Women in Alaska make significantly less money than men on average, according to reports by state and independent sources.
The National Partnership for Women and Families, a nonprofit fairness advocacy organization, recently did a study using 2009 U.S. Census data. Portia Wu, vice president of the partnership, said women in Alaska made about 76 cents for every dollar men made on average. Nationally, the average was 77 cents. This data applied to industries across the board rather than any one specifically.
The report states that Alaska women as a whole lose more than $1.1 billion each year from this wage gap. It estimates women are paid about $12,000 less than their male counterparts here, so are individually losing nearly three years of family health insurance premiums, 3,000 additional gallons of gas, 90 weeks of food and seven months of mortgage and utility payments.
The report also states nearly 64 percent of Alaska’s women bring in more than a quarter of their families’ incomes and head more than 27,017 households. Furthermore, it states nearly 22 percent of women-headed households in Alaska are below the poverty line. Eliminating the wage gap would provide critical income to 5,916 such families.
“This new data illustrates the very real harm unequal wages are doing to families and the state,” Debra L. Ness, president of the partnership, stated in a release. “It is long past time to close the gender-based wage gap. With women playing an increasingly important role as family breadwinners, there is no time to waste.”
Work and Family Communications Manager Sadie Kliner said this inclusion of women’s financial roles for their families is a new part of their study.
“It’s especially important to look at what impact it’s having considering our economic times,” she said.
This report was done in conjunction with the American Association of University Women.
Data from the state of Alaska also shows women here to make less on average. In 2008, the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development published an analysis on gender and wages using 2006 data. This report found that women on average overall earned 66.6 percent of what men did. This is an increase from 2000, when women were found to make 65.9 percent of what men did, and from 1990, which had it at 62.2 percent.
The report elaborates the percentage for the public sector, combining state and local government, was 79.8 percent, and was only 62.4 percent for the private sector.
The report also broke down wages by industry, showing women’s average wage in percentage of men’s as 67.1 percent in mining and natural resources, 76.6 percent in financial services, 66.4 percent in professional and business services, 76.8 percent in leisure and hospitality, 74.5 percent in state government, 86 percent in local government and 71.5 percent in education and health services.
National wage averages from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2009 state that women in mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction made 79.9 percent of male annual averages, 76 percent in wholesale and retail, 83.5 percent in leisure and hospitality and 77 percent in education and health services.
“The wage gap, even in industries where women dominate like health care and education, shows there’s a bigger problem at work,” said Wu.
A data set from the 2007-2009 American Community Survey, showing three-year estimates, has the male average in Juneau at $41,323 and women earning $29,379. These numbers constitute 2009 months and are adjusted for inflation. The margin of error for those numbers is $4,364 for women and $3,390 for men.
The same chart shows estimates that Anchorage Municipality women averaged $29,217, while those in the Fairbanks North Star Borough averaged $25,359. It estimates men averaged $42,293 in Anchorage and $35,994 in Fairbanks.
Alaska economist Mali Abrahamson said statistics like these can often be hard to get completely accurate, as they’re estimates based on surveys. She noted that can be a lot of compounding and disparities in play.
Ginger Johnson of Juneau, who is retired from the Department of Transportation, said that wages shouldn’t be driven by gender but by experience and ability. She said this is the ideal taught to children and should be applied in business, and if people are doing equal jobs they should get equal pay. “It should be a continuing pursuit since so many women today are heads of households,” she said.
• Contact reporter Jonathan Grass at 523-2276 or at jonathan.grass@juneauempire.com.
Comments (15)
Add commentNot in my department!
In the department I work in, women are favored. They have the softest duties and they tend to run everything as a social clique. For some reason, our department seems to prefer attractive young women with no work experience for tenured permanent positions, and they get the promotions.
That is what I have seen with my own eyes in my own workplace.
obsure facts
Check out the second to last paragraph. It essentially says there's no way to verify their figures. Why did they only include women? Throw in minorities, illegal aliens, homosexuals, etc.
Spoor, my office is the same,
Spoor, my office is the same, except for the attractiveness part. We have a very high percentage of women in our office, and even in the agency, there are more women than men, and almost all division heads are women. The men are given the work duties and the women are allowed to have social hour. If the man complains, he is written up for something. Problem employees are kept if they are women and driven off if they are men. They are also mostly minority women. The most discriminated segment anymore is the white male.
@Spoor and kwpawsuh: both of
@Spoor and kwpawsuh: both of your guys' statements are BS, and you know it. Maybe you perceive you're treated worse in your respective offices, but it's more likely that 1) your perception is wrong, 2) your perception is based on your own resentment at being bossed around by people you think are inferior to you, which shows in both your comments, or 3) your job performance stinks because you spend all your time trying to figure out how much your co-workers are paid and what their specific duties are instead of doing YOUR job.
@jimcollman: you can find statistics on minorities as well, and they (with the exception of those of Asian descent) are paid less than whites on average as well. It's harder to figure statistics for homosexuals, though, because many homosexuals don't admit to it or aren't open about it in the workplace.
...
@Persnickety Persimmon: Well said.
I also have to say that I doubt the statistics are the same for unionized workplaces.
Aaawww Kpawsuh.....
Perhaps it's just your turn? Hang in there, you only have about 2,000 years of being seen as inferior to do in order to catch up to us. Then we'll talk......K?
The big reason would most
The big reason would most likely be that men are more adapt to work long schedules out in the oil fields, mines, etc ''''''Persnickety Persimmon''''' you are full off c$%p, everyone that I work with out in camp makes the same hourly wage, non union, and pays much better, depending on your level, men and women are paid to the penny,the same, and are treated with the same respect, if you look at the truth, its all the goop gobbling state and federal unions is were the women get less pay, are you libs ever going to wake up and look at the truth of how the progressive liberals are holding you down, wake up, the non union place I work at treats Men, Women, and all races the same and pay equal, and not only do they pay us the same, we all have mutual respect for each other, and come together to help each other out, so if you are a women, or of any race or religion,I AM A HARDCORE CONSERVATIVE WHO LOOKS FORWARD TO SOMEDAY WORKING WITH YOU ON A EQUAL PAY AND RESPECT BASIS. Can the state or federal union workers do that, hell no, Example, my niece works for Safeway, union dues 60 $ a month, initiation fees 600 $ a month wages, 8 $ a month, the unions and the progressive liberals are in favor of holding races and women back, look at any big city, Seattle, San Fran, they all hold the races and women back, in poverty, and blame conservatives. CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHY LIBERALS ARE SO HATE-FULL.
If all these stats are from
If all these stats are from men, & women doing the EXACT SAME JOBS, they may very well have a legitimate point.
But their stats are so generalized as to be worse than meaningless, they are misleading.
Well, no, they're not
Well, no, they're not misleading. Part of the problem with pay inequality is that women often get passed by in favor of men for higher level positions. This is why you see so few women in charge of large, multinational corporations. However, statistics also show that women get paid less doing the exact same job, in most cases. I think the notable exceptions would be porn and modeling.
@junohippie: just as I said to the other two, it sounds to me like you're making stuff up. For one, you aren't omniscient and aren't in a position to describe how everyone in your workplace is treated. You can describe what you see, which, since you admit to being a hardcore conservative, is likely colored by what you WANT to believe is true. And two, unless you work in accounting or payroll, you don't know what everyone is paid, and again, are not in a position to opine about it.
-Uh- Actually, -Persnickety Persimmon-
Your recent speculation on my recent comment appears to be somewhat biased. Am I correct in assuming that you are a Woman? Possibly a bit defensive? In my comment simply I stated 'That is what I have seen with my own eyes in my own workplace.' - Why would I bother to make a false statement? It is a simple observation. My little 10 person work group is not big enough to alter any statistics. It is simply a couple old-fashioned, biased managers who are not aware of modern business practices. In the big picture, the whole Department where I work - there are lots of good employees, managers, and work groups. It is just that in my little working group, we have a couple bad managers. They back each other up. This is typical bad management crap - everybody knows what it is about. Everything is personal, nothing is professional. This happens more than it should in Juneau. It is still a minority, but there are a lot of people in Juneau, Women and Men, that favor women in the workplace. There is no reason to favor either Women or Men in the workplace. The clique thing in Juneau is a real problem, in many ways.
I think we should all can the 'Men or Women' labels in the workplace and just say 'co-workers' because that is what they are. And they should be judged that way.
You are incorrect in assuming
You are incorrect in assuming I am a woman.
Your original comment presumed to speak for your department as a whole. I also work in an office full of women, but I don't tell myself that it's biased, because it's not. It just happens to be that more women tend to apply here, and thus more women are hired than men, and this may encourage men who do work here to move elsewhere (because a lot of guys still have problems working under women).
I'll grant you that it may be true your office is discriminatory against men, but it's unlikely, and even if it's true, it certainly doesn't represent the problem as a whole in the U.S.
Persnickety Persimmon
Persnickety Persimmon,,, once again you are full of crap, I m a supervisor were I work, I have women whom are hourly and make equal to or more than some of the men, depending on time that they have worked here, and furthermore we have a female supervisor . my counterpart, has less time and experience with the company, yet makes the same wage as a supervisor that I and the third supervisor does, even though the gods awful truth is that none of the women can pull equal weight of the men, yet we don't mind as they still give 100 % 0f what they can do physically, and have you checked nation wide employment lately, more women working than men, go figure, you know I really feel sorry for you ungrateful libs, why is it you are so full of hate?? please explain that to me
More men are employed
More men are employed nationally than women. It's hard enough to take you seriously when you rant on about liberals hating (wtf?) and how underprivileged you poor men are, but when you can't even get facts straight?
http://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/main.htm
And perhaps your female counterpart makes the same amount of money as you do because she's better at her job. Honestly, very few workers will admit to not being as proficient as co-workers, especially if they already believe those co-workers should be inferior.
facts
You have to be a female Persnickety Persimmon, you cant even look up facts Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (8.6 percent),
adult women (7.7 percent), teenagers (24.5 percent), whites (7.9 percent), blacks
(15.5 percent), and Hispanics (11.3 percent) showed little change in March. The
jobless rate for Asians was 7.1 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
As for my counter part I already told you she cannot do the job equally , but she try s, and thats a heel of a lot more than your lazy crying liberal hateful a$$
More men total are employed
More men total are employed than women in the United States. If you can't tell the difference between a percentage and a hard number, then there's little hope for you.
Bogus comparisons.
Pretty much a useless article when comparisons are based on jobs in the same industry, instead of the EXACT SAME JOBS! I'm not saying women are underpaid when compared to men.....I'm just saying that this article doesn't prove a damn thing with its apples-to-oranges comparisons.
And Persnickity, you really don't sound like you know what you're talking about, and you definitely jump to conclusions too much without knowing facts.....just sayin'.