Pay Gap… Yup, It’s Still There
by Race in the Workplace special correspondent Erica Mauter
The Wall Street Journal reports that — surprise! — a ridiculous pay gap still exists between white men and everyone else.
I keep hearing that diversity in the workplace will only improve if it’s perceived as a business incentive. Change only happens in Corporate America if it’s a business incentive.
What will it take to change this picture at a time of fierce competition for a shrinking number of management jobs? It requires business chiefs who understand that diversity is good for the bottom line because it enables them to recruit the best talent, enlist broad thinking and reach diverse customers world-wide. And it requires CEOs to link their managers’ compensation to achieving more diversity while offering development programs for all employees.
What about it just being the right thing to do? Saving on head count is smart for your business, so if you can get away with paying your women and minorities less, you’re saving your business some money, right?
So “business incentive” will probably end up meaning something more like “legal incentive.” As long as the EEOC has no money, it has no teeth, but there is at least one example of a state having the initiative to enact its own pay equity legislation (Minnesota). (More on all that in this Race in the Workplace interview with Evelyn Murphy, author of Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men – And What to Do About It.)
That the pay gap exists so soon after college clearly indicates that women and minorities are being discriminated against from the get-go. There hasn’t been any time for them to demonstrate that “they deserve less” for whatever myriad bullshit reasons.
True, progress in the executive ranks can only be made one appointment at a time. But the numbers are small enough that we can’t hold our breath on every rise and fall. Every new black CEO, every new female SVP, every new Chief Diversity Officer is going to significantly impact the percentages of non-white-male people holding those roles.
This is not news. It’s appalling, but it’s not news.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
moth wrote:
Very interesting article! I could not believe the percentages they stated but I know they’re true
Of course the percentages I am talking about are that men get far fewer high education degrees than women but nobody seems to think it’s an issue of concern. I kind of doubt the author will tackle the issue of the lack of high education degrees among men.
Too bad the author didn’t discuss the “theories” about the wage gap further. A recent report stated that this gap was caused by women’s choices in the workplace. I guess this wasn’t important enough for her to explore. I don’t want to make any assumptions about what her motives might’ve been for leaving this important fact out. I mean… if she actually stated that the wage gap is virtually gone when normalizing for years of experience, education, work history… that would remove the whole argument.
Posted 11 Mar 2008 at 10:08 am ¶
class factotum wrote:
Wow! With those numbers, a company would be foolish not to fire all the white men and replace them with lower-paid women and minorities!
Posted 09 Aug 2008 at 9:57 am ¶