Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Charlotte's gender gap: $3.1 billion in income

A new study, released for "Equal Pay Day" April 9, shows that women who work full-time jobs in the Charlotte area are paid 76 cents for every dollar paid to men, amounting to an annual gap in wages of $11,906.

That translates to more than $3.1 billion in lost income for local women every year, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group National Partnership for Women & Families, which conducted the analysis based on U.S. Census Bureau data. 

If the Charlotte-area gap were eliminated, the analysis says, each full-time working woman could afford to: pay for food for two more years, buy more than 3,200 more gallons of gas, pay mortgage and utilities for nine more months or pay rent for 15 more months. 

The Charlotte-area average of 76 cents for every dollar paid to men is lower than the North Carolina average (80 cents) and the national average (77 cents). 


The Paycheck Fairness Act, reintroduced in Congress in January and supported by the National Partnership, is designed to fight against wage discrimination and establish stronger workplace protections for men. 

More key stats from the study:  

  • African American women and Latinas fare worse. African American women are paid 64 cents for every dollar paid to men, and Latinas are paid 55 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men. 
  • Since the Equal Pay Act in 1963, the wage gap has been closing at a rate of less than one-half a cent per year. given that rate, the study says, women will not reach equal pay for more than 40 years. 
  • More than 92,000 Charlotte-area households are headed by women. More than 31,200 of those women-headed households are below the poverty line. 

See the full Charlotte report here

The analysis spans all 50 states and country's 50-largest metropolitan areas. Check other city and state rankings here








8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Typical left-over feminist flawed thinking from the 1960's.

This myth is ONLY true for "comparable" work as defined by the affected "minorities", not the SAME work as defined by an employer (or the market in general).

If women make less than men, for example, it is because they choose the lower paying professions.

If they are a doctor, they become pediatricians instead of surgeons, for example.

They choose to be teachers instead of engineers.

Now you may ARGUE that a teacher should make as much as an engineer, but the real world doesn't agree.

That is the feminist flaw in this argument.

So it's all in how you define "comparable" vs. how the market defines "comparable".

This has as much to do with career choices as any form of "discrimination".

As for the minorities, well...

Guess who does worse in school, too?

If there was such as thing as a wage gap that wasn't based on performance, then someone could form a company hiring only the lower-wage employees, pay them MORE, and beat the competition.

But they don't because they can't.

Anonymous said...

Typical leftist thinking. Always wanting to classify people by their gender, skin color, etc and not their individual merits. People are not the same in life, that's just a fact. People who always look at themselves as victims will become victims. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Get out there and work hard and the pay will come. Women CEOs and other sucessful women did not get where they are by making excuses and looking for others to blame.

Anonymous said...

I am a feminist and a liberal, but I would like to know if apples are being compared to apples in this study as well. Neither the article or the references cited that I checked indicate that any consideration was given to either the job titles or the job descriptions of the survey respondents. If the study is an aggregate of ALL full time jobs, then the study is fatally flawed and is worthless. The salary of a surgeon cannot be compared to that of an administrative assistant with the expectation that the disparity is due ONLY to gender or race or socio-economic background.

Articles and reports on this topic do more harm than good unless there are disparities between salaries of individuals in the same position and even then ONLY if there are consistent differences in pay between males/females or along racial lines.

Anonymous said...

I assume that if the salaries of a male surgeon and a female administrative assistant were included in the study, then the salaries of a female surgeon and a male administrative assistant were also included.

Anonymous said...

The charlotte observer sucks !

Anonymous said...

Boy are you all DUMB. They compared equal jobs vs. male to female "aka" APPLE TO APPLES and ORANGES TO ORANGES comparison. Therefore, white men are getting paid more to do the same JOB...Is that fair? You tell me.

Southern Boy JJ...

Anonymous said...

Boy are you all DUMB. They compared equal jobs vs. male to female "aka" APPLE TO APPLES and ORANGES TO ORANGES comparison. Therefore, white men are getting paid more to do the same JOB...Is that fair? You tell me.

Southern Boy JJ...

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