B and B

Now is the time for the Paycheck Fairness Act

The Paycheck Fairness Act may come up for a vote in the U.S. Senate today.  This is a critical piece of legislation that addresses several shortfalls in current laws against unequal pay for women.  We know from personal experience that these shoftfalls need to be addressed before we can hope to achieve the decades-old goal of equal pay.

Terrel McSweeny writes at whitehouse.gov:

Wage discrimination is real.

Just ask Lilly Ledbetter.  She is a mother.  She didn’t seek a “less stressful work environment” than her male counter parts.  And she was paid roughly 30% less.   If she had been allowed to share information about her pay with her colleagues she would have realized she was being paid less than men with less experience.

But Lilly couldn’t bring that case.  She could have lost her job if she discussed her pay with her colleagues.  The Paycheck Fairness Act would provide that protection. The author [of a Wall Street Journal op-ed] is right there are a lot of laws aimed at this problem – but because they don’t provide basic tools like pay transparency, discrimination persists.

Also see Carol Rose at boston.com:

Lawmakers meant for The Equal Pay Act of 1963 to ensure equal pay for equal work, but over time, because of weak remedies and loopholes in the law, significant disparities in pay persist.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would give employees the legal tools they need to finally close the wage gap by, for example, requiring employers to demonstrate that wage differences between men and women doing the same work have a business justification; prohibiting retaliation against workers who inquire about their wages; and leveling the playing field by ensuring that women can obtain the same remedies as those subject to employment discrimination based on their race or national origin. The bill would also provide technical assistance to employers and provide important safeguards for small businesses.

The Paycheck Fairness Act already passed the U.S. House of Representatives with bipartisan support and now has 40 co-sponsors in the Senate—more than it has ever had in any previous Congress. Recently, a report from the White House National Economic Council underscored the need for the Paycheck Fairness Act as an important step towards the economic security of women and our nation’s families.

If we want the tools to eliminate pay discrimination against women, it is time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passes Senate

Excellent news.  From The Hill:

The Senate on Thursday flexed its bolstered Democratic majority and passed an equal pay measure that Republicans blocked last year. The bill could be the first measure signed into law by President Obama.

Senators voted 61-36 for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, after a day of beating back eight GOP amendments by decisive margins.

“We have now overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill to correct an injustice that has been prevailing,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who led the floor debate on the bill.

All four female GOP senators crossed over to support the Democratic measure: Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas; Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine; and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) also approved the legislation.

Every voting Democrat backed the bill.

Yesterday, Congress took a large step towards helping enforce fair pay for women

The Lilly Ledbetter Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act both passed the House resoundingly on Friday.  Unfortunately, the vast, vast majority of Republicans remain adamantly opposed to recognizing the problems with workplace discrimination that these bills are meant to address. 

Also, I've noticed a misleading representation of the Ledbetter Act being passed around, either by lazy journalists (NPR) or by conservative propagandists (CEI).  These people suggest that this act is meant to extend or abolish the status of limitations on filing discrimination lawsuits.  This is completely false.

For an accurate, short description of the Act, see this AP article by Jim Abrams from yesterday:

The Lilly Ledbetter Act would reverse a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that a worker must file claims of wage discrimination within 180 days of the first decision to pay that worker less, even if the person was unaware of the pay disparity.

The 180-day limit, for better or worse, is untouched by the Ledbetter Act.  But it will apply to the time since the issuance of the last discriminatory paycheck, as it had in legal interpretation for decades -- until 2007.

Later in the AP article, Rep. Rob Andrews of New Jersey concisely summarizes the impact of that Supreme Court Ruling and the situation that the Ledbetter Act is meant to rectify:

"It should not become the law of the land that if you are an employer and can hide discrimination for 180 days you can get away with it."

For more on these bills, which now await action in the Senate, see the National Committee on Pay Equity.

New Congress will quickly take up the Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act

One of the first acts to be taken up by the new Congress should be the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act.  Hopefully this time, thanks to the GOP's numerous defeats in the recent elections, it won't be filibustered to death by the Senate Republicans.

From the NY Times on Monday:

President-elect Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress are planning swift action to overturn a Supreme Court decision that made it much harder for people to challenge discrimination in employment, education, housing and other fields.

...

The decision, involving a woman named Lilly M. Ledbetter, who had accused her employer of sex-based pay discrimination, was issued in May 2007. Since then, courts around the country have gone far beyond the facts of that case and cited it as a reason for rejecting lawsuits claiming discrimination based on race, sex, age and disability.In some cases, after initially ruling for employees, judges have reversed themselves and ruled in favor of employers. The judges said they had to switch because of the Supreme Court decision.

Lilly Ledbetter to address Dem convention on equal pay for women

More details from the convention website:

“We are honored that Lilly Ledbetter will address the Democratic Convention,” said Senator Barack Obama. “The fact that women are paid less than their male coworkers for doing the same job is unacceptable in the 21st century and counter to both the progress we've made and our shared values as Americans. Lilly Ledbetter's case before the Supreme Court has once again awakened the nation to this discrimination, and it's time we join together to right this wrong and pay women equal pay for equal work."

“The theme of Tuesday night’s program is Renewing America’s Promise, and there is no more critical promise that we can keep to American women than to ensure pay equity,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Permanent Chair of the 2008 Convention. “There is a clear difference between the parties when it comes to pay equity, and this election could not be more critical when it comes to garnering support for reversing the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision in the Ledbetter v. Goodyear case.  As American women are called upon to do more and more for their families with less and less resources coming in, the least we can do is to ensure pay equity.”

Apparently she'll be speaking at around 8pm Central time.

Ledbetter Fair Pay Act still in limbo

While we were traveling last week, we missed this news of a rally in support of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.  From Womenstake:

As the rally commenced, one by one the Congresswomen spoke to the crowd and explained why the passage of this Act is integral to closing the wage gap and guaranteeing pay equity. Following Senator Hillary Clinton’s address, Lilly Ledbetter shared her own story and gave a face to the unfortunate reality of pay discrimination. As the rally came to a close, the Congresswomen urged the crowd to contact their Senators and demand that they support this Act and demonstrate their commitment to equality.

Kay Steiger at RH Reality Check has more:

"My struggle today is about timing," Letbetter [sic] said when it was her turn to speak, "at least, on the surface." Women who lack the power to contest pay discrimination in court -- and many do because they discover their pay discrimination long after the legal six-month filing period has expired -- end up earning less over a lifetime. As Ledbetter noted, to this day it affects her pension and social security payments. "The only bill that would fix the problem created by the court is the Paycheck Fairness Act," Ledbetter said.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act

Here is a bill I've been keeping a close eye on for nearly a year:

Under a measure sponsored by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, the court’s ruling that Ms. [Lilly] Ledbetter [of Alabama] failed to file a timely challenge to pay practices at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden would effectively be overturned, though Ms. Ledbetter would not benefit directly.

Ms. Ledbetter, who earned thousands of dollars less than male colleagues doing similar supervisory work, was found by the court to have failed to make her claim within 180 days of the company’s pay policy decision. The sponsors of the bill want to clear up that requirement and straighten out what they see as a flawed ruling.

“Never mind that Ms. Ledbetter didn’t know about the discrimination when it first began,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Never mind that she had no means to learn of the discrimination because Goodyear kept salary information confidential. Never mind that Goodyear’s discrimination against Ms. Ledbetter continued each and every time it gave her a smaller paycheck than it gave her male colleagues.”

The House passed a similar bill last year soon after the court decision, but its backers have encountered resistance in the Senate and from the Bush administration, which argues it could spark a wave of lawsuits. Some Senate Republicans have reservations about the measure, but they intend to be careful in their opposition to avoid being portrayed as backing pay discrimination.

Don't ignore the effects of gender bias

The San Antonio Express-News published a letter of mine today, in response to this article from last Sunday's paper.  The article focused on women re-entering the workforce after taking several years off the care for their kids.  For my letter, they used a title "Show both sides," but a better title would be "Don't ignore the effects of gender bias."  Here is the letter:

I am writing to comment on the article by Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje, "Opting Back In."

I applaud the Express-News for taking on such a complex subject, but I was disappointed the author did not discuss the crucial role gender bias has on the work-related choices that families face.

The phrases "opting in" and "opting out" imply free choice, yet the reality for many women who enter or leave the workforce has nothing to do with choice. For the majority of families, simple economics dictates that the parent who can make the most money works and, if possible, the other parent stays home and takes care of the children.

Since, on average, women earn only about eighty cents for every dollar a man earns, most of the parents who "opt out" are women. If the tables were turned, we would be talking about men "opting out" rather than women.

Also, the article overplays a small number of positive stories of women who have succeeded at returning to the workforce, while downplaying a "rigorous survey" that suggests the reality for those who pursue this course is far less encouraging: only three-quarters of highly-qualified women who desire to return to work actually succeed, and less than half at a full-time job.

The author should have devoted much more attention to this other side of the story. Why can't these women find work appropriate for their skills?

Isn't it far more newsworthy when qualified people cannot find appropriate work?

While it may feel better in the short run to ignore the ongoing realities of gender discrimination in the workplace, it does not serve your readers well to give short shrift to this crucial factor affecting the choices of women and their families.

The gender wage gap in stark detail

A couple days ago, I pointed out how one very common excuse heard from wage gap deniers is false:  the idea that women earn less than men because women take large amounts of time off from their careers.  The final nail in the coffin for that myth is a GAO report from 2003 that performs a detailed analysis of salary data for men and women, controlling for numerous independent variables such as annual hours worked, time out of the labor force, work experience, highest education achieved, industry, and more.  Controlling for all those variables, the study still found a pay gap of over 20% between men and women in the year 2000.

It didn't take long for me to find the myth still being propagated.  The very next day, a conservative contributor to the blog Polar Opposite Politics quoted another blog saying:

When I am confronted with evidence that women earn less than men I do not take this as a sign of discrimination. Instead, I point out that if you add to the regression a variable measuring continuous attachment to the work-force the difference in wages fades away.

I pointed out the data directly contradicting this statement, and that got us started in a conversation about this issue (at both his blog and mine), as he continued to insist that the wage gap could be "easily explained away" by women's choices.

One weakness of the GAO study is that it only controlled for occupation via broad categories such as "professional, technical" and "nonfarm laborers."  But this does not mean the wage gap can be explained away be different occupational choices by men and women within these broad categories.  Further studies demonstrate that the wage gap persists even in much more specific occupational categories.  In fact, a significant pay differential exists in virtually every single such category. 

The Census Bureau released a study in May 2004 entitled "Evidence From Census 2000 About Earnings by Detailed Occupation for Men and Women."  On page 12, it states:

Fifteen of the 20 listed [highest-paid] occupations for men appear on the list [of the 20 highest-paid occupations] for women, and in all cases, the female median is less than that for men.  In fact, the occupation third on the list for women makes the same as the occupation last on the list for men ($67,000). A similar pattern is shown for the lowest-paid occupations (Table 6).  Sixteen occupations appear on both lists, and in all cases but one ... women make less than men in the same occupation.

In only 11 out of 422 detailed occupations with 10,000 or more year-round full-time workers did the Census Bureau find that female median earnings were statistically indistinguishable from male median earnings.

Among the highest-paid occupations:  women physicians and surgeons earn 63% of what men do; women dentists, 62%; women judges, magistrates, and other judicial workers, 57%; women actuaries, 70%; women economists, 82%; women chemical engineers, 80%; women chief executives, 63%.

Among the lowest-paid occupations:  women dishwashers earn 86% of what men do; women farmers and ranchers, 60%; women cooks, 88%; women maids and housekeeping cleaners, 79%; women teacher assistants, 75%.

Take this Census data, across 411 out of 422 detailed occupations, combine it with the GAO study that controls for numerous independent variables, and the existence of a wage gap that is not "easily explained away" is readily apparent.

Unfortunately, discrimination, both the overt kind and the more subtle, social-pressure, kind, cannot be measured via studies like these.  No one admits to purposefully paying women less for equivalent work.  (After all, it is technically against the law these days.) So those who seek to deny the significance of discrimination continue waving their hands and inventing more and more excuses for the huge amounts of data that demonstrate the large pay differential between men and women.

Perhaps, as the Census Bureau hypothesizes for the pay gap for physicians and surgeons, "different degrees of specialization within an occupation and different choices of industry or business organization may affect the ratio.  For example, women might choose more frequently than men to practice in lower-paid medical specialties (such as pediatrics) or in lower-paid institutional settings (such as health maintenance organizations)."

Even if this were so, which is not at all clear, and even if this were purely due to women's personal preferences, which again is not at all clear, this argument cannot be plausibly extended across 411 out of 422 occupations.   Alas, experience shows that this does not stop the wage gap deniers from trying.

The GAO, in concluding their study, offers up some further speculative straws for the wage gap deniers to grasp:

Some experts believe that women and men generally have different life priorities—women choose to place higher priority on home and family, while men choose to place higher priority on career and earnings.  These women may voluntarily give up potential for higher earnings to focus on home and family.

This non-expert, but very interested observer, finds that argument extremely unconvincing.  In this country, women have a long history of being underpaid relative to men for the same work.  Has it all suddenly ended in the last 20 years?  Both anecdotal evidence and the hard data strongly suggest not.

Equal Pay Day and a popular fiction about the wage gap

As many have heard, yesterday was Equal Pay Day. Full-time working women, on average, have to work an en extra three-and-a-half months to earn the same amount of money as full-time working men make in a year.

To all who care about basic fairness, this should be a scandalous situation.  Many people, however, dispute that there is even a problem.  In doing so, they promulgate numerous myths—myths that have seeped into the collective conscience of a large fraction of the country.

One particularly popular myth is that women earn less because many of them take large amounts of time off from their careers to spend at home raising children.  A typical version of this fallacy goes like this:

Consider that women typically take about a decade out of the workforce caring for family. It’s reasonable that a 35-year-old woman reentering the workforce after ten years earns less than a man or woman who worked continuously during that time.

Sadly, this argument isn't just promoted by the pay-gap deniers, who are so common amongst right-wing pundits these days.  I've even seen this raised by those who know the pay gap is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

Many studies have been done that take differences in experience, education, and numerous other factors into account.  The pay gap between men and women persists even after these factors are included.  For instance, a comprehensive study by the General Accounting Office released in late 2003 reports:

We found that before controlling for any variables that may affect earnings, on average, women earned about 44 percent less than men over the time period we studied—1983 to 2000. However, after controlling for the independent variables that we included in our model, we found that this difference was reduced to about 21 percent over this time period.

The "independent variables" considered in this study include all of the following:  annual hours worked, time out of the labor force, work experience, highest education achieved, full-time versus part-time schedule, length of unemployment, tenure, occupation, industry, self-employment status, and numerous demographic variables.  Yet even after controlling for all these complicating issues, women still earn 21% less than men, a figure barely different from the more simply measured value of 24%.

The idea that the pay gap is due largely to women taking time off to raise children is thus complete fiction.