Shocking! Why women earn less in female-dominated field.

Xavier Roger

1 year ago

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The gender pay gap is so pervasive it appears in one of the country’s most female-dominated professions.

Women make up roughly three-fourths of K-12 teaching jobs, which are generally tied to fixed salary schedules. Yet according to a new research brief from the Brookings Institution, female teachers typically make thousands less than their male counterparts.

Even when controlling for credentials and other characteristics, male teachers make more on average.

“It is a seemingly egalitarian profession, but yet (the pay gap) persists,” said Michael Hansen, a senior fellow at Brookings’s Brown Center on Education Policy who co-authored the brief. “These are public workers, government employees. … Teachers are working under a compensation schedule so there shouldn’t be opportunities for differential pay but yet (the data) still shows up favoring men.”

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Women educators would need a 7% bonus to make as much as men

The authors of the brief – published Monday, just ahead of Equal Pay Day – highlight a recent study they conducted utilizing data from national surveys of teachers and principals.

When considering all sources of school-based income, the researchers found, male teachers make $4,000 more than women annually. Women would need a 7% bonus, they conclude, “to fully equalize pay between genders.”

Even when the researchers controlled for observable teacher and school characteristics – such as the subject taught and the demographics of their students – men made $2,200 more. That included a gap of $714 in base pay and $1,204 in extra duty pay.

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Why do female teachers make less than their male colleagues?

There are lots of underlying reasons behind the gender wage gap generally, including differences in the types of work environments women and men are drawn to and in the choices they make within the labor market.

But those differences aren’t as pronounced in the teaching world. Male and female teachers tend to have similar levels of experience and education, which are key factors in district-adopted salary schedules. The greater tendency of men to teach in hard-to-staff (and thus higher-paying) roles only explains some of the wage gap, the researchers found.

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So why do pay gaps persist? The answer, according to the researchers, might lie partly in the extent to which teachers assume extra duties at school – coaching a team or teaching summer school, for example – and to which they receive compensation for doing so.

While the vast majority of teachers tend to take on extra tasks at school, fewer than half say they’re paid for the work. And the ones who are paid are often men.

Male teachers aged 21-30 are 12 percentage points more likely than their female counterparts to participate in extra duties such as coaching a team or sponsoring a club, for example – an age group when women are most likely to have children. What’s more: Male teachers are more likely to receive compensation – especially when the principal is also male – for taking on those extra responsibilities.

“Men tend to be modestly more likely to participate in this extra work and are much more likely to be paid for it, especially if their school principal is also a man,” the researchers write. “Taken together, this evidence suggests these supplementary payments are more likely to reflect gender-based discrimination in comparison to base pay.”

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Ultimately, the gender pay gap isn’t as glaring in K-12 education as it is other sectors. But the findings, Hansen stressed, add another layer to discussions about raising teacher pay.

“What’s not part of these conversations is a spotlight on the uncompensated work women do in these schools,” Hansen said.

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Contact Alia Wong at (202) 507-2256 or awong@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter at @aliaemily.

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