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NEW EVIDENCE ON THE GENDER PAY GAP FOR 

WOMEN AND MOTHERS IN MANAGEMENT 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE 

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

SEPTEMBER 28, 2010 

Printed for the use of the Joint Economic Committee 

( 

(II) 

JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE 

[Created pursuant to Sec. 5(a) of Public Law 304, 79th Congress] 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chair 

MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York 

BARON P. HILL, Indiana 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas 

KEVIN BRADY, Texas 

RON PAUL, Texas 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, M.D., Texas 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

SENATE 

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York, Vice 

Chairman 

JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico 

AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota 

ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania 

JIM WEBB, Virginia 

MARK R. WARNER, Virginia 

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas, Ranking Minority 

JIM DEMINT, South Carolina 

JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho 

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah 

ANDREA CAMP, Executive Director 

JEFF SCHLAGENHAUF, Minority Staff Director 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

MEMBERS

Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney, Chair, a U.S. Representative from New York .......... 1 

Hon. Kevin Brady, a U.S. Representative from Texas ......................................... 3 

WITNESSES

Dr. Andrew Sherrill, Director of Education, Workforce, and Income Security, 

U.S. Government Accountability Office .............................................................. 5 

Ms. Ilene H. Lang, President & Chief Executive Officer, Catalyst ..................... 7 

Dr. Michelle J. Budig, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts ................................................................................................................. 9 

Ms. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute ............................. 11 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Prepared statement of Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Chair .................... 30 

Prepared statement of Representative Kevin Brady ............................................ 31 

Prepared statement of Dr. Andrew Sherrill .......................................................... 33 

Prepared statement of Ms. Ilene H. Lang ............................................................. 84 

Prepared statement of Dr. Michelle J. Budig ........................................................ 107 

Prepared statement of Ms. Diana Furchtgott-Roth .............................................. 117 

Prepared statement of Representative Elijah E. Cummings ............................... 183 

(1) 

NEW EVIDENCE ON THE GENDER PAY GAP 

FOR WOMEN AND MOTHERS 

IN MANAGEMENT 

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2010 

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, 

JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:07 a.m. in Room 106 

of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, The Honorable Carolyn B. 

Maloney (Chair) presiding. 

Representatives present: Maloney, Cummings, and Brady. 

Senators present: Bingaman. 

Staff present: Andrea Camp, Gail Cohen, Colleen Healy, 

Elisabeth Jacobs, Jessica Knowles, Rachel Greszler, Ted Boll, and 

Robert O’Quinn. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CAROLYN B. 

MALONEY, CHAIR, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW YORK 

Chair Maloney. The Committee will come to order, and I welcome all the witnesses and my colleague from the other side of the 

aisle, Mr. Brady, and I will begin with my opening statement. 

Good morning. Today’s hearing on the gender gap among managers is part of the Joint Economic Committee’s in-depth look at 

women in the work place. Women’s work is crucial for families’ economic well-being, particularly in these tough economic times. 

Women comprise nearly half of the workforce, and families are 

increasingly dependent on working wives’ incomes, with working 

wives now contributing 36 percent of household income, compared 

to 29 percent in 1983. 

Because of this, gains in women’s earning power or the absence 

of progress on that front is a very important economic security 

issue for American families. Women earn just 77 cents on the dollar as compared to men for doing the exact same work. That figure 

hasn’t budged in nearly ten years. 

The report released today by the GAO provides additional evidence of the persistence of the gender gap at the highest echelons 

of industry. The GAO finds a striking pay gap between male and 

female managers. In 2007, female managers were paid 81 cents for 

every dollar earned by their male manager peers, even after accounting for measurable differences like age, education, and industry. 

The pay gap for women in management shrank by just two cents 

from 2000 to 2007. In short, and in no uncertain terms, we are 

2 

stalled out. No matter how you slice the data, the pay gap between 

male and female managers persists. 

Even among childless managers, women earn just 83 cents for 

every dollar earned by their male peers. Both the GAO and Catalyst also find that we have made very little progress in breaking 

the glass ceiling for women in management. 

Women’s representation in management professions in 2007 was 

essentially unchanged from 2000, and motherhood continues to be 

a penalty for women in the workforce. A previous GAO report 

showed that fathers enjoy a bonus, while mothers pay a penalty for 

their decisions to have children. I like to call this the ‘‘mom bomb.’’ 

Today’s GAO report shows that management moms earn just 79 

cents for every dollar earned by management dads, a figure that 

has not budged since 2000. In all but one industry, fathers are 

more likely than mothers to be managers. When working women 

have children, they know it will change their lives, but they are 

stunned at how much it changes their paychecks. 

While women’s earnings are a crucial element of families’ economic security, this is particularly true for families where the wife 

is a manager. Across all industries, married female managers are 

just like male managers in one key regard: they are their families’ 

majority breadwinners. 

But married male managers’ paychecks represent about 75 percent of their families’ total earnings, compared to the 55 percent of 

total family earnings represented by married female managers’ 

paychecks. The impact of the wage gap is particularly painful in 

our current economic downturn, as families struggle to make ends 

meet in the face of stagnant wages and job losses. 

In order to further our understanding of the gender pay gap 

across the economic spectrum, I am pleased to announce today that 

I will be requesting a new report from GAO investigating gender 

pay and representation issues among lower-wage workers. 

The GAO research team provides a great service to our nation 

with their impartial data-driven analysis of pressing economic 

problems, and I look forward to learning more from them when this 

report is issued next year. 

Women are more productive and better-educated than they have 

ever been, but their pay has not yet caught up. Women continue 

to bump up against everything from subtle biases to acts of discrimination relating to gender stereotypes about hiring, pay raises, 

promotions, pregnancy, and caregiving responsibilities. 

The first piece of legislation that President Obama signed into 

law, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, was an important start, but additional 

legislation is necessary to close the loopholes in the Equal Pay Act 

that allow discrimination to persist. I am proud to be the co-sponsor of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which passed the House earlier 

this session, and I hope that the Senate will soon act on it. 

Better work/life balance policies would allow both mothers and 

fathers to continue to support their families and develop their careers. By ensuring that women aren’t forced to start all over again 

in new jobs, paid-leave policies can help keep women upwardly mobile in their careers, protecting their earnings. 

The Working Families Flexibility Act, which I have sponsored 

with the late Senator Kennedy, would do just that, and I am 

3 

pleased to announce that just last week, Senator Casey introduced 

a version similar to this act in the Senate. I would like to thank 

today’s panel, and I look forward very much to your testimony. I 

recognize my colleague and very good friend, Mr. Brady. 

[The prepared statement of Representative Maloney appears in 

the Submissions for the Record on page 30.] 

OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE KEVIN BRADY, A 

U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM TEXAS 

Representative Brady. Thank you Madam Chairman. I’m 

pleased to join with you to welcome our panelists before the Committee this morning, and I would ask unanimous consent that my 

statement be entered in the record in full. 

Chair Maloney. No objection. 

Representative Brady. I support equal compensation for men 

and women, and our nation’s laws that are in place to ensure 

women are not discriminated against in the work place. Where lax 

enforcement of our laws may exist, Congress should fulfill its duty 

in its role in conducting proper oversight, and I appreciate the 

Chairwoman’s sponsoring of this hearing today. 

Back home, we have a number of women entrepreneurs, women 

in management, women in the workforce, who talk to me mainly 

today about jobs, the economy, and about stretching their family 

budget further. They are concerned about this economy. They have 

seen since the beginning of the year our economic growth has 

dropped by two-thirds. We are beginning to stall out again in our 

recovery. At a time when we ought to be adding jobs, we’re continuing to lose them. 

Small businesses are not hiring. They’re continuing to lay off, 

and consumer confidence is at an 18-month low. We’ve given back 

all the consumer confidence from the last year and a half. The 

stimulus has not worked to jump-start the economy. It certainly 

has not worked to restore consumer confidence, and businesses are 

holding—many of them led or with women in key management positions—are holding onto more than $2 trillion of cash that ought 

to be going toward rehiring new workers, the old workers, hiring 

new ones, making new investments, adding net new sales force. 

They’re not doing that, and what they tell us, both small businesses and large, that they’re frightened by what they see coming 

out of Washington these days. They see continued talk of higher 

taxes, more regulation. They’re concerned about the health care bill 

driving up health care costs, its impact on their small businesses, 

very concerned about higher energy prices from cap and trade, and 

now they’re facing in January, January 1st, a nearly $4 trillion tax 

bomb that will go off, affecting every person in America. Families 

who are trying to balance their budgets, small businesses who are 

trying to survive this recession. 

We see women are now the fastest-growing among entrepreneurs. I was a Chamber of Commerce executive before coming 

to Congress, so I got to see firsthand how women are the leading 

entrepreneurs among our small businesses. Women and minorityowned businesses are really the catalysts for new small business 

creation in this country. They are for the first time, as a generation, building wealth, and they’re concerned about the death tax 

4 

coming back, springing back to full life January 1st, which will 

make it very difficult for them to pass their small business and 

their wealth back down to their children and their grandchildren. 

I don’t know how anyone could believe that the way to jumpstart our stalled economy is to heap new taxes on the very professions and small businesses most critical to a recovery. That doesn’t 

make economic sense, and I don’t think refusing to hold a vote, just 

a straight up or down vote, on extending the tax cuts, so there is 

not a tax increase on professions, small businesses, on capital gains 

and dividends is right. 

I just think leaving Congress without letting the will of Congress 

be held and be known, to put lawmakers on the record of whether 

they support these tax increases or not, whether they’re serious 

about jump-starting the economy, I think, really is irresponsible. 

I’m hopeful that maybe this hearing, maybe others, where we feature again the challenges of women in the workforce, building 

wealth, of retaining their hard work and being rewarded for it will 

encourage an up or down vote. 

I’m hopeful perhaps any effort we can make to encourage an up 

or down vote this week before we leave, I think, would be helpful. 

With that, I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Representative Brady appears in the 

Submissions for the Record on page 31.] 

Chair Maloney. I thank the gentleman for being here. We are 

focusing today on an important report that just came out of the 

GAO, but I need to respond to my good friend and colleague’s revisionist history on where our economy is. He seems to have amnesia, and does not remember that the last month that former President Bush was in office, this country lost 790,000 jobs. 

Because of the policies that were put in place during his eight 

years, we had a continued loss of jobs, down to what I call the ‘‘red 

valley.’’ Since President Obama took office, we have been moving 

in the right direction. It is not success, but it is definitely progress. 

For the past eight months, this country has gained jobs in the private sector, which is the true indicator of economic recovery. 

President Obama’s actions, along with the Recovery Act, helped 

start moving us in the right direction. Economists Alan Blinder 

from Princeton University and Mark Zandi, who was McCain’s 

economist—he works for the private sector for Moody’s, he’s a forecaster—they came out with a joint report saying that if President 

Obama and the Democrats had not taken the steps that they did 

to start moving our economy in the right direction, this country 

would have lost an additional 8.5 million jobs and would have been 

thrust not into the great recession, which we are suffering in now, 

but into a Great Depression. 

With the actions of the Obama Administration to stabilize our financial markets, to bring reform to them, we avoid the risk of taxpayers having to invest in bailouts in the future. Actions such as 

the HIRE Act give a tax credit to businesses that hire unemployed 

workers. And you know from the testimony that we heard before 

this Committee that a tax credit was one of the prime goals that 

economists said would help us move in the right direction. 

Just last week the Senate passed and the President signed into 

law an important bill that we passed in the House earlier, a $30 

5 

billion loan fund for small businesses, directed to small businesses, 

to help them expand, to hire. What we’re hearing on both sides of 

the aisle is that our small businesses do not have access to credit. 

This money will be solely for credit to small businesses directed 

through community banks and regional banks, with other tax incentives and breaks to try to get this economy moving in a stronger 

direction. 

History speaks for itself. The facts speak for themselves. I would 

certainly take the initiatives and trends that we’re seeing now over 

the long line of policies that led us to the deep, red valley. But 

today is not a time for this type of debate. Women comprise half 

of our population. The new GAO and Catalyst studies are very disturbing, and we plan to hear more about them today. 

I thank our witnesses for being here, and I would like to introduce them, and thank them for their life’s work and for being here 

today. Dr. Andrew Sherrill is a Director of Education, Workforce, 

and Income Security Issues at the U.S. Government Accountability 

Office. He oversees the GAO’s work on worker protection and workforce development issues, and has worked there for 19 years. He 

has led GAO teams in producing reports to Congress on topics including the gender pay gap, compensation for nuclear weapons facilities, and welfare reform, among many other topics. 

Ms. Ilene Lang is the President and Chief Executive Officer of 

Catalyst, the leading research and advisory organization working 

to build inclusive work places and expand opportunities for women 

in business. She was appointed President in August of 2003, and 

named CEO in September of 2008. She was the founding CEO of 

AltaVista Software, a subsidiary of Digital Equipment Corporation. 

She was named to the Global Agenda Council on the Gender Gap 

at the World Economic Forum, and she is a member of the National Board Development Committee of the Girl Scouts of the 

USA. 

Dr. Michelle Budig is an associate professor of Sociology and the 

associate director of the Social and Demographic Research Institute 

at the University of Massachusetts. She has published work on 

gender differences leading to self-employment, the relationship between women’s employment and fertility histories, and earnings 

penalties associated with childcare, labor, and motherhood. 

In 2003, her research won the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for 

Research Excellence in Families and Work. 

Ms. Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and directs the Center for Employment Policy. From February 

of 2003 to April of 2005, she was chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor. She was Assistant to the President and Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute from 1993 to 

2001. Prior to that, she served in the White House under President 

George H.W. Bush. 

We thank all of our distinguished panelists, and we’ll begin with 

Dr. Sherrill and go down the line. Thank you again for being here. 

6 

DR. ANDREW SHERRILL, DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION, WORKFORCE, AND INCOME SECURITY, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Dr. Sherrill. Chair Maloney and members of the Committee, I’m 

pleased to be here today as you examine issues related to women 

in management. Although women’s representation across the general workforce has grown, there remains a need for information 

about the challenges women face in advancing their careers. 

To respond to your request that we update our 2001 report on 

women in management to 2007, we addressed the following three 

questions: 

First, what is the representation of women in management positions, compared to their representation in non-management positions by industry? 

Second, what are the key characteristics of women and men in 

management positions by industry, and third, what is the difference in pay between women and men in full-time management 

positions by industry? My remarks today are based on our full report, which is being released at this hearing. 

To examine these questions, we analyzed data from the Census 

Bureau’s American Community Survey for the years 2000 through 

2007. We analyzed managers across all of the broad industry categories used in the survey, representing almost the entire workforce. We defined managers as individuals classified under the 

manager occupation category in the survey, which includes a wide 

range of job titles. 

In our analysis of the differences in pay between male and female managers working full-time and year-round by industry, we 

used annual earnings as our dependent variable, and we made adjustments for differences of certain characteristics that were available in the data set, and are commonly used to estimate adjusted 

pay differences. 

These include age, hours worked beyond full-time, race and ethnicity, state, veterans status, education level, marital status and 

presence of children in the household. In summary, we found that 

when looking across all industries combined from 2000 to 2007, female and male managers’ characteristics remained largely similar. 

However, differences narrowed substantially in level of education 

and slightly in pay. 

With regard to women’s representation, women comprised an estimated 40 percent of managers and 49 percent of non-managers on 

average in 2007 across the 13 industry sectors we analyzed. This 

compares to 39 percent of managers and 49 percent of non-managers in 2000. In all the three industry sectors, women were less 

than proportionally represented in management positions than in 

non-management positions. They were more than proportionally 

represented in construction and public administration, and there 

was no significant difference in their representation in the transportation and utility sector. 

On average across the 13 industry sectors, an estimated 14 percent of managers in 2007 were mothers, with their own children 

under age 18 living in the household, compared to 17 percent of 

non-managers. With regard to characteristics, according to our estimates, female managers in 2007 had less education, were younger 

7 

on average, more likely to work part-time, and were less likely to 

be married or have children than male managers. 

While the average female married manager earned the majority 

of her own household’s wages, her share of household wages was 

smaller than the share contributed by the average male married 

manager in his household wages. However, a key story in our report was that female managers’ gains in education surpassed those 

of male managers from 2000 to 2007. 

Looking to the estimated difference in pay between female and 

male managers working full-time, it narrowed slightly between 

2000 and 2007, after adjusting for selected factors. When looking 

at all industry sectors together and adjusting for these factors, we 

estimate that female managers earned 81 cents on the dollar for 

every dollar earned by male managers, compared to 79 cents in 

2000. This is the bolded line on the first graphic on the chart up 

there. 

The adjusted pay difference in 2007 varied by industry sector, 

with female managers’ earnings ranging from 78 cents at the low 

end in the construction and financial activities industries, to 87 

cents on the dollar in public administration. 

To examine the effects on pay of having children, we conducted 

two additional analyses. We first compared only managers with 

children, and then the second compared only those without children. In 2007, the adjusted pay for female managers with children 

was somewhat lower, 79 cents for every dollar earned by male 

managers with children. That compares to 83 cents on the dollar 

for female managers without children. 

While this indicates that the factors associated with having children explain some of the differences in pay between female and 

male managers, it also suggests that other factors are involved in 

the remaining unexplained differences, the large, gray portion of 

those last two graphics. 

Some of the unexplained differences in pay seen here could be explained by factors for which we lack data or are difficult to measure, such as level of managerial responsibility, field of study, years 

of experience or discriminatory practices. 

Madam Chair, this concludes my prepared remarks. I would be 

happy to answer any questions you or the Committee members 

may have. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Andrew Sherrill appears in the 

Submissions for the Record on page 33.] 

Chair Maloney. Thank you for your testimony. Ms. Lang. 

MS. ILENE H. LANG, PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE 

OFFICER, CATALYST 

Ms. Lang. Good morning, Chairman Maloney and members of 

the Committee. Thank you for inviting me on behalf of Catalyst. 

Founded in 1962, Catalyst is the leading non-profit working globally to advance women in business. Our research, widely considered the gold standard on women in business leadership, identifies 

major barriers to women’s advancement and presents the most effective strategies for creating sustainable change. 

Today I will share Catalyst’s latest findings on the representation of women in leadership positions, and their implications as we 

8 

look at issues of pay equity. First, the good news. Women currently 

make up 46.7 percent of the labor force, and more than 50 percent 

of management, professional and related occupations, and have for 

a long time. 

But despite their sustained workforce participation and economic 

influence, women have experienced a shockingly slow rate of 

progress advancing into business leadership, regardless of industry. 

According to Catalyst research, the percentage of women executive officers and board directors in Fortune 500 companies is stuck 

in the teens, and a staggering 97.4 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs 

are men. The Catalyst census of Fortune 500 companies is a precise count of women leaders in our nation’s largest 500 corporations, as measured by revenue. 

We analyze the Fortune 500 because the country’s most powerful 

and influential companies set the standard. Catalyst believes we 

will not see systemic change until we see it at the nation’s leading 

corporations. So let’s look at the data. 

While women are 46.4 percent of the Fortune 500 workforce, they 

are only 25.9 percent of senior officers and managers, hold only 

15.2 percent of board seats, are only 13.5 percent of executive officers, and just 2.6 percent of CEOs. That’s 13 CEOs out of 500. 

The numbers reflect a deep leadership gap. The current gender 

ratio of top earners at Fortune 500 companies raises another red 

flag. Executive officer compensation remains a visible indicator of 

women’s status in corporations. In 2009, women were only 6.3 percent of top-earning executive officers within the Fortune 500. 

Women are stuck. Despite decades of efforts to create opportunities for advancement, deep inequities persist. Our recently released 

report, ‘‘Pipeline’s Broken Promise,’’ revealed that talented female 

MBA graduates still start lower, are paid less, and climb more 

slowly than equally qualified men. 

The report surveyed more than 4,100 women and men MBA 

alumni from 26 leading business schools around the world. Taking 

into account time elapsed since earning the MBA, years of work experience pre-MBA, industry and region, the survey found (1) 

women averaged $4,600 less in their initial jobs after controlling 

for their job level; (2) women were outpaced by men in salary 

throughout their careers. In fact, the gap in pay intensified as time 

went on, and cannot be explained by career aspirations or parenthood status. 

And (3), even if they both started at entry level, men progressed 

more quickly than women up the corporate ladder. If this is happening to our best and brightest, one can only imagine the inequities throughout the rest of the system. These inequities must be 

addressed because it’s the right thing and the smart thing to do. 

Catalyst Bottom Line research found that Fortune 500 companies with more women corporate officers, on average, financially 

outperformed those with fewer, and the same holds true for Fortune 500 companies with more women on their boards of directors. 

On average, companies with more women on their board of directors significantly outperformed those with fewer women by 53 percent on Return on Equity, 42 percent on Return on Sales, and a 

whopping 66 percent on Return on Invested Capital. 

9 

What’s good for women is good for American business. From the 

perspectives of leadership advancement and pay equity, companies 

that disadvantage women lose out on half the available talent. 

That’s like playing cards with half a deck. Women aspire to success 

just as much as men do, and they define it similarly. But until 

women achieve parity in pay and business leadership roles, they 

will be marginalized in every other arena. 

To address inequities, Catalyst advises companies to establish 

strict accountability regarding promotion and pay. We strongly 

support legislation that targets inequity. A bold step forward for 

American business and the economy would be for the Senate to join 

the House in passing the Paycheck Fairness Act. 

Chairman Maloney and members of the Committee, thank you 

for this opportunity to testify today. I have also submitted a written testimony that includes further details about relevant Catalyst 

research and our methodology. I’m ready to answer questions now. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Ilene H. Lang appears in the 

Submissions for the Record on page 84.] 

Chair Maloney. Thank you very much. Dr. Budig. 

DR. MICHELLE J. BUDIG, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF 

SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS 

Dr. Budig. Chairwoman Maloney and members of the Committee, I thank you for the opportunity to speak. Today I testify 

that a significant portion of the persistent gender gap in earnings 

among workers with equivalent qualifications and in similar jobs 

is attributable to parenthood. 

Thus, policies that target the difficulties of balancing work and 

family responsibilities, as well as discrimination based on workers’ 

parental status, may be the most effective at reducing the remaining gender pay gap. I’m going to address four points: The relative 

absence of wives and mothers among managers, the larger gender 

pay gaps among parents, the evidence of motherhood penalties and 

fatherhood bonuses, and work family policies that are associated 

with smaller motherhood wage penalties. 

The GAO report shows that, compared with male managers, 

women managers are far less likely to be married, to be parents 

and have smaller family sizes when they are. The absence of mothers and the rising childlessness among workers is also found in national data. 

Table 1 in the handout I’ve distributed shows that controlling for 

important labor market and family characteristics, the gender employment gap among the childless is only six percentage points, 

while it is 20 percentage points among parents. Thus, high-achieving women are foregoing families at rates not observed among 

high-achieving men. This is an important form of gender inequality. Moreover, the relative absence of mothers may represent a 

brain drain of experienced, skilled workers. 

The GAO report also shows that, among mothers who do persist 

in management, the gender pay gap relative to fathers is far larger 

than the gender pay gap among childless managers. Table 2 of your 

handout shows that, among all full-time workers in the U.S., childVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:20 Jan 07, 2011 Jkt 061713 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\61713.TXT SHAUN PsN: DPROCT
10 

less women earn 94 cents of the childless man’s dollar, while mothers earn only 60 cents of a father’s dollar. 

The gender pay gap and the parenthood pay gap are strongly 

linked. Research demonstrates that between 40 to 50 percent of the 

gender pay gap can be explained by the impact of parental and 

marital status on men’s and women’s earnings. Moreover, while the 

gender pay gap has been decreasing, the pay gap related to parenthood is increasing, which brings us to the wage penalty for motherhood. If we look just at women, the finding that having children 

reduces earnings, even among workers with comparable qualifications, experience, work hours and jobs, is now well-established. In 

your handout, Table 3 from our research shows the effect of children on earnings. 

All women experience reduced earnings for children, each additional child they have. This penalty ranges in size from 15 percent 

per child among low-wage workers, to about four percent per child 

among the highly paid. That mothers work less and may accept 

lower earnings for more family friendly jobs partially explains the 

penalty among low-wage workers, and that mothers have less experience due to interruptions for child-bearing explains some of the 

penalty among highly-paid workers. 

But a significant motherhood penalty persists even in estimates 

that account for these differences, such that the size of the wage 

penalty after all factors are controlled is roughly three percent per 

child. What does that mean? In 2009, the typical full-time female 

worker earned $1,100 less per child in annual wages, all else equal. 

This unexplained three percent penalty may partially derive 

from employer discrimination against mothers, and evidence from 

experimental and audit studies finds motherhood discrimination in 

callbacks for job applications, hiring decisions, wage offers and promotions. 

After reviewing resumes that differed only in whether they noted 

parental status, subjects in an experiment systematically rated 

childless women and fathers significantly higher than mothers on 

competency, work commitment, promotability and recommendations for hire. 

The motherhood penalty compares women against women to see 

how children impact wages. Among men, fatherhood increases 

earnings. Some of this fatherhood bonus is due to fathers’ longer 

work hours, greater experience and higher-ranking jobs, but, even 

after we adjust for these differences, we find a wage bonus for fatherhood. 

Figure 1 in your handout shows that, controlling for labor market characteristics, all men receive a fatherhood bonus, and this 

bonus is the greatest for white and Latino college graduates, whose 

annual earnings are about four to five thousand dollars higher 

than comparable childless men. Thus, we see parenthood exacerbates gender pay differences. 

What kind of policies might reduce the gender gap in pay attributable to the motherhood penalty? In collaborative NSF-funded research, we’ve identified three key policies. Figure 2 of your handout 

shows that universal early childhood education for pre-school children and increased availability of publicly supported affordable 

high-quality care for children under the age of two enables mothers 

11 

to maintain connections to employment, and therein dramatically 

reduces the motherhood wage penalty. 

Figure 3 shows that universal moderate-length job-protected 

leave following the birth of a child also reduces motherhood penalties. We recommend FMLA needs to be extended to all work 

places and workers, and ideally should be longer than 12 weeks. 

Universal paid maternity and paternity leave are key. 

Short-term paid maternity leave also reduces women’s exit from 

the workforce and reduces the wage penalty for motherhood. Moreover, non-transferrable paid leave to fathers is strongly linked to 

smaller motherhood penalties. 

I see that I’m out of time, but I’m happy to talk about any of 

these recommendations, and I thank you for your attention. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Michelle J. Budig appears in the 

Submissions for the Record on page 107.] 

Chair Maloney. Thank you very much. Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. 

MS. DIANA FURCHTGOTT-ROTH, SENIOR FELLOW, HUDSON 

INSTITUTE 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. Thank you very much for inviting me to 

testify today. I would like your permission to submit the full testimony for the record, as well as my recent monograph, ‘‘How 

Obama’s Gender Policies Undermine Women,’’ which I refer to in 

my testimony. 

I’d like to congratulate GAO on another in a series of excellent 

studies, and this study does not show discrimination. On page four, 

if I quote from Dr. Sherrill’s letter, he says ‘‘Our analysis neither 

confirms nor refutes the presence of discriminatory practices.’’ 

Some of the unexplained differences in pay seen here could be explained by factors for which we lack the data or are difficult to 

measure, such as level of managerial responsibility, field of study, 

years of experience or discriminatory practices, all of which can be 

found in the research literature as affecting earnings. 

Dr. Budig has given a very clear summary of the research literature. I mention some of it in my testimony, so I don’t think I 

have to review it here. 

Just one small point about the male and female managers and 

percent of household income. In the bullet point on page two, it 

says ‘‘While the average female married manager earned the majority of her own household’s wages, her share of household wages 

was smaller than the share contributed by the average male married manager to his household’s wages.’’ 

Well, when I spoke to Dr. Sherrill earlier, one reason for this is 

because it doesn’t account for whether the spouse worked, and 

there are more non-working female spouses than male spouses. So 

many of the male managers were the only earner in the household, 

and that’s one reason they had a higher percentage of household 

earnings. 

Well, when you account for age, experience, motherhood, time in 

the work force, the pay gap basically disappears according to many 

studies. In fact, Professor Marianne Bertrand of the University of 

Chicago and Kevin Hallock of MIT have done a study on top CEOs, 

accounting for age and tenure in the workforce and level of responVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:20 Jan 07, 2011 Jkt 061713 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\61713.TXT SHAUN PsN: DPROCT
12 

sibility, and found that women managers earn 97 cents on the dollar. 

The GAO study shows that women have been improving over the 

past seven years, where they were documenting this research, and 

the danger is not that women are going to fall behind. The danger 

is that Congress is going to over-react to false discrimination 

claims and pass legislation that will slow the progress of both men 

and women. Such legislation is discussed in this monograph here. 

The Paycheck Fairness Act specifically was one of the first bills 

that the House of Representatives passed, but if it is passed by the 

Senate and signed by the President, it would spawn a tidal wave 

of lawsuits, and enmesh employers in endless litigation. This bill 

is a full employment act, not for women but for trial lawyers, that 

would further burden our overburdened courts, and would slow 

small businesses and large businesses from hiring, and encourage 

them to ship more jobs overseas. 

The bill would only allow employers to defend differences in pay 

between men and women on the grounds of education, training and 

experience, if these factors were also justified on the grounds of 

business necessity. That means that this change could prohibit, for 

example, male supermarket managers with college degrees from 

being paid more than female cashiers, because the college degree 

for the male manager might not be considered as part of a business 

necessity. 

Another provision of the Paycheck Fairness bill would expand 

the number of establishments subject to the law from all establishments to the same employer in a county. So right now, it is countywide, but if there are many establishments with some firms in one 

say low-income county with lower wages, another in a higher-income county, this bill would mean that they would all have to be 

paid the same. 

But now employees who do substantially the same work in one 

location have to be paid equally. Identifying ‘‘substantially the 

same work’’ is hard to do for disparate jobs in different locations. 

Class action suits would be facilitated by the bill’s opt-out clause. 

Now, if a worker wants to participate in a class action suit, she has 

to affirmatively agree to take part. 

What the Paycheck Fairness Act would do is mean that she 

would have to opt out affirmatively. Otherwise, she would be included. The bill would require the EEOC to analyze pay data and 

collect more records from employers, imposing a substantial burden 

in terms of collecting data on race, sex and wages of employees. 

So the danger is not that women have insufficient remedies for 

discrimination, or that they are underpaid when you take account 

of their age, experience, education and background, but the Congress will interfere and slow the economy even more, reducing job 

growth and family income for men and for women. Thank you very 

much for allowing me to testify. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Diana Furchtgott-Roth appears 

in the Submissions for the Record on page 117.] 

Chair Maloney. Thank you, and I’ll begin the questioning, and 

I’d like to ask Dr. Sherrill and Ms. Lang about a recent Wall Street 

Journal article that reported that the number of women in finance 

has fallen dramatically over the last ten years, despite the rise of 

13 

the number of women in the industry and their educational level. 

What does the GAO report tell us about female managers’ representation and pay, in the financial services industry, and how 

has their position evolved over the last decade? Dr. Sherrill. 

Dr. Sherrill. Our analysis of the financial services industry indicates that women’s representation in management positions 

dropped from about 53 to 50 percent over the time period we looked 

at. Also, that this industry has the biggest pay difference for male 

and female managers, at 78 cents to the dollar for men. That’s tied 

with construction. 

We also found that the financial services industry by far has the 

biggest difference between men and women managers in the percentage with bachelor’s degree or higher: 26 percentage points. 

GAO has also done some prior work, separate reports, looking specifically at women’s representation and minorities’ representation 

in management over time in the financial services sector, and basically found that from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, it’s remained 

largely stagnant. 

There have been some initiatives, but there’s been obstacles in 

terms of recruiting more minorities and also getting buy-in from 

middle-level managers to some of these initiatives like recruitment 

and internships. 

Chair Maloney. And Ms. Lang, would you like to comment on 

this? 

Ms. Lang. We don’t have any research that shows anything different from the GAO. 

Chair Maloney. And how does this compare to other fields that 

you looked at in your report, such as education, social services, and 

other lower-paying fields? 

Dr. Sherrill. The financial services industry is one of the higherpaying industries, and, in comparison, we didn’t find any strict correlation between the representation of women in management positions and the size of the pay difference in different sectors. 

But you mentioned health care and social services, just to compare them with the financial services industry. In health care and 

social services, we saw an increase in the representation of women 

as managers of up to four percentage points, up to 70 percent, the 

highest of all across the industries, and the pay gap was 81 cents 

to the dollar in 2007. 

In educational services, women represented about 57 percent of 

managers in 2007. The pay gap was somewhat less, 86 cents to 

every dollar earned by the men. That’s one of the smallest pay gaps 

across the industries we analyzed. 

Chair Maloney. And Ms. Lang, are there sectors of the economy 

where women are not represented at all at the upper rungs of the 

corporate leadership? Or Dr. Sherrill, if you’d like to comment. Are 

there some areas where they’re not represented at all? Are there 

other areas where they’re more represented? 

Ms. Lang. Thank you. We look at the Fortune 500, and we look 

at industry breakouts, and in particular when there are ten companies in an industry, we compare, and what we found is that there 

are women in leadership throughout—and senior corporate leadership in every industry. The only place where you don’t see women 

14 

is in the CEO role. There are some industries that have no women 

CEOs. 

That’s not to say that the representation is equivalent across the 

board. Some do better and some do worse, but, in fact, there are 

women on boards in just about every industry, and, again, in the 

C-suite and in management. Some industries have a much higher 

percentage of women in the overall workforce than others, but it 

doesn’t seem to make that much of a difference overall as to how 

far they advance, except to the CEO. 

Chair Maloney. Thank you. My time is up. Mr. Brady. 

Representative Brady. Well, discrimination against women in 

the workforce or society is wrong, period, and we ought to root that 

out, and we ought to apply the principles that allow merit in hard 

work and effective work to be rewarded on an equal level with 

men, period. The question is one, what is government’s role in 

doing that, and secondly, does it—and how does it—exist? 

I think Ms. Furchtgott-Roth pointed out, as did Dr. Sherrill’s report, that it is sometimes difficult to compare apples to apples. We 

have male-dominated industries and female-dominated jobs. You’ve 

got education, skills, tenure, workforce, a whole number of variables in it. I want to get to the point about how that affects women 

entrepreneurs specifically. 

But I also want to point out the women in my district, and we 

meet regularly with our chambers of commerce or small business 

groups, and they really sincerely today are most worried about 

jobs, the economy and this debt and this country. 

I think today 90 percent, the latest poll, 90 percent of the American people believe this economy is in bad shape and not getting 

better any time soon. They raise real doubts and skepticism about 

the stimulus bill, because it has lost, what, three and a half million 

jobs now along Main Street since that was put in place. 

Almost every economist has downgraded our economic growth 

over the next year. The fact is that, at this level, it will take much 

of this decade to return to the unemployment levels of the Bush 

years. 

We have a bipartisan, I think, goal in getting this economy back 

on track. Back home, what I’ve seen over the last decade is a dramatic increase in women in leadership roles in the community, 

leadership roles in business, and especially among small businesses, entrepreneurs. 

All you need do is go to any chamber of commerce meeting in any 

community, and you’ll see that it is dominated by women running 

small businesses. So my question to the panelists is what studies 

have you done to identify how women in small businesses, entrepreneurs owning their business, launching their small business are 

doing? What type of equality occurs in the marketplace? 

You know, are consumers and clients rewarding small businesses 

run by women? Is there discrimination in that area? Have there 

been any studies done? I would open it up. I ask that because 

that’s the growing area of job development and creation in the 

country. This is where I see major gains occurring. 

I want to see more of that occurring. Has anyone made some 

comparisons, identified those levels? 

Dr. Budig. Is this on? 

15 

Representative Brady. There you go. 

Dr. Budig. A decade ago, I wrote my dissertation on gender differences in self-employment, so my data might be a little old, but 

I think I can speak to some of your, part of your question. Self-employment and entrepreneurship, particularly among women, is 

really very varied, right? I mean it runs the gamut from women 

opening hair salons in their basement to starting up businesses in 

the tech sector. 

What I observed in my analysis was that, among those engaged 

in professional forms of self-employment, for the highly educated 

and highly skilled, there were no gender differences in the impact 

of self-employment and entrepreneurship on family economics. 

Both men and women benefited from it. 

But among non-professional work, it’s very different. So you have 

men opening businesses in crafts and trades such as plumbing, carpentry, and those are pretty lucrative, whereas the things women 

are doing are not. In fact, the motherhood penalty is even stronger 

among self-employed, non-professionals than it is in the regular 

workforce. 

There, that can’t be employer discrimination, because you are 

your own employer. I didn’t study consumer discrimination, so I 

can’t speak to that end of it. 

Representative Brady. But that data’s a decade old? 

Dr. Budig. Yes, it is, uh-huh. 

Representative Brady. Okay. I appreciate the point you’re 

making. I think the last decade has seen tremendous growth in 

women entrepreneurs. I imagine there are, if you’re the mom, and 

you run the company, and you’re taking time off either for the 

birth or for those early years, clearly there will be an impact. 

I’m just curious in the marketplace itself, have there been any 

studies on, you know, do small businesses owned and run by 

women make less, generate more income, have greater profit margins, employ more, employ less? Do they have different policies for 

merit, you know, and productivity in their own business? 

I just think these are areas—again, I see tremendous growth in 

this area, and again discrimination doesn’t belong in the marketplace, period. I’m just trying to get to that apples and apples comparison. Thank you. 

Chair Maloney. Mr. Cummings. 

Representative Cummings. Thank you very much, Madam 

Chair, and I thank you for having this hearing. It’s so very important. Dr. Budig, can you—maybe you can comment on this. The 

women in my district, there are huge percentage of them who are 

single mother head of household, and you know, when I hear you 

talk about the bonus for fatherhood and then you said what, the 

penalty for women, you know, I’m trying to figure out how does 

that—have you broken your numbers down as to how they affect 

single mother head of household? 

The reason I ask you that is because these are the women who 

have no help usually, who have no support systems. They’re the 

ones that have to get up at five o’clock in the morning, dress the 

baby, get them to a babysitter, you know, and deal with all of those 

issues, while somebody who may be married may have a partner 

who can take on some of those tasks. 

16 

So I’m just wondering, has there been research done with regard 

to that, and the other reason I asked the question is because, if 

you’ve got a single earner, and if her wages, if she is penalized for 

having children, it seems like in those circumstances she’s in a 

tougher, much tougher situation than somebody who may be married. 

The other reason I ask the question is because, when we look at 

our divorce rates, you know, and I wonder how, you know, I’m sure 

you didn’t get into this, but I wonder how all of this, that is when 

women go out and they’re trying their best to move up these ladders, how that might affect the family when they are together, 

when they are married, and divorce rates. 

So you’ve got a whole—I’d like to just have your comments. 

Dr. Budig. Certainly. Because single mothers tend to not disrupt their employment when they have children, they have more 

continuous employment records, and that does help them a little 

bit, but, for low-wage workers, I have a study coming out next 

month in American Sociological Review, that looks at the impact of 

motherhood in terms of the motherhood wage penalty across the 

distribution of women earners. 

And among the lowest-paid workers in the economy, they pay the 

highest wage penalties for motherhood. In part, that’s due to the 

fragility of their child-care systems, that oftentimes that women at 

that end of the spectrum, when they have work family crises, they 

have to quit their jobs because they’re in jobs with very few benefits or accommodations, whereas women at the higher end of the 

spectrum usually have more resources to deal with child-care crises 

and so forth. 

But certainly the wage penalty for motherhood is going to be experienced more seriously in a family that is not getting the fatherhood bonus because there’s no man in the home, so children are 

profoundly affected by the loss of earnings that their mothers 

incur. 

Representative Cummings. Now, in many jobs, there is a necessity or requirement, and any of you all may comment on this, 

that a person go back and get credits, say, for example, teachers, 

lawyers, and, in many instances, as we well know, education and 

continuing education is one of those factors that would allow a 

woman to move up the work ladder. 

I would imagine that if somebody does not have that support system that’s another factor that comes in, that makes it almost impossible to do all the things I just talked about doing, work and 

then go to night school, take care of the kids. 

So I was wondering have you all addressed that issue at all, with 

regard to continuing education? Mr. Sherrill, Dr. Sherrill? Dr. 

Lang, Ms. Lang? Either one of you. 

Ms. Lang. One of the things that Catalyst does is examine practices among companies to see what are the best practices, what 

goes the longest way towards improving the work environment at 

companies, and the notion here is that, in a competitive work environment, where you need talent and you talk about continuing education, which is improving the talent, you want to be the employer 

of choice, and what do the best employers do in those situations? 

17 

And those are situations where the best employers sponsor their 

employees for the continuing education. They invest in their employees. They support them, and they have paid leave for them, so 

that’s kind of where we see the best employers going, that they are 

trying to make sure that they do not lose their employees because 

of situations like what you’ve described. 

Representative Cummings. I see my time is up. Thank you, 

Madam Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Representative Cummings appears in 

the Submissions for the Record on page 183.] 

Chair Maloney. Thank you very much, and building on Mr. 

Cummings’s questions, in 2003, GAO did another report that I requested on mothers’ pay, and it showed that mothers pay a wage 

penalty while fathers earn a wage premium. Dr. Budig, are there 

specific industries where the ‘‘mom bomb’’ is more of a problem 

than others? And if so, what do you think might explain those differences? Dr. Sherrill, or anyone who’d like to comment. But if you 

could begin, Dr. Budig? 

Dr. Budig. I have—sorry. I have in the past done analyses by 

industry, and I did not see that there were better or worse industries for mothers to be in, but the wage penalty for motherhood occurred in the same way in all jobs and industries. 

Chair Maloney. Do more educated women face a bigger motherhood wage penalty than those who are less educated? 

Dr. Budig. Education seems to be protective, so the more education you have and the longer you delay motherhood, the less of 

the penalty you’d incur. So it’s worse for younger mothers and for 

the less educated. 

Chair Maloney. And do women face an additional penalty when 

they have a second child? In other words, is the ‘‘mom bomb’’ a onetime explosion, or is it a cluster bomb? 

Dr. Budig. Women face—it’s a cluster bomb. 

Chair Maloney. It’s a cluster bomb? 

Dr. Budig. It is. 

Chair Maloney. Really? 

Dr. Budig. Each additional child impacts earnings in a non-linear fashion, so it actually gets exponentially worse, and the wage 

penalty for motherhood doesn’t go away in my, the research I’ve 

done, as the children age, but actually grows over time. So it’s a 

permanent penalty. 

Chair Maloney. You also mentioned that education is somewhat 

protective, and we have seen in the last decade that women have 

outpaced men in receiving college degrees. How have women’s educational gains translated into leadership positions in the industry, 

and I ask Ms. Lang, Dr. Sherrill, anyone? What is the impact of 

these gains in education? Has that also been reflected in gains in 

leadership positions and in narrowing the pay gap? 

Dr. Sherrill. Our prior work on the gender pay gap has shown 

that women’s gains in education and level of work experience in occupations that they’re in has explained a big part of their progress 

at lowering the pay gap. 

When we look at that particular education story here, with the 

women in management analysis we did, it’s kind of a mixed picture. For example, if you look at the industry where the levels of 

18 

education are most similar for male and female managers, that’s in 

manufacturing, where they’re very close in levels of education, but 

women represent only 23 percent of management positions, so 

they’re at the lower end. 

In construction, an industry where women have higher levels of 

education than male managers overall, women are only 12 percent 

of the managers there. In the educational services industry, the 

levels of education for male and female managers are fairly close, 

yet women represent 70 percent of managers, so there’s no clear 

picture. Education is just one factor in the story. 

Chair Maloney. Ms. Lang. 

Ms. Lang. Certainly education has brought more women into 

more professional positions, and has brought them into more industries and on the management track, but our study about women 

MBAs, comparing women and men MBAs (they are sort of the 

proxy for future leadership)—from day one, first job after an MBA, 

even after you control for years of experience before the MBA, control for parenthood, industry, region, whatever, women start at a 

lower compensation than men, so there’s a pay gap just for being 

a girl. 

Chair Maloney. Well, why is the pay gap so stubborn, and what 

do you think we can do to try to end it once and for all? We learned 

from a Census report earlier this year that the gender gap has not 

budged since 2007, and the GAO report today shows us that the 

pay gap for women in management barely moved from our first report in 2000. 

We got a two cent raise, but that’s hardly a massive improvement. Two cents for seven years, between 2000 and 2007. In management, moms saw no improvement at all, so I would just like to 

hear your comments on why do you think the pay gap is so stubborn? It’s barely moved. 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. It’s because women like choosing family 

friendly jobs, so here it goes up to the most educated. So on the 

Yale Law Women website, these are some of the smartest women 

in the country, this reads ‘‘In the aftermath of recent global financial crises, Yale Law Women believes the focus on family friendly 

firm policies and policies designed for the retention of women remains more important and pressing than ever.’’ 

And family friendly policies are those that allow children to be 

combined with a career. It means careers where you can be home 

for dinner, with fewer hours, and these are not careers that lead 

you on the CEO track. It’s not a mom bomb. It’s a preference for 

more flexible schedules, and women want these flexible schedules, 

and they come with lower levels of pay. 

That’s why, until women stop wanting to be home with their 

kids, until mothers stop wanting to spend time with their children, 

you’re always going to have, we’re always going to have that pay 

difference. 

Chair Maloney. Would you like to comment, Dr. Sherrill? You 

say you accommodated for part-time work, for preferences, for leaving to have children, taking care of a sick parent? Or Ms. Lang or 

Ms. Budig, would you like to comment on the persistence of the pay 

gap? 

19 

Dr. Sherrill. Yes. We found that being a mother was associated 

with a lower level of pay. Our prior work, like in our 2003 report, 

found that, for the general workforce, women’s work patterns were 

a key in explaining differences in pay, such as time away from the 

workforce, part-time work, fewer hours worked in a year, those 

kinds of things. 

I think this points to a couple of areas. One is the different policies that help women better balance work and family priorities, 

and I think a second area is women’s entry and retention in some 

of the higher-paying industries. As part of this story, a key issue 

is the extent to which women are getting degrees in the same fields 

of study as men, such as mathematics, science, and engineering, 

and to what extent that is changing over time. 

Chair Maloney. Okay. Yes, Ms. Lang, very quickly. 

Ms. Lang. We have studied the values that women and men 

bring to the workplace, what they’re looking for, what they expect, 

and it’s a little counterintuitive. But, in fact, women and men do 

look for the same kinds of work environments and the values there. 

Number one and number two of women and men is having a supportive work environment and having a challenging job. Number 

three and number four are having a good fit between life on and 

off the job and being well-compensated. Numbers five and six are 

working at a company that has high values and having the opportunity for high achievement. Women and men are more alike than 

different in what they look for in the workplace. 

But as it turns out, men are much more likely to get the values 

that they’re looking for than women are, and that’s kind of the rub 

here. There’s an assumption that a family friendly work place is a 

lower-paying workplace for women. That’s not true. Companies 

that really work at having the women, at retaining the women in 

their workforce, the ones they’ve invested in, the ones they’ve developed, they care a lot about what those women want. 

I will just conclude with the comment from the Senior Vice President of Human Resources, a man in his early 40s with three young 

children, who told me recently, he said, ‘‘I meet with’’—he was a 

senior VP of Human Resources in a large global company—he said, 

‘‘I meet with the women all the time, and I can tell you what they 

want is what I want.’’ 

Chair Maloney. Well my time is up, but I just would like to 

comment and come back to this in my further questions. Isn’t it 

true that, in the GAO report, you found a pay gap between childless women and men, so we can’t blame motherhood for the entire 

pay gap, can we? I think that’s a fair thing to say. Mr. Brady. 

Representative Brady. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I want 

to go back to the apples to apples comparison because I think that’s 

where we want to go. Obviously, GAO’s report shows, I think, a 19 

percent pay gap on average salaries, but an earlier GAO report, 

2009, said that measurable differences account for all but seven 

percent. 

The Department of Labor recently found the wage gap is between 

about five to seven percent after accounting for measurable differences. Ms. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, you cited a study, Bertrand 

and Hallock— 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. Yes. 

20 

Representative Brady [continuing]. That found, you know, not 

much of the difference in the pay of male and female corporate executives, when they factored in a number of issues. What are they 

factoring in in that study, that other studies may not be or may, 

you know, not be factoring in quite as heavily? What are the differences? 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. So what they factored in is the work age 

and experience, as well as presence of children, and what one finds 

is not that mothers are underpaid but that getting on the CEO 

track is just very difficult to do. A lot of men don’t make it either. 

When you, if you’re a mother and you select a job that allows you, 

say, to be home for dinner, or you might choose, say, part-time 

work. 

So you choose part-time work, and then the head of the law firm 

or whatever it is Ms. Lang talked about says, ‘‘Oh yes, I’ll give 

them whatever they want.’’ Say a woman wants a part-time job. So 

she says, ‘‘I want to work three-quarters time and get three-quarters of pay.’’ Then that lowers her wages compared with men, but 

she’s still getting what she wants. 

If you look at say recent Supreme Court nominees, Justice Elena 

Kagan, Justice Sotomayer and then candidate Harriet Miers, they 

didn’t have any children. Condolezza Rice, Secretary of State, no 

children. Hillary Clinton, one grown daughter when she was in the 

Senate, and now she’s Secretary of State. 

The data from the Labor Department in 2009, I have it right 

here in front of me. If you just don’t even account for occupation 

and education, if you look at childless, single women compared 

with childless, single men, on the aggregate it’s 96 percent. Then 

if you just add with children under six years, it goes to 80 percent. 

Representative Brady. And your point in that study is what? 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. This is the Labor Department Highlights 

of Women’s Earnings in 2009, put out in June 2010 by the Labor 

Department. It has tables of average earnings. This is Table 8 I’m 

looking at, women, men, married, spouse present, divorced, single. 

I was just reading from Table 8. 

So single women with no children under 18 earned 96 percent of 

what men earn, but when you add with children under six years, 

it brings it to 80 percent. These women earn 80 percent, and I can 

do further calculations here with my pocket calculator if you want. 

I can turn this data over to your staff. It’s right there for anybody 

to see on the web. 

Representative Brady. Can I ask for—thank you. Can I ask 

first the panelists, and Ms. Lang, you made the point that men and 

women may be more alike on issues of not just compensation but 

of time, the ability both to have a satisfying work life and a life 

afterwards, and time with your children or family, or pursue whatever other interests you have. 

Is the workforce becoming more flexible for those who want to 

have a life outside of it, and is the boom in women-owned businesses, women entrepreneurs, is that perhaps a desire to have 

more flexibility and more control over your time and still have a 

satisfying work environment? 

I ask that because I see women-owned, starting law practices, 

medical practices, sales teams. In virtually every field, not necVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:20 Jan 07, 2011 Jkt 061713 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\61713.TXT SHAUN PsN: DPROCT
21 

essarily a plumbing company but a lot of businesses in our communities, and one, I think it’s because it’s merit-based, the ability to 

control your time, to have some say over your destiny. 

But I wonder what role flexibility in controlling your time has in 

encouraging women entrepreneurs? 

Ms. Lang. Right. So I’ve been an entrepreneur, and I can tell 

you, an entrepreneur works all the time, day and night, round the 

clock, 24–7, 365. It’s a myth that women who are entrepreneurs 

work part-time. That said, the idea of flexibility and the ability to 

control your own time is dependent on a lot of things, most particularly on power in the workplace. 

So more senior people have more staff. They have more resources. They have more power over their own time because there’s 

somebody else who they can ask to do the work or command to do 

the work. Now we are in a workplace today in the 21st century 

that is global markets, global workforces, and it’s 24–7, 365. 

The workplace that will survive in that kind of economy is one 

where flexibility is the norm. I’m not talking just about flexible 

hours. I’m talking about flexibility that leads to innovation, flexibility that allows for cultural competence, so that people who work 

in one part of the world can support customers in another part of 

the world. Flexibility for employers and employees, and women and 

men. That’s really also about focusing on results, so I think that 

how work is done and where it’s done today are completely contrary to the really outmoded notions about face-time and being in 

the office, and the technologies that are available make it much 

more possible for companies to structure the workplace so that 

there’s much more flexibility. People can work at home. They can 

work reduced schedules. They can do other kinds of things. 

The best companies are offering that to women and men employees. You know if they’re the best companies when the men take 

these kinds of options as well. 

Representative Brady. Right. 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. So if women want to be offered reduced 

schedules, then they’re paid a reduced amount, and that means 

there’s a pay gap. You just—— 

Ms. Lang. Every credible research study that looks at this controls for that kind of thing, so you don’t look at the raw numbers; 

you look at it controlled for the number of hours worked or some 

of these other things. That’s what it means to control for a factor. 

So when you control for that, you can look and see what is the pay 

gap that nets out. 

Chair Maloney. And this report compared full-time female managers to full-time male managers. It was not comparing part-time 

employment. We did have a JEC report on part-time employment, 

and I’ll follow up when I have time on that one, but this was fulltime versus full-time employment. Mr. Cummings. 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth [continuing]. Full-time is over 35 hours a 

week. 

Chair Maloney. Pardon me? 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. Full-time is any hours over 35 hours a 

week. 

Chair Maloney. Yes, exactly. 

22 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. Someone could be working, say, 36 hours, 

a woman, and it would be full-time, and she’s compared to a man 

who’s working say 50 or 60 hours a week. So saying that those— 

you have to account for the number of hours, not just full-time or 

part-time. 

Chair Maloney. I’ll call on Dr. Sherrill to clarify the framework 

of his report. 

Dr. Sherrill. We did also take account of hours worked beyond 

full-time, as one of the explanatory factors. 

Representative Cummings. I’m sitting here and I’m listening 

to all this, and I’m also looking at the audience and Ms. 

Furchtgott-Roth, if you saw some of the expressions on some of 

these women’s faces, I guess you’d be surprised. But I have two 

daughters, and let me make sure I understand this. 

Am I to tell them that they need to wait until they’re 40 to have 

children? 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. No. 

Representative Cummings. Now hear me out. Now hear my 

whole question now. Don’t answer me too quickly. Am I supposed 

to tell them they need to wait until they’re 40 to have children, if 

they want to progress up the employment ladder? Am I supposed 

to tell them that they are—they need to go in and if they’re going 

to have children, they need to expect that they will not move quickly up that ladder? 

And I’m just trying to figure out, you know as I listen to all of 

this, I’m trying to figure out where, and I listened to you, Ms. 

Lang, and I’m thinking I agree, that you’ve got to have some flexibility in the employers. 

But you know where that comes from? It comes from leadership, 

and I wonder if there’s a correlation between who’s sitting on these 

boards. If I’ve got an all-male board, it’s like imagining Congress 

without women. I hate to even imagine it. 

But if you’ve got an all-male board, all of whom have benefited 

from having as many children as they want, and they are making 

decisions, corporate decisions, Dr. Budig, about their employees. 

I’m just trying to figure out is there a correlation with regard to 

sensitivity coming in there because a lot of this is about sensitivity 

and creating that kind of work place. 

For example, I’ve seen situations where a lot of women tell me, 

we have some situations in Maryland where they have, for example, daycare centers right on the premises. They love it because 

they can see their kids at lunch time; they’re on the way to work. 

They can drop them right off, pick them up right there at work. 

I mean those kinds of things, all of that. 

I’m just trying to figure out what do we, instead of us being 

stuck here, what are the kind of things that, if I’m sitting here as 

an employer, and I want to make sure that women progress, what 

are the kind of things that I need to be doing to make sure that 

that happens? 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. So one thing you could tell your daughters is that the field they choose is very important. They need to 

get a lot of education and also that some careers are more family 

friendly than others. If they become a Congressman and follow in 

their father’s footsteps, they are not going to get a wage penalty 

23 

for having children because that is a job where the—where it’s 

easier to combine work and family. 

If they’re a professor in a college, professors are given additional 

years in many universities to be able to write the publications and 

get tenure. Women have been teachers frequently because they 

have long academic leaves in the summer. 

On the other hand, if your daughters were to go into, say, investment banking, where there isn’t really any concept of part-time 

work, or a partner in a law firm, a high-powered law firm where 

the client also wants to see you, you know, it could be 24 hours a 

day if they have a case. That’s difficult to be a full-time working 

mother. 

But a doctor, if she wanted to be a doctor, a medical practice. 

There are group medical practices, and some doctors cover for others in these medical practices. 

Representative Cummings. And so if I—what would I say to 

my son? The same things? What would I say to my sons? 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. I mean if they were to have children? 

Representative Cummings. The same questions. The same 

thing you just answered. Would I have a different answer than 

what you just gave me if I were talking to my boys? 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. Well, it depended if your boy wanted to 

be home in time for dinner to see his children. 

Representative Cummings. I see. 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. Some men don’t care. Some do. 

Representative Cummings. Ms. Lang, thank you. 

Ms. Lang. Yes. I want to thank you for bringing up the issue 

of leadership and tone at the top, and it’s really important. You 

talked about a board of directors that is all men. There are still 

some boards of directors that are all men, but I am happy to say 

that the largest companies in the United States are increasingly 

seeing more women representation. 

In fact, the question of representation of women that we find is 

less industry-specific and more size of company. So the Fortune 

500, 100, have more women, a higher percentage of women held 

board seats than the Fortune 101 to 200, 201 to 300, that type of 

idea. 

Now why is that important? You brought up a little bit of it in 

some of the examples, but one of the most important is that women 

are role models to women and men alike. They’re not role models 

just for women; they’re role models also for men. Men and women 

both see women in leadership roles, and one of the most difficult 

perceptions to get past is that I speak a lot and I say to people, 

‘‘Close your eyes and picture a business leader.’’ Can you imagine 

how many picture a woman? Most of them picture a man. 

Getting past that assumption or stereotypic perception is very 

important, so when you see women on boards of directors, you 

know that there is diversity, inclusion of women, as well as men 

there. It sets the example that this is a company at which all people can succeed. 

One of the quotes that I like the most from one of our focus 

groups that we had was a woman saying about—and she worked 

in a high tech company—and she said, ‘‘When I look up and see 

that they’re all men, I don’t think I have a chance. When I see diVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:20 Jan 07, 2011 Jkt 061713 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\61713.TXT SHAUN PsN: DPROCT
24 

versity, I know that people like me can succeed, that everyone can 

be successful.’’ That’s what tone at the top is really all about. 

So I think that the more we focus on leadership, the more important it is. We did one study that shows that a company that has 

more women on their board of directors, five years later will have 

more women in their senior leadership, so that’s again sort of 

showing it’s not just that it happens organically. It shows that it 

happens because there are people in the boardroom who think that 

it’s important to have diversity and leadership, and they stand for 

that and they pursue that in policy. 

Representative Cummings. Thank you. 

Chair Maloney. What is the impact of the recession on the gender gap? When we did this report, we specifically looked through 

2007 in order to avoid the recession, so we would have a greater 

long-term trend to look at, but I’m interested in knowing what the 

gender gap is during times of prosperity versus times of recessions. 

Do women share the wealth during times of prosperity, or does the 

disparity grow? Have there been any studies on that impact on the 

pay gap? Yes, Doctor—Ms. Lang. 

Ms. Lang. I’ve been a doctor three times already today. So our 

study about the pipeline, looking at the MBA alums, explored that 

as one of several issues that we looked at. What we found is looking at the period between December 2007 and June 2009, asking 

a group of over 1,000, about 1,500 or 1,600 of the women and men 

MBA alums, how did the recession treat you? What’s happened to 

you over these last 18 months? 

And what we found is that women and men, for the most part, 

did well. These are the MBA alums. They job-hopped much more 

than one would have thought. They were promoted. They took lateral moves. They took international assignments. However, the 

women and men, when we looked just at the women and men who 

were in the most senior levels, that group, women were three times 

more likely to lose their jobs. 

So that was a—that’s a very serious penalty when it looks at 

what’s happened to women in leadership, and it has been quite 

pronounced, at least anecdotally. People would ask us are senior 

women losing their jobs more in this recession? This study that we 

did suggests that that was the case. 

Chair Maloney. Also, could you talk about women’s leadership, 

and how it creates opportunities for women lower down the corporate ladder? You did mention that female board members help 

improve the hiring of women. Would you like to elaborate more on 

the pipeline issue that you studied? Others may want to comment 

on the pipeline issue you were commenting on, too. 

Ms. Lang. Well, what we have found in the research that we’ve 

done, looking at both senior levels and in the pipeline, is that 

women face barriers to advancement that men don’t. We documented that women MBAs, all other things being equal, start at 

lower compensation rates, and they are slow—they move more 

slowly up the ladder over the years, at least in the ten years that 

we covered in our study. 

We have shown for years that women’s, their aspirations towards 

leadership are just as strong as those of men, but it’s much harder 

25 

for them to be treated seriously and have the credibility and for 

their accomplishments to be recognized. 

Chair Maloney. Thank you. Mr. Brady. 

Representative Brady. No. I really have nothing more to add. 

One, I think it’s very—it’s a fascinating discussion on an important 

topic. Two, I’m grateful Stephen Colbert is not here to make any 

comments. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

I do think we’re missing two of the fastest-growing areas for 

business, entrepreneurship and the digital economy. You know, all 

you need do is go to some of the technology companies in the Silicon Valley and look at the meritocracy there that they’ve created, 

regardless of gender, age or anything. 

It is simply who produces the best results on time under budget. 

And I think we are missing some of that, and, at the end of the 

day, I still believe we need jobs for women and men. I do think this 

economy is off the track. I don’t understand why Washington’s pursuing the policies it’s doing; that has produced a recovery three 

times weaker than 1981 and 1982; why so much of America is discouraged about the economy and the track that we’re on, and, for 

the life of me, I don’t understand why we’re not voting this week 

to not raise taxes on women and men and small businesses and 

families, and capital gains and a number of other areas, I think, 

that could create this certainty to help get this economy on track. 

So Madam Chairman, we have differences on some of the policies, but I think your holding this hearing is a very important action. Thank you. 

Chair Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Brady. 

Representative Cummings. I just want to go back to you, Ms. 

Lang. You were talking to the chairwoman just a moment ago 

about loss of employment. Is that right? 

Ms. Lang. Yes. 

Representative Cummings. And you said that women—what 

was your conclusion? 

Ms. Lang. We looked at women and men MBA alums who had 

earned their degrees between 1996 and 2007, so it’s basically that 

Gen-X group, and they range in age from, at the time that we did 

this most recent study, they were kind of late 20s to mid-40s. 

That’s kind of the age group. 

We asked them, ‘‘What’s happened to you over this period of time 

during the recession, December 2007 to June 2009?’’ What we 

found was that the women and men—the only differences between 

the experiences of women and men during that period were that, 

in senior leadership positions, women were three times more likely 

than men to have lost their job involuntarily. 

Representative Cummings. That’s very interesting. As I listened to Mr. Brady, I could not help but think about, you know, 

I really wasn’t going to go here. But a few weeks ago we had a vote 

on unemployment benefits, and I keep thinking about these women 

in my district, many of whom are head of household, single mothers, and we all know the stories. I can tell it, you know. I’ve seen 

it over and over again. 

They’re the ones who are at the bus stop, six o’clock in the morning. They don’t have time to jog because they’ve got to get that kid 

to the babysitter. Many of these women were the ones who lost 

26 

their jobs. We had a vote, and there were many who, sadly, on unemployment benefits, that would have left these women with absolutely nothing, said no. 

There’s something awfully wrong with that picture, and I guess 

my question, Ms. Lang, is, you know, what would you say—I mean 

what can government or any of you all, what can government do 

to encourage employers to be more sensitive to this situation that 

we find ourselves in, where a woman becomes penalized because 

she has a child? I mean what kind of things can we do because, 

after all, that’s what we do? We legislate. 

And so I’m just wondering if you all have any suggestions. In 

other words, I want folks to be all that God meant for them to be, 

and I don’t want them to be penalized because they decide to have 

a child. Ms. Lang, you talked about entrepreneurship and women, 

and I know Mr. Brady’s very interested in this. 

My wife is an entrepreneur, and you’re right. It is a 24–7 job, 

24–7. Even when you go to the movies, you’ve got to compete with 

the Blackberry, so what kind of things can we do as government, 

in government, if anything? 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. Well, we can make sure existing laws 

against discrimination are enforced. If women work the same hours 

as men, they get paid the same. They only have a penalty for having children if they decide to cut back on their work hours after 

they have children. Otherwise, the data show that they’re paid the 

same. 

And right now, the biggest gender gap we have is in the unemployment rates. Women’s unemployment rates are about two percentage points lower than men’s. It was two percentage points. 

Now it’s 1.8. It’s men who have the higher unemployment rates 

right now, and that’s a big problem we need to do something about 

by getting the economy going and cutting taxes. 

Representative Cummings. I understand, and you know what, 

and you know what? I wish you would come to my district and tell 

those women that the ones who have been losing their jobs, because they were last hired, and therefore they are the ones that 

lose their jobs. But Ms. Budig, Dr. Budig, I see you shaking your 

head. I just want to hear what you’re thinking. 

Dr. Budig. I just want to respond to the statistical models that 

are estimated to capture the motherhood wage penalty, is based on 

an hourly wage measure. So it’s not determined by the number of 

hours that you work. It is not determined by preferences, and, in 

fact, family friendly work places are not the places most women 

work. 

Female-dominated occupations are not more family friendly. 

They have less authority, less benefits, less pay, and often have 

very fixed schedules that are inflexible to the needs of families. 

Those are some of the thoughts I was having. 

Representative Cummings. Thank you very much. 

Chair Maloney. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cummings, and I’m 

interested in pursuing your line of questioning that basically asks 

how can we unstick ourselves and make true progress towards 

equality, and what government policies, Dr. Budig, do you think 

would be helpful? 

27 

I do have one bill in, modeled after the bill that passed in England, where you can request a flexible work schedule. It’s not mandatory, but it’s shown just having the right to request flextime, 

which an employer can grant or not grant, has led to more family 

friendly situations. Senator Casey is now carrying the Senate 

version of it. I’ve authored this with former Senator Kennedy. 

What about the ideas on paid family leave for the birth of a 

child? Most industrialized countries do provide that. Can you talk 

about some policies, Ms. Lang or anyone, or beginning with you, 

Dr. Budig, that could lead us to a more family friendly workplace 

and really try to attack the gender discrimination that is spelled 

out in so many reports? 

Dr. Budig. Yes, I can. I’ve been, for the last five years, analyzing 

work family policies in 22 nations and looking at the relationship 

with women’s employment outcomes, and the strongest policy is the 

publicly funded child care. High quality, publicly funded child care 

is associated with lower gender gaps in pay and a smaller motherhood wage penalty. 

Paid leave available to both fathers and mothers after the birth 

or adoption of a child is also linked to smaller gender disparities 

and motherhood penalties. In terms of flextime, any policies that 

are targeted to women only tend to not address the gender disparities, and any policies that serve to disconnect women from the 

workforce also don’t address gender disparities. 

They may have other positive outcomes for families, but not economic ones. 

Chair Maloney. Anyone else, Ms. Lang. 

Ms. Lang. Yes. I’m a proponent of shining light into darkness. 

So I like transparency, and I think that we find that, in industries 

where some of the industries where there is total transparency 

about what the compensation is for individuals, there’s much less 

of a pay gap. 

So you might be aware that the SEC ruled early this year, I 

think the regulations took effect in February, about mandatory disclosure of certain kinds of factors, and, in particular, executive 

compensation was one that got a lot of attention. But another one 

is about diversity on boards, and it is—it’s not any kind of requirement that there be diversity on boards, but there is disclosure 

about whether it’s a factor taken into account, and if so, how is— 

how are policies implemented? This is something that is happening 

in Australia and also in the U.K., and I think that mandatory disclosure of compensation would make it possible that you wouldn’t 

have to go ask whether your pay is the same as somebody else’s. 

But in fact it would be publicly available, and it’s amazing how 

people get into line when they think that the information might be 

on the front page of The New York Times. 

Chair Maloney. I would like to ask all of you about women’s 

roles as family breadwinners. The report showed that an increasing 

number of women are the primary breadwinner for their families. 

Dr. Budig, could you spell out for me the role that women play as 

breadwinners now for their families, and how important women’s 

paychecks are for families’ economic well-being, and how this has 

changed over the last several decades? I’ll begin with you and then 

invite anyone else who would like to add their comments. 

28 

Dr. Budig. Women’s paychecks are really important to families. 

Increasingly, because of the lack of gains in the minimum wages, 

working class families cannot rely on a husband’s paycheck alone 

to support them, so women aren’t working always because they 

want to but because the family has to have them in the labor market. 

Women are increasingly contributing, are the primary breadwinners in some families, although oftentimes that’s a transitory 

state for those families. I lost my train of thought there. But particularly in—— 

Representative Brady. The issue was just breadwinners while 

you were on it. You were doing it. 

Dr. Budig [continuing]. The industries that men tend to predominate in have been the hardest-hit in the most recent recession, 

meaning that women who have been better able to keep jobs in 

health care services and education are increasingly more important 

to family economic well-being. 

Chair Maloney. Well, any other comment on the importance of 

women as breadwinners for their families? 

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth. It’s become increasingly important because women’s unemployment rates are lower right now, so a lot 

of men who’ve been laid off in the manufacturing and construction 

sector, whereas the service sector is continuing to grow. It’s really 

important that we get the unemployment rate down so that men’s 

unemployment rate falls also, as well as women’s. 

That means reducing government spending, keeping taxes low, 

reducing mandates on employers, so raising minimum wages 

means that low-skilled workers are, in fact, priced out of jobs. Having a $2,000 per worker mandate penalty if you don’t have the 

right kind of health care insurance also reduces employers’ hiring. 

It’s important that we let employers be as flexible as possible in 

their hiring, so they can hire more workers rather than fewer. 

Chair Maloney. We’re going to close this shortly, but I’d just 

like to ask Dr. Sherrill and Ms. Lang if you’d like to comment on 

how the gender pay gap impacts families’ financial bottom line. 

Dr. Sherrill. I think the key is that our report showed that 

women managers earned over 50 percent of their family incomes, 

so obviously it’s a very important part of their family income, and 

especially over time, if they’re earning less income than they otherwise might be receiving, it has a cumulative effect. 

Chair Maloney. Okay. 

Ms. Lang. I think the gender pay gap basically puts less money 

in women’s pockets, and that’s less money that they have to spend, 

and that’s the problem with getting the economy moving again. It’s 

the women who control over 75 percent of all spending in this economy, and, if women don’t have the money to spend for themselves 

and their families in particular, we’re going to see a prolonged recession. 

Chair Maloney. Well, I’d like to thank all of the panelists. This 

has been a very informative discussion about the persistence of the 

gender pay gap, and these new reports from the GAO and Catalyst 

provide fresh evidence of the stubborn pay gap facing women managers and women in executive roles. Now more than ever, women’s 

incomes are critical to family economic well-being, and narrowing 

29 

and ultimately eliminating the pay gap is truly an economic issue 

for families, and for our country. Today’s testimony will help us develop and enact effective policies that can move us in that direction. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 11:43 a.m., Tuesday, September 28, 2010, the 

hearing was adjourned.] 

(31) 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

32 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CAROLYN MALONEY, CHAIR, JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE

Good morning. Today’s hearing on the gender gap among managers is part of the 

Joint Economic Committee’s in-depth look at women in the workforce. 

Women’s work is crucial for family economic well-being, particularly in these 

rough economic times. Women comprise nearly half of the workforce. 

And families are increasingly dependent on working wives’ incomes, with working 

wives now contributing 36 percent of household income compared to 29 percent in 

1983. 

Because of this, gains in women’s earning power—or the absence of progress on 

that front—is an economic security issue for families. Women earn just 77 cents on 

the dollar as compared to men—for doing the same work. That figure hasn’t budged 

in nearly ten years. 

The report released today by the GAO provides additional evidence of the persistence of the gender gap at the highest echelons of industry. 

The GAO finds a striking pay gap between male and female managers. 

In 2007, female managers were paid 81 cents for every dollar earned by their 

male manager peers, even after accounting for measurable differences like age, education, and industry. The pay gap for women in management shrank by just 2 cents 

from 2000 to 2007. In short, and in no uncertain terms: we’ve stalled out. 

No matter how you slice the data, the pay gap between male and female managers persists. Even among childless managers, women earn just 83 cents for every 

dollar earned by their male peers. 

Both the GAO and Catalyst also find that we have made very little progress in 

breaking the glass ceiling for women in management. 

Women’s representation in management professions in 2007 was essentially unchanged from 2000. 

And motherhood continues to be a penalty for women. A previous GAO report 

showed that fathers enjoy a bonus, while mothers pay a penalty for their decisions 

to have children. I like to call this the ‘‘Mom Bomb.’’ 

Today’s GAO report shows that Management Moms earn just 79 cents for every 

dollar earned by Management Dads—a figure that hasn’t budged since 2000. In all 

but one industry, fathers are more likely than mothers to be managers. 

When working women have kids they know it will change their lives, but they 

are stunned at how much it changes their paycheck. While women’s earnings are 

a critical element to families’ economic security, this is particularly true for families 

where the wife is a manager. Across all industries, married female managers are 

just like male managers in one key regard: they are their families’ majority breadwinners. 

But married male managers’ paychecks represent about 75 percent of their families’ total earnings, as compared to the 55 percent of total family earnings represented by married female manager’s paychecks. 

The impact of the wage gap is particularly painful in our current economic downturn as families struggle to make ends meet in the face of stagnant wages and job 

losses. 

In order to further our understanding of the gender pay gap across the economic 

spectrum, I am pleased to announce today that I will be requesting a new report 

from GAO investigating gender pay and representation issues among lower-wage 

workers. The GAO research team provides a great service to our nation with their 

impartial, data-driven analysis of pressing economic problems, and I look forward 

to learning more from them when this report is issued next year. 

Women are more productive and better educated than they’ve ever been, but their 

pay hasn’t yet caught up. 

Women continue to bump up against everything from subtle biases to egregious 

acts of discrimination relating to gender stereotypes about hiring, pay raises, promotions, pregnancy and care-giving responsibilities. 

The first piece of legislation that President Obama signed into law—the Lilly 

Ledbetter Act—was an important start, but additional legislation is necessary to 

close the loopholes in the Equal Pay Act that allow discrimination to persist. 

I am proud to be a co-sponsor of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which passed the 

House earlier this session, and I hope that the Senate will take action soon. 

Better work-life balance policies would allow both mothers and fathers to continue 

to support their families and develop their careers. 

By ensuring that women aren’t forced to start all over again in new jobs, paid 

leave policies can help keep women on an upward trajectory in their careers, protecting their earnings. 

33 

The Working Families Flexibility Act, which I have sponsored, would do just that. 

I’m very pleased to announce that just last week Senator Casey introduced a version 

of that bill in the Senate. 

I would like to thank today’s panel of experts and I look forward to the testimony 

today. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE KEVIN BRADY

I am pleased to join in welcoming Dr. Sherrill, Ms. Lang, Dr. Budig, and Ms. 

Furchtgott-Roth before the Committee this morning. 

I support equal compensation for men and women and our nation’s laws that are 

in place to ensure women are not discriminated against in the workplace. Where 

lax enforcement of our laws may exist, Congress should fulfill its duty in conducting 

proper oversight. 

But respectfully since today’s hearing is the last one before the November election, let us take a few moments to assess the economic record of President Obama 

and the Democratic Congress. 

After taking office, President Obama proposed a stimulus bill now estimated to 

cost $814 billion by the Congressional Budget Office. The Democratic Congress 

passed this bill with little scrutiny, and President Obama signed it into law on February 17, 2009. 

The President’s two top economic advisers assured the American people that if 

Congress were to pass President Obama’s stimulus plan, then 

1) The unemployment rate would remain below 8.0 percent; 

2) Payroll employment would increase to 137.6 million jobs by the fourth 

quarter of 2010; and 

3) 90 percent of the jobs created would be in the private sector. 

By the standards that the Obama administration set for itself, its stimulus plan 

has failed miserably. 

1) The unemployment rate has never been below 8.0 percent and actually 

rose to 9.6 percent in August 2010; 

2) The United States is 7.2 million payroll jobs short of the Democrats’ 

promise; and 

3) Since February 2009, the private sector lost 3.1 million payroll jobs. The 

only sector that has created payroll jobs is the federal government, which 

added a mere 116,000 payroll jobs. 

Incredibly, since the Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007, payroll 

employment has fallen by 6.6 million jobs. 

While failing to offer new job opportunities to unemployed workers, the Democrats’ stimulus plan, their federal takeover of healthcare, and their other reckless 

spending schemes have accomplished two things: record federal budget deficits and 

a ballooning federal debt. For the first time since Alexander Hamilton was Secretary 

of the Treasury, financial market participants are actually questioning the longterm creditworthiness of the U.S. government. 

Another way to judge the economic performance of President Obama and the 

Democratic Congress is to compare this recovery with a recovery after a recession 

similar in depth and length: the August 1981 to November 1982 recession. 

In the first four quarters of recovery under President Reagan, average real GDP 

growth was a robust 7.8 percent. In the first four quarters of the recovery under 

President Obama, average real GDP growth was a mediocre 3.0 percent. Even more 

troubling, growth has slowed from 5.0 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to an 

anemic 1.6 percent in the second quarter of 2010. Indeed, this may be as good as 

it gets under Democratic economic policies. 

During the first 14 months of the Reagan recovery, payroll employment grew by 

3.9 million jobs. During the first 14 months of the Obama recovery beginning in 

July 2009, payroll employment fell by 329,000 jobs. 

Moreover, the unemployment rate dropped by 2.8 percentage points to 8.0 percent 

during the first 14 months of the Reagan recovery, while the unemployment rate 

rose to 9.6 percent during the first 14 months of the Obama recovery. 

The actual data, as opposed to the hypothetical ‘‘what if’’ studies of the Congressional Budget Office and Mark Zandi, are clear and convincing. The Democrats’ 

stimulus has failed, and the Obama recovery is subpar. 

President Obama and the Democratic Congress have irresponsibly pursued economic policies that have created uncertainty and needlessly undermined public conVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:20 Jan 07, 2011 Jkt 061713 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 C:\DOCS\61713.TXT SHAUN PsN: DPROCT
34 

fidence. The most recent example of this is the failure of the House and Senate leadership to hold a vote on renewing the 2001 and 2003 tax reductions that expire at 

the end of this year. 

Although economists of all political stripes are demanding that Congress renew 

all of these reductions, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid prefer to let taxes 

increase on all Americans rather than see the defeat of their ‘‘divide and rule’’ strategy of class warfare on the floor of the House or the Senate. What entrepreneur 

would make job-creating investments now when he or she does not know what his 

or her income tax rate will be next year? 

On November 2, 2010, the American people will sit in judgment on this Democratic Congress. We can and should have economic policies that instill confidence, 

promote growth, and create jobs. President Reagan has shown us the way forward— 

reducing federal tax rates, controlling federal spending, cutting regulatory red tape, 

and opening foreign markets to American products through trade liberalization. I 

trust that the American people will institute a mid-course correction. 

I look forward to hearing the testimony of today’s witnesses. 

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS

Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney. I welcome our witnesses and thank the Chairwoman for holding this hearing on such an important topic: the issue of gender 

wage equity. 

Some people may wonder why we are holding this hearing. After all, earlier this 

month, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that gender pay disparities are at an alltime low. Unfortunately, there is additional data which reveals underlying trends 

that are deeply concerning. 

For example, although the pay gap seems to be closing, experts are attributing 

this positive step to the poor economy, which has caused many laid-off men to take 

lower-paying jobs. 

Additionally, this year, for the first time in history, women earned more Ph.Ds 

than men. However, the recent data show that women continue to earn less than 

men at every level of education. 

A third alarming trend is the severity with which these pay gaps are impacting 

African-American and Latina women, who are earning 62.1 cents and 53 cents, respectively, for every dollar earned by their white male counterparts. 

In addition to the injustice such disparities inflict on women who are being shortchanged, such conditions send a poor message to young women, those whom we are 

trying to encourage to stay in school, attend college and pursue their dreams. 

How can we take serious steps toward lowering truancy rates, increasing college 

completion rates, and encouraging young people to pursue the jobs of tomorrow if 

we can’t assure all young people, both men and women, that their hard work and 

perseverance will be rewarded? 

I am proud that this Congress has taken the issue of wage discrimination seriously. We enacted the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which prevents employers from 

escaping responsibility for wage discrimination by hiding that discrimination and 

running out the clock. 

In addition, last year, the House passed the Paycheck Fairness Act of 2009, which 

strengthens the Equal Pay Act of 1963 by giving victims of gender discrimination 

the same remedies available to victims of other kinds of discrimination. 

Pay inequality doesn’t just harm individual workers, it harms families and our 

nation’s economy. 

Single women who are heads of household are twice as likely to be in poverty as 

single men. Nearly four in 10 mothers are their families’ primary breadwinners, and 

nearly two-thirds are significant earners. Therefore, for millions of families, equal 

pay for women determines whether they will reach the middle-class or whether they 

will live in poverty. 

Additionally, the wage gap has a long-term impact on women’s economic security, 

especially in retirement, as unequal pay affects Social Security and pension benefit 

calculations. 

Therefore, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about this issue and 

about steps Congress can take to ensure that all citizens of a nation dedicated to 

the principle of equal opportunity for all are equally remunerated for their work. 

Æ