Mary Beth West
Equal work? Then equal pay.
It doesn’t seem like too much to ask, but it’s a concept that continues to befuddle far too many management cultures.
According to the American Association of University Women report, “The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap,” as of 2015, “women working full-time in the United States typically were paid just 80 percent of what men were paid, a gap of 20 percent.”
The rate of change in this statistic has remained so doggedly slow over the decades that the AAUW points out that if the same rate of change persists ongoing, women won’t reach pay equity with men until 2059 … which is great news for my as-yet-unborn granddaughters, who might be embarking on careers by then.
Looking more narrowly in one professional sector, statistics show that women comprise roughly 75 percent of those in my chosen profession, public relations (but, by contrast, only 30 percent of global public relations firms are run by women).
Read the full article at Knoxville News Sentinel’s website.
Mary Beth West owns Mary Beth West Communications, LLC, in Alcoa, Tenn. She can be reached at mb@marybethwest.com and followed via Twitter, @marybethwest and @MBWComm.