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TELL US: How Would You Eliminate Pay Gap for Women?

Pay for women in Boston is better than the rest of New England, but it's still not on par with what men make for the same jobs. Should we pass laws to attack the problem, or is there another solution?

 

The pay gap between men and women—the difference in pay for the same jobs—was front and center in this week's presidential debate. The exchange over equal pay led to the second debate's most memorable quip about "binders full of women." That statement became an instant Internet meme

Slate, meanwhile, has published an interactive map showing how each state and county does with wage inequality. In New England, Suffolk County (Boston and a few surrounding cities) does best. On average, women here are paid 83 cents for every dollar a man earns for the same job.

So where is the worst in New England? Coastal New Hampshire's Rockingham County, where women average 59 cents for every dollar a man in a similar role would earn.

After decades of debate, the needle's barely budged on pay inequality. What can be done? Should the government step in and legislate pay equality? Or should there be more societal pressure on companies? Tell us your ideas in the comments section below.

Related Topics: Pay Gap

Fiscal Conservative

11:09 am on Thursday, October 25, 2012

What I say makes no difference. Start with Mr. President, in DC. The women on HIS White House staff are paid less than the men. He talks about equality in the work place, shouldn't he lead by example? And women fall for all his colorful RHETORIC. He is such a phony, as is EVERY other politician (Frank, Gretchen I'm sure don't agree), BOTH sides. How people can believe anything these people say is beyond me.
Even as bad as it is, it's still way ahead of what is in second place, although the gap is narrowing because of uneducated voters who believe these ELITISTS.

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deb of see-attleboro

12:10 pm on Thursday, October 25, 2012

I don't know what else can be done. There are already laws that prohibit discrimination based on sex. Any more laws will probably just amount to job stimulus for attorneys. Social pressure is the best way to handle bad behavior. Publish the biggest offenders.
The other issue is that with every law passed, there is always unintended consequences. Men will be the preferred candidates because women will be too much trouble. And then there will pressure for quotas. And the beat goes on.

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Fiscal Conservative

1:11 pm on Thursday, October 25, 2012

The answer is quite simple: Eliminate all women from the work force OR all men from the work force. Isn't that simple? The true answer is not that simple. I worked in a field where everyone was paid equally, based on education. I know that is not the case, unfortuately, politicians can cloud the situation even more, when we let them. Deb got it right when she said: "there is always unintended consequences".

Janet Sroczynski

12:44 pm on Thursday, October 25, 2012

Bentley University - @ Deb-of-see-attleboro - read two articles if interested:

1) Bentley University - "Betsy Myers Aims to See More Women in Corner Offices" -Boston Globe article by Kathleen Pierce, Globe correspondent, June 12, 2012. Betsy Myers: Director of Bentley Universities Center for Women and Business; and Bentley student Maggy Reynolds. Quoted in the article: Stephen Delvecchio of PwC.com and Bentley alum. PwC-PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP invested $1 million. Gloria Larson, President of Bentley-has raised $5 million. Read the article, ties to Obama administration cited.

2) http://bostonherald.com/business/general/view/2011_0609_bentleys_gloria_larson_women_stuck_in_place_in_business_world

Source: Boston Herald article by Brendan Lynch on Thursday, June 9, 2011.

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Dave

3:04 pm on Thursday, October 25, 2012

Um, there already is pay equity on the books, you cannot base pay on age, sex, race, religion, etc. There are several laws on the books for this. This article is a gross lie. The 79 cents on the dollar talking point is not unequal pay FOR THE SAME JOB, it is simply all women's salaries thrown into a pot and averaged them compared to all men's salaries thrown into a pot and averaged. It does not account for job type, hours worked, education, etc etc. When those things are accounted for the pay gap disappears almost entirely. This article is completely misleading, just like the talking point. This information is widely available elsewhere.

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Carol Bragg

9:15 pm on Thursday, October 25, 2012

Make pay equity (would need to define what that means) a condition for receiving government contracts and you'd see things change fast. You could also add in no government contracts to companies and institutions that don't have at least 30% women on their boards.

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paul

7:01 am on Friday, October 26, 2012

If you girls want equal pay, do not vote for Scott Brown.

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Dave

7:26 am on Friday, October 26, 2012

Yeah ok Carol. I see you ignored the FACTS I gave you. Stop whining as Hillary told you and work hard, you'll earn just as much as any man. Just don't expect special treatment so you can be home more with your family.

Darren Major

11:56 am on Friday, October 26, 2012

Debunking a new Romney lie :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-morning-plum-romneys-false-scare-story-in-ohio/2012/10/26/5f8edbbc-1f58-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_blog.html

Romney told Ohioans that a major manufacturer is on the verge of moving all its jobs to China — but it isn’t true. Chrysler is looking to build Jeeps in China for the Chinese market, not to move American jobs there. In fairness to Romney, the news story that gave rise to this tale seems to have been sloppily written. But all the relevant facts were in the original article. And in any case, there are no indications the Romney campaign bothered to check out its preferred story before working it into his stump speech.

http://blog.chryslerllc.com/blog.do?id=1932&p=entry

Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation. A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.

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Darren Major

11:59 am on Friday, October 26, 2012

Colin Powell Endorsement
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50133838n

John Sununu embarrassed himself again by insinuating it was raced based - This sickening idea that African American's are just some monolithic entity that only can move in one direction is FOOLISH and I am tired of it.

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