UAH’s hosts talk for Women’s Equal Pay Day, discusses history and solutions

Women’s Equal Pay Day was observed on March 12, 2024.

“This date symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year,” according to the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE). 

Equal Pay Day was started by the NCPE in 1996 as a way to raise awareness of gender disparities in pay. 

“American women typically earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by men,” says Rakesh Kochar, senior researcher at Pew Research Center. 

This figure, with slight variations, has been shared by NPR, Forbes, and The Washington Post. 

“Over a working lifetime, this wage disparity costs the average American woman and her family an estimated $700,000 to $2 million, impacting Social Security benefits and pensions,” states NCPE. 

According to national research, there are a number of reasons why this wage gap continues to persist. 

Differences in the ways in which girls and boys are socialized during their formative years can impact the career choices that they make as adults. 

“Men are still significantly more likely to graduate from college with a major in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM), which can lead to higher earning careers,” explained a scholarly article written by Thomas Buser, Muriel Niederle, and Hessel Oosterbeek and published on Harvard College’s Gender Action Portal.

Women are also more likely to experience career interruptions as they reduce working hours, or spend time out of the workforce, to assume unpaid caretaking roles within their families. 

“Women remain twice as likely as men to work part time, and they take time off more often from employment over their working lives—in large part to care for children or other family members,” according to analysis conducted by Pew Research. 

When women’s careers are disrupted, men who were formerly their equals in terms of employment experience surpass them in consecutive years worked and other job-related qualifications. This leads men’s earnings to outpace women’s as they age, further widening pay disparities. 

Pew Research Center has created an interactive pay gap calculator that computes gender pay differences based on city and age bracket. 

“Women ages 30-49 in the Huntsville, AL metro area earned 72% of what men their age earned in 2019,” according to the Pew Research calculator. 

On March 20, UAH students and faculty gathered at a two-hour event to learn about pay disparities and discuss solutions to narrow the gap. The event was hosted by Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Department of Sociology, and Justice and Equity Studies. 

Dr. Jessica Calarco, Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the forthcoming book “Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Social Safety Net,” joined the UAH meeting by Zoom. 

Calarco’s research shows that the absence of a social safety net can drive some women into precarious financial situations. 

“Women hold 70% of the lowest-paying jobs in our economy, despite representing only 40-something percent of the U.S. workforce,” said Calarco. “Many of those are mothers of young children.” 

Calarco encouraged the audience to take concrete steps to improve the financial security of women in the U.S., especially those who are mothers. 

“I think if we had to start somewhere, policy-wise, I would encourage us to start with things like childcare and paid family leave. Those two things, especially if we can couple them together, help to weaken the strength of the motherhood trap,” said Calarco. 

The “motherhood trap,” or “motherhood penalty,” is the name given to the phenomenon by which women bear quantifiable costs in the workforce when they become mothers. 

The “motherhood penalty” increases with the birth of each subsequent child, reports the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

“Fathers don’t pay the same penalty. Moms were six times less likely than non-mothers and 3.35 times less likely than child-free men to be recommended for hire,” explains Fortune personal finance writer Ivana Pino.

Measures taken by both the government, and by private businesses, can lessen the gender-related costs that women bear in the workplace. 

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 was the first piece of legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama. The law is named for Lilly Ledbetter, a woman who discovered that she had faced nearly two decades of sex-based pay discrimination at the Goodyear Tire plant where she was employed in Gadsden, Alabama. The law extends the time during which employees can legally dispute discriminatory pay. 

In addition to policy changes, private businesses can take the lead in supporting parents and families by adopting family-friendly business practices. Policies that allow for flexible hours or remote work, health care coverage, and nursing benefits are just a few that have been shown to be beneficial to both families and to companies’ bottom-line.