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Initial results show wages here are lower than national
average.
by Marketta Gregory, Democrat and Chronicle, November 15, 2003
Posted with permission from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle
Sidebar: Earnings by gender
Women's earnings compared with men's are even further behind in
Monroe County than in the nation, according to preliminary results of
a study by The Women's Foundation of Genesee Valley released Friday.
On average, women in the county are paid 58 cents for every $1 that
men make, taking all men and women who are able to work into
consideration. Nationally, women earn 77 cents compared with every $1
men earn, the foundation said.
The full study, which is expected to be released in January, will
use statistics, personal interviews and focus groups to address
questions ranging from where poverty is located in the foundation's
seven-county area to how women understand economic self-sufficiency.
Some preliminary results were offered during the foundation's
philanthropy conference at Woodcliff Conference Center.
Dr. Jessie Drew-Cates, chairwoman of the research committee,
thought the local earnings-by-gender numbers would reflect the
national average but was surprised when the data started coming in.
"Part of it is what women do," she said. "The traditional jobs for
women don't pay well."
The numbers include all women and men and what they earn,
regardless of whether they have a full-time job.
Drew-Cates suggested caution in interpreting the statistics, which
do not, for example, compare what women and men are paid for doing the
same type of work.
Sarah Boyce, associate director of the Center for Governmental
Research, a nonpartisan Rochester think tank, couldn't back up the 58
cents to $1 ratio with her own research, but she agreed that women
were selecting or were channeled into lower-paying types of jobs, even
though women and men are close in levels of education.
For example, in Monroe, Wayne, Ontario, Livingston, Genesee and
Orleans counties, 4,420 men were corporate chief executives compared
with 367 women, Boyce said, citing U.S. census figures. The average
salary for the CEOs, regardless of gender, was $87,500.
In computer software engineering, another field dominated by males,
there were 3,341 men in the profession compared with 1,441 women, and
they earned an average of $65,600.
For social workers, a field where females predominate, there were
602 men and 4,427 women. The average wage: $28,800.
Boyce, who presented some census statistics at the conference, also
noted that women are much more likely than men to work part time
because of family situations.
And even though the high school dropout rate is 15 percent for
women and 17 percent for men, the women who drop out are more likely
to lie in poverty -- 34 percent compared with 22 percent of men.
Besides the gender gap, Drew-Cates was struck by the number of
people in the area living at or below the federal poverty level.
"I thought maybe there would be 3 or 4 percent, but 10 percent?"
she said. "It's endemic. It shows that it's not just Rochester, it's
all over" the region.
Other finding in the foundation's seven-county area -- which
includes Yates County in addition to the six that are part of the
Rochester Metropolitan Statistical Area -- were gathered not only from
census data but also from a Medicaid database and New York state Vital
Statistics. Among the findings:
9 percent of women older than 65 live at or below the federal
poverty level, which is $748 a month for a single person and $1,010
for a family of two. While New York state has seen a 7.9 percent decrease in
pregnancy among 15- to 19-year-olds, increased pregnancies have been
reported in Genesee, Orleans, Yates and Livingston counties. The Economic Self-Sufficiency Standard, which takes in to
consideration what a family would need for local housing, food,
child care, transportation, health care, taxes and other essentials,
shows 35 percent to 45 percent of the area's households are on the
economic edge. By that standard, one person would need to earn
$1,272 a month in Monroe County while an adult with an infant and a
preschooler would need $3,078 a month.
Researchers also interviewed 93 low-income women in soup kitchens,
laundries and other places, talked to 32 low-income women in focus
groups and questioned 81 social service workers in focus groups.
The sampling was not random and the data only recently arrived, so the
committee is shying away from drawing too many initial conclusions,
Drew-Cates said. However, the committee did tell conference
participants that women receiving help had a different definition of
self-sufficiency than social workers. When women who received
public assistance were asked what self-sufficiency meant to them, they
said it meant being able to pay the bills and daily expenses without
needing help from anyone, said Kathryn A. Sielbeck-Bowen of B.E.C.S.
Inc., the Pennsylvania-based research firm hired by the foundation.
When people who worked in social service agencies were asked the same
question, they said it meant being able to meet the bills and daily
expenses but still relying some on social services. "That seems
patronizing," said one audience member. Social service workers are
struggling to work within the system and need to be liberated, said
another. "The big point is that these people (women on public
assistance) want to be assets to the community," said Chris Grumm,
Thursday evening's keynote speaker from the Women's Funding Network.
After the research presentation, Grumm, from California, said the
social service system needs to listen to what the women being helped
have to say about solving problems. It's popular to talk about
self-esteem, she said. "But when you focus on self-esteem, you only
see the individual. You've got to have a system that works with them."
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