Daily Mississippian

Members of the Chancellor's Commission on the Status of Women will be handing out flyers, stickers and candy bars at the Union today from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to commemorate Equal Pay Day.

This event is sponsored by the Sarah Isom Center for Gender Studies and the Oxford chapter of the American Association for University Women (AAUW).

Isom Center Director Mary Carruth said college students need to be aware that gender discrimination is not a thing of the past.

"Many college students believe that we live in a post-feminist era where gender inequalities have been eradicated," Carruth said. "This second annual Equal Pay Day activity raises the younger generation's awareness about a persistent gender inequity - the wage gap - and about the factors that contribute to it."

Assistant Professor of Economics Simona Lup Tick said that women's pay is still below men's pay in every sector of the economy.

"Full-time female workers had median weekly earnings at 80 percent of what their male counterparts did in 2007, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics," Lup Tick said.

Lup Tick said some of the gender wage gap is explained by differences in the measure of productivity-related characteristics of women and men, as in education, experience and industry. For the most recent years, however, between 9 percent and 17 percent of the raw wage gap is unexplained by these characteristics of workers, she said.

"It's not clear how much of the unexplained gender wage gap represents discrimination," Lup Tick said. "Part of the unexplained wage gap may be due to unobserved characteristics, such as motivation of workers and differences in working conditions, which means that the 9 to 17 percent unexplained wage gap overstates discrimination."

However, Lup Tick also said other factors may skew the statistics in the other direction.

"At the same time, if discrimination affects the hiring and promotion policies, this is likely to decease women's employment in high-paying jobs. Thus, the 9 to 17 percent unexplained wage gap may understate the actual discrimination," she said.

Lup Tick said it is more than likely that the wage gap will be eventually eliminated, but it depends on whether women can find jobs that suit their unique needs.

"The 20 percent gap represents a considerable gain from the 1970s' 40 percent gap." Lub Tick said. "Women are more likely to graduate from college than men, and this trend does not seem to stop. Also, technological change has favored women, and it is likely to continue to do so."

However, even these factors are not enough to guarantee that women will one day earn as much as men, she said.

"Whether or not the wage gap will continue to narrow and eventually disappear is uncertain, and probably depends on whether women can find a job where it is possible to combine family and career," she said.

Article Tools