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Policies to End the Gender Wage Gap in the United States

Marlene Kim
Review of Radical Political Economics 2013 45: 278 originally published online 6 June 2013
DOI: 10.1177/0486613413487159
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research-article2013

RRP45310.1177/0486613413487159Review of Radical Political EconomicsKim

Policies to End the Gender

Wage Gap in the United States

Review of Radical Political Economics

45(3) 278283
2013 Union for Radical
Political Economics
Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/0486613413487159
rrpe.sagepub.com

Marlene Kim1

Abstract
Women continue to earn less than men in the United States. This article surveys the debate
about why this occurs and synthesizes the policy remedies. Unionizing women, comparable
worth, pay secrecy legislation, affirmative action, stronger non-discrimination legislation, and
family-friendly policies can improve the gender wage gap. But doing so means that instead of
attempting to pass federal legislation, advocates should target states to pass legislation and
undertake pro-active remedies that can improve womens pay.
JEL Classification: J7, J31, J38
Keywords
gender, comparable worth, pay secrecy, wage gap, discrimination, gender wage gap

Women continue to earn less than men in the United States. Among full-time workers, on average
women earned 82 percent of mens wages in 2011. Gender wage gaps are pervasive among all
races and ethnicities: Asian women earned 23 percent, white women 18 percent, and black and
Hispanic women 9 percent less than men of the same race (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2012).
Thus, although womens wages have increased over the past thirty years, they remain stubbornly
below mens.
Much of the explanation for these wage differentials is that women work in different jobs than
men, and these are lower paid. Although women have made some progress over the past thirty
years in some professional occupations such as law and medicine, women work in the lowerpaying specialties of these fields, and they remain in the same low-paid jobs in which they had
always worked, such as office support and service occupations (England 2010). Little progress
has been made in traditionally male blue collar jobs such as construction (England 2010).
Research continues to show that entry into high-paid top executive jobs remains difficult for
women (Smith 2012). Thus, over-representation in lower-paid jobs and underrepresentation in
higher-paid ones continue to reduce womens pay.

1Economics,

University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Marlene Kim, Economics, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, MA 02478, USA.
Email: marlene.kim@umb.edu

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Kim

There is a lively debate about the cause of these occupational differences. Neoclassical economists believe that women are less productive and that they choose lower-paying jobs in order to
care for their families. Women work fewer years than men, and if they work at all, women with
young children are more likely to work part-time compared to men with young families (ONeill
2004). Anticipating their family needs, women choose occupations that allow them flexibility in
the hours they work, such as nursing and teaching, and they avoid jobs that require highly specific skills and knowledge that become quickly outdated, such as in physics, knowing that they
may take time off to raise families (ONeill 2004; ONeill and ONeill 2005).
Critics of these neoclassical explanations control for factors that can explain productivity differences, including education level, hours worked, working part-time, having young children at
home, and being married. These studies generally find that even with these controls, women earn
less than men (Blau and Kahn 2007). To counter the argument that women are less career-focused
or motivated, scholars find that even after adding controls for job aspirations and occupational
preferences, women earn less than men (Blau and Ferber 1991). Finally, to dispute the argument
that women major in less remunerative areas, such as the liberal arts rather than engineering or
sciences, Weinberger and Joy (1997) add controls for college major, the university attended, and
grade point average. They find that even when attending the same college and having the same
college major and GPA, women earn less than men.
Audit and correspondence studies in hiring indicate that men are favored over women, even
with the same qualifications. David Neumark (1996) found that when resums for similarlyqualified women and men were left in restaurants, men received higher call-back rates in higherpaid restaurants, while women were favored in the lower-paid ones. Other studies find that
womens qualifications are often overlooked, while mens qualifications are often used to justify
their higher pay (Bergmann 1996). Mothers are perceived as less competent and less committed
to working and consequently are recommended for lower salaries. They are also less likely to be
recommended to be hired or to be promoted into management (Corell et al. 2007).
Thus, given that gender disparities in wages may result from bias, policies are needed to remedy these. Such policies can be divided into two strategies: increasing access to higher-paying
jobs, and increasing pay in the jobs in which women already work.

1. Enforcing Existing Equal Opportunity Statutes

If women are less likely to be hired into higher-paying jobs because of discrimination, enforcing
existing statutes would help alleviate this. In a cross-country analysis, Doris Weichselbaumer and
Rudolf Winter-Ebmer (2007) find that laws mandating equal treatment in workplaces reduce the
gender wage gap. Indeed, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the United States, which mandates non-discrimination regarding gender in the workplace, has been very successful in mitigating discrimination when this law is enforced (Leonard 1989).
In addition, enforcing affirmative action mandates can also increase womens employment
and pay (Leonard 1989). Affirmative action requires that companies that receive government
contracts examine the gender and racial composition of their workplaces in broad occupational
categories and compare this with the composition of workers available to work. When workplaces are deficient in their representation of women or minorities, employers must use voluntary
goals and timetables and take affirmative steps so that the gender and racial composition in their
workplace reflects the composition of the workers available. Affirmative steps include publicizing the availability of jobs, recruiting underrepresented workers, and training and mentoring
them. In egregious cases of discrimination, courts can mandate hiring quotas so that employers
are forced to hire underrepresented workers.
Affirmative action has been successful in increasing the proportion of women in jobs, but it
has been dismantled by the courts (Leonard 1989). Despite critics allegations, it does not lead to

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weaker candidates being hired or a loss in productivity in the firm (Holzer and Neumark 1999;
Leonard 1989).

2. Family-friendly Policies
Family friendly policies allow women to work so that they do not have to choose between their
careers and their families. Many countries that have family-friendly policies have higher labor
participation rates among women than in the United States, since women in these countries can
have both a job and a family. Parental leave, especially paid leave, as well as part-time work and
child care policies, increase the proportion of mothers who work (Hofferth 1996; Joech 1997;
Gornick et al. 1998), and moderate length paid parental leave and publicly-funded child care can
increase earnings for mothers (Budig et al. 2012).1 Thus, adopting paid family leave and child
care policies that are available in many industrialized countries can reduce the gender wage gap.
One must ensure that family-friendly policies do not reinforce the gendered division of labor,
however (Bergmann 1997; Singley and Hynes 2005). Allowing part-time work only in low-paid
female jobs, paid parental leave for women but not men (e.g. women receive disability payments
for childbirth in some U.S. states), and higher pay for men ensures that women rather than men
will care for families. Thus, part-time work should be available in high-paying fields, both parents should be required to take alternating periods of use or lose paid parental leave, and families should not forfeit the higher pay of fathers who take such leave (Singley and Hynes 2005).

3. Comparable Worth
Besides increasing access to higher-paying jobs, another strategy to improve womens earnings is to increase pay in the jobs in which women work. Comparable worth, also known as pay
equity, is one such strategy. To comprehend it, one must understand that employers compensation systems meet three different goals: to adequately recruit and retain workers, they pay
market wages (hence they perform or purchase salary surveys); to pay more for occupations
that are evaluated as having greater worth (often measured as having greater duties and responsibilities), they conduct job evaluations; and to motivate hard work, they pay more for more
productive workers even within occupations (hence they use performance appraisals). (See
Milkovich et al. 2010.)
Comparable worth addresses the second of these goals. It advocates that when employers
conduct job evaluations, they should not underpay jobs simply because women are employed.
Occupations evaluated as having the same value to the employer should be paid the same,
whether women or men perform the work.
This is not the case in the United States. The greater the proportion of women in an occupation, the lower the pay, and even employers own job evaluations often indicate that womens
occupations should receive higher pay (England 1992). In addition, there is much historical evidence that employers commonly paid less to occupations filled by women. For example, in 1945,
Westinghouse and General Electric paid 70.5 cents per hour for womens jobs having 50-62 job
evaluation points, but 84.5 cents per hour for mens occupations with the same number of points
(Newman 1976). Kim (1999) similarly shows that when the State of California established its
pay system in the 1930s, it paid occupations primarily held by women less than those primarily
held by men, where otherwise the duties and responsibilities were the same. Because the employer
maintains the existing salary relationships among occupations, this underpayment to femaledominated occupations continues into the present, even when market wages are accounted for.
1Extensively

long paid leaves for mothers may relegate them to low-paid jobs after they return from their
long absence (Budig et al. 2012).

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Thus scholars believe that employers should re-evaluate their job evaluation systems to ensure
that womens occupations are no longer underpaid. Indeed, research indicates that when comparable worth is implemented at the state level (for public sector workers), the wage gap is reduced
(Hartmann and Aaronson 1994) once these inequities are remedied.

4. Unionization
Unionized workers earn ten to thirty percent more than non-union workers (Freeman and Medoff
1986), and the union wage premium is higher among women than among men in public sector
jobs (Freeman and Leonard 1987). The result is that unionization decreases the gender wage gap
(Cho and Cho 2011). Thus, unionizing workers in typically female jobs and industries can reduce
the gender wage gap.
Women are less likely to belong to unions, however, even though they are more likely to favor
them, because historically organizing drives occurred in manufacturing and blue collar jobs,
where men typically worked (Freeman and Medoff 1986). Given the decline of these jobs and the
rise of the service sector, including health care, education, and other sectors in which women
work, unionizing women is critical to revitalizing union density in the nation. However, this will
require changes in the law so that organizing drives can occur without union-busting tactics of
employers (Freeman and Medoff 1986).

5. Pay Secrecy
An interesting strategy to close the gender pay gap is to prohibit pay secrecy. Pay secrecy includes
rules, policies, and practices that forbid workers from sharing information on their earnings.
Even though the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935 mandates that employees have
the right to share information on wages, most employers either formally or informally forbid this
(Institute for Womens Policy Research 2010). Feminists are concerned that women may be
underpaid because they do not know that they are paid less than men, as in the case of Lilly
Ledbetter. Ledbetter worked as a manager for Goodyear Tire for twenty years before receiving
an anonymous note that the male managers in her position were paid more than she.
Six states (California, Vermont, Michigan, Colorado, Illinois, and Maine) forbid employers
from retaliating against employees for sharing information about their earnings (Kim 2012).
These laws are important because the NLRA does not cover supervisors; hence Lilly Ledbetter
could have been fired had she inquired about the pay of male managers. In addition, because the
remedies under the NLRA are mild, limited to back wages minus any earnings in other jobs,
employers commonly ignore this law (Freeman and Medoff 1986).
Research indicates that in states that outlaw pay secrecy, wages are higher for women, even
when accounting for standard human capital controls as well as state effects. In other words,
wages for women increased in the same state after such laws were passed compared to similar
women in the state before these laws were in effect (Kim 2012). Thus expanding pay secrecy
laws to other states would benefit women, increasing their pay and lowering the gender wage
gap.

6. Policies to End the Gender Wage Gap

Because the wage gap results from multiple causes, no single policy can end it, and multiple
remedies are required. Title VII and affirmative action address the problem of women being
employed in low-paying jobs and being overlooked for higher-paid ones. Family-friendly policies would ensure that women can work and retain their jobs. Comparable worth, unionization,

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and pay secrecy laws can allow women to increase their pay in the jobs in which they already
work. Research indicates that all of these policies improve womens wages and lower the gender
wage gap.
But national legislation has been introduced many times in these areas. The Paycheck Fairness
Act has been introduced by Congress 20 times, most recently in 2012. This legislation proposed
to increase the remedies and penalties under Title VII and also outlaw pay secrecy. Comparable
worth and family-friendly laws have also been introduced but never passed by Congress. Labor
law reform that would make it easier to elect unions and that would increase the penalties to
employers and remedies to employees under the NLRA also has failed in Congress.
Given this political reality, advocates should follow the very successful political strategy of
the radical right. The right failed to pass federal legislation outlawing abortions, so it took its
campaign to the states. Over the years, it has limited abortions with state laws mandating parental
consent, waiting periods, and other conditions so that in many states abortions are effectively
unavailable. A similar campaign is now being waged over unions, with Michigan recently becoming a Right to Work state.
Let us follow this example. Individual states have passed stronger laws on non-discrimination,
pay secrecy, comparable worth, and paid family leave. States should continue to take this lead.
Advocates can assess and target the states most likely to pass such legislation, and researchers
can study and disseminate the effects of these policies on the gender wage gap, leading to more
support for these policies. In addition, states can be pro-active in identifying and remedying
unequal pay for women. The Attorney Generals Office in Vermont, for example, explicitly asks
during every intake of any complaint (including minimum wage or maximum hour violations)
whether women are underpaid at work, and if women answer affirmatively, they initiate and
investigate a pay discrimination complaint. In this way, they proactively uncover and resolve
problems that women encounter in their workplaces. States can use this as a model to uncover,
investigate, and remedy underpayment to women. Instead of attempting to pass the same legislation that continues to fail on a national level, women can reap the rewards of higher pay through
targeted state and local initiatives and legislation that can remedy the problem of unequal pay that
women face.
Acknowledgments
Arsenia Reilly provided excellent research assistance. Joya Misra provided useful feedback. The errors in
this paper remain the authors.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Author Biography
Marlene Kim is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She specializes in race
and gender discrimination in employment and the working poor. She has published Race and Economic
Opportunity in the Twenty-first Century (Routledge 2007) as well as numerous scholarly articles on these
topics. She is the recipient of the first Rhonda Williams Prize for her work on race and gender discrimination and serves as Associate Editor of Feminist Economics and on the editorial boards of Industrial
Relations, the Review of Radical Political Economics, and Panoeconomicus. Her current research investigates race and gender discrimination, especially the intersection of these. She holds a PhD in Economics
from the University of California, Berkeley.

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