As creative as today's employers are in screwing workers, one way in which they are traditionalists is the commitment to always screwing female workers just a little worse than male ones.
A new report from the Retail Action Project finds that women working in retail sales in New York City make an average of $9.77 per hour, while men average $10.64, with an even larger gap in the median wage. Not only that, but 55 percent of men had received a raise and 36 percent had received a promotion compared with 44 percent and 28 percent, respectively, among women. Men were also more likely to receive health benefits and paid time off, though approximately equal numbers received paid sick days. Unsurprisingly, black and Latina women were the worst off, with 53 percent of black women and 77 percent of Latina women making less than $10 per hour.
One of the reasons you often hear to partially explain the wage gap between men and women is that women are concentrated in lower-wage industries. But aside from the questions of whether the industries are lower-wage because they're seen as women's work, or whether women are funneled into lower-wage industries, here we see women making less than men in the same female-dominated type of job in the same city.
The Retail Action Project points out that:
Retail businesses such as Old Navy, Sears, and Toys R Us plan to capitalize on the holidays even further by instituting around-the-clock sale hours. Since women are overrepresented in retail across the country, it is women who will be working extra hours in the lead up to Christmas, for less pay than their male counterparts.
But, as corporate spokespeople assured us around Black Friday, workers are super excited to work around the clock at the holidays. So I guess women are just that much more lucky.