This paper investigates the gender wage gap in social service occupations, where women comprise the majority of workers yet earn significantly less than male counterparts in comparable positions. Using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the author documents narrowing wage gaps for counselors but widening gaps for social workers between 2005 and 2013. The paper explores explanations including discriminatory practices, human capital theory, interrupted employment due to caregiving, and welfare regime structures across different countries. A comparative analysis of STEM fields reveals that while women in STEM jobs earn substantially more than non-STEM peers, they remain severely underrepresented in these occupations. The paper concludes that addressing gender wage gaps requires multifaceted social, political, and legal action across institutional contexts.
A disproportionate number of women are employed in the social service workforce, yet the median earnings of men in social services are higher in certain occupations within the field. Roughly 80.3 percent of social workers, 73.2 percent of social and human service assistants, and 69.3 percent of counselors are women (BLS, 2014). Yet women represent roughly 50 percent of the overall labor force in the United States (BLS, 2014). The gender wage gap in social services appears to be slowly narrowing.
Men who worked as counselors in 2005 earned 16.6 percent more than women working in the same field (BLS, 2014). Eight years later, in 2011, the median weekly earnings of counselors were 13 percent higher for men than for women in comparable positions (BLS, 2014). The 2013 reports of median weekly earnings for counselors showed males earning only 0.5 percent more than their female counterparts (BLS, 2014).
The same gender wage gap trend does not hold for social workers. Notably, there are proportionately fewer non-union counselors than non-union social workers. Male social workers earned more than 14 percent over females in similar positions in 2005 (BLS, 2014). A puzzling increase in this gender gap appeared in 2013–2014, when men reported earning 19.5 percent more than women in comparable positions (BLS, 2014). The reasons for this widening gender wage gap have not been clearly identified. It is important to note that aggregate employment and wage figures do not indicate parity across organizations and employers (BLS, 2014).
According to researcher Gibelman (2003), "the problem of relatively low salaries for social work and other female-dominated professions is rooted in continued discrimination" (p. 22). Many variables serve as drivers of social conscience, which is reflected in courts, legislatures, boardrooms, union halls, and workplaces across the nation. Gibelman (2003) argues that the changing social and political climate is mirrored in the comparable worth debate:
"Debates about the issue were consistent and loud during the 1960s and 1970s, but have been relatively unemotional and infrequent since then. Public attention to the matter can also be traced to different administrations. Under President Carter, enforcement regulations were proposed; their enactment would have mandated comparable worth for federal contractors. The Reagan administration saw these regulations as too controversial and took them off the agenda. Thus, gender-specific policy proposals have not fared as well as antidiscrimination policies that include gender and also apply to race and ethnicity" (p. 26–27).
Even when the political climate favors comparable worth legislation, implementation and enforcement have been insufficient to correct the problem in the United States. Equal pay legislation was introduced to the U.S. with the Equal Pay Act of 1963, amending the Fair Labor Standards Act. The following year, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (P.L. 88-352) forbade all discrimination, with Title VII specifically forbidding discrimination in employment practices. By 1991, it was apparent that discrimination laws needed to be strengthened, and Title VI of the Equal Pay Act (P.L. 102-166) was amended to prohibit discrimination in all programs or activities that receive federal funding. With the 1991 amendment, Title VII was also changed to increase the powers of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Title II, the Glass Ceiling Act (P.L. 102-166), addressed the underrepresentation of women and minorities in management and decision-making positions. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-2, S. 181) was signed into law by President Barack Obama on January 29, 2009, and served to reverse the Supreme Court's decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which had stripped away protection against pay discrimination.
Historically, women were predominantly employed in education, domestic work as cooks, maids, housekeepers, nannies, and laundresses, and nursing. The business and industrial world underwent slow evolution that opened opportunities for women to find jobs outside the home that were still considered women's work, but invariably paid low wages: waitresses, cashiers, typists, secretaries, and factory workers.
Proponents of human capital theory argue that the employment patterns of women related to family events and the presence and age of children are primary determinants of the gender wage gap and occupational sex segregation (Stier, Lewin-Epstein, & Braun, 2001). The conventional wisdom related to this phenomenon is that employers regard intermittent employment as a contributor to skill atrophy and, thereby, reduced productivity. Moreover, employers perceive workers who interrupt their employment to care for children or family members as having less commitment to their work.
Although both women and men engage in caregiving, these responsibilities more often fall to women—often because in dual-earner families, the wages earned by women are less, which means the net impact on families of interrupting women's employment is lower. If this appears to be a tautological relationship, that is because it is. Much of the research on the consequences of women's interrupted employment over the lifecycle is conducted from a microeconomic perspective. While this provides insights into the labor market overall, "it generally ignores institutional and normative arrangements that structure women's work and that may mediate the effect of intermittent or part-time employment on market outcomes" (Stier, Lewin-Epstein, & Braun, 2001, p. 1732).
Stier, Lewin-Epstein, and Braun (2001) analyzed the effect of interrupted work for women across a number of countries that provide different levels of policy support to women during childrearing and implement various types of welfare regimes to provide support to parents, families, and children. The term welfare regime was used to convey social-political contexts and structural arrangements based on Esping-Andersen's typology, according to which three models of welfare regimes exist: the social-democratic welfare state, the liberal welfare state, and the conservative-corporatist welfare state (Esping-Andersen, 1990, as cited in Stier, Lewin-Epstein, & Braun, 2001).
The welfare regime typology is as follows:
"The social-democratic welfare state is characterized by a universalistic approach to social rights, a high level of decommodification, and an inclusion of the middle class in social programs. The liberal model, at the other extreme, provides only limited social insurance. Its social programs are directed mainly toward the working class and the poor, and means-tested assistance is prevalent. In the conservative-corporatist welfare regime, social principles prevail in most areas, based, however, not on egalitarian standards but rather on eligibility dependent upon social statuses (mainly family, class, and religion) and traditions" (Stier, Lewin-Epstein, & Braun, 2001, p. 1733).
The researchers expected high levels of employment continuity and a fast return to full employment in countries they described as social-democratic (Stier, Lewin-Epstein, & Braun, 2001). In addition, these countries were expected to institute lower earning penalties in response to workers shifting to part-time employment, but higher penalties when workers withdrew from the labor force. In countries that were termed conservative, the researchers expected higher levels of employment transition to part-time or out of the workforce; in these conservative countries, the norm was for women to adjust their participation in the workforce in response to family demands. As a result, penalties incurred from shifts to part-time work or interruptions in workforce participation were expected to be low. Finally, the researchers expected that countries with the most liberal welfare regimes would institute the highest penalties for deviations from continuous full-time employment (Stier, Lewin-Epstein, & Braun, 2001).
Analyzing different sectors for patterns of gender differences regarding occupational choices and pay levels is certainly useful, but it is not sufficient. The drivers of gender patterns in employment stem primarily from sociological factors that cross the artificial boundaries of industrial sectors. An exploration of the workforce patterns in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is instructive as a case illustrating the sociological, educational, and psychological variables that shape workforce patterns.
Women are substantially underrepresented as earners of STEM university degrees and as holders of STEM jobs. This must be intentionally juxtaposed against figures showing women as half of the workforce in the United States and roughly more than half of college-educated individuals, yet holding less than 25 percent of STEM jobs in the country. Moreover, approximately 2.1 percent of college graduates who were in the labor force for at least 27 weeks fell into the category of working poor, compared to 21.2 percent of those with less than a high school diploma (BLS, 2014). The dilemma in STEM employment goes beyond gender inequalities to national imperatives: competitiveness in STEM industries is crucial to national economic wellbeing. Consider these two simple issues in light of the STEM gender gap: the underutilization of the female workforce undercuts efforts to balance trade and decrease dependence on foreign fuels.
Even though the share of college-educated women in the workforce has increased over the past several decades, female employment in STEM jobs remains low. Women working in STEM jobs earned 33 percent more than their non-STEM employed peers. This represents a higher wage premium than for men comparably employed: the gender wage gap is smaller in STEM jobs than in non-STEM jobs. Once women with STEM degrees are employed in STEM fields, their situation is fairly positive; the problem is getting those STEM jobs. Fewer women have earned undergraduate STEM degrees, especially in engineering. Women with STEM degrees are more likely to work in healthcare or education than in a traditional STEM job. Experts suggest that a constellation of variables contributes to the gender discrepancy in STEM occupations, including gender stereotyping, few female role models or professional mentors, and less family-friendly flexibility in STEM fields.
"Institutional and political action needed to address wage gaps"
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