A labor official says companies do not set out to create a difference in pay between genders.
LEWISTON – Despite years of advances, a person’s sex is still the greatest predictor of earning power.
That was the message Jane Gilbert, assistant to the commissioner in the Maine Department of Labor, delivered during an address at the Great Falls Forum Thursday.
“The issue of pay equity still confronts us as women in the workplace,” said Gilbert. “And it follows women all our lives.”
She was referring to the wage gap between what a man earns and what a woman earns in comparable jobs. That gap accrues every year so that when a woman reaches retirement age, she has significantly less in retirement and Social Security benefits than her male counterpart. Indeed, Gilbert said, “elderly women are the poorest people in this country.”
But not all the news was sobering. In a nod to women’s work ethic, Gilbert said when women worked at BIW during World War II, the yard’s productivity shot up 30 percent. Her anecdote drew applause from the audience assembled at the Lepage Center at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center.
Gilbert cited progress since the ’60s when classified ads were categorized routinely as men’s jobs and women’s – even for the same opening. And women no longer have to “retire” from their positions when they marry or have children as they did into the 1970s in some occupations.
But there is still a discrepancy between what a man and a woman earn for the same job. In Maine that discrepancy is broken down by age: women ages 16-24 earn 94 cents for every dollar a man earns; ages 25-54 it’s 74 cents; and 65 and over is 73 cents.
“Some of the discrepancies can be explained by personal choice, some by discrimination,” said Gilbert.
She said many professional women purposely choose career paths that allow them more flexibility to raise a family. The trade-off is they pay less.
And while Gilbert said she doubts businesses today intentionally discriminate, they often set wages based on assumptions.
She told a story of a young man she knows who was seeking work and suggested some openings she knew of in the construction field. Although “Sean” had no experience or aptitude for construction work, he was big, and was hired for a carpentry job at $10 per hour. He started working with a woman who had been at the same firm for two years as a carpenter and who had a degree from a technical college in carpentry. She, too, was making $10 an hour, despite her experience and education.
“No one sets out in 2004 to discriminate based on sex, but the reality is, it happens,” she said.
Gilbert encouraged employers to review their pay scales and challenge any assumptions they have about wages and gender. For employees, she encouraged workers to know what their fields pay (the DOL keeps statistics), discuss wage issues with other employees and to negotiate for higher wages at the time of hire.
“It’s changing for our children and we need to be participating in that change,” she said. “We have a role to play with our children and grandchildren so that they will have equal pay for equal work.”
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