Closing the gap for equal pay

Equal pay for equal work is supposed to be the law, but hurdles remain for women
By Colleen O'Connor
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 10/13/2008 08:33:46 AM MDT

More than four decades after the Equal Pay Act made it illegal to pay men and women different wages for the same work, the fight over equal pay rages once again.
Although the wage gap has narrowed since the days when full-time working women made 58 cents on average to the dollar earned by men, women's wages have remained stuck at 77 cents to the dollar since 2001, according to government statistics.
"At the rate the pay gap is closing, it will still be decades before women achieve equal pay," said Linda Meric of Westminster, executive director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, who founded the Colorado chapter in 1996. "That is unacceptable. It's time to take action now to close the pay gap."
While the statistics

Click on image to enlarge. on the pay gap come from a variety of sources — including the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — there remain questions about whether the numbers paint a true picture of the pay situation.
"It's misleading and bad for women to be told that they're only making three-quarters of what a man makes," said Carrie Lukas, vice president for policy and economics at the Independent Women's Forum in Washington, D.C. "They are being told they're victims of discrimination when often that's not the case."
The wage gap results from personal choices, she believes: women on average take more time out of the labor force; men assume more high-risk jobs than women; and women are less likely than men to negotiate a starting salary and to ask for raises.
A new study on Colorado's wage gap shows that it persists across all education levels, and in jobs held predominantly by men and those held predominantly by women.
And as Lukas suggests, the gap is worse for mothers both in Colorado and nationally. But national statistics compiled by the American Association of University Women also show women start out behind men after college and never make up the ground regardless of whether they have children.
Fresh case sheds new light
The issue of pay equity has been on a long, slow boil for decades — at least among women who either know or suspect they are paid less than their male counterparts.
But it grabbed the limelight recently, in part because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that women who don't learn of the pay disparity until months after they're hired have little legal recourse.
Three pay-equity bills are pending in Congress. Colorado has created the Pay Equity Commission, which recently released a report on the problem and listed some causes and solutions.
Colleen Abdoulah, an executive in Englewood, did not wait for legal action. Twice in her telecom career, she took the course that many experts say women must take if they are going to close the gap: She got the facts and negotiated. [To see the entire story, go to: http://www.denverpost.com/ci_10693928?source=rss ]