Women in Maine get paid about $10,000 less than their male counterparts, according to a new report from the National Partnership for Women and Families.
The nonprofit released the report just ahead of Tuesday’s Equal Pay Day. That’s the day white women must work until to earn the same pay their male colleagues earned last year. For women of color, it takes months longer.
That $10,000 wage gap means that Maine women, like women across the U.S., earn about 79 cents for every $1 paid to men. If that gap doesn’t sound much different from what you’ve heard in recent years, you’d be right, says Vicki Shabo, the vice president of the National Partnership for Women and Families.
“A couple of years ago is was 77 cents,” she says. “Last year it was 78 cents.”
After steady progress from the 70s through the 90s, Shabo says the gender pay gap has remained stagnant for more than a decade.
“I mean, I find it surprising that the wage gap persists regardless of industry, within occupations,” she says. “I find it astounding that regardless of education level, there’s a gender wage gap.”
Some if it has to do with the jobs women choose and their experience, says Shabo, but even when you account for those factors, about 38 percent of the wage gap is unexplained. And she says that means bias and discrimination likely play a role.
Last year, when the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers issued a policy brief on the gender pay gap, it cited studies that found when employers were presented with identical resumes where the only difference was the name, male applicants were more likely to get the job, and at a higher pay.
“The bottom line is that when women are 50 percent of the workforce and key bread-winners in two-thirds of families, families just can’t afford to have unequal pay,” says Shabo.
She says in Maine, closing that $10,000 wage gap would help pay for about 73 more weeks of food, or 7-12 months of rent, mortgage or utility payments.
Eliza Townsend of the Maine Women’s Lobby says getting to pay parity will take a variety of policy changes.
“And it starts with the availability and affordability of child care,” she says.
Also, paid sick days and paid leave. Townsend says it’s more common for women than men to step out of the workforce to care for new babies and aging parents.
“So, the ability to continue to earn a living while facing a major life change is a really important strategy here,” she says.
Last week, New York state passed the strongest paid family leave law in the country, allowing 12 weeks. The National Partnership for Women and Families has its eye on federal policy, like the Paycheck Fairness Act that’s before Congress. That would increase penalties for employers who discriminate on the basis of gender.
At the individual level, there’s another thing women should keep in mind.
“Women should assume everything is negotiable,” says Sara Laschever, the co-author of two books about women and negotiation.
Laschever says when it comes to negotiating salary, the biggest mistake women make is they don’t do their research.
“Without research, without any external guidelines, women tend to ask for too little. They aim too low,” she says.
Laschever says it pays to do your homework. Though women should practice and feel comfortable negotiating, she says she doesn’t want to suggest that women created the pay gap problem, or that they must solve it themselves.
“Big cultural change comes for the top down. So organizations that start doing audits on how they shape up themselves in terms of the gender pay gap, tracking their salaries in their organizations by gender, and of course other markers as well, such as minority status,” she says.
The National Partnership for Women and Families projects that if policies don’t change, women will likely not reach pay parity until 2059.
