Equal pay for equal work?
According to an article at salon.com, feminists around the country should rejoice that the long-shouted battle cry is won on at least a few professional fronts. According to the article, women and men are now on equal grounds, salary-wise, in three professions: meeting and convention planning; dining room or cafeteria work; and construction trade help, according to statistics compiled by the Census Bureau on hundreds of job categories from its 2000 census. As the article notes: “Each of these fields employs predominantly men, except for meeting planning.”
This is at odds with results from our own industry salary surveys, though. While this year’s numbers aren’t out yet, last year’s Association Executive Compensation & Benefits Survey, which was compiled by the American Society of Association Executives, found that female convention/meeting directors still only earned $60,500, as compared to the male’s $67,125, in 2002.
Or maybe it’s just as association thing? An MPI report released in 2002 didn’t break out gender, but it did say that corporate planners tend to earn better salaries than their counterparts in associations, university, and other institutions. However, those who have taken the risk to go out on their own as independent planners are generally reporting the highest salaries.
P.S. If you want to make more than a guy in the same job, the Census info says you’d have to switch to hazardous waste remediation or telecommunication line installation, which are the only positions where women make more than men holding the same position. Generally speaking, women still earn less than 74 cents for every man-dollar, up from about 59 cents to the buck back in the early 1960s.
P.P.S. If you went to the salon site to read the article and aren’t a subscriber, how did you feel about that ad you have to sit through to get to the article? I found it half fascinating, half irritating. Maybe three-quarters irritating.
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Related Topics: Professional development
