THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 16, 1996 TAG: 9601160251
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN SCHWARTZ, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
Women's salaries are starting to catch up and, in some fields, even surpass men's pay. But more typically, women still earn 5 cents to 15 cents less on the dollar than men working in similar jobs, Working Woman magazine reported Monday.
The survey being released today, which uses figures provided by professional associations, compensation consultants, trade publications and the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, looks at 28 fields for which salaries were available by gender. It found that women typically earned 85 cents to 95 cents per man's dollar.
The magazine found that the pay gap for women narrowed significantly in 1995 in some jobs, such as computer analysts, but widened in others. For instance, female bank tellers, brokers and other financial service representatives made 55 percent what their male counterparts earned, down from 66 percent in 1994.
``One of the big problems facing women is not that they get paid less when they have the same job with the same experience,'' said the article's author, Diane Harris. ``The problem is that women are clustered in traditionally female lower-paying jobs.''
The survey found that pay inequities varied by industry and position. Female health managers at hospitals earned about $30,212 to men's $44,200, or 68 percent. That was a decrease from 1994, when women in those positions earned 79 percent of men's wages.
Harris said she could not explain why salaries decreased in some areas.
The news for women was brighter in other fields, with some women professionals earning more than their male co-workers.
For instance, a female chief financial officer at a university or college earned $104,506 compared with her male counterpart's $95,004, about 110 percent. But a female chief executive officer at a university typically earned $138,800, to a man's $155,500, or 89 percent.
``There are very few women who make it into those positions and those who do are highly, highly qualified,'' Harris said. ``The problem for those women is not pay equity, it's getting there in the first place.''
Susan Mazen, a travel agent at BSC Travel in New York, agrees that experience helps even the pay.
``I would say in general it's a fairly even thing,'' she said of the travel business. ``When you have the experience you can command the salary.''
The Working Woman survey, however, found that female travel executives earned $30,800 to men's $38,600, or 80 percent.
And figures can disagree.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics determined that women earn 74 cents to a man's dollar.
Harris said that's because the bureau does not compare like jobs. ``It lumps all jobs that women hold and all jobs that men hold,'' she said.
Ellen Bravo, executive director of 9to5, the National Association of Working Woman, cautioned that it can be misleading to categorize women as a homogeneous group.
``It's true that women in higher level jobs are doing better, and we should all be proud of them, but the majority of women are not in higher-level jobs,'' she said. ``And for many, particularly women of color, they continue to toil in jobs that are undervalued and low paid simply because they're done primarily by women.''
She cited figures from the National Committee for Pay Equity, which used Bureau of Labor Statistics figures to determine that as of 1994, white women earned 75 percent of the wage earned by white men; black women earned 63 percent as much as white men, and Latino women earned 56 percent as much as white men.
Harris agreed that pay equity is still a ways off.
``I was not looking to give people a rosy vision. I think the problems are somewhat different than the ones we've heard a lot of noise about. When we keep citing the 74 cents on the dollar picture we're doing a disservice,'' she said.
``The real problem is that women are clustered in lower paying jobs and they're not making it in large enough numbers into upper level positions. And then when you look at comparable jobs, women still make less.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
KEYWORDS: SALARIES by CNB