by Kolbe Franklin, Program Assistant
National Women's Law Center
It’s no secret that women earn less than men. As we’ve blogged about before, a report released by the American Association of University Women earlier this year found that female college graduates earn approximately 80 percent of men’s earnings as soon as their first year out of college. However, after 10 years in the workforce this wage gap widens to 69 percent on average.
And now, a new survey has found that this wage gap is not always just the harsh reality that women face upon entering the workforce. Many female students in their last year of college expect to earn less than their male counterparts.
Slightly more than half of the women indicated that they expect to earn $30,000 or less in their first job out of college, compared to 35 percent of men. While 24 percent of men expect to earn $50,000 or more in the upcoming year, only 12 percent of women expect the same. When asked about their expectations for their salaries after three years in the workforce, only 38 percent of women indicated that they expect to earn $50,000 or more, compared to 59 percent of men.
The survey’s compiler, economics professor Charles Wilf, argued that the lowered expectations among women may be more a result of career choices than discrimination. But when the study controlled for career choices, Wilf noted that a gap remained in men’s and women’s expectations, albeit smaller.
The reality of the situation is that women still earn less than men -- and according to this study, their expectations apparently match this outcome. So what’s next? Well, we can start with passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to begin to arm women with the tools they need to fight pay discrimination.
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