In his State of the Union speech last week, President Obama spoke passionately about wanting to end the wage discrimination between males and females. He used the number $.77 in the context of women make $.77 for every dollar a man makes. Is that actually true? Probably not, when you look at all the data:
"[Women] still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. A woman deserves equal pay for equal work."
Hard to argue with that, but the 77-cents statistic does not tell the full story.
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All it tells us is how the median annual earnings of full-time, year-round female workers compare with that of full-time, year-round male workers.
It doesn't speak to any of the factors that determine one's pay, such as the type of job chosen, education, experience, tenure, or hours worked. Nor does it reflect the host of less tangible factors that play a role, such as job performance.
Controlling for those factors would shrink the pay gap considerably in many jobs and in some cases all but erase it.
Does that mean there's no gender discrimination in pay? No. But teasing out just how much exists is very hard. Assessments will differ depending on what methodologies are used and what specifically is being compared. The Institute for Women's Policy Research, for instance, estimates that somewhere between a quarter to a third of the 77-cents pay gap may be attributable to discrimination.
But it doesn't really matter, in my mind, if we are talking about $.23 or $.03 – any difference is too much. Our reality is there shouldn't be any difference in pay given all things being equal. So, why is it that really, today in 2014, we have pay discrepancy between men and women? I'll give you three reasons why we have it, and why it's going to continue:
1. HR still does not have enough influence in most organizations to stop illegal and immoral decisions by leadership. 72.7 percent of HR Professionals are female (based on 2012 BLS figures). So, in the vast majority of our organizations women are actually in a position to influence this issue. You would think with such a large number of females in HR this would take care of itself. But here we are. I'm not saying women don't have influence, I'm saying HR doesn't have influence. Having more than 70 percent of HR positions filled by women should make, and keep, this a top-of-mind issue to put an end to.
2. HR does not train, and consequently discipline, male leaders who over-inflate the performance of male employees. We see this happen all the time, and we (HR) turn a blind eye to the practice instead of putting a stop to it. I think one could easily argue that an over-reaching competency amongst HR professionals is their inability to directly handle conflict, which definitely perpetuates this issue.
3. Culturally, in America, we want women to make less. That one hurts, right? Before you react, think about it. Who is expected to take off work when a baby is born? Who is expected to stay home with a sick child? Or on a snow day from school? All of these feed into Obama's $.77 figure. If 20 percent take off 12 weeks after childbirth, that has a huge impact on female average wages compared to male wages! Also, what about that thing we don't talk about? Men who can't handle being with or married to a woman who makes more than them? You can scoff, but it is a very real thing! In my career I've had to sit with female employees and have them tell me to my face they don't want a raise, or to take on a new position, because it would cause them to make more than their husbands, and that was a bad thing.
HR could put a stop to most of this wage discrimination, almost immediately, but we don't.
It wouldn't solve the entire problem, but it would make a huge dent.
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