So How Far Have We Come? Pestilent and Persistent Gender Gap in Pay

Salary holds significant meaning in this society in terms of the value and worth assigned to professions and to the holders of professional positions. The importance of wage levels to social workers has been repeatedly demonstrated (Gibelman & Whiting, 1997; Huber & Orlando, 1995; "Jobs, saliaries drive an array of actions"; "Public awareness seen"). It is, after all, a matter of livelihood. Salary levels affect recruitment and retention of social workers and the status afforded social work by the larger society. This article explores the issue of women's pay in the human services within a comparative framework of many of the service occupations. As demonstrated later, year-end 1998 data reveal that the pay gap continues unabated. I argue that the problem of relatively low salaries for social work and other female-dominated professions is rooted in continued discrimination. Relevant policies to address gender discrimination in the workplace, dating back to the 1960s civil rights era, are reviewed against the backdrop of the current realities of salary differences on the basis of gender. Several strategic approaches to combat continued inequities are discussed, including public and professional education, individual and group advocacy, and targeted policy practice. These strategies can also be applied to interventions with and on behalf of the clients with whom social workers work. Gender gaps in salary have existed throughout history in all occupations, including social work and related human services professions. Despite the salience of salaries to the professional workforce, wages have remained stagnant. When controlling for inflation, there has been little movement in salaries since the early 1960s (Gibelman & Schervish, 1997). Clearly, there is a gap between what social workers seek for themselves and believe they deserve and what they actually earn. The profession's Code of Ethics, its values and principles, its public policy positions, and its interventions point to the centrality of the goal of eliminating discrimination (NASW, 2000). This commitment must extend to issues that affect the well-being of the professional labor force. In the process of serving our own interests, we also develop better strategies to help our clients, the majority of whom are women for whom discrimination and labor market barriers are well known. Status of Women's Pay A history of occupational segregation by gender and the associated salary inequities has been well documented. Research by economists and sociologists has revealed that the wage differential between men and women is only partially explained by the characteristics of the worker (such as education level) or the job (see, for example, Acker, 1989; England, 1992; Gibelman & Schervish, 1995; National Committee on Pay Equity, 1995). This point was reinforced by President Clinton when, during his 1999 State of the Union address, he indicated that U.S. society must ensure "that women and men get equal pay for equal work by strengthening enforcement of the equal pay laws" (Clinton, 1999, p. 1). This one-sentence declaration received the strongest bipartisan ovation of the entire State of the Union address, an acknowledgment on the part of Congress, perhaps, that women now constitute the strongest group of voters (Mitchell, 1999). Lacking, however, were specifics about how this pay equalization goal will be accomplishe d. Current data support previous assumptions and empirical evidence. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the median weekly pay of full-time working women was 75 percent of the median pay for men in 1996 (Lewin, 1997a, 1997b). Although women began closing the wage gap in the 1980s--earnings for women in salaried full-time year-round positions reached 71 percent of men's earnings in 1991 after a long period of stagnation--weekly earnings for women reached a high of only 72 percent of men's earnings in 1992 (Hartmann, 1993). …