Women in Arkansas typically earn 78 cents for every dollar paid to men, according to a gender pay analysis from the National Partnership for Women & Families.
The state’s pay gap between women and men was one penny wider than it was in a similar analysis conducted by the group last year and is the 21st-largest in the nation, according to the study. The yearly pay difference means women who are employed full time and year-round earn roughly $8,900 less than men.
The National Partnership for Women & Families used U.S. Census Bureau data to calculate the difference in pay between men and women in every state and Washington, D.C., as part of its analysis. The data were based on comparisons of median wages for women working full time, year-round compared with men.
Vicki Shabo, the National Partnership’s vice president for workplace policies and strategies, said Tuesday, the results are the latest indication that the pay gap remains “vastly unequal.”
“Our goal is to raise awareness about the fact that women are bringing home wages that are lower than the wages that men are bringing home,” Shabo said. “While there are differences by industry and by occupation, what we see consistently is that within each industry and within almost every occupation in the country, women are paid less than men.”
A gender pay gap was evident in every state, according to the analysis. Nationally, the median annual pay for a woman who holds a full-time job is $41,554, while full-time men earn $51,640. The wage gap of $10,086 means that on a national level women are paid 80 cents for every dollar paid to men.
The largest gaps in pay were in Louisiana and Utah (70 cents to the dollar), while the smallest were in New York (89 cents), California (88 cents) and Florida (87 cents).
The difference was larger for women of color, according to the analysis. While white women were paid 79 cents for every dollar paid to white men nationally, the gap widened for black women (63 cents) and Hispanic women (54 cents).
The overall pay gap for women in Arkansas widened from 79 cents to 78 cents this year, but Shabo didn’t put much weight into the 1-cent change. It could simply be a rounding issue. She added the overall issue remains: The amount women are being paid compared with men is far too low.
“Over the last 15 or so years the gap has closed glacially,” Shabo said.
REASONS WHY
Researchers and economists believe the gender wage gap is fed by multiple factors, including education levels or breaks from full-time work because of maternity leave and child care.
Occupational segregation — when a demographic is overrepresented or underrepresented in different kinds of industries or jobs — is another element that contributes to differences in pay.
“If you think about why the pay gap exists, probably about half of it comes about from the industries and the occupations that men are in,” said Mervin Jebaraj, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas. “The male-dominated industries and occupations tend to have higher pay than ones that women dominate.”
But Jebaraj and Shabo said more than a third of the difference in pay consists of elements that can’t be detected in the data. The National Partnership points to bias and discrimination.
“The wage gap cannot be explained by women’s choices,” Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership, said in a statement. “It’s clear that discrimination contributes to it — and equally clear that it’s causing grave harm to women, families and the country.”
The group said Arkansas women are paid nearly $6.4 billion less each year because of the wage gap.
The National Partnership is urging Congress to pass legislation like the Paycheck Fairness Act, which it believes would help break patterns of pay discrimination and establish stronger workplace protections. The Fair Pay Act would diminish wage disparities from gender-based occupational segregation, while the Healthy Families Act would guarantee workers the right to earn paid sick days.
The analysis was released the same day a California federal appeals court ruled that employers couldn’t justify paying a women less than a man doing similar work because of her salary history.
“We need to change our laws around pay itself,” Shabo said.
The Women’s Foundation of Arkansas completed a similar analysis of economic indicators for women in Arkansas earlier this year. In its analysis, the group said the median earnings for women in Arkansas who are employed full-time was $31,790, while men’s earnings were $40,867.
Sarah Beth Estes, who coordinates the gender studies program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and is a Women’s Foundation board member, said the purpose was to provide a benchmark to better understand the challenges women in the state experience from an economic standpoint. Estes said the group especially wanted to focus its research on the status of women of color in the state.
According to the study, white women earned 78 cents to the dollar compared with white men, while black women earned 66 cents and Hispanic women 53 cents. Women of color earned 54 cents to the dollar compared with white men in southwest Arkansas and 53 percent in the southeast region of the state.
The Women’s Foundation said it hopes the analysis — and the work of others like the National Partnership — can lead to action that helps close the gender pay gap in the state and beyond.
“There is no end to the number of policy organizations and research that has come from them suggesting that addressing pay inequity is going to be good for everybody,” Estes said. “Addressing women’s status and helping women in their endeavor … that is good for families. It’s about basically the health of our communities. Both the economic health and the quality of life.”
Vicki Shabo, the National Partnership’s vice president for workplace policies and strategies, said Tuesday the results are the latest indication that the pay gap remains “vastly unequal.”