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Women proceed to make great strides in the workforce, attaining increasing levels of education, and advancing into senior leadership positions. However, the gender pay gap — the distinction between the earnings of women and men — has barely budged in latest years.
In the U.S., girls who work full time are usually paid about 80 cents for each greenback paid to their male counterparts, almost the identical disparity that existed 20 years earlier.
There is not any single rationalization for why progress towards narrowing the pay gap has stalled, in keeping with a latest report by the Pew Research Center, though girls are nonetheless extra more likely to pursue careers in decrease paying industries and take day out of the labor pressure or cut back the variety of hours labored due to caretaking responsibilities — also known as the “motherhood penalty.” Systemic bias has additionally performed a job.
In Boston, nonetheless, change is going on regardless of these headwinds.
New analysis exhibits the gender wage gap decreased by 30% over the final two years, in keeping with the Boston Women’s Workforce Council, which was shaped a decade in the past in partnership with the Boston Mayor’s Office to handle this problem.
To ensure, in Boston, girls nonetheless solely earn 79 cents for each greenback a person earns. However, that marks a nine-cent enchancment from the gap reported by the group in 2021.
“This is the first time we have seen an actual lower,” mentioned Kimberly Borman, government director of the Boston Women’s Workforce Council.
Two elements have helped transfer the needle, in keeping with the council: Salaries for girls total rose 6% between 2021 and 2023, and extra girls superior into greater paying senior positions.
The council’s annual report additionally discovered that the racial/ethnic wage gap didn’t enhance over the identical time interval. Women of shade stay overrepresented in lower-paying industries and positions and inflexible office practices do not accommodate for the wants of working mother and father, the report discovered, in addition to persistent bias in hiring and promotion practices.
Equal pay for equal work
The council recruits corporations in Boston to signal the 100% Talent Compact, a pledge to work towards fixing wage and development inequities and dedication to share their payroll information. More than 250 employers have joined the initiative.
The thought is that pay transparency will result in pay equity, or primarily equal pay for work of equal or comparable worth, no matter employee gender, race or different demographic class.
Other cities have reached out in the hope of attaining comparable success, however the mannequin could also be laborious to duplicate, Borman mentioned. In Boston, main employers corresponding to MassMutual and Mass General have been early co-signers.
“There’s a common feeling amongst CEOs that that is one thing that has to be paid consideration to,” Borman mentioned.
Those corporations have additionally labored carefully with the mayor, she added, noting that “the private and non-private partnership has helped.”
Equal alternatives for development
Going ahead, having extra girls in the C-suite is vital to additional progress. “There’s a wage gap however there’s additionally one thing referred to as an influence gap,” Borman mentioned.
Even in a metropolis in which barely greater than half of all skilled workers are girls, girls are sometimes prevented from getting the identical alternatives to advance, in keeping with a separate Women in the Workplace examine from Lean In and McKinsey.
“We want employers to proceed their efforts to handle the energy gap by advancing girls into positions of energy, and subsequently greater pay, at the identical price as males,” Borman mentioned.
That’s the place progress usually falls brief, the Lean In report discovered.
“The ‘damaged rung’ is the largest barrier to girls’s development,” Rachel Thomas, Lean In’s CEO and co-founder, recently told CNBC.
“Companies are successfully leaving girls behind from the very starting of their careers, and girls can by no means catch up,” Thomas mentioned.
Ultimately, that’s the largest impediment to success. Even transferring “nearer to fairness is not sufficient,” Borman mentioned. “We are working in direction of full elimination however it’ll take selling girls into greater paying jobs.”