Michael Jin is looking forward to life after college. With only a couple of months to go before graduating from the University of Massachusetts, Michael dreams of working for a sports marketing company like IMG or Octagon.
"In ten years time, I hope to become a marketing director of a foreign sports company," he said.
Laurena Abraham, a student majoring in sports management and HR, is equally ambitious. Also currently studying at UMass, Laurena plans to gain employment in the sports marketing field.
"I would like to work my way up in the events industry from an event co-coordinator to an events manager and be involved with several different aspects of events, including operations, marketing, licensing and merchandising," she said. But Abraham is likely to earn less than Jin after graduation.
Research suggests females are more likely to be in a financially disadvantaged position. Statistics released by the 2006 Current Population Survey show that a male bachelor degree graduate will have a median income of $55,425, while women with the same classification of degree will only have a median of $38,221.
The United States Census Bureau found that on average, women only earn 77 cents to every dollar a man makes.
Melissa Hodges, a sociology graduate student at UMass, is currently researching gender inequalities. She thinks there are three main factors causing gender inequality in the workplace. The first of these is occupational segregation.
"Some say women are socialized into taking the lower paid jobs like teachers and nurses," Hodge said.
This statement is strengthened by the National Committee on Pay Equity figures, which show more than half of all women work in sales, clerical and service jobs. In this instance, the gender wage gap can be attributed to degree and occupation choice.
The American Association of University Women Education Foundation's "Behind the Pay Gap" 2007 report found that women working full time one year after graduation only earned 80 percent of what their male counterparts made. This gap increased ten years after graduation with women earning 69 percent as much as men in the same field.
Another factor scholars like Hodges and Heather Boushey attribute to the gender pay gap is having children and the positioning of women in the role as caregivers. "Women have to take time off at a point in their career when they are starting to build up their contact network," Hodge said. The Family Medical Leave Act was introduced in 1993 to try and tackle this issue. The U.S. Department of Labor defines this act as entitling eligible employees to "a total of 12 work weeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period for the birth and care of a newborn child." This policy prevented employers firing employees for taking time off to look after their newborn child.
Boushey thinks there is strong social and economic pressure for mothers to spend more time caring for their children. The effects can be seen when looking at Hartman and Rose's 2004 report, "Still a man's labor market." Over a 15-year period, they found that prime-age working women earned only 38 percent of what men in their prime age earned.
Irene Boeckmann, a sociology graduate student at UMass, thinks motherhood is traditionally seen as being in conflict with being a good worker.
"This attitude needs to change to allow progress," she said.
Student loans could also begin to put women in a vulnerable position. The College Board found the typical college graduate who enrolled at age 18 would have earned enough by age 33 to compensate for the money they borrowed to pay tuition and fees at the average public four-year institution.
Amuedo-Dorantes and Kimmel 2004 reported in "The Motherhood Wage Gap for Women in the United States" that over the past three decades, the rate of college-educated women who have first births before 30 has been declining. At the same time, this rate has increased for women over 30. This means that more and more women are taking leave before they have even earned enough to pay off their student debt and are consequently adding further interest to their debt.
"Behind the Pay Gap" authors Judy Goldberg Dey and Catherine Hill argue, "the only way to discover discrimination is to eliminate the other possible explanations."
Using this technique, they found, when taking the above factors into consideration, the portion of unexplained pay gap one year after graduation was five percent. This rose to 12 percent 10 years after graduation. Hodges argued that discrimination is the reason behind these figures.
Boushey's 2007 report, "Strengthening the middle class," argues the above data is worrying when considering that women outnumber men on college campuses. In 2007, the College Board found 67 percent of male high school graduates were enrolled in postsecondary education, compared to 70 percent of females.
The AAUW study found that "women and men who majored in male-dominated subjects earn more than those who majored in female-dominated subjects or mixed-gender fields." In biological sciences, a major classed as mixed-gender, women earn only 75 percent as much as men.
Women may be gaining employment in higher-paying occupations than they were ten years ago. However, this research shows that the glass-ceiling effect is still restraining them to the lower-paying end of the scale. All of the current positions on the board of directors at IMG, a global leader in event management and a field both Michael and Laurena would be interested in working in, are held by men.
This kind of trend is not, however, specific to the sports industry. In 2006, The National Academy of Sciences reported that men who have doctorates in engineering and science are four times more likely than women of similar qualifications to have a full-time job.
Emily Welsh, a sophomore art education major, was shocked by the AAUW findings. "I know not all things in life are fair, but this seems like a huge injustice," she said. "Your wage should reflect the enthusiasm and effort you put into your work, not your gender. We are supposed to be living in the 21st century."
Evelyn Murphy, author of "Getting Even," found women graduating in 1991 to make 91 cents to a man's dollar. By the end of the decade, these very same women were making only 89 cents to a man's dollar. The wage gap widened during the USA's biggest economic expansion since the 1950s.
"The glass ceiling is still creating a hierarchy within big businesses. There are fewer women in the top jobs, and those that are there face higher discrimination in their wage gap," Boeckmann said.
Until 1964, discrimination in the workplace was an accepted practice. This became illegal after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
Hodges acknowledges the positive steps that have been made over the past three decades. NCPE research shows that women on average made 59 cents for every dollar earned by men in 1963, the year the Equal Pay Act was signed.
"Until we have some kind of policies put in place to manage this work-family conflict, life is going to remain difficult for many women," Hodges said.
Be the first to comment on this article!