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WHAT CAUSES THE PAY GAP? The gap of 20 cents on the dollar between men and women working full time and year- round is a statistical fact, though the overall pay gap summarizes a huge diversity of women and life circumstances. The origins of the pay gap are also more complicated than a single cause. From birth, gendered perceptions and expectations mean that boys and girls have different experiences and take different paths through education and training on their way to the workforce. Factors such as race, class, sexual orientation, and disability mean different women have different opportunities and advantages. Once in the workforce, women and men again face gendered perceptions, expectations, and other biases. As a result of the cumulative impact of gendered experiences and biases, women and men participate in the workforce in different ways and are treated differently by employers. As noted above, women's greater educational attainment is helping to shrink the gap overall. Furthermore, unionization exerts a larger positive effect on women's wages than men's, also decreasing the size of the gap (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018c). But the remaining 20 cent pay gap is the result of the cumulative effect of the ways that men's and women's experiences and treatment in the workforce still differ and reduce women's earnings. Men and women may be steered toward different industries and occupations. Sectors and jobs where men tend to work are, on average, better compensated than those where women tend to work. Moreover, due to work and home structures still built around the presumption that women will be primary caretakers, women are more likely to drop out of the workforce temporarily as a result of parenting or other family obligations. Women of color experience outcomes and pay that are worse than would be expected as a result of race and gender separately, suggesting that gendered racism is a distinct contributor to the gap. The remaining gap apart from these factors cannot be explained by other observable characteristics. Many researchers attribute it to direct gender bias and discrimination. THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT THE GENDER PAY GAP 1 Fall 2018 Edition OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION Early in boys' and girls' educational experiences, there are gendered expectations regarding what boys and girls are "good" at or "should" be focusing on. These different expectations, as well as external pressure to conform to stereotypes about gender roles, follow women and men into classes and extracurricular activities, their college majors, and their career directions. In 2017 the U.S. civilian workforce included 160 million full- and part-time employed workers. Of these, 53 percent were men, and 47 percent were women (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018d). But women and men tend to work in different kinds of jobs. Women are disproportionately represented in education, office and administrative support, and health care occupations. Men are disproportionately represented in construction, maintenance and repair, and production and transportation occupations (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018e). Segregation by occupation is a major factor behind the pay gap. Even though a pay gap exists within nearly every occupational field, jobs traditionally associated with men tend to pay better than traditionally female -dominated jobs that require the same level of skill (Hegewisch & Hartmann, 2014). Occupational segregation is facilitated through the practice of "steering" Steering occurs when women are channeled into jobs with lower pay (or lower long-term pay potential) than other similar jobs, based on the AAUW • www.aauw.org A•ly