Texas working women earned 84.8 percent as much as their male counterparts in 2011, slightly less than 85.6 percent the year before but still well above the national median of 82.2 percent and better than in neighboring states, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.
That percentage has generally trended upward in Texas since 1997, the federal bureau said. It was around 83 percent from 2003 to 2009 before climbing sharply in 2010, it said.California women attained the closest wage parity, at 89.9 percent, while female workers in Louisiana had the lowest, 68.7 percent, the survey said. It looks at comparable jobs and is based on a national sample of about 60,000 households covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia.The survey said differences among the states might partly reflect different occupations and industries in each area as well as the age of the labor force. Moreover, comparisons are not adjusted for such factors as educational attainment.While Texas women had a relatively high parity with male counterparts, the actual wages they received -- median weekly earnings of $680 -- ranked fourth from the bottom, tied with Alabama.By comparison, Arizona women earned $741, which was 88.5 percent of what men in the same jobs received.And while Louisiana women ranked lowest in parity, they earned $8 a month more than Texas women.The survey did not try to explain why the wage gap persists nearly 50 years after the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963.While the gap is apparent, the reasons for it remain the subject of controversy, said the authors of an October study by the American Association of University Women.A year after graduating from college, women working full time earn 82 percent of their male counterparts. Some of the discrepancy is explained by the fact that more men go into well-paying fields such as engineering and computer science while many women enter lower-paying professions such as education and social sciences, said the report, "Graduating to a Pay Gap."But that's not the full story, said co-authors Christine Corbett and Catherine Hill. The gap exists even between men and women with the same majors, such as business administration. Women started out at $38,000 while men earned just over $46,000.The pay gap can mean that a woman's student loan debt is a bigger hardship. In 2009, 47 percent of women devoted more than 8 percent of their income to repaying college loans, compared with 38 percent of men."The pay gap has been part of the workplace for so long that it has become simply normal," the report said. "Yet the pay gap has serious ramifications for women and their families throughout their lifetimes."Barry Shlachter, 817-390-7718Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
