We know women get paid less for the same job.  We know mothers get paid even less.

We know this from studies and the newspaper.  Not because HR circulates charts showing females get 22% less.

No, salaries are kept private—pay slips are passed out in sealed envelopes. Why such secrecy? Things we generally keep secret—affairs, warts, are not usually nice.  But money’s nice to clothe and feed our children.

GOING PUBLIC

Here’s an immodest proposal:  let’s go public about salaries. Transparency might ensure women get paid fairly.

FEDERAL WOMEN

It seems to work for the government which has a complicated ranking of jobs and pay rates.  They are all charted and standardized and recorded  for all to see on the Office of Personnel Management’s website.

Just this week, the Government Accounting Office released a report showing that the wage gap for women has been shrinking steadily for federal workers.  From 1988 to 2007, women’s pay disparity decreased from 28 to 11 cents—a full 17%.  Apparently, men and women employees are becoming more similar in education and skill levels--which help close the gap.

Even better, the numbers of women in the higher echelons of government service has risen 30%.

The bad news, all the fairly-paid calculator-operators at the GAO still can’t account for 7 cents of the difference—but suggest it could be chalked up to work experience outside government or “discrimination”.
http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d09621thigh.pdf

UNION-PAID

Unions, which are also public about wages, seem to promote more fair pay.  We know union women make more than non-union women.  A gender wage gap still exists, but it’s smaller than in the private sector. The disparity between men and women in unions is $2.50 and hour, as opposed to a $5.00 difference on non-unionized, according to a Canadian labour and industry-funded study. http://www.jobquality.ca/indicators/union/uni3.shtml -

BRITAIN COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET

The UK may move to transparency to promote fairness. The Minister for women and Equality, Harriet Harman has proposed legislation that would help close the gender gap. Her proposed Equality Bill will require companies with 250 employees or more to publish the average hourly pay of male and female workers. Many in the business community are grousing about too much paperwork, the inexactitude of comparison, and the eruption of discrimination claims. Funnily, English women aren’t complaining.

If this new system works to close the gap, maybe we Americans can follow suit.

PAPERWORK, SCHAPERWORK

Arguments against salary transparency says it causes disharmony among colleagues and puts a big burden on HR departments. Employers might have to prove why one worker would get more than another—which sounds bothersome, yet if there’s a good reason for a pay difference, it’s easily quantified or explained.  And no one needs to go to court.

Certainly, had Goodyear had been public about salaries, Lilly Ledbetter would had to waste her time going to the Supreme Court.