Title: Men Earn More Than Women in More Than 100 Occupations, Study Shows

“Interning at IWPR has given me the chance to analyze firsthand the effects many economic and social policies have on women in the U.S.,” says McCourt School of Public Policy student Stephanie Keller Hudiburg (G’15), co-author of a recent Institute for Women’s Policy Research study on gender income inequality.

SEPTEMBER 2, 2014 A STUDY CO-AUTHORED by a student at the McCourt School of Public Policy shows men earn more than women in most of the 112 occupations for which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes weekly full-time earnings data.

Stephanie Keller Hudiburg (G’15) co-authored the study with Ariane Hegewisch as a research intern withInstitute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), a Washington, D.C.-based organization that researches domestic policy issues affecting women. Hegewisch is the IWPR study director.

IWPR published the study, which also found that women earn less than men in all of the 20 most common occupations for women, earlier this year.

REMAINING BARRIERS

“As the country wrestles with policies that ensure better wages and improved economic security for workers, it is important to consider remaining barriers to entry to higher-paid occupations, the overrepresentation of women in low-paid occupations, and how we value different types of work,” said IWPR President Heidi Hartmann.

The occupation with the largest gender gap is in sales. In securities, commodities, and financial services sales, women’s median weekly earnings of $863 are only 62.1 percent of men’s median weekly earnings of $1,389.

Women working in retail have median earnings of only $485, compared with men, who receive about $719 in weekly earnings.

“Once again, sales occupations, which have great disparities in commissions, are the ones with the highest wage gap,” Hegewisch said. “This is not about choice, but about inequality in access to the jobs with the highest earnings, and lack of transparency in who gets paid what.”

HOUSING RESEARCH

Keller Hudiburg, of St. Louis, Missouri, also recently received an award in the 2014 Case Study Competition hosted by the American Society for Public Administration Center for Accountability & Performance (ASPA-CAP).

She presented her case study analyzing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s efforts to measure its programs and policies at the 2014 ASPA National Conference.

“Having witnessed the impact as well as some of the ongoing challenges [HUD] while working with Community Development Corporations and constituents in Massachusetts, I wanted to get a sense from the 3,000 foot viewpoint of how HUD managed its plethora of programs and assessed its performance,” said Keller Hudiburg, who recently became an ex-officio member of the ASPA-CAP board.

FIRSTHAND ANALYSIS

She said the opportunity to intern at an organization like IWPR is why she enrolled at Georgetown’s newest school.

“Interning at IWPR has given me the chance to analyze firsthand the effects many economic and social policies have on women in the U.S.,” she says. “Having worked in the nonprofit and public sectors before coming to Georgetown, I had many opportunities to see how public policies impacted citizens’ daily lives on the ground but not to quantify or verify the impact I saw.”

The Georgetown student said she came to the McCourt School to gain skills that would allow her to critically analyze available data and gain confident assessing as well as recommending different policy solutions.

“[The school’s] connections to area think tanks and federal agencies have already helped me strengthen these skills and I have only just begun,” she says.