The woman behind New York City’s recent wage gap success reveals what to focus on next

In April, New York City banned employers from asking job applicants about their salary histories, a move intended to level the playing field for women in the workplace. It was one of the first jurisdictions to do so. But the groundbreaking piece of legislation currently being held up as a model for cities around the country would never have been possible without the work of one woman: Letitia James, the city’s public advocate.
“Being underpaid once should not condemn one to a lifetime of inequity.” James said in a statement following the bill’s passage. “[This bill bans] employers from asking about previous salary information, a practice that is known to perpetuate a cycle of wage discrimination. We will never close the wage gap unless we continue to enact proactive policies that promote economic justice and equity.”
James, a longtime supporter of equal rights for New Yorkers, was elected as a member of the city council representing Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, and parts of Bedford Stuyvesant in 2003 and 10 years later was elected to the office of public advocate. She is the first woman of color to hold the prestigious position.
New Yorkers and state officials applauded the bill as a step in the right direction.
The wage gap is a multi-pronged issue. The first prong, and one that is partially addressed by Letitia James’ legislation, is that the wage gap gets worse as women age in the workforce. A study by PayScale, an online compensation data company, collected from 1.6 million user profiles, and it showed that, at age 22, the average salary for a woman is $31,900. For a man, it’s $48,800. Once they reach their late forties, women are only paid $60,000 compared to the $95,000 a man takes in.
But let’s look at it from a bird’s eye view. Across the country women earn approximately 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man. James told A Plus that the gap is even starker for women of color: the wage gaps for Asian, Black, and Hispanic women are 37 cents, 45 cents and 54 cents respectively to a white man’s dollar. The PayScale data also shows salaries are “significantly closer” between men and women who hold the same jobs and that the real disparity is in an opportunity. The study found that “men are 85 percent more likely than women to be VPs or C-Suite Executives by mid-career, and 171 percent more likely to hold those positions late in their career.” This means that men make up the super-majority of higher level (and higher paid) jobs.
The gap exacerbated by “the motherhood penalty.” Women on average end up earning four percent less for every child born or adopted. The opposite happens for men. Men see their incomes rise 6 percent for every child because employers see fathers as more reliable and stable. To make matters worse, this motherhood penalty hits low-income women the hardest. According to sociology professor Michelle J. Budig, “at the very top of the income distribution for women, there is no significant and costly motherhood penalty. In other words, ‘the women who can least afford it, pay the largest proportionate penalty for motherhood.’”
Women are disproportionately represented in fields like nursing, teaching, service jobs (waitressing), and human resources. And these fields are often thought of as “women’s work” and now have their own term: “pink collar jobs.”
“In this society, we devalue women and we devalue the jobs that women perform,” James told A Plus. “Such as caring for elderly individuals, caring for the sick, caring for children, and women who work in the healthcare industry, service-oriented jobs, where women for the most part take care of other individuals. Human services, and because human services, on averages, pay less than individuals in insurance, and in banking, and on Wall Street, women on average are paid less.”
Here is a chart detailing the percentage of women in each field of the top 20 industries where women are the majority from the data from the US Department of Labor:

Even if men and women were paid equally in these female-dominated industries (they aren’t), these jobs are valued less than that of jobs traditionally dominated by men.
Because of the gender pay gap and gender opportunity gap, women fall short with wealth accumulation. Albert Einstein is thought to have said that compound interest is “the most powerful force in the universe.” That is because over time, the returns on an initial investment make their own returns if that money is kept in the market or reinvested.
So basically women aren’t only losing money paycheck to paycheck. They are potentially losing millions of dollars in money earned through savings and investment. According to hypothetical accounting by Sallie Krawcheck at Ellevate Network, women who are paid $85,000 and should be making $110,000 have the potential to lose up to $2.1 million dollars in investment returns, depending on market performance, over the course of a career.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have an extra $2.1 million dollars to retire on or to use for your children’s education?
All of these factors create what is called the feminization of poverty, where women represent a disproportionately high percentage of the world’s poor due to the deprivation of opportunities and wages because of gender bias.
So how can we overcome this issue? Luckily, we have people like Letitia James fighting with us.
By A Plus’ Katie Ward
