Hard at Work, Women in the Utah Labor Force

Hard at Work, Women in the Utah Labor Force has been updated on the DWS site into an interactive data visualization. See a snapshot of the visualization below.

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U.S. Women on the Rise as Family Breadwinner

Women are not only more likely to be the primary caregivers in a family. Increasingly, they are primary breadwinners, too.

Four in 10 American households with children under age 18 now include a mother who is either the sole or primary earner for her family, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census and polling data released Wednesday. This share, the highest on record, has quadrupled since 1960.

The shift reflects evolving family dynamics.

For one, it has become more acceptable and expected for married women to join the work force. It is also more common for single women to raise children on their own. Most of the mothers who are chief breadwinners for their families — nearly two-thirds — are single parents. New York Times

Female Labor Supply in the United States

In 1990, U.S. women's labor force participation rate (LFPR) was 74 percent, sixth highest among 22 economically advanced countries. By 2010, it had risen slightly to just over 75 percent, while the LFPR of women in other economically advanced countries had increased substantially, from 67 to nearly 80 percent, on average. As of 2010, U.S. women ranked 17th in LFPR out of these 22 countries.

Unlike the United States, many other of those countries have enacted an array of policies designed to facilitate women's participation in the labor force, and such policies have expanded on average over the last 20 years relative to those of the United States. In Female Labor Supply: Why is the U.S. Falling Behind? (NBER Working Paper No. 18702), authors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn study the role of such policies in explaining the decline in U.S. women's relative position in labor force participation internationally. They also discuss some possible unintended side effects of these policies, including a reliance on part-time employment for women and lower female representation in high-level positions. National Bureau of Economic Research

When women out‐earn men

A new study out of the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business found that if a woman out-earns a potential husband, the two are less likely to get married. Within couples, if a wife's potential income is likely to exceed her husband's, the wife is less likely to be in the labor force, and if she does work, she will probably earn less than her potential. Additionally, if a woman makes more than her husband, she is more likely to take on a greater percentage of domestic work than a woman who makes less than her husband.

Among the millennial generation, attitudes may be shifting to a more supportive model for women to pursue high-paying jobs. Recent research from Stewart Friedman of the Wharton School of Business shows that changing viewpoints among young men and women may be creating a more conducive environment for both genders to share equally in work both inside and outside the home. Deseret News

The benefits of completing college

The Utah Women and Education Initiative has just completed a set of “Benefits of Completing College” At-A Glance Sheets for use in classrooms, churches, families, nonprofits, community groups, etc. The sheets include an Introduction and Overview as well as six one-pagers on the following topics:

• Better Jobs and Higher Pay
• Healthier and Happier Lifestyles
• Confident, Stronger Sense of Self
• Intellectual and Reasoning Abilities
• Parenting
• Society
• Utah Women—Know the Facts  
• General Lesson Plans

Utah Women and Education Initiative

What does she want to be when she grows up?

There is a greatness in girls that's hard to suppress. With a supportive environment, today's girls will become tomorrow's role models, leaders, and captains of industry. Support makes all the difference. Take time today to participate, speak up, and invest.

Empowering girls to be leaders tomorrow is the focus of the Girl Scouts and their partners. Does she imagine she can become whatever she wants to be? Is she growing up in an environment that supports her future success?

Check out this video to shed some light on the state of girls today. To Get Her There

The Gender Pay Gap

April 9, 2013 was Equal Pay Day, and it represents how far into 2013 women must work simply to earn what their male counterparts earned in 2012. Due to the gender pay gap, women earn on average 77 cents for every dollar that their male counterparts earn, and this gap widens for women of color.

For Equal Pay Day 2013, NerdWallet has created this infographic detailing the history of the gender pay gap. We also have compiled a list of cities with the lowest gender pay gaps as well as occupations with the largest and smallest gender pay gap. Nerd Wallet

Utah women outpaced U.S. average in starting businesses

When it comes to starting businesses, women in Utah have shined in the past decade and a half.

The state has an estimated 72,800 women-owned firms, employing 58,300 workers, and those companies are expected to generate $13 billion in sales this year.

More telling, Utah is ranked seventh nationally in the number of firms (73.4 percent) added in the past 16 years and fifth in growth of company revenue (156.7 percent), according to the State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, commissioned by American Express OPEN.

By comparison, the number of women-owned businesses has increased 59 percent nationally since 1997, according to the analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Salt Lake Tribune

Do women avoid salary negotiations?

Past studies have demonstrated that women earn approximately three-quarters of what men earn and that women represent only 2.5 percent of the highest-paid positions at U.S. firms. Researchers have long sought to identify the source of these wage gaps, which might be differences in human capital, workplace practices such as maternal-leave policies, general discrimination, and differences in competitiveness. Some evidence also suggests that men and women differ in the way that they negotiate for wages, and that women are less likely to engage in salary negotiations at all.

In Do Women Avoid Salary Negotiations? Evidence from a Large Scale Natural Field Experiment (NBER Working Paper No. 18511), co-authors Andreas Leibbrandt and John List report on an extensive nine-city field study which involved advertisements for actual administrative-assistant jobs. They find that in responding to these ads, men are more apt to initiate wage negotiations when there is no explicit statement at the outset that wages are negotiable. Men also generally prefer positions for which the "rules of wage determination" are left ambiguous. However, women become more aggressive in negotiating wages when the advertisement explicitly states that wages are negotiable; this erases and even reverses the gender differences. National Bureau of Economic Research

Where Are U.S. Women in 2013?

Women make up more than 50 percent of the U.S. population and more than 49 percent of the workforce, yet they still hold a disproportionately small number of leadership roles in both the public and private sector. At every level of government across America, women are underrepresented. The United States ranks nearly 70th out of 188 countries in terms of women elected to national offices, having dropped down from 57th in November 2004.

While there is room for more research on how women in leadership roles affect policy outcomes, the advancement of women in our workplaces has had clear benefits for our economy and nation. Studies have shown that Fortune 500 corporations with more women on their boards perform better financially and that hedge funds run by women also outperform the industry standard. But right now, of the 1,000 CEOs leading our nation’s largest businesses, only 42—4.2 percent—are women.

Furthermore, women are more likely to work in many of the low-wage, service-sector jobs that underpin much of our economy. Women make up 54 percent of all service-sector workers and77 percent of all education and health-service workers. This includes 80 percent of those in health care and social-assistance jobs, and more than 80 percent of workers in nursing and residential-care facilities. As these occupations are some of the fastest-growing jobs in our economy, it is important to pause and take note of not just the absolute gains women are making in employment, but the ways in which they are being represented and empowered—or disempowered—at every level. Center for American Progress

Women in the Labor Force: A Databook

Over the past 4 decades, women have made notable changes in their labor force activities. Labor force participation is significantly higher among women today than it was in the 1970s, particularly among women with children, and larger shares of women are working full time and year round. In addition, women have increasingly attained higher levels of education: among women ages 25 to 64 who are in the labor force, the proportion with a college degree roughly tripled from 1970 to 2011. Women’s earnings as a proportion of men’s earnings also have grown over time. In 1979, women working full time earned 62 percent of what men did; in 2011, women’s earnings were 82 percent of men’s.

This report presents historical and current labor force and earnings data for women and men from the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a national monthly survey of approximately 60,000 households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Women’s labor force participation rate peaked at 60.0 percent in 1999, following several decades in which women increasingly entered the labor market. In 2011, 58.1 percent of women were in the labor force, down 0.5 percentage point from 2010.

The educational attainment of women ages 25 to 64 in the labor force has risen substantially over the past 40 years. In 2011, 37 percent of these women held college degrees, compared with 11 percent in 1970. About 7 percent of women had less than a high school diploma (that is, did not graduate high school) in 2011, down from 34 percent in 1970.

In 2011, women accounted for 51 percent of all persons employed in management, professional, and related occupations, somewhat more than their share of total employment (47 percent). The share of women in specific occupations within this large category varied. For example, 14 percent of architects and engineers and 34 percent of physicians and surgeons were women, whereas 61 percent of accountants and auditors and 82 percent of elementary and middle school teachers were women.

Women who worked full time in wage and salary jobs had median usual weekly earnings of $684 in 2011. This represented 82 percent of men’s median weekly earnings ($832). Among women, earnings were higher for Asians ($751) and Whites ($703) than for Blacks ($595) and Hispanics ($518). Women’s-to-men’s earnings ratios were higher for Blacks and Hispanics (both 91 percent) than for Whites (82 percent) and Asians (77 percent). Users should note that the comparisons of earnings in this report are on a broad level and do not control for many factors that may be significant in explaining earnings differences.

In 2011, 27 percent of employed women usually worked part time—that is, fewer than 35 hours per week. In comparison, 11 percent of employed men usually worked part time.

To read more of this report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, click here.

What every employee with a family should look for in a company

More than three-fourths of families had at least one person employed in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For these households, what makes a company family friendly?

Kaylie Astin, the founder of FamilyFriendlyWork.org, said that depends on personal preference and priority, but she gave pointers on what to look for to maintain work-life balance.

Flexibility in the workplace allows a parent to be there for children when they need it. Astin said one way to look for this is by seeing how many women work at a particular company.

The company’s willingness to promote women or part-time workers, allowing a parental leave program, and having paid sick leave and elder care are options that help families balance.

While most companies don’t offer on-site childcare, some do offer referral programs that prescreen child care centers for employees. However, it's best not to ask about these benefits found in family friendly companies before being given an offer.


Research before a job interview can be done online. A number of companies, including those on this list by Glassdoor, are rated the best places to work. For 2013, Glassdoor ranked Facebook, McKinsey & Company, Riverbed Technology, Bain & Company and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center the top five.

Astin said to check previous years of ratings because companies don’t apply every year for these kinds of lists. She also recommends talking to other employees once an offer has been made. Ask them questions like, “Does your manager trust you? Does he or she micromanage your work?”

Legally, companies aren’t required to offer employees much for work-life balance. Even the Family and Medical Leave Act, which allows employees 12 workweeks of leave for a birth; placement of adoption or foster care; or caring for a spouse, child or parent with serious health conditions, has exceptions.

Despite the lack of legal obligations, employers who like and want to hire applicants are willing to negotiate more than prospective employees tend to think, Astin said. She said that even if a policy is in the handbook, an employee can still ask the employer to negotiate it. Deseret News

U.S. maternity leave trails other countries, and going away may not mean 'out of the office'

With fewer than 11 percent of working parents in the private industry receiving paid leave when a child is born, America lags behind every other industrial country — and most others, too. And when new moms and dads take leave, they may not be able to leave work at the office. Technology has extended work's reach into homes and nurseries.

The New York Times notes that "when it comes to paid parental leave, the United States is among the least generous in the world, ranking down with the handful of countries that don't offer any paid leave at all, among them Liberia, Suriname and Papua New Guinea."

That doesn't mean that some parents can't take leave at the birth of a child. It has been 20 years since the Family and Medical Leave Act became law. Under its provisions, large employers and public agencies must provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, as well as continue health benefits, for birth or adoption of a child, to care for a spouse, parent or child who is ill or for an individual's own health issues. The provision applies to companies with 50 or more employees and it extends to employees who worked 1,250 or more hours within the previous 12 months.

Considering all the people that don't fit within those parameters and adding in the people who can't afford to take unpaid leave, and close to 40 percent of workers "fall through the cracks," wrote the Times' Tara Siegel Bernard.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates 11 percent of private industry workers have access to paid family leave. The Institute for Women's Policy Research says those most likely to have paid leave are those with higher salaries in managerial or professional jobs at large companies, the newspaper said.
States are looking at other aspects of parental leave having nothing to do with pay, but rather focusing on time off. As an article in The Washington Post emphasized, being on leave doesn't always mean leaving your work behind. Deseret News

Utah women in politics vastly outnumbered

Jennifer Seelig is among a few handfuls of women legislators who are vastly outnumbered by their male counterparts. Half of all the state is female, but fewer than one in five legislators are women. Neighboring Colorado tallies two female legislators to every three men.

Nationally, almost a quarter of state legislators in the United States are women. But the proportion of women in the Utah Legislature is the lowest it has been since 1998. According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, only four states have a smaller female percentage: Alabama, Oklahoma, Louisiana and South Carolina. And no women in Utah hold a statewide or congressional office.

Now, lawmakers and others are working to change that by recruiting female candidates.
Real Women Run, a Utah group dedicated to raising the number of Utah women in politics, urges women to join boards or commissions like Seelig did. The group also holds classes for women interested in running for office.

As a woman and a nurse, Biskupski said, Lockhart brought a new perspective to the House floor. That perspective made Lockhart instrumental, Biskupski said, in passing legislation which allowed midwives to enter homes without a doctor present. "There was so much work that went into it," Biskupski said. "She was instrumental in bringing both sides together."

Lockhart cited what she called Utah's cultural focus on family as a reason that few women in the state run for office.

Lockhart emphasized the importance of networking at local political party gatherings as an important tool in recruiting women.

After serving as a commissioner, Seelig, the House minority leader, said she hesitated for a few months before deciding to vie for a seat in the House. She credits her stints as a commissioner and a common counselor as training grounds that taught her to state her case, listen actively and adjust to the public spotlight. Deseret News

Equal pay for equal work: Gender pay gap smaller in liberal states

Gallup released a study listing the top 10 liberal and conservative states with Alabama coming in as number on the conservative side and the District of Columbia topping the liberal charts. Geographically, liberal states tend to locate on the East and West Coast while conservative ones lean towards the South, Midwest, and Mountain West.

The survey concluded that America is now slightly more liberal and slightly less conservative than it was in 2011. But how do these statistics add up against social issues, in particular, the gender pay gap between men and women?

Research from the American Association of Women (AAUW) showed that in 2011, women earned 23 percent less than their male equivalents on average. In the study, the pay gap calculated in each state by the American Community Survey (ACS) relayed the smallest pay gap within the United States was in the District of Columbia where women earned 90 percent of what men earned in 2011. The largest pay gap was in Wyoming, where women earned only 67 percent of their male counterparts' earnings. Interestingly enough, Wyoming tied second place with North Dakota in the Gallup survey.

Out of the 10 liberal states listed in Gallup, eight states all ranked within the top 25 displaying the smallest pay gaps. On the conservative side of the fence, two states, Nebraska and Arkansas made the top 25 with gaps of 79 percent and 85 percent respectively. The conservative states of Utah, Louisiana, North Dakota, Mississippi, and Idaho, all fell within the bottom end of the survey. With the comparisons present, it is fair enough to say that the Gallup and AAUW/ACS studies both correlate with one another. Higher pay gaps between men and women are more likely to be seen in conservative states in comparison to liberal states. Why?

One major reason can be attributed to demographics.


According to Vice President of Education and Employment of the National Women's Law Center, Fatima Goss Graves, many people who work in Washington work for the federal government where pay gaps tend to be smaller than in private industries. Furthermore, workers in D.C. tend to be younger — age playing a role in determining how small or large pay gap sizes can become.

Senior economist Mike Montgomery for HIS Global Insights also said that states where men and women do similar jobs could have a much narrower gap because opportunities are more equal.

Regardless, gender pay gaps still exist even in areas like the nation's high-ranking capital.

There is the related issue of discerning the type of jobs women and men go into, and at how many work hours. Past studies have shown that when women with familial obligations take those into consideration when concerning their employment. Ironically enough, when it comes to part time work within the United States, women generally out earn-men overall.

Sadly, not every factor can be logistically accounted for and that in it of itself is truly the most problematic. PolicyMic

Women's financial discrimination

The stereotypical problems with women and money, that women are too emotionally attached, can’t save or aren’t willing to take the risk of investment, aren’t true, according to a Slate article.

Being paid less than men, treated differently by financial advisers, and generally spending less than men in miscellaneous spending is true, according to a Gallup survey. Men spend $11 more per day on average than women.

But what can be done about it?

Rather than trying to change the 77 cents per dollar that women make compared to men, figures from 2010, Helaine Olen, writer of the Slate article, suggests the financial services industry give women what they say they want.

Female investors were most concerned with financial assistance that included low and transparent fees, clear explanations of products and advice and no sales pressure, according to a study by a market research firm called Hearts & Wallets.

In 2009, 70 percent of women complained about subpar treatment from financial professionals including “being talked to like an infant” to assumptions that the male half of a couple was the financial decision-maker, according to a Gallup study. Deseret News

Utah's college gender gap shrinking, but state lags behind nation in earning degrees

Utah's higher education gender gap may be shrinking, but the state lags behind the rest of the country in degree attainment, according to two studies released Tuesday by the Utah Women and Education Initiative.

Data was collected to examine the state's progress toward its goal of 66 percent of Utah adults holding a post-secondary degree or certificate by the year 2020. Currently, 43 percent of the state's adult workforce has a degree or certificate.

In a pair of research and policy briefs, officials with the Utah Women and Education Initiative suggest that college enrollment in the state has increased in the past decade but has failed to keep up with the state's overall population growth.

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According to the data, Utah has one of the largest gender gaps for degree earners in the country, and one of the highest percentages of adults who failed to complete their college or university degree. In Utah, 27 percent of adults, mostly women, fall into the "some college, no degree" category, compared with the national average of 20.6 percent.

Currently, enrollment at Utah's colleges and universities is evenly split between male and female students, and women are more successful at completing their programs. But both genders fall behind the national average by more than nine percentage points in terms of graduation, according to the data. Those numbers also do not take into account the number of women who do not pursue a bachelor's degree after completing an associate degree.

Women receive 55 percent of Utah's associate degrees, according to the Utah Women and Education Initiative, but only 47 percent of bachelor's degrees —the lowest percentage of all 50 states.

Female attrition in higher education is a key focus of the Utah Women and Education Initiative. Officials say women in the state are often put in a situation where they feel pressured to choose between continuing and completing their education or beginning a family and supporting their children.


According to the researchers, in order to meet the state's goals for the year 2020 it is necessary for the state to implement strategies encouraging high school graduates to attend college directly after high school, encouraging more men and women to enroll in and graduate from college and also encouraging older adults to return to school and complete their education.

The recommendation is that students begin college directly after high school graduation. Susan Madsen, senior adviser to the Utah Women and Education Initiative said the recommendation is more in response to students who postpone their education for employment after high school and then lose their educational momentum and never return to school. Deseret News

Prepare for Careers

Utahns are doing quite well economically, compared to how slowly residents of other states are clawing their way out of the Great Recession. Or, more accurately, half the state’s working population — the men — are doing well. Imagine how much better things could be if working women were sharing equally in the economic resurgence.

Utah women — who make up a bigger percentage of the workforce than in other states — are paid only 55 cents for every dollar earned by men. That’s dead last — the greatest gender wage inequality in the nation.

Utah also has the nation’s largest education gap between men and women who have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher. The percentage of women holding higher degrees is 6 points below the percentage of men with the same education level. Idaho is next to Utah’s worst-in-the-nation ranking with a gender gap of 2.4 points.Across the nation, women outside Utah are on par or even ahead of their male counterparts in earning bachelor’s degrees. So why are Utah women lagging so far behind?

Utah women too often grow up in a culture that embraces a fantastical image of family life in which women and children are financially supported by the man of the house. Girls are taught that raising children and taking care of a home will be their primary responsibilities, and so they have no need for education to prepare them for good jobs.

But the reality is much different. The Utah Department of Workforce Services reports that:

• Most Utah women who work are married.
• A higher percentage of Utah women work outside the home than the national average.
• Utah has a higher divorce rate than the national average.
• A young woman today can expect to spend more than 30 years in the labor force.
• Most women at one time or another will need to support themselves and/or their families

Even when it becomes apparent that the family needs two incomes, too many women settle for part-time or low-paid menial jobs and end up spending as much time away from their homes as their husbands but earning far less.

Even worse, undertrained women often end up as heads of households after death or divorce and find they are the only breadwinner. Almost a third of households headed by women in Utah have incomes below the poverty level.

Utah women should prepare for careers. In today’s world, they can’t depend on others. Salt Lake Tribune

Utah Women Rewarded for Work in Community

Zions Bank has selected three Utah women to receive its 2012 Smart Women Grants.

The grants are given to recognize women in Utah who excel in categories such as small business start-up and expansion, community development, continuing education and teacher support, child and elderly care, health and human services and arts and culture.

Joan Dixon of Neighbor-2-Neighbor, Heather Fryxell of Movement Mentor Dance Therapy and Julee Smith of Your Community Connection were each given $3,000 during a recent ceremony.

The grant money will cover the cost of stipends for Neighbor-2-Neighbor representatives, who help foster a socially cohesive community. The grant for Movement Mentor Dance Therapy will help expand this free program to more students. And the grant for Your Community Connection will help provide resources such as bus tokens, educational assistance and training, and fees for accessing documents like social security cards and birth certificates, to help victims make the transition to independent, violence-free lives. KSL

Women Earn Less Out of College, but Not for the Reasons You’d Think

Among college graduates one year out of school, women earn 77 percent less than men of similar backgrounds, according to “Graduating to a Pay Gap,” a study by American Association of University Women.

The study compared men and women who graduated in the same major from the same university, with similar work experience and marital statuses.

While the report faults gender discrimination for the difference in wages, it acknowledges that actual instances are hard to track.

Formal complaints of gender discrimination have increased 18 percent in the past 10 years, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Another explanation for the difference in income may be wage negotiation. Women are less likely to negotiate their wage than men, according to the study.

Since disclosing personal salary amounts in an office is taboo, many women might not know they’re earning less, according to Businessweek.

Overall, women earn 82 percent of the salary that men do. That overall gap in income could also be caused by major selection. Majors that tend to earn less are filled by a majority of women.

Education and humanities majors are made up of 81 and 60 percent females, respectively, but more potentially lucrative majors such as computer science and engineering only have 19 and 18 percent.

One effect of the difference in wages between genders could be that women have less money to pay student loans, so they could be burdened with them longer, according to the study. Deseret News