Study says women still lagging in pay

WASHINGTON — Women continued to face lower wages and fewer managerial opportunities than men during the past decade, a government study found.

Women managers earned 81 cents for every $1 earned by male managers in 2007, up 2 cents from 79 cents in 2000, according to the Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday.

“Women are more productive and better educated than they’ve ever been, but their pay hasn’t caught up,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., at a hearing of Congress’s Joint Economic Committee.

The GAO study also found that women in 2007 made up 40 percent of managers and 49 percent of nonmanagers in 13 industries that account for most of the U.S. work force. In2000, the breakdown for women was 39 percent managers and 49 percent nonmanagers.

In all but three of the 13 industries, “women were less than proportionately represented in management positions than non-management positions in 2007,” the study said.

The report focused on the period before the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression. The GAO wanted to “avoid concerns about the role of the recession that began” in December 2007, the report said. The study accounted for women and men working at least 35-hour weeks for 50 weeks a year.

A panelist at the Joint Economic Committee hearing said the main reason women face unequal pay is because they choose jobs that allow them to have more family time.