Anne Bubriski, lecturer of women’s and gender studies, spoke with News 6 WKMG about how we can close the gender wage gap. The gender wage gap impacts all industries, with some worse than others. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its look at weekly earnings in the fourth financial quarter of 2021, said there is a 20-cent on the dollar wage gap between women and men.
“When you control for all the different variables, education, major, hours worked per week, full time, part time, you know, leave for family reasons, all of that, there’s still about a 10% on average of unexplained discrepancy,” says Bubriski. “And so, most social science researchers account that for some sort of gender discrimination, if you’re looking at women of color, gender racial discrimination.”
Bubriski also explains how the belief that women are the ones who become the primary caregivers is what holds women back across the board. To combat this, she suggests that more companies need to embrace paid leave and also flexible work schedules to make it easier for women and men to raise families.