Jen Strobel works in human resources, and has mentored young female high school students.
And she has a message for young women as they embark on their careers: "Women have to be their own best advocates."
If they believe they're not being fairly compensated for the work they do, they need to do their homework, build their case, and "fight for it," she said.
Strobel is the human resources manager for Flagger Force, a Middletown-based company that provides temporary traffic control for businesses and utilities.
She wasn't all that surprised by the findings of a recent American Association of University Women study, "Graduating to a Pay Gap," which found that the pay gap between men and women starts right after college graduation.
Among all full-time workers, the AAUW points out, women are paid about 77 cents for every dollar paid to men.
The gap is narrower among college-educated workers, but a gap remains, nonetheless: The AAUW study found that "women one year out of college who were working full time earned, on average, just 82 percent of what their male peers earned."
The conventional wisdom long has held that the gap between what men and women earn is something that develops over the span of a woman's career, as she prioritizes family over work, and makes other choices that affect her earning ability. But by focusing on recent college graduates, the AAUW study could compare young men and women in similar circumstances — mostly unmarried, not raising children, and relatively inexperienced at work.
When researchers controlled for hours, occupation, college major, employment sector and other factors, the pay gap "shrinks but does not disappear," the study said, noting that about one-third "of the gap cannot be explained by any of the factors commonly understood to affect earnings."
The AAUW study pointed to gender discrimination" as "one potential contributor to the unexplained pay gap," and noted that "research shows that most men and women continue to hold biases — often unconscious — against women in the workplace, especially against those who work in traditionally male fields."
Different pay, same field
The study said that the choice of college major was an important driver in the pay gap, but "college major is not the full story. One year after graduation, a pay gap exists between women and men who majored in the same field. Among business majors, for example, women earned just over $38,000, while men earned just over $45,000."
Female teachers earned 89 percent of what their male peers earned. In business and management, women earned 86 percent of what men earned, and in sales, women earned just 77 percent.
Carol J. Auster, a professor of sociology at Franklin & Marshall College, said that even when they're in the same field, women and men may be drawn to different specialties, and some of the specialties women choose — environmental engineering, for instance, over aeronautical engineering — happen to pay less.
Gender socialization often leads women more so than men to choose "caring professions," which are generally less lucrative, Auster said, noting, for instance, that grounds crew workers are paid more than child care workers. Even teenagers who mow lawns in the summer, and tend to be boys, are likely to be paid more than baby sitters, who tend to be girls, she said.
"Why do we pay some fields a lot more than others?" Auster asked. "Why is that engineer paid a lot more than that teacher? They both attended school for four years."
Kenneth Smith, associate professor of economics at Millersville University, said that "men are more aggressive and more assertive in protecting their economic interests than women."
According to the book, "Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide," by Linda Babcock, of Carnegie Mellon University, and Sara Laschever, men initiate negotiations about four times as often as women.
Women tend to be gloomy about their negotiating prospects — they typically ask for less, and get, on average 30 percent less than men. One in five women say they never negotiate at all.
The costs of failing to negotiate a first salary are high, and long-lasting: An individual may go on to lose more than a half million dollars in income by age 60.
And, as the AAUW study points out, if a female college graduate is earning less than her male counterpart, her student loan payments will eat up a bigger portion of her earnings.
In an effort to help girls become comfortable with negotiation, Babcock developed a "Win-Win" badge for Girl Scouts in grades four to six. Girls earn the badge by learning problem-solving and negotiation skills.
Her co-author, Sara Laschever, teaches workshops on negotiation. She is slated to speak at F&M's Alice Drum Women's Center in the spring.
Kathryn Clark is an F&M sophomore who intends to major in government. She's a few years away from joining the workforce full time, but she's already gained some negotiating experience.
Last summer, when she was working at a high-end grocery store outside of Milwaukee, she asked her employer for a raise. At a time when many college students were struggling to find jobs of any kind, Clark was awarded a raise of more than $1 an hour.
"My parents always raised me to ask for what I deserve," she said one recent evening, as she awaited the start of Gender at Work, a class taught by F&M associate professor Dennis Deslippe.
But not every young woman is socialized to assert her self-worth, said Stephanie Boothe, a junior majoring in religious studies. An assertive woman still runs the risk of being "characterized as cold," she said, "while a man is seen as standing up for himself."
Ask, maybe you'll receive
In Jen Strobel's view, young women have to get over worrying about what other people think.
"If you're interested in a higher income, you're not going to get it unless you ask for it," Strobel said. "Women [say], 'Well, OK, I'd really like this, but I'll settle for $5,000 less."
"It's unfortunate — maybe it has to do with a level of confidence about what they're bringing to the job."
Women also tend to be more empathetic, thinking, "Oh, well, I understand, Mr. Employer, you can't afford to pay me that," Strobel said. "Somehow we rationalize it for somebody else, why it's OK for them to pay us less."
In her experience, "The older women get, the more likely they are to ask for what they want or what they feel they deserve."
She said she'd encourage young women to do the research, look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data to see what people in their field, in their region, are earning, and be willing to say, to their employers, "I'm currently underpaid, and I can back this up."
Backing it up is key, she said: An employee may feel entitled to a pay raise, but she also needs to justify that raise, by having the requisite qualifications, skill set and experience.
If an employer is unable to afford increasing your pay right away, you should work out a plan for incremental increases. "You can't expect your employer to say, 'Yep, I'll give you an extra 10 grand' on the spot," Strobel said.
This may be a tough time for employers. But, Strobel said, "I think it's reasonable to ask for more money at any time, if what you're bringing to the table, you can back it up. You're laying the groundwork for your expectations, your desires. ... You're not going to get it unless you ask for it, and if you wait for the economy to turn around, this is the new normal — you'll never get it."
Priya Desai, a 2012 graduate of Temple University, is employed as a laboratory analyst for a vaccine manufacturer.
The Monroe County resident said she'd considered getting an English degree, but felt a career in science offered greater earning potential. She said it never even occurred to her to ask for more pay when she accepted her contract.
"I honestly was just so worried that I wasn't going to find anything else," she said, adding, "I just took what was offered to me."
Desai said, in retrospect, she wishes she had at least asked for more money. "I don't think most women are ready to take that risk."
Partisan divide over pay equity
Auster, of F&M, believes the key to erasing the lingering pay gap would be to establish a system of pay equity — not equal pay for just equal work, but equal pay for equivalent work. This system, known as comparable worth, was instituted for public workers in Minnesota. (According to an example on that state's website, a delivery van driver, who's typically male, earns the same wage as a clerk typist, who's typically female.)
Pay equity also would eliminate the disparities in pay among people of different races, Auster said.
While there is "a noticeable pay gap between white men and women, and Asian men and women, the pay gap is rather small [between] black men and women, and Latino men and women," Auster pointed out.
This smaller pay gap isn't a positive: Black and Latino workers of both genders tend to have fewer years of education, which results in more limited job options, she said.
Smith, of Millersville University, said that many economists are against legislating wages, fearing that "if you legislate wages, you also get rid of the market's ability to allocate labor efficiently."
He said that Sweden did try to legislate pay equity, pushing a "wage solidarity" program that was supported by labor unions. "It eliminated a lot of pay differentials," Smith said, but it created "horrible problems" for some areas that faced labor shortages and couldn't raise pay to attract workers.
Smith noted that in the United States, "there's a real partisan divide" on the pay equity issue.
Democrats tend to be friendlier toward legislation such as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which was signed into law in 2009 by President Barack Obama and extended the time period for filing discrimination claims. Republicans, Smith noted, "are more concerned about market efficiency ... [and] want a lack of legislation in general."
Last spring, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which sought to expand protections for women making wage discrimination claims, and would have required companies to cite legitimate business reasons for any pay disparities, was thwarted in the U.S. Senate by Republicans.
That act, which was seen by the AAUW as a needed update to the nearly 50-year-old Equal Pay Act, would have made it illegal for employers to fire employees who discussed their pay with co-workers.
Technically, "unless you're in a workforce with a collective bargaining agreement, you're not supposed to sit around in the lunchroom and talk about what your salary package is," said Dennis Deslippe, associate professor of American studies and women's and gender studies at F&M. "If there's no forum in which to discuss this, how can change really occur?"
People who want to explain away the pay gap attribute it wholly to work-family choices made by women, maintaining that "the structure of the workplace [has] no accountability," Deslippe said.
The reason for this is simple, he said: "The cost of rolling up your sleeves and addressing it is significant."
Deslippe said he thinks the AAUW study will cause people "to sit up and notice and ask harder questions than they've asked."
The students in his Gender at Work class have spent a lot of time talking about the notion of "having it all."
"In a way, this [AAUW study] is much more sobering," Deslippe said. "This is something they're going to be facing in the next few years."
Said student Stephanie Boothe, of the pay gap, "It's sad to know that this is the state of things but it's reality."
