Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 22, 1992 TAG: 9201220181
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
U.S. LAGS IN CLOSING PAY GAP
Despite steady gains for more than a decade, American women still lag behind their counterparts in several other Western democracies in closing the salary gap with men, researchers say.In 1967, American women were paid less than 60 cents for every $1 earned by men, government figures show. The gap fluctuated by a penny or so until 1978, then rose steadily to top the 75 cents mark last spring, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Women in several other industrialized nations have risen more rapidly toward equal pay, say Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn, professors of economics and labor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
In 1969, Australian women workers - not including farm workers - were getting less than 63 cents for every dollar paid to men, their study showed. By 1977 the share had risen to 85 cents. There was a dip after that, but the rise began again in the 1980s.
In West Germany they found a slow, steady rise from 69 cents in 1967 to about 71 cents in 1989.
Blau and Kahn concentrated on the seemingly paradoxical position of U.S. women compared with those in other countries.
"The United States has had a longer commitment to equal pay and equal employment opportunity policies for women than have the other countries . . . Yet the gender pay gap is lower in most countries than in the United States.
They explained the difference, in part, to "low skill prices" in the United States.
"The U.S. labor market . . . is particularly unfavorable to those with below-average levels of labor market skills . . . relative to those with higher skill levels," they wrote.
They noted that many women spend a shorter time in the labor force than men, with less opportunity to acquire the skills and seniority that bring higher pay. Thus, women who quit their jobs to raise children often find they have to take less pay than men of their age when they return to the labor force.
Blau and Kahn also noted that most western European countries have a much higher proportion of workers in labor unions, which bargain for across-the-board gains for their members.
"Centralized pay systems that consciously raise minimum pay will also tend to lower male-female wage differentials," they observed.
Kim Gandy, executive vice president of the National Organization for Women, says the progress in narrowing the wage gap between men and women in the United States is "somewhat illusory."
"The women's comparative level has risen, not because women's pay has gone up but [because] men's pay is either going down or disappearing altogether," she said. "Lots of men's blue-collar jobs have just been eliminated."