Women Get Less: the gender pay gap

Women have always been paid less than men, and the gender pay gap continues to be a prominent issue today. When comparing full-time, year-round workers in 2021, women would have needed to work an extra 49.5 days (using a typical 40-hour work week) to make up for the pay gap, with women taking home 84 cents per 1 dollar of what men were paid. Equal Pay Day is held every year on the day when women would have finally closed the pay gap from the male pay from the previous year. This year, it was held on March 14, 74 days after Dec. 31. The local chapter of the League of Women Voters brought attention to this issue armed with informational brochures handed out at Michigan Tech on March 14. . 

Faith Morrison is a member of the local chapter of the League of Women Voters who taught chemical engineering at Michigan Tech for 32 years before retiring. She acknowledges that it’s true that there are pay differences between occupations that are monopolized by one gender, using the example that engineers make more money than many other fields of work. 

Faith Morrison on Michigan Technological University’s campus on March 14. Photo by Sidney Wilmot.

She said, “because there are more male engineers than female engineers than let’s say nurses, there are more female nurses than male nurses, you could expect that would cause a pay gap.” 

However, according to author Cathrine Hill, once relevant factors (college major, occupation, economic sector, age, marital status, etc.) have been considered, the pay gap was still 7% just one year after graduating from college and widened to 12% ten years after graduating. The League of Women Voters calculated that if a man makes $100,000, the woman then makes $93,000. Assuming both parties receive a 2.5% yearly raise, the man saves the “pay gap” money, and earns a 5% interest, in 25 years he’s over $400,000 ahead of the woman. 

“Even within a discipline we don’t want to see a gap in pay between men and women, because we don’t think that comes from any merit. We think that many women, on average, [in] the same discipline and same background, should make the same,” Morrison said.

So why does this still happen? Morrison highlighted a book by Virginia Valian, called “Why So Slow?: The Advancement of Women,” which talks of nonconscious bias. The book included results of experiments and examples of integrated stereotypes and assumptions in our minds and society that apply to gender differences. An example from the book Morrison cited was where an identical resume was submitted for review, but changed the obviously male name to a female name. The resume with the female name got a lower ranking than the one with the male name. Morrison explained that this experiment has been done with names that denote racial differences, which also ended up considered a lower ranking.

To fight against this inequality, Morrison says that “what we’re doing here is to educate [people] about [nonconscious bias]. Let people know this happens… if you can spot it happening, ask yourself ‘well why did I think that’…if you can catch yourself, you can make a change… we’re not trying to break anything, we’re trying to make something better.” 

She continued to explain that it was often thought that women’s income were simply supplemental to the household income, and not a necessity. The societal role and pressure on women to attend the house and raise children meant that their jobs were done in their free time, and they were financially dependent on men.

“When I started here at Michigan Tech, I was the first woman they ever hired in the Department of Chemical Engineering. … My husband joined the faculty at the same time,” Morrison said. “We had the experience where he had a higher raise than I did. Frankly, there was a good argument to me that it should’ve gone the other way. We confronted the department chair, and he admitted that he had done that on purpose because he didn’t want my husband to feel bad that his wife was going to get a higher salary than he was.”

Morrison’s husband supported her, wondering why he wouldn’t want his household income to be higher.

Morrison also recalls how she went to a program in Washington, DC for the advancement of women in chemical sciences in the early 90s. She remembers a presentation by an MIT professor of biochemistry, Nancy Hopkins, in which Hopkins felt ashamed that she was the target of gender bias. 

Morrison agreed that she shared that shame about being the target of gender bias in her successful career.

She said, “It feels terrible, to have to say that you feel someone is discriminating against you, even though it's true.” 

When encompassing all workers such as seasonal or part-time, however, the pay gap increased. Women were taking home only 77 cents per 1 dollar made by their male counterpart, meaning they would need to work a shocking 77.6 more days per year (also using a typical 40-hour work week) to make up for the pay gap. The pay gap is increased even further for women of color. 

There are sources to fight to close the pay gap. This includes supporting state laws that prevent pay discrimination, advocating for your colleagues and employees, and supporting the Paycheck Fairness Act. If you want more information, visit the American Association of University Women, here.