The Persistence of Pay Inequality
March 14 is Equal Pay Day. It represents how far into this calendar year women in the U.S. had to work to earn what men earned in 2022. Women across occupations earned 84 cents for each dollar earned by men in 2020, a Pew Research Center’s analysis found. In architecture, full-time female architects earned just 78 percent of their male colleague’s salaries, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2019.
This disparity in pay has narrowed since the passage of the 1963 Equal Pay Act, but at a glacial speed. At the current pace, it will take 40 more years for women to reach pay parity with men, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. The wait will be even longer for many women of color as compared to white men: over 100 years for Black women and almost 200 years for Hispanic or Latina women.
There are actions people can take to increase pay equality, whether or not they control the company purse strings:
Employees can share salary information with co-workers (see the Department of Labor’s map showing pay transparency protections by state) to identify and call out disparities. Employers can address gender bias by modifying procedures for pay, hiring, and promotion decisions. The American Institute for Architects’ Compensation Guide for Equitable Practice can help.
Employers can set salary bands, ignore applicants’ salary histories, and stop negotiating salaries. Women applying for positions requiring negotiating salaries can see the New York Times’s guide for women researching and negotiating salaries.
Address inequities in unpaid work both at home and in the office. Inequities in the unpaid workload at home reinforce the lower wages for paid work for women.
This March, in observance of Women’s History Month, let’s take steps to make more equitable workplaces. That would be something to celebrate.
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Examining currency at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, 1929. (Library of Congress)