If you’re wondering if you read the chart above correctly, you did. Although there is a gender pay gap, when comparing the salaries of men and women who have never married and who have never had children, the women earn significantly more. This indicates pretty clearly there must be an association between family life and women’s salaries.
Women have been caregivers since the beginning of time, haven’t they? Always taking care of someone, and this trend continues today, especially with the aging baby boomers becoming the sandwich generation, stuck squarely between raising their young children and caring for aging parents. The problem is that this greatly interferes with women’s careers, and by extension, the pay that they earn. This is because often women opt out of their high-paying career paths and pursue a more flexible, and usually lower paying, job in order to better balance all of their family responsibilities. In other instances, women leave the workforce all together to just focus on their caregiving duties. This is largely due to the fact that the world of work has not kept up with the changing workforce and the workers of today are drastically different from the traditional ideal worker of fifty years ago: a man who is able to dedicate himself completely to his job because he has a wife at home taking care of the children and the household (Cabrera).
Wondering how this can change? My white paper is directed to the CEOs of Fortune 500 Companies and it instructs them on how to change their organizations for the better to retain female talent. It will only serve to make their companies more productive and give them a competitive advantage, because they are losing as well when talented, trained women are leaving their jobs for their caregiving responsibilities.
So be sure to read “Closing the Gender Pay Gap: How Women Can Have It All” to learn more!
Business Government & Society III 