Student Debt Weighs Down Women More. Blame The Wage Gap When Kristine Leighton graduated from a private college five years ago with a degree in hospitality, she owed $75,000 in student loans. Each month, she paid the minimum amount of $450 and lived at home with her parents on Long Island, N.Y.

At first, she was working at a hotel for $10 an hour; money was tight. Even after she got a job in Manhattan making $75,000 a year, she still couldn’t afford to move out. She funneled her earnings into car payments, credit card bills and debt, and a monthly commuter train pass. The loan payments left little extra money for things like an emergency fund.

At one point she upped her monthly student loan payments to around $1,800 for almost a year, in an effort to chip away at her debt as much as she possibly could. To prepare for the future.

“I was trying,” Leighton says. “I had this great job, this great career, but I still couldn’t afford to move out of my parents’ house.”

Women have made gains in the workplace but there’s still a wage gap. Although attending college costs the same for both genders, women are more burdened by student loan debt after graduating. They spend a higher proportion of their salaries on paying off debt because, well, they have lower salaries to work with than men — from the very start.

Women make less than men — even upon first entering the workforce — for a number of reasons. They’re discriminated against. They don’t negotiate. Or they do and are penalized. They also tend to choose fields that pay less, such as social sciences and teaching, instead of engineering and computer science. But after the AAUW controlled for factors such as college major, occupation and average hours worked, the wage gap was still there.

 

Millennials Are Saving, But Men Are Saving More. Here’s Why. Among young adults, a savings gender gap is starting early.

You’ve probably heard that Millennials are doing better than previous generations in saving for retirement—those who landed jobs, anyway. But here’s something you may not have heard so much about: young men are saving significantly more than young women.

That’s the finding from a new Wells Fargo survey on Millennial savings habits, which found that overall 55% of young adults are saving for retirement. But that number disguises a wide gender gap. More than 60% of men are stashing money away, compared with just 50% of women.

“We were surprised to see the gap in this generation, when they have such similar profiles,” said Karen Wimbish, director of retail retirement at Wells Fargo. She points to the relatively few number of women in high-paying positions as a key reason for the disparity. For college-educated Millennial men, the median household income is $77,000, according to the survey; for women, it’s $63,000. (Those figures are similar to 2012 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which found that women ages 20 to 24 earn just 89% the median earnings of their male counterparts.)

Given that difference in pay, it’s not that surprising that 26% of young men manage to save more than 10% of their incomes, compared with just 9% of women. The majority of women surveyed (53%) put away only 1% to 5% of their pay.

For both men and women, debt loads are making it more difficult to save. Some 40% of Millennials say they feel overwhelmed by debt. Nearly half say more than 50% of their pay is going toward debt repayment, and 56% “live from paycheck to paycheck,” the survey reported. The largest payments were owed to credit cards (16% of debt), followed by mortgages (15%), student loans (12%), auto loans (9%), and medical bills (5%).

 

A 2 Percent Pay Raise For M/C Workers Approved Non-unionized state workers with management-confidential status will receive a long-sought 2 percent pay bump, according to a memorandum made public on Friday by the Division of Budget.

According to the memo, the workers will start receiving the payroll adjustment in July. The increase impacts about 12,000 state workers.

State lawmakers last year approved a commission to recommend pay increases for the “M/C” designated workers, who haven’t seen a pay bump since the onset of the financial crisis.

 

Nannies, Housekeepers, Caregivers Had Virtually No Rights—But Key Victories are Changing All That In her new book, Part of the Family? Nannies, Housekeepers, Caregivers and the Battle for Domestic Workers’ Rights, journalist Sheila Bapat explores how it came to be that an entire class of workers were excluded from basiclabor protections. Through vivid storytelling and thorough research, Bapat exposes the working conditions and subjective practices that make policy change necessary. She explains what made victories possible in California,New York and Hawaii and what’s underway in Massachusetts, Illinois and other states where caregivers are organizing themselves and pushing lawmakers to recognize the value of their work.

 

Why women’s pay gap means trouble later in life Fear of becoming an old bag lady is apparently fairly common, even for high-income female workers. It turns out it might not be such an ungrounded worry.

Women are hitting retirement age with lower Social Security benefits than men, as well as less in private savings and less pension income than their male counterparts, according to a new report issued by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D.-Minn., who serves as vice chair of the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee.

The report, which was released to coincide with  “Equal Pay Day,” notes that women older than 65 have annual median retirement income that’s $11,000 below that of men in the same demographic group, thanks partly to the pay gap that finds women earning as little as 77 cents for each $1 earned by a man. While that’s problematic enough, the issue of women’s lower retirement savings is compounded by their greater retirement needs, given women tend to live longer than men and spend more on medical care.

“People often think of this issue in the moment, as in what are you making now, but it’s a cumulative issue,” Klobuchar told CBS MoneyWatch. “When you have a group that isn’t getting that same kind of equal pay, that slows down the entire economy. Two-thirds of families rely on a woman solely or in part for their livelihood.”

 

The Highest-Paid Woman CEO Was Born A Man The CEO in question is named Martine Rothblatt. She founded Sirius Satellite Radio in 1994, as Martin, then had a sex-change operation. Then she founded United Therapeutics in 1996 and has served as its CEO ever since. That $38 million put Ms. Rothblatt a fair ways above the second-highest paid woman CEO on the New York Times’ list, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo. The rest of the 200 with market values over $1 billion, the 189 other CEOs, are men.

 

AAUW Blog: Male Colleague’s Pay Given “Family” Boost over a Mother’s Pay In her first job out of graduate school, Eileen deHaro was paid less than a male colleague because he had a family. Yet so did she.

DeHaro, who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology, helped train this man, who had a bachelor’s in English and a master’s in biology, to do her same job in a university lab. She learned through a conversation with him that he earned 20 percent more than she did. DeHaro took this information to her boss and asked why. She said he told her, “Because he’s a man. He has a family.”

At that time, deHaro said she didn’t consider herself a feminist or an activist, but she was quick to point out the blatant — and illegal — discrimination.

“I said, ‘He has a wife and a dog. I have a husband and a son. Is my son worth less than his dog?’” deHaro recalled.

Then she furiously walked out of his office. The next day, she was called into his office and told, “You’re working out really well. We’re going to give you a raise.” The raise made her salary equivalent to her male co-worker’s.

Though deHaro was able to force her employer to pay her equally, she still lost out on wages she deserved for the time she was underpaid. Her experience is shared by mothers nationwide. It takes almost an extra six months — or until June 12 in 2014 — for working mothers’ wages to catch up with working fathers’ wages from the previous year. Working mothers typically are paid 69 cents for every dollar working fathers are paid.

 

AAUW Blog: Same Job but Less Pay for a Mother When Melissa’s position in city government was eliminated due to a slowdown in new construction, the city offered her a different job. She gladly accepted, without knowing she could negotiate her salary or feeling like she was in the position to do so. She and her husband had a house payment and a 1-year-old son. They needed the income.

Melissa’s salary as the city’s new historic preservation planner was $34,000 a year. She learned that her predecessor had made about 32 percent more, $45,000 a year. Her job — in title and duties — was identical to the job he’d had, but the position description differed slightly.

“They actually rewrote the job description to give it to me like that,” she said. “They told me it was because I didn’t have planning credentials, but I have always wondered if they didn’t rewrite it so they could justify the lower wage.”

 

Pumped up: Breastfeeding mothers fight for rights at work A growing number of lactation discrimination lawsuits highlighting the need for more accommodation and acceptance for nursing mothers in the workplace, advocates say.

Despite overwhelming evidence supporting the health benefits of breastfeeding, “women who choose to continue breastfeeding when they return to the paid workforce face insurmountable obstacles that can make them choose between their jobs and what is in the best interest of their babies,” said New York-based ACLU senior staff attorney Galen Sherwin, who is representing Bockoras.

 

Closing the Pay Gap for Asian-American Women Throughout Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month in May, the Labor Department shared the latest data available on the employment status of AAPI workers. Secretary Perez discussed the overall employment situation for AAPI workers, Deputy Secretary Chris Lu wrote about the importance of education and Assistant Secretary Portia Wu described the challenges of long-term unemployment. There’s another issue that I’d like to discuss, one that this administration – and the Labor Department in particular – has made a top priority: equal pay.

When taken as a whole, AAPI workers have the highest level of earnings compared to other racial and ethnic groups. Half of full-time AAPI workers earned $987 or more per week in 2013, approximately 14 percent higher than the median weekly earnings of white workers.

 

What It’s Like To Be One Of The Only Female Construction Workers In America Patricia Valoy was not the typical worker when she began her apprenticeship at a construction site in college. As a woman of color, she is rare among construction workers: women make up just 2.6 percent of all employees in construction and extraction jobs, and about three-quarters of those women are white, according to a report released by the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) on Wednesday. Hispanic women make up just 0.4 percent of construction workers, while black women are 0.2 percent, and Asian and Native American are each 0.1 percent.

The Department of Labor found that 88 percent of women in construction said they had experienced sexual harassment at work, compared to 25 percent of women in the workforce generally. And, according to NWLC, they “are more likely to be concentrated in office positions…and least likely to be found in more labor intensive positions,” but those office positions pay less.

Valoy did complete her apprenticeship. That makes her unique. The NWLC report notes that women leave these programs at higher rates than men: in four of the five construction jobs that have the most women, more women than men still didn’t complete their programs. Carpenter apprenticeships have a particularly bad track record, with 70 percent of women leaving before the end of their programs, compared to 53 percent of men. The women who leave point to hostile work environments, harassment, and the lack of child care.

Women’s small share of these jobs haven’t been increasing; it’s about where it was three decades ago.

This is not just problematic because women are being locked out of an industry, but because it’s a lucrative one. The median hourly wage for these jobs is nearly $20 an hour. That’s a good deal better than female-dominated jobs like home health aides or childcare workers, who make $10 an hour and $9.38 an hour, respectively. Women in construction also experience a smaller wage gap with their male coworkers: They earn 89 percent of men’s weekly earnings, compared to 82 percent nationwide.

 

Women in hard hats Right now, women make up almost half of the total workforce in the United States but only 2.6 percent of all construction workers. And get this: The share of women in construction has not changed since 1983.

You can read more about the roadblocks facing women in construction and how to increase women’s access to these jobs in our new report, Women in Construction: Still Breaking Ground.

This issue affects women’s wallets, since construction jobs are more likely to pay higher wages than many other fields.

As we note in our report, 88 percent of women face discrimination on construction sites. And before they can even step foot on a site, women must deal with obstacles in career and technical education and apprenticeships.

 

How Much Are Dads Worth in 2014? Find Out How Much Dads Should Be Paid

Dads are officially in flux. And the ongoing changes and shifts in what’s considered masculine is a great conversation to be having.

In the 1950s, a “good dad” was one who brought home the bacon and had his Stepford wife fry it up. Sure maybe he doled out some discipline every now and again when mom uttered the “Just wait til your father gets home!” line, but for the most part work and being a breadwinner was the benchmark of a good dad. But now? Well, things are much different.

Women are the breadwinners in 4 out of 10 families. The number of stay-at-home dads has doubled in the last 25 years. And even working dads are making work/life balance a priority by putting things like flexible scheduling, telecommuting, and paternity leave high on the scale of importance right up there with salary.

And guess what? That  shift shows up in the results of our annual Father’s Day “Dad Salary” survey.

Stay-at-home dads work 59.7 hours a week on household and childcare related tasks. When considering base pay and overtime, they would earn $71,463 per year.

Working dads spend 32.3 hours a week on these chores, and would earn $37,064 per year (in addition to whatever salary they earn in their day jobs).

This year, stay-at-home dads saw a sharp increase in both hours worked and salary earned. Last year, at-home dads logged 55.7 hours and a $67,203 per year salary (increases of 7% and 6% respectively). However, working dads actually spent less time on these chores in 2014. Last year they spent 33.7 hours for a salary of $38,231, which means working dads felt a 3% decrease this year.

 

Got paternity leave? Men value it, but are conflicted by it Most dads think a man should get respect for taking a few days off after his child is born. Many also think the operative phrase there is, “a few days,” a new TODAY survey shows.

Researchers say Americans’ conflicted views over paternity leave are a potent symbol of how tough it is to figure out what it means to be a good man, and a good dad, these days. That became evident two months ago, when New York Mets’ player Daniel Murphy sparked a national debate by taking a few days of paternity leave.

Harrington’s new research, also released Monday, finds that most professional men place an incredible value on paternity leave. Fully 99 percent of the approximately 1,000 well-educated, white-collar dads the center studied said companies should offer paid paternity leave.

Also, 60 percent of the dads, who all had at least one child under age 18, said paternity leave is a very or extremely important consideration when evaluating a new employer.

It’s also further proof that dads are caught between their aspirations to share childcare duties and their responsibility to provide financially.

 

Rural Poverty Increasing According to USDA Two recent USDA reports – Rural America at a Glance, 2013 Edition and Rural Poverty & Well-being – are reporting that rural poverty is increasing. In 2008, the overall rural poverty rate was 15.1 percent; in 2012, the rate increased to 18.1 percent. Poverty among rural children increased to 26.7 percent in 2012. Urban poverty decreased from 14.9 percent in 2010, while urban child poverty decreased from 21.9 percent in 2010. Deep poverty – having cash income below half of the poverty line – was 12.2 percent in 2012 for rural areas and 9.2 percent in urban areas.

 

Student loans emerge as women’s issue and midterm theme among Democrats “It is a one-two punch,” Warren said at a recent news conference. “Women take on big debts to go to college, but they have less money to pay off those debts.” But here’s another number — 82.  That’s the average amount on the dollar that women make their first year out of college, relative to their male counterparts, according to the 2012 report “Graduating to a Pay Gap.” And what that number means for women with student loan debt, who tend to borrow the same amount as men for their education, is that their student loan debt can be even more burdensome.

 

Angelina tops the money list for highest paid Hollywood actresses (but she is the only one to make the top 10 with men included) Hollywood may like to boast of its liberal ideals but it is still a man’s world in many ways, a new study has shown.

Not only are women dramatically under-represented on screen and behind the scenes, but even the most successful female stars are paid significantly less than men.

Last year, of the 10 biggest payments to actors per film, not one went to a woman, according to research cited by the U.S. campaign group Women’s Media Centre.

Quoting analysis by the New York Film Academy of the 2013 earnings of Hollywood’s best paid 10 male and 10 female stars, the study found that while Angelina Jolie was the top-earning actress, she lagged behind all but two of the men in the list.

And while, at $33 million, her pay packet was enormous, it was dwarfed by the highest-earning man – Robert Downey Jr – who earned $75 million