Demystifying the gender wage gap

Make Me Smart March 28, 2023 Transcript

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Kimberly Adams 

Hello, I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome to make me smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m Kai Ryssdal, thanks for being here. Today is the 28th of March. Last couple of days of Women’s History Month are upon us. So we’re going to do a single day, single topic on the gender wage gap and why here in 20 freakin 23, it still exists.

Kimberly Adams 

It does indeed. And we are about to attempt to demystify it and get into what people get wrong about the pay gap and what it will take to actually close it. And thank you helicopters in Washington DC. Gotta love it. All right here to make a smart about this is I believe also in Washington, DC Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. Welcome to the show.

Elise Gould 

Thank you so much for inviting me.

Kimberly Adams 

So then, what is the state right now of the gender wage gap? What does it look like in, as Kai said, 20 freakin 23?

Elise Gould 

It’s a great question, right? Why would we have a gender wage gap? How big is it? How do we even think about that women on average are paid about $8 less per hour than men that’s about a 22% wage gap.

Kai Ryssdal 

And the answer as to why we still have it is?

Elise Gould 

Well, there are many reasons, historical discrimination, occupational segregation. There are a multitude of reasons like there are a multitude of solutions. I think that women are paid less than men as a result, as I said, occupational segregation, devaluing of women’s work, societal norms and discrimination. And all of those things take root well before women actually ever entered the labor market.

Kimberly Adams 

So let’s stick with occupational segregation for a moment. Because, yes, there’s this idea that jobs that are typically done by women, which often ends up being care work, for example, those jobs tend to be paid less. But there’s also some evidence that when women enter male dominated field fields, the pay goes down, right?

Elise Gould 

Yes, absolutely. So occupational segregation, just to back up a second, is the idea that women are more likely to be in certain types of jobs than men. Right? So we know that men are more likely to occupy jobs at the very top, you know, CEOs. Higher paid professions are more likely to be men were lower wage professions are more likely to be women. And so that means many helping professions, when we undervalue that kind of work in this country, and women are paid less. And again, those sort of, quote unquote, choices, are made long before women actually ever entered the labor force. But then you’re asking, “Well, what happens in these occupations that may be male dominated, and women start to enter?” You actually see pay growth slow. So there’s research that shows that even if it is a higher paid profession, when women enter well just are not quite as good as they had been before. So there is another way in which women’s work is devalued.

Kai Ryssdal 

So this really it’s a societal problem, right? It’s not a labor force issue.

Elise Gould 

I’d say it’s both. I think it’s a problem in the labor force and a problem with what we you know, expectations and societal norms. I think it’s I think it’s all of it.

Kimberly Adams 

So talk about the societal norms, then. If we’re talking about solutions to the gender pay gap, what kind of societal norms we need to change or update?

Elise Gould 

Well, I think we think about what professions that women are more likely to go into. It can start with the profession that they see their own role models are in and so that can perpetuate or persist that kind of occupational segregation into certain kinds of fields. Like we know that childcare workers in the US are historically underpaid, that is more likely to find women in a field like that. Not just women overall, but particularly Black and Hispanic women are more likely to be in a field like that; that is undervalued and lower paid. And so I think those kinds of norms. But even when you look just at the labor market, women that are doing the same work as men. So if you do some sort of more fancy statistical model, and you look at, you’re trying to control for occupations or jobs, or how much experience women have, you still see that there is a significant pay gap between women and men.

Kai Ryssdal 

I just want to pick up on something you said there a little bit ago, the the gap for women of color is even more substantial, like like enormously more substantial.

Elise Gould 

Exactly. So the occupational segregation, discrimination is compounded for women of color, particularly for Black and Hispanic women. So that pay gap is much larger when you compare how much they’re paid on average, or however you might measure it. Compared to white men, they’re paid far less.

Kimberly Adams 

You were talking earlier about controlling for different things. Talk about education a little bit because women are getting more educated and earning more college degrees than ever before. And so often, whether it’s gender or race, people talk about education as closing some of those pay gaps. Any evidence that’s actually working?

Elise Gould 

Yeah, that’s a great point. You think about education as some sort of great equalizer, and it’s another myth out there. And you’ve mentioned that women are getting going to college it at higher rates. In fact, at higher rates than men, so women are actually more likely to graduate from college and have an advanced degree than men are. So now they’re doing everything that they’re supposed to be doing in the labor market, right? They’re making those investments are taking that time out of labor market to go to school, and get more education. And yet that pay gap persists. At every education level, women are paid less than men. And in fact, on average, women with a graduate degree are paid less than men who only have a college degree. So across all different kinds of professions that you could have for graduate degree, women are still paid less. So it’s persistent. And it is large.

Kai Ryssdal 

Whatever narrowing there has been over the years. And I imagine as with most things, it ebbs and flows, even though it stays substantial. But but is it is whatever narrowing that we’ve had, because women are doing better or because men aren’t doing as well? I won’t say worse, because men always wind up doing well, you know?

Elise Gould 

Yeah, that’s a great question. We think about the narrowing that happened, particularly leading up to 2000, because it has been pretty stagnant. That gender pay gap has persisted has not improved very much at all over the last 20 years. When we think about maybe the 20 years that preceded that much of the narrowing of the gender pay gap was because men’s wages were stagnant, which is not really how we want to achieve a narrowing of the gender pay gap. There’s actually a lot of room in the economy for men and women to both do better because of rising inequality. So much of the gains to a growing economy have gone to the very top and there hasn’t been that much for typical workers to be able to get in terms of having more leverage to be able to bid up their wages. So it’s been a problem for both men and women. Yes.

Kimberly Adams 

A second ago, you were saying that this idea of education as the great leveler was one of the myths behind the gender wage gap. What are some of the other myths and misconceptions people have about why this pay gap persists?

Elise Gould 

So I think the idea of choice that women are choosing to be in lower paid jobs, I think that’s a huge myth as well. Many of the reasons that the lower pay as we talked about, it’s because women are in that field, and that’s what lowers the pay or the devaluation of that kind of work, I think, is also what lowers the pay. I think that you know, that gender pay gap is much larger when you talk about higher paid professions. In lower paid professions it’s actually much narrower when we think about the gender pay gap. And some of that is because of policy has kept the lowest wage workers from falling below a minimum wage. And at the very top, some of the demanding hours, or unusual hours that are demanded when women have oftentimes other pulls on their time, other responsibilities for children, other family members. We saw that in this pandemic, extremely.

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, so indulge me in a hypothetical here, would you? 2024 elections come and go Biden wins, even though he’s not officially running yet Biden wins in 2024. Democrats take back the Senate with 61 seats. Chuck Schumer is the most powerful Majority Leader in the Senate since like Lyndon Johnson right? Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats take the house. And Joe Biden calls you up and says, “Hey, listen, Elise. I got all the oomph now. Give me five things I got to do to take care of the wage gap.” What do you tell him?

Elise Gould 

Oh, I love that I have five things because there is no silver bullet to solving pay equity. I think that there are many different things that we need to do. I think that we need to require federal reporting of pay by gender, race and ethnicity. We need to prohibit employers from asking about pay history require them to post pay bands. But I also think that we need to do things like make sure there’s funding for enforcement of non discrimination laws. And then we need policies that lift wages for most workers, that will also reduce these kinds of pay gaps. So running the economy at full employment, raising the federal minimum wage, make it easier for workers to collectively bargain for higher wages and benefits. I took some liberties that’s more than five, but I think they’re all important.

Kai Ryssdal 

That’s alright. It’s our show, you can do whatever you want. Elise Gould. She’s a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. Elise thanks a lot. Really appreciate it.

Elise Gould 

Thank you.

Kai Ryssdal 

I alway like those hypotheticals.

Kimberly Adams 

I do too but like that hypothetical is a bit of a stretch. It feels a little impossible

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh come on! If you’re gonna go hypothetical. Go Big. Come on.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. But I mean, then what’s the solution for like, more slightly more realistic scenario for actually addressing it?

Kai Ryssdal 

Well, you need to turn society upside down, right, because I don’t think it’s realistic unless you consolidate political power in the hands of the party that actually wants to do something about it. Because let’s be clear, here, Republicans would vote against a lot of those things that that Ms. Gould just said. Right? Unless you you know, I mean, as Joe Joe Manchin said one day, “if you want more progressive policies, elect more progressives.”

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah that’s how it works. Or well at least how it’s supposed to work.

Kai Ryssdal 

That’s how it’s supposed to work. Anyway. Let us know what you think would you? About equal pay, the gender wage gap, anything at all that’s on your mind. Our number is 508-827-6278. 508-U-B-SMART or you can email us at makemesmart@marketplace.org. We’re coming right back

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, news fix time is upon us. Kimberly Adams, you go first.

Kimberly Adams 

So saw this one in the Punchbowl News newsletter, which is a very very DC newsletter. Like its little graphic is an upside down Capitol Hill Doom as a Punchbowl. It’s very wonky but interesting. And this morning they had a story about the senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, T(oo)berville.

Kai Ryssdal 

I thinks it’s T(oo)berville yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

I think it is too. Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, I’m going to read from Punchbowl “is single handedly blocking the promotions of military commanders assigned to key jurisdictions in the Indo Pacific, Middle East and NATO. And he’s doing this in order to compel the Pentagon to reverse a February policy directive that” wait for it “gives servicemembers increased access to abortion service.” Up in like… the abortion fight, of course, has been playing out federally in the courts, but a lot of the sort of nuts and bolts of where these fights are happening has ever since the Dobbs decision been happening at the state level. And there’s not much appetite in Congress to you know, be able to push through something one way or the other on it, right? So what this particular senators doing is making it so that every single military promotion and appointment has to basically go before the full Senate instead of being approved in batches, which slows the process down to like a snail’s pace. And it’s annoying, to put it mildly, very mildly, a lot of people. The defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said today that there will be, quote, “powerful effects on military readiness” if he continues to hold up more than 150 Pentagon nominees in the Defense Department. And basically, what the military has done is they’ve said that, even in states where abortion access is limited, they will still provide the same level of abortion services at military medical facilities as they were in the past and start covering travel expenses and other accommodations for people who have to travel out of state for care. Because the argument is, service members don’t get to decide where they are stationed. And so it’s not like they have the freedom of movement to choose to live in a place that might align with their values or their needs on this particular issue. But yeah, that is having, according to the defense secretary, a direct impact on our military readiness, which I thought was very interesting. It’s extremely telling. I will also say that I think it’s very interesting, also in this piece, that a lot of Tuberville’s Republican colleagues in the Senate are irritated with him. Yeah, and they probably do not love this attention on it either.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right. That’s because it’s the last thing they want to talk about, right? They don’t want to talk about abortion. Mine’s a quickie. It’s a an update, or just a little context on the hearings. And I’m sure by the time everybody hears this podcast, they will also have heard of the hearings on Capitol Hill today, Tuesday and tomorrow, Wednesday into SVB, and banking regulation and what’s going to be done. I just want to just pull a little nugget out from Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr’s testimony about how quickly SVB imploded. So on Wednesday, they were if not fat, dumb and happy, they were completely normally functioning bank. They had revealed some losses on some some long term bonds sales, as we have talked about I think on this past podcast and definitely on Marketplace. But on Wednesday of three weeks ago, they were fine. On Thursday of three weeks ago, they had $42 billion of withdrawals. Okay? Today, Barr said in testimony on Capitol Hill that that Friday, there was $100 billion of withdrawals scheduled. They couldn’t meet those. And so they were shut down. So if you want to talk about a fast bank run, that is a fast, fast bank run. It’s fast, it’s big and went down hard. That’s just it’s so crazy how fast that whole thing happened.

Kimberly Adams 

It was at the speed of the Internet.

Kai Ryssdal 

That’s right. That’s right. That’s exactly right. And the WhatsApp group that all the VCs and the startup founders were in and they were like, “No, you don’t have the money. We’re shutting you down.”

Kimberly Adams 

I’ve been wondering about that, like, the fact that they were talking to each other about it and sort of strategizing these moves. How is that not some kind of version of insider trading? I know it’s not trading of a stock specifically, but like, is that kind of coordinated action okay?

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah that’s that’s a great question. And I would say it has something to do with securities not being involved. They’re talking about cash.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, effectively, it’s an organized bank run. And even if it was not, like, let’s… with the intent purpose of “let’s shut down the bank,” the… I’m just fascinated in that. And then what the… anybody is smarter than us on this. We’d love to hear from you on any implications of that. Because that’s, that’s been kind of kicking around in my brain for a bit wondering about that. Okay, that’s it for the news fix. Let’s do the mailbag.

Mailbag 

Hi Kai and Kimberly. This is Godfrey from San Francisco. Jessie from Charleston, South Carolina. And I have a follow up question. It has me thinking and feeling a lot of things.

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright we’re talking about restaurants last week, specifically restaurants that have subscriptions, the Subway Footlong paths we were talking about. And then we got this.

Jeff 

Hi, Kai and Kimberly. This is Jeff from Vernon Hills, Illinois. I was listening to a half full half empty when you were discussing restaurant subscriptions. And I think I may have one that Kai might actually pay for. Not only do you get priority seating and the occasional free appetizer, you also get a free monthly beer sampler and once a quarter they collaborate with local breweries to give you an eight pack of beers to take home. I love the show.

Kai Ryssdal 

That’s that’s a very cool idea. That’s a very cool idea. I would I would subscribe to that one for sure. Thanks, Jeff. I appreciate that

Kimberly Adams 

Yes and if the FCC has its way, it would be easy for you to cancel it when you’re done.

Kai Ryssdal 

That’s right. That’s right. Click to cancel. It’s in the news.

Kimberly Adams 

Click to cancel. Yes. Sorry, I’m referencing a recent FCC effort I think they want they put it out for common or proposed regulation or something to try to make it easier for people to cancel subscription services. Anyway, before we go, we’re going to leave you with this week’s answer to the make me smart question, which is: what is something you thought you knew but later found out you were wrong about? It is of course cherry blossom season. As you all know, one of my favorite seasons. So this week’s answer comes from Diana Parsell, author of “Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington’s Cherry Trees”

Diana Parsell 

When I set out to write the story of Eliza Scidmore, I thought I knew her motivation and it was pretty straightforward. She went to Japan in the 1880s she saw the trees in bloom, and she decided Washington should have some. But during the research, I realized she was not interested in just creating a pretty park in Washington. She had in mind transplanting a ritual called Hanami that the Japanese had been practicing for over 1000 years, when people from all walks of life turned out in the spring time to ramble, enjoy and fellowship underneath the blooming trees. And of course, that’s what we have today along the banks of the Potomac. So Scidmore was not just a woman with an idea. She was a woman of vision.

Kimberly Adams 

It was so beautiful this weekend in Washington. On a Sunday morning my uncle and I went for a cherry blossom kayak tour in the Washington channel and got to see the cherry blossom trees that are on, not in the title basin which is the big cluster of them. But there’s some along this area called Hains Point, and it was a lot of fun. And they were talking in the tour about Eliza Scidmore and her efforts to bring the cherry trees, which apparently the first batch that were sent over from Japan were actually destroyed because they were infested with some sort of like insect or whatever. And so they had to get another batch.

Kai Ryssdal 

And they did

Kimberly Adams 

And they did. And yeah.

Kai Ryssdal 

And there you go. And Kimberly gets to go on a kayaking trip. What is something you had been wrong about that you had sort of some thoughts about? Leave us a voice message with your answer to make me smart question. Our number is 508-827-6278. 508-U-B-SMART. We’ll get you on the pot. Ah Jay’s in.

Kimberly Adams 

He likes to get in early. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Antonio Barreras. Today’s program was engineered by Jay Siebold with mixing by Gary O’Keefe.

Kai Ryssdal 

Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our acting senior producer is Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital. And Marketplace’s Vice President and General Manager is Neal Scarbrough.

Kimberly Adams 

What was the purple tree that you said has really pretty flowers. That blooms in California.

Kai Ryssdal 

Jacaranda trees.

Kimberly Adams 

Are they blooming yet?

Kai Ryssdal 

No, not yet. The thing about Jacaranda trees is those blossoms are super sticky so that when they fall off, they just get plastered all over the road. And if they’re on your driveway, they get on your shoes and yeah. They’re super pretty but they’re a pain in the ass.