PHOENIX — A new Pew Research Center analysis is finding women in the US make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes.
Pew Research Center’s study looked at US Census Bureau data showing that the gender pay gap hasn’t changed much in at least 20 years.
In 2002, the study found that American women made 80 cents per every dollar American men make.
“I think the thing that is most challenging to think about with it is the fact that it really hasn't moved very much in the last 20 or so years,” Amanda Sharkey, an associate professor with ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business, said.
According to the Pew Research Center’s analysis, women of color had an even larger pay gap, finding Black women earned 70 cents for every white man’s dollar and Hispanic women earned just 65 cents.
Would transparency in the wage gap help?
Sharkey and a couple of colleagues recently studied how wage gap transparency could affect employers.
The study looked at Glassdoor evaluations for companies in the U.K., where about 10,000 firms were required to disclose the difference in pay between men and women.
“What we found was, essentially, that the firms that were disclosing a large gender wage gap were really not seeing a decline in their evaluations, we thought that their ratings would go down right after they disclosed, and we really didn’t find that,” Sharkey said.
Sharkey believes employees might have found it difficult to figure out if that wage gap personally affected them.
“On a more positive note, what we did find was that firms that disclosed a very small or almost equal pay gap did see a bump in their ratings,” Sharkey said.
In some states, Sharkey notes, job postings are required to have a salary range when posting a job.
“There's some arguments and evidence that part of the issue is that people don't necessarily know what the appropriate range is. And so they don't know how to negotiate. Now, a separate question is kind of the reaction that women get when they do negotiate, which there's research showing that there's backlash to that,” Sharkey said.
Are women less competitive than men?
Mary Rigdon, Director of the University of Arizona’s Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, notes one recent theory behind the wage gap is women aren’t as competitive as men and that there’s no reason to close the disparity.
However, Rigdon’s research with Alessandra Cassar, a professor of economics at the University of San Francisco, found that’s not true, women are as competitive as men.
The key point they found is women are motivated differently.
“It seems it’s the option to share that motivates women,” Rigdon said.
In Rigdon and Cassar’s study, they paid participants for real effort tasks, like numbers problems, and varied payment schemes related to how many problems were solved for three rounds.
In the first round, all participants were paid for each problem they solved. In the second round, only the top two performers out of four participants were paid double for the problems they solved, the others weren’t paid at all. In the third round, participants can choose whether they want to be paid like round 1 or round 2.
Rigdon said when the researchers added another dynamic beyond the payments: those with the most amount of problems solved could share their earnings with those who didn’t perform as well, they found women were as competitive as men. However, they found women are motivated differently.
“Now women nearly double their entry rate in round three for that type of tournament, the one that has this socially oriented incentive almost to 60%,” Rigdon said. “Men - nothing happens to their behavior, they look exactly the same. They entered about 50%.”
Based on the research, Rigdon said one idea is for a social incentive for women in the workplace that would help motivate women to compete.
“We're thinking of: If you have a reward system that's perceived as a shared one, rather than one that disproportionately benefits those in the C-suite, in the corporate suite, maybe women would find managerial positions more attractive,” Rigdon said.
While Rigdon said research is continuing in this area, she added the Center for Philosophy of Freedom is also looking at Women's Equity in Sports through a panel discussion in early April.
What should women do now?
Both Sharkey and Rigdon find that the wage gap is a complex issue that needs multiple solutions.
As for what to do right now, Sharkey recommends women look to the wealth of information online when entering a wage negotiation.
“I think before you go into any job negotiation, doing that homework is really important. Because if you don't sort of throw out an appropriate ballpark, you're never gonna get to your full potential,” Sharkey said.
Both women note that at the current rate, the wage gap is closing it will be at least decades before $1 paid to a woman equals $1 paid to a man.
Rigdon recommends women find allies that care about the wage gap to help make a change.
“We need to find allies, we need to find people who we can tell this information to, and who can help move this needle forward,” Rigdon said.
Up to Speed
Catch up on the latest news and stories on the 12News YouTube channel. Subscribe today.