Awareness of Wage Inequality Causes No Action

Most adults in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia are aware of pay inequality. The does not seem to help women get equal pay with men. Recent Census data shows that female workers in the US make at 77% of what men do to perform the same job.

A new Argus Global Monitor poll shows that “About two-thirds respondents in the four nations think women and men are not paid the same salary when working the same job.”

When asked from what you have seen, read or heard, do you think women and men in are paid the same salary when working the same job? The answers across the four nations were similar

*Methodology: Online interviews with 1,004 Canadian adults, 1,005 American adults, 2,001 British adults and 1,009 Australian adults, conducted from Mar. 25 to Apr. 6, 2010.

The results show that most people think  women are much less likely than men to move into top management. A recent study of Fortune 500 by Catalyst confirmed that women have made no progress in their presence on corporate boards during the last five years

The Argus research shows the extent to which opinion matches reality.

Msny female respondents in all countries (between 35% and 48%) believe that women have fewer opportunities than men to become the CEO of a private company or corporation—more than a quarter of men in all countries agree.

There is a great disparity between how men and women view the issue of unequal pay

Over three-in-five women in Australia (68%), Britain (67%), Canada (64%), and the U.S. (61%) agree that there is still much to be done to reach real gender equality in developed nations. Around half of men in each of these countries also agree.

In the US, the harsh numbers for women continue to be found in Census data

For the first quarter of this year, women had median usual weekly earnings of $665, or almost 79 percent of the $844 that men earned.In the first quarter of 2000, women earned about 76 percent of men’s income.

Perhaps a “little less talk, and a little more action”

Douglas A. McIntyre