Gender Pay Gap Narrowing Very Slowly

Catherine Rampbell writes up a new GAO report on gender gaps in the workforce. The pay gap continues to slowly narrow:

Across the work force, the gap between what men and women earn has shrunk over the last few decades. Full-time women workers closed the gap to 80.2 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2009, up from just 62.3 cents in 1979. Much of this persistent wage gap, however, can be explained by what kinds of jobs the sexes are drawn to, whether by choice or opportunity. [...]

This varied by industry, with the pay gap being the narrowest in public administration, where female managers earned 87 cents for every dollar paid to male managers. It was widest in construction and in financial services, where women earned 78 percent of what men were paid after adjustments.

We also learn that the proportion of women in management positions is basically flat at 40 percent (relative to 49 percent of the overall workforce). The divergences in family status between male and female managers suggests to me that the underlying issue is that mothers shoulder more home-side work than do fathers:

In 2007, 63 percent of female managers were childless, compared with just 57 percent of male managers. Of those managers who did have children, men on average had more children than their women counterparts. Female managers were also less likely to be married than male managers, at rates of 59 percent versus 74 percent, respectively.

Incidentally, I’m not sure exactly who counts as a manager for the purposes of this report, but for the record the majority of the senior staff at CAP are women.

Meanwhile, I note that though everyone would agree that norms about gender roles in 2010 are totally different from where they were in 1960, when people think forward to 2060 they tend to forget to build continued evolution into the forecast.