US women better educated but still paid less than men

by Karin Zeitvogel Karin Zeitvogel

WASHINGTON (AFP) - More US women than men have advanced degrees but women still earn substantially less than their male counterparts for the same work, data released Tuesday show.

A female graduate of Marymount Manhattan College waves after getting her diploma. More US women than men have advanced degrees but women still earn substantially less than their male counterparts for the same work, data released Tuesday show.

Nine percent of young adult American women hold either a master's, doctoral or professional degree, such as in medicine or law, compared with six percent of men, and women make up nearly six in 10 holders of advanced degrees, data compiled by the Census Bureau show.

Women also outpaced men in terms of bachelor's degrees, with 35 percent of women aged 25-29 and 27 percent of men obtaining the four-year university degree

The Census Bureau issued the data on Equal Pay Day, which is the day to which women would have to work to make the same money as their male counterparts did in 2009.

Many women's movements call April 20th Unequal Pay Day, pointing out that in 2008, the most recent year for which annual salary comparisons are available, women made just 77 dollars for every 100 dollars their male counterparts made.

On a weekly wage comparison, women made around 80 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts in 2009, according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR).

But for highly skilled women surgeons or physicians, the weekly wage gap separating her earnings from those of a male doctor was a whopping 36 percent, with the woman making just 64 cents to the dollar of what her male counterpart, the IWPR statistics show.

"Educational attainment does little to equalize the pay gap between men and women," IWPR's Elisabeth Crum told AFP

"In fact, we found some anecdotal and statistical evidence to suggest that a woman who gets a college degree will earn the same as a man who finishes high school," she said.

The percentage of US men with bachelor's degrees has held steady since 1999, while the rate for women has grown from 30 percent that year to 35 percent in 2009.

In 1960, just three percent of Americans had studied beyond a bachelor's degree, and more than three-quarters of those who obtained advanced degrees at the time were men.

In 1963, when the Equal Pay Act was signed, women made 59 cents on average for every dollar earned by men, the NCPE says on its website, citing Census Bureau figures of median wages of full-time, year-round workers.

By 2000, women had overtaken men in terms of holding advanced degrees -- 58 percent of women had one compared to 42 percent of men -- but the wage gap had narrowed by only half a cent a year.

Even men who work in jobs that are traditionally predominantly female tended to earn more than their women colleagues, data compiled by the IWPR show.

A male secretary or administrative assistant earned 666 dollars a week in 2009 while a woman doing the same job -- in which nearly 97 percent of workers are female -- earned 619 dollars.

When she was still a senator, now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton together with Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act before Congress.

The bill, which was passed more than a year ago by the House of Representatives but is stalled in the Senate, would empower women to negotiate for equal pay, give employers incentives to pay women the same as men, and strengthen enforcement efforts.