Dear Mr. Buckley,
The best approach to dealing with the wage gap would be to ensure that companies publish their own wage gaps with variables factored out and allow the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to use these along with their own findings to a much more accurate depiction of the wage gap . This is the best approach because the overall wage gap is comprised of many different factors which when removed will show a much more accurate depiction of the wage gap, it is one of the cheapest methods as opposed to hiring out third parties to ensure that there are no underlying wage discrepancies within the company, and because this method will spark momentum within the company to make sure they are giving equal pay. However, an important qualification is that people may conclude that the different variables account entirely for the wage gap and nothing needs to be done about it.
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Historical background (can also include laws)
The wage gap seems to be a very modern issue facing many people today, but the public outcry against it has been prevalent from even the late 1800’s. The vocalized outrage against the wage gap began in 1883, when workers of the Western Union Telegraph Company went on strike to ensure equal pay for both genders. This strike was not very successful, but it was still a landmark as one of the first public outcries against unequal wages. By 1911, much progress had been made; New York teachers were granted equal wages for both men and women after a long legal battle with the Board of Education. In 1918, during World War 1, the U.S. Employment Service put out a list of jobs suitable for women in order to deter men from taking them and instead join the army. This was originally meant to be derogatory towards women, hoping men would leave positions labeled as a “woman’s job”, but it only increased the female work force and led to the National War Labor Board deciding that women needed to have the same wages as men if they were doing the same jobs (Charlotte). After that, the public fight for wage equality began to slow down as the idea of the archetypal “american housewife” began to grow in popularity. Soon, different laws and statues were instituted, such as the which systematically gave women lower wages, such as the National Recovery Act. This required women who held jobs with the government to receive 25 percent less pay than men in the same jobs. ("History of the Struggle for Fair Pay"). In 1963, the Equal Pay Act was introduced. This was very significant because it was introduced by President JFK himself, and provided equal pay for equal work. In 1979, 20 different women’s groups formed the National Committee on Pay Equity in order to educate, lobby, and build coalitions on pay equity ("History of the Struggle for Fair Pay."). In 1982, San Jose city workers went on strike due to unequal wages, and their victory led the city to pay out $1.5 million in order to fix the issue. ("History of the Struggle for Fair Pay.").
Alter, Charlotte. "Here's the History of the Battle for Equal Pay for American Women." TIME, 14 Apr. 2015. TIME, Meredith Long, time.com/3774661/equal-pay-history/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2017.
"History of the Struggle for Fair Pay." National Committee on Pay Equity, pay-equity.org/info-history.html. Accessed 28 Sept. 2017.
Legal background (more modern laws)
The wage gap has had a very long and complicated legal history. Towards the beginning, there were many laws that blatantly and systematically brought down a woman’s pay compared to that of a man. The War ended before rule can be enforced. In 1951, equal pay bills are introduced by Senator Wayne Morse, but not much changes. In 1963-4, the Equal Pay Act and Civil Rights Bill are passed, providing equal pay for equal work and banning employment discrimination against women. Throughout the 1980’s, there were a multitude of court cases that strengthened the case of equal pay through the court rulings. In 1994, the Fair Pay Act of 1994 was introduced in Congress by Delegate Eleanor Holmes-Norton calling for employers to pay fairly for equivalent jobs ("History of the Struggle for Fair Pay."). In 2009, President Obama chose the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act as his first piece of legislation, which restored some protections against discrimination that had been stripped in a 2007 Supreme Court case, and incentivized employers to make their payrolls more fair (Charlotte)
Equal Pay Act. United States Code, vol. 29, 1963 & supp. 1964, 1967, 1990, sec. 206(d). U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/epa.cfm. Accessed 20 Sept. 2017.
"History of the Struggle for Fair Pay." National Committee on Pay Equity, pay-equity.org/info-history.html. Accessed 28 Sept. 2017.
Alter, Charlotte. "Here's the History of the Battle for Equal Pay for American Women." TIME, 14 Apr. 2015. TIME, Meredith Long, time.com/3774661/equal-pay-history/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2017.
Factoring out variables of the annual salaries of men and women will provide a much more accurate depiction of the wage gap
In order to fully deal with the issue of the wage gap, we must first remove all of the separate variables obscuring it for what it truly is. The mere 77% statistic that seems to be thrown around all to often nowadays is mainly derived from the National Census Bureau's findings, which provide no effort to minimize or account for all of the separate variables that go into a wage. This merely diminishes the value down to its face value as a single number instead a combination of many different aspects of a person’s job (Brooks). These different factors can include: whether they are working part or full time, their previous experience, whether or not they went on maternity leave, and what industry and occupation they are working in. Historically and continuing to the modern day, women have worked in fields very different to those men work in, which have also on average had lower wages (CONSAD Research Corporation). Women tend to choose lower waged, but more self fulfilling jobs such as pediatricians, where men tend to work in higher waged, less self fulfilling jobs, such as accounting (Daymont). Many different researchers have found this to be one of the main factors creating the discrepancy within the pay gap. In addition, it is important to note that as the categories of employment being analyzed are narrowed down and refined, the smaller the wage gap becomes. Recently as women have begun moving into all areas of the workforce, the wage gap has also decreased proportionally. Another issue that may contribute to the gap is maternity leave. Maternity leave has a strong negative effect on someone’s wages and can also contribute to a lower national average (CONSAD Research Corporation).
Jackson, Brooks. "Obama’s 77-Cent Exaggeration." FactCheck.org, edited by Lori Robertson, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 22 June 2002, www.factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-77-cent-exaggeration/. Accessed 30 Nov. 2017.
CONSAD Research Corporation. "An Analysis of the Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women." An Analysis of Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women, 12 Jan. 2009, www.shrm.org/hr-today/public-policy/hr-public-policy-issues/Documents/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf. Accessed 1 Dec. 2017.
Daymont, Thomas N., and Paul J. Andrisani. “Job Preferences, College Major, and the Gender Gap in Earnings.” The Journal of Human Resources,vol. 19, no. 3, 1984, pp. 408428. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/145880.
Miller, Claire Cain. "The Gender Pay Gap Is Largely Because of Motherhood." New York Times, 13 May 2017. The New York Times, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap-is-largely-because-of-motherhood.html?mcubz=1. Accessed 20 Sept. 2017.
Kliff, Sarah. "The truth about the gender wage gap." Vox, Vox Media, 8 Sept. 2017, www.vox.com/2017/9/8/16268362/gender-wage-gap-explained. Accessed 20 Sept. 2017.
Walker, Henry A. “Gender Differences in Role Different and Organizational Task Performance.” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 12, 1986, pp. 255275. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2083203.
Publishing data is one of the cheapest methods to spur a company into taking a closer look at how fairly they pay their employees, and can help remove external variables on the national level if done effectively
In recent years, the effort to make wages equal among the two genders has been enormous and has started to pay off. The discrepancy in pay was originally attributed to an “unconscious bias” among men in the workplace. This immediately creates a dilemma for anyone trying to solve this issue: if about 6-9% of someone’s wage is attributed to an abstract idea unable to be measured, quantified, or even recognized by its own perpetrators, there is no way you can go about fixing it. Britain, however, does have a solution to this problem: they have begun to institute a plan requiring any businesses with over 250 employees to publicly report their gender pay gap ("David Cameron sets out plans to tackle gender pay gap"). Critics of this plan have deemed it too expensive and not as effective as other strategies. The New York Times points out, however, that “About 20 percent of large companies now train employees to recognize unconscious bias, spending billions of dollars to try to stamp out unintentional discrimination. Paying for a salary analysis is cheaper and potentially more effective. Evidence also suggests that less secrecy about pay results in greater employee loyalty and lower turnover” (Lipman). For these reasons, it is much economically safer and more effective to enforce the public reporting of wage gaps rather than trying to teach men not to be “unconsciously biased.” The latter approach would require seminars, meetings, and many hours that could be spent working instead, and would not see many results. However, by only hiring a single person, you allow everyone else to continue their work and the published data will also bring a stronger sense of trust to the company’s employees.
Lipman, Joanne. "Let’s Expose the Gender Pay Gap." New York Times, 13 Aug. 2015. The New York Times, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/opinion/lets-expose-the-gender-pay-gap.html?mcubz=1 . Accessed 20 Sept. 2017.
"David Cameron sets out plans to tackle gender pay gap." BBC, 14 July 2015, www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-33515629 . Accessed 5 Dec. 2017.
This method has been tried before on much smaller scales and has worked
The method prescribed above would also be incredibly effective because it has been shown to work on smaller scales before. At first this may not seem to do a tremendous amount of work, but the results speak for themselves. Pricewaterhouse Coopers’s found that most of its 15.1 percent pay disparity reflected a lack of women in senior jobs. This caused them to focus more on whether they were promoting fairly. The firm’s executives also found a bonus pattern that favored men. The analysis showed that men would often be given retention bonuses to keep them from quitting. Women weren’t. Ms. Churchman believes that’s because men often threatened to leave, while women typically decided to work harder and try again next year (Lipman). Not only does reporting the data publically put the company into the public eye, but also may show trends previously thought to be nonexistent, such as the pattern of bonuses only going to men in the previous example. This method would also discourage workers from intentionally paying women less or giving men more raises. Last but certainly not least, if this were instituted on a large scale, not only would it help companies to reconcile any wage gaps created, but the public data would allow for a much more accurate representation of the wage gap that can be backed up with hundreds of company’s statistics (Obama).
"David Cameron sets out plans to tackle gender pay gap." BBC, 14 July 2015, www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-33515629. Accessed 5 Dec. 2017.
Obama, Barack. "Presidential Memorandum — Advancing Pay Equality Through Compensation Data Collection." Obama White House, 8 Apr. 2014, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/08/presidential-memorandum-advancing-pay-equality-through-compensation-data.Accessed 7 Dec. 2017.
An important qualification is that people might believe that there is already no residual wage gap after accounting for different variables, and that everything else is unnecessary.
Some may believe that the different variables within the wage gap are enough to completely account for the disparity in pay between men and women, and the plan above is overkill. There is a school of thought some belong to which think that the entire idea of a pay gap is propaganda being pushed by the “feminist left”. As stated in an article by CBS News, “According to highly acclaimed career expert and best-selling author, Marty Nemko, ‘The data is clear that for the same work men and women are paid roughly the same. The media need to look beyond the claims of feminist organizations’” (Tobak). The reality that this ideology is founded on is limited to none, and more comes from a perspective of contradicting the opposite side of the political spectrum. They further push this by stating about a study done by the labor berau, ”This study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action”(Tobak). This is specifically saying that any corrective action against the pay gap would be unjustified. However, even if there is no pay gap, the plan in which the data is publically reported does action to prevent one from being created in the future and has many other benefits such as a culture of trust among the employees and less uncertainty and paranoia on the basis of fair payment (Miller).
Tobak, Steve. "The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth." CBS MoneyWatch, edited by Steve Kapus, CBS, 8 Mar. 2011, www.cbsnews.com/news/ the-gender-pay-gap-is-a-complete-myth/. Accessed 28 Sept. 2017.
Miller, Kevin. "The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap." AAUW, www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/. Accessed 7 Dec. 2017.
Another qualification is that people may believe that we are putting too much trust in independent companies to accurately report all of their data
On the other end of the spectrum, there could be a dilemma where companies may not accurately publish all of the data either deliberately or indeliberately. This could have much worse effects on the wage gap, calling into question the legitimacy of every other published financial report on the wage gap of its time. How could a company’s findings harm the integrity and legitimacy behind the wage gap? They will either do so unintentionally or with malicious intent. If done unintentionally, this could be due to negligence on the part of the accountant or the company itself. There could also be hidden variables that the company was unaware they should account for (Muller). The company itself may also have different definitions or extents to which they will claim a variable accounts for pay, which can cause discrepancies between different companies’ pay gaps. Many companies may also refuse to publish their financial reports, narrowing down the bank of data you have to work on. Companies may also deliberately exclude things like systematically given bonuses and financial compensations to males in their reports, causing the pay rates to look more equal while keeping the inequalities (Bloxham). All in all, there are some issues in the idea, but they can be worked out with time.
Bloxham, Eleanor. "Here’s why you can’t trust a company’s financials." Fortune, edited by Clifton Leaf, Eric Danetz, 19 Oct. 2015, fortune.com/2015/10/19/auditors-financial-reports/. Accessed 1 Dec. 2017.
Muller, Joann. "Why Can't You Trust General Motors' Financials? Because GM Says You Can't." Forbes, 20 Aug. 2010, www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2010/08/20/why-you-cant-trust-gms-financials/#4d58eed94638. Accessed 7 Dec. 2017.
People may also not believe the wage gap does not have to do that much with external factors, and that we are not doing enough and claim this will not really fix the issue
Others may still believe that the gap is not simply solved by eliminating the extra factors, and that accounting for them and publishing them simply will not be enough to help. In the New York Times article, they object against the idea that the pay gap is able to disappear simply by factoring for variables. “Take doctors and surgeons. Women earn 71 percent of men’s wages — after controlling for age, race, hours and education” (Miller). Instead, they attribute it to another issue. “The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours” (Goldin). This suggests that the gap is not existent because of gender, but because on average women need more flexibility in their work hours, and this allows any disproportionate pay for hours work to do its damage. If this is the scenario trying to be solved by publishing financial reports, it would still be able to be fixed. The disproportionate amount per hours worked would still be able to be recognized by the companies and promptly fixed.
Goldwin, Claudia. "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter." A Grand Gender
Convergence: Its Last Chapter, vol. 104, no. 4, Apr. 2014. American Economic
Association, DOI:10.1257/aer.104.4.1091. Accessed 14 Feb. 2018.
Miller, Claire. "Pay Gap Is Because of Gender, Not Jobs." The New York Times, edited by Dean Baquet, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., 23 Apr. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/the-pay-gap-is-because-of-gender-not-jobs.html?abt=0002&abg=0.Accessed 7 Dec. 2017.
I recommend that we instate a law or proposition to ensure that companies publish the data on their own wage gaps and have the Census Bureau use those statistics in accordance with their own.
I recommend that we instate a law or proposition to ensure that companies publish the data on their own wage gaps and have the Census Bureau use those statistics in accordance with their own. This will be the best approach to help alleviate the issues as it will create a much more accurate depiction of the wage gap by using a large conglomeration of individually collected wage gaps which all factor out variables specific to them. It will also be one of the cheapest methods, as investing money into the Census Bureau to do it all on their own would be far too expensive, and each company would only have to hire a few data analysts. Making the information public will also encourage companies to reduce their own wage gaps to avoid negative publicity. Even putting all of the information into one place will allow wage gap causing patterns to appear that may have previously been unknown. In order to fix this, a law needs to be passed requiring all companies with over 100 staff members to publish their wage gap statistics including original wages, amount factored out, and how the extra variables were calculated. These must also be verified and follow standards set by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If it were to start from the ground up, a bill would have to be sent through congress and become a law.
Jackson, Brooks. "Obama’s 77-Cent Exaggeration." FactCheck.org, edited by Lori Robertson, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 22 June 2002, www.factcheck.org/ 2012/06/obamas-77-cent-exaggeration/. Accessed 30 Nov. 2017.
—. "The White House’s use of data on the gender wage gap." Fact Checker, Fred Ryan, 5 June 2012, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-white-houses-use-of-data-on-the-gender-wage-gap/2012/06/04/gJQAYH6nEV_blog.html?utm_term=.6fb3f2769d1b. Accessed 20 Sept. 2017.