The wage gap narrows…sort of…and not for reasons you’d expect

December 6th, 2006

I found this little nugget in Monday’s Seattle Times, in an article called “Gender Gap Narrows as Men’s Pay Erodes”:

…a noteworthy trend in the 21st-century economy: Women are closing in on men when it comes to wages, but not for the reasons anticipated — or hoped for — when gender pay equity became a rallying cry in the 1970s.

Data show that the pay gap has been narrowing not because women have made great strides, labor experts say, but because men’s wages are eroding.

Since I’m on deadline, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about how languishing wages are a drag for all workers and probably not what my mom had in mind in the seventies when she joined NOW and marched for the ERA. But don’t let me put words in your mouth or anything…

Entry Filed under: Glass ceiling, Overworked and underpaid