S3 Ep49: The Joke- Men and Women Are Unequal in Pay- It's a Fact!

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In this episode of the Employee Survival Guide®, Mark discusses the continuous pay disparity among female and male employees.  Mark shares two recent studies that support the conclusion that women earn 80 cents on the dollar in comparison to men.  He explores several explanations for the cause of the pay disparity.  Mark advocates that the facts speak for themselves- men do not want women to be paid equally.  Employees 30 years and younger actually have the solution- they share their compensation information with one another in order to get around the employer's wall of pay secrecy.  Mark offers the solution that all employers should disclose pay compensation for all employees.  There is more financial benefit to "say your pay" than to hide it.

This episode was written and produced by Mark Carey and edited by Matt Zako.

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Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:00):
Hi it's mark here and welcome to the next edition of

(00:03):
the Employee Survival Guide.
Today's topic "the joke men andwomen are unequal and pay. It's
a fact." I'll get to the point,men are paid more money in
comparison to women, and theymen do not want to admit it.
Specifically, the Wall StreetJournal reported on August 8
2022, broad new data on wagesearned by college graduates who
received federal student aidshowed a pay gap emerging

(00:24):
between men and women soon afterthe join the workforce, even
among those receiving the samedegree from the same school. The
data which covered about 1.7million graduates showed that
the median pay for men exceededthat for women three years after
graduation in nearly 75% ofroughly 11,000 undergraduate and
graduate degree programs. Inalmost half the program's male

(00:46):
graduates median earnings toppedwomen's by 10% or more.
Nationally, women across theworkforce earn an average of
82.3 cents for every dollar aman earns. According to the US
Department of Labor. I cannotresist the applicability of the
following song lyric to thepersistent pay inequality issue.
female employees continue toexperience brandy Carlisle, she

(01:07):
wrote the song called the joke.
You get discouraged, don't yougirl. It's your brother's world
for a while longer. We got todance with the devil on a river
to beat the stream, call itliving the dream. Call it kick
in the letter. They come back tokick dirt in your face to call
you weak and then displace youafter carrying your baby on your

(01:29):
back across the desert, and thejoke's on them. Several reasons
were cited in the Wall StreetJournal article for the pay
disparity. First, manyeconomists cite the so called
motherhood penalty, referring tothe perception that mothers are
less committed to the jobs andsay This affects hiring
promotions and salaries. We'veseen these cases in our office,

(01:50):
primarily through the pregnancydiscrimination statute, and can
confirm the persistentoccurrence of the motherhood
penalty at play in today'sworkplace. The unequal pay cases
are unreported andunderreported. In our opinion,
for female employees, primarilydue to fear in retaliation and
termination. We suspect a lackof co worker pay data is to

(02:11):
blame here. Management will citethe confidentiality of personnel
files as an excuse. But this isonly self serving. It isn't
employers best interest to keepemployees from discovering pay
data in the workplace, as thisreduces the bargaining around
salary compensation by allemployees within a company.
Quote, employers continue toargue that they need the

(02:32):
flexibility to set pay afterseeing candidate pool in order
to attract talent says anattorney from the Women's Legal
Defense Education Fund, who wasworking on the law in New York
State at the time it was passed.
But research she goes on to saybut research has shown that
giving employees employers freerein to set salary in this way
is precisely what leads todiscriminatory pay. Today,

(02:54):
younger employees under 30 nowshare their compensation data
amongst themselves to catchemployers engaging in unequal
pay practices among female andmale employees. cities like New
York and Washington State arenow require posting of salary
ranges and job ads to reduce thepay inequality in hiring.
Second, the Wall Street Journalreporting. Researchers say women

(03:15):
choosing careers sometimesinternalize societal
expectations about which jobssuit them. well intentioned
advisors and employers can steerwomen toward less lucrative
options based on assumptionsabout their aspirations. Third,
the Wall Street Journal articleargues that confidence plays a
role in early career decisions.

(03:36):
And then site research thatwomen are less aggressive than
men in negotiating salaries orraises because they will appear
too demanding. Have we gottenpast this point yet? The
continued propagation of theidea that women are demanding is
demeaning and dehumanizing. Iwould have to strongly disagree
here on the cause. My experiencewith female clients reveals the

(03:58):
opposite is true. The majorityof female employees know how to
negotiate and do it better thanmen. In my opinion. The problem
lies in the party on the otherside of the negotiation table
men, including some women whoreport to them, there's a
systematic bias within eachemployer that men must be paid
more than men. This is anundisputed fact according to the

(04:19):
data in both of the surveysreported in this article, the
pay inequality persists becausegovernment agencies fail to
police employer pay practices.
If there exists no threat ofgetting caught, then there is no
penalty to the employer and anincrease incentive for
profitability due to continuedpay inequality. However, there
is other evidence that the payinequality gap has decreased to

(04:41):
zero in some metro areas, butonly for a short period of time.
reverting back to thestatistical 80% counterpart
comparison normswe've seen nationally. According
to a recent survey by the PewResearch study, the earnings
parity tends to be greatest inthe first years after entering
In the labor market, the genderwage gap is narrower among

(05:01):
younger workers nationally, andthe gap varies across
geographical areas. In fact, in22 of the 250 US metropolitan
areas, women under the age of 30earn the same amount as or more
than their male counterparts inboth the New York and Washington
metro areas. Young women earn102% of what young men earn when
examining median median annualearnings among full time year

(05:24):
round workers. Nationally, womenunder 30, who work full time
year round earn about 93% or 93cents on the dollar, compared
with men the same age range, butthe study suggests that women
will lose this level of paritywith men as women age to the 35
to 48 age range, dropping thepay inequality to any sense of
their male counterpart intothose 21 The Pew Research Center

(05:46):
wrote that the following in anattempt to answer the question
of why does a paid gender paygap still exist, and they
responded by much of this gaphas been explained by measurable
factors such as educationattainment, occupational
segregation, work experience,the narrowing of the gap is
attributed in large part togains women's have made in each

(06:08):
of these dimensions. Even thoughwomen have increased their
presence in higher paying jobstraditionally dominated by men,
such as professional andmanagerial, managerial
positions, women as a wholecontinued to be over represented
in lower paying occupationsrelative to their share of the
workforce. This may contributeto the gender pay differences

(06:29):
that we currently see, theaforementioned survey results
reveal a sudden burst ofimportant improvement in the
wage inequality issue in the 13under group in certain metro
areas, but the data then revertsback to the historical norms.
Also paying an equal payequality only reaches parity in
coastal metro areas, leaving thevast majority of the country

(06:51):
leaving disparity in place. Whyand who controls this issue, men
and the boys club that stillprevails in this country. This
is not fair. It's not equal. Andit's discrimination. And it
continues. Until we collectivelyaddresses important societal
issue we cannot say that men andwomen are equal in the workplace
in terms of pay. We cannot saythat the Equal Pay Act is

(07:13):
affected to prevent payinequality among female and male
employees. Pay inequalitynationally has remained
unchanged at 80 cents for $1. Incomparison to men, for female
employees over 30 years of agefrom more than three decades in
will not change, a simplesolution exists. All companies
must reveal and make transparentcompensation practices for all

(07:35):
employees, not just new hires.
This rulemaking should occur atthe national level through the
US Department of Labor and theEqual Employment Opportunity
Commission. younger employeesunder 30 have already
demonstrated their ability tobypass management's wall of
secrecy on pay by openly sharingtheir salaries with one another

(07:57):
in order to force management toreconcile their pay practices.
Once employees start to sharetheir pay data, they will
achieve more in form of payincreases versus any benefit
obtained by not revealing theirpay data. Why keep your pay data
secret? From who? There is nobenefit to keeping these
information private? Stop, sayyour pay. If you'd like more

(08:18):
information about this topic,please contact us at Carey &
Associates PC on the web. I lookforward to talking with you
soon. Have a great week.