Column: Times Up for the Gender Pay Gap

mary-lee-kiernan_12_1_2016

By Mary Lee Kiernan

During Women’s History Month, let’s pledge to end pay disparities in the workplace based on gender.

According to the National Partnership for Women & Families, Connecticut women working full time are paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to men, resulting in an annual pay gap of almost $11,000. Connecticut women lose an average of almost $15 billion every year as a result of the wage gap.

The gap is significantly larger for women of color. African American women are paid 58 cents, Latinas are paid 47 cents and Asian women are paid 80 cents for every dollar earned by men in Connecticut. Compounded over time, Connecticut’s women, particularly women of color, are less likely to develop assets that support long-term economic security for themselves and their families.

What causes this chronic disparity? A study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research commissioned by the now abolished Connecticut Permanent Commission on the Status of Women found that the concentration of men and women in higher and lower paying industries, respectively, accounts for approximately half of this pay differential. Efforts to encourage young women and girls to join traditionally male-dominated fields such as science, technology, engineering and math will pay off, literally, with higher average wages than in industries traditionally dominated by women.

However, the rest of the gender pay gap in Connecticut is caused by pay disparities between men and women who work in exactly the same occupations. In fact, these pay differentials existed in all the male-dominated and even the female-dominated industries examined by IWPR, except one. Only among secondary school teachers do women in Connecticut earn slightly more than men. The largest gender pay gaps in the state exist between men and women who are surgeons and between men and women who are employed in managerial occupations. While discrimination in compensation based on gender has long been illegal in this state, gender discrimination is still the likely cause of the chronic gender wage gap in these occupations.

Right now, the Connecticut General Assembly has a special opportunity to address this chronic gender wage gap with a bill now before the Labor Committee. The bill would prohibit employers from inquiring about a prospective employee’s wage or salary history before that employee is hired. Gender discrimination in pay follows women from job to job, and this bill would limit the ability of employers to carry forward the longstanding gender pay gap for new employees.

This proposal was stripped out of a pay equity bill in front of the General Assembly last year, and was arguably the most important provision of last year’s bill. Massachusetts, Delaware, Oregon and California, as well as several cities including New York, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., have passed laws or ordinances that similarly prohibit employers from inquiring about wage or salary history, and we hope that Connecticut will also enact this  same common-sense legislation.

This year’s bill also contains a defense for employers who are sued in a civil action claiming violation of the pay equity provisions of state law. According to the bill, an employer will not be liable in a civil action if the employer conducted an equal pay analysis of a scope and level of detail that is reasonable and if the employer eliminated the pay disparities for the employee who is bringing suit.

While we urge the General Assembly to pass these provisions of the current bill, we also urge our legislators to consider adding an, “equal pay for equal work” provision that goes beyond the state’s current prohibition against gender discrimination in compensation. Other states have passed or are now considering this type of legislation, which specifically prohibits employers from paying wages at a rate less than wages paid to employees of the opposite sex for substantially similar or comparable work.

Such a prohibition would provide a civil cause of action that will be easier to prove than Connecticut’s current prohibition against gender-based wage discrimination and provide stronger discouragement of this illegal practice. Such a prohibition should also be accompanied by an affirmative defense for employers such as the defense provision that currently exists in the wage discrimination statute.

Let’s seize this unique moment of greater understanding of gender barriers and put forward a comprehensive bill that more forcefully addresses the stubborn wage disparities that linger for women in Connecticut, most acutely for women of color. It is past time for more effective, common sense legislation on pay discrimination against women in the workplace.

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