that don’t have 10 years of experience, much less 5 or 6 years? 

After six month’s personal research of local employment openings in the administrative support field, almost every single researched employer (about 100) that offered a position in this field reported that they have had as many as 50 applicants for each job opening, even when the positions were minimally advertised.  In even the smallest of towns, where job openings are often spread through word of mouth, a craigslist posting, or a small newsletter, there are still as many as 15 applicants for each position.  Employers, when having such a large pick of applicants, are always going to choose the most overqualified candidate, to ensure a safe hire.  Overqualified people that are fortunate enough to be chosen for the job are accepting, because there simply is a tremendous lack of jobs right now.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, recent college graduates and people ages 20-39 are hit the hardest because tenure and experience becomes much more important in a sliding economy, and entry level positions are filled by workers who have years behind them at any given company.  Unemployment has risen from about 7% to about 10% since November, for people ages 20-29 – you add to that the difficulties that young women, many of whom also have young children to care for, already face against their male counterparts, and we begin to see the unemployment crisis for women expounding in a dismal realization.  Yet women have even more to overcome.

No matter how much any man, or woman, may insist that there is no gap in the working world, statistics prove over and over that there is.  While the business world would like us to believe that by allowing a few women to cross the boundary into a CEO or senior executive position and create an illusion that any woman can do it, that is not the case.  According to the last U.S. Census Bureau report in 2001, the median average for full-time working men was at $48,000 a year.  The median wage for full-time working women was at about $27,000 a year.  White women made 73.4% of what white men made, and black women made 84.8% of what black men made.  The gender wage gap exists across the board, with the largest gap being between white men and white women.  This does NOT include women who work part-time, and if it did, the gap would be much greater, due to the fact that many more women work part time than men.  Even more disconcerting is the largest wage gap exists at the highest of education levels.  According to the same U.S. Census, at professional degree level, women make 60% of what men do.  So while an education may improve some women’s salaries, with an increase in education, comes a decrease in equality of wages and opportunity.  It is a proven fact: women still make less, are hired less, and have less opportunity than men at getting a job, especially to get them out of unemployment.  Meanwhile, unemployed women and impoverished families with single mothers are still in need of stable and adequate income.  The gender wage gap is a bunch of crap -  but its real, and it adversely affects many women, especially in an equally crappy economy.

So now what? Well, for starters, there are many women activist organizations and lobbyists struggling to get women in dire need of work noticed by the local, state and national government, such as NOW (National Organization for Women) for example  To contribute to these efforts, look up the closest one to your area and get involved. Petition your local officials, your state representatives, and do as much as you can to call attention to the fact that jobs are being created for men, while women are being significantly overlooked.  There is no sense bawling about such things if we don’t at least try to change them.  There is also the option of working for yourself.  Everyone has some kind of marketable talent or trade, whether its tutoring, babysitting, catering, artistic talents, writing, cooking, organizing – don’t neglect to see that talent can be turned into profit.  It may not be enough to be an alternative to a full-time job, but it can help with income while having to work something part-time, or below your education level.  Another idea is to save or invest some of all that extra “talent” money.  Use any extra money to buy a few stocks or other investments, and do what you can to multiply your dollar.

 Don’t settle for a lower-paying job because you think you have to.  If you know for a fact that a man with the same education and experience is making more than you as a woman, demand a raise.  Don’t accept less to start a job if you know men are starting out at a higher wage.  Equality exists constitutionally, in our societal theories and in our ideals – shouldn’t it exist in reality as well?

(sources used: U.S. Census Bureau,

Forbes.com, and the National Organization for Women (NOW)