Study cites wage gap between the sexes in Nevada

Molly Ball

Thursday, April 22, 2004 | 11:05 a.m.

Women in Nevada earn only 77 cents for each dollar men earn, and minority women earn even less, according to a report released Tuesday by a national women's group.

Compared with women in other states, Nevada women's median earnings of $27,500 rank 31st in the nation, the report noted.

Nationally, the median wage for men is $39,500. The median wage for women is 23.8 percent less, $30,100.

"The perception among some folks is that women have achieved equality with men, but the wage gap is alive and well," said April Shaw, one of the authors of the study.

The report, "Women's Economic Status in the States," was released by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a Washington-based think tank, and quantifies wages by state, gender, race and ethnicity. The study uses data from the 2000 Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which had numbers from 2002.

In terms of the size of the gap between men's and women's wages, Nevada does better than the national average, ranking 17th in the country. Nationally, women make 68 cents for every dollar earned by men.

The biggest disparity in Nevada is between Hispanic women, whose median yearly income is $22,100 -- half the median wage of white men, who collected $44,200.

Similarly, Native American, black and Asian American women in Nevada earn 62 cents for every dollar white men earn, the study showed. White women in Nevada earn 72 percent of white men's salaries.

The problem is that women's jobs tend to be in the service and sales sectors -- the fields that Nevada's economy revolves around, said Jill Winter of the Nevada Women's Lobby in Reno.

"The Nevada economy has a disproportionate number of service and sales jobs, (because) so much of our employment comes in the tourism and hotel and entertainment and casino business," she said.

Sixty-four percent of working women in Nevada are in sales, administrative support and service, compared to 53 percent nationally. These jobs, which are traditionally lower paid than professional or skilled trades, are disproportionately filled by women, Winter said.

"For example, child-care providers are overwhelmingly female, and that is a very low-paying job," she said. Nurses, who also tend to be women, "are highly trained, and many of them have more responsibilities than they used to have, but they are not paid a professional wage."

If Nevada women's wages are low, it's not because of employment practices at Strip megaresorts, said Arte Nathan, senior vice president and chief human resources officer of Wynn Resorts.

"These companies are very sensitive to this issue of diversity and glass ceilings for all members of protected classes," Nathan said.

He rejected the idea that service jobs in casinos were driving Nevada median wages down. For entry-level jobs such as housekeeping and kitchen work, "if you compare the gaming industry as a whole with the same jobs in the rest of America, we pay double or triple what they pay (elsewhere)," he said.

A recent survey commissioned by the industry found that levels of minority participation were actually higher than expected, Nathan said.

"Are women paid less than men in the same positions? No," he said. "If we tend to have minorities and females bunched up in these service jobs, these jobs pay so much money that it's a badge of honor, not a badge of shame."

D. Taylor, local Culinary Union secretary-treasurer, also said it was unfair to blame low wages on the service sector, especially the casino jobs the union represents.

The union's contract guarantees equal pay for equal work to its membership, 60 percent of which is female, said Taylor, the local's top elected official.

The contract also provides benefits for casino workers, but the women's institute's report does not calculate benefits as part of salaries.

"The total package here for people who do (service sector) work is better than anywhere in the United States," he said.

The union's members receive health-care coverage for their entire families, with no out-of-paycheck deductions.

Taylor agreed that minorities and women face obstacles in the workplace. "That's the reason we have strong provisions on discrimination in our contract," as well as training programs to help people advance, he said.

Hispanic women in the workforce are held back by the stereotype that they all work as nannies or maids -- a belief that, sadly, contains some truth, said Sonia Perez, deputy vice president for research at the Washington-based National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group.

"Hispanic women are very heavily concentrated in the lower (paying) sectors of the workforce," she said.

Some of the disparity can be explained by the fact that fewer Hispanic women work, and that Hispanics as a group tend to have less education and work experience than other groups. Hispanics may also speak English less fluently, Perez said.

America's Hispanic population is booming, growing by 58 percent between 1990 and 2000 to become the country's largest minority.

Studies have shown that even educated, experienced Hispanics still earn less, Perez said. "When you account for all the factors, you still see huge gaps. That leads us to believe that discrimination continues to play a role."

Hispanic women are doubly discriminated against--for both their gender and their ethnicity, she said.

The wage gap that all women face has wide-reaching implications for society at large, Winter noted.

"That $27,500 that Nevada women are earning is below what has been established as a living wage for a (single) woman supporting two children," she said, referring to a study by the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada that set the wage at about $30,000.

"That has huge consequences for the children of this state," Winter said. And since $27,500 is the median, half the women in Nevada are earning less than that, she pointed out.

That means they are less likely to have health care for themselves or their children. "So women...have to take time away from work to sit in the emergency room with their child because they couldn't take them to doctor when their earache started, and now it's a crisis," Winter said.

To remedy the disparity between women's and men's income, the report recommends enforcing anti-discrimination laws, increasing recruitment and training for women in male-dominated fields, affirmative action, increased access to health care and parental leave, and raising the minimum wage.

Winter said she supported a recent initiative by the state AFL-CIO to raise Nevada's minimum wage above the federal standard of $5.15 per hour to $6.15.

The Nevada numbers in the national institute's report differ from the national data in one noticeable respect: nationwide, Asian-Americans -- both men and women -- earn more than whites, but in Nevada they earn less. Asian-American men and women in Nevada earn the same median salaries as their black counterparts, the report said.

Experts said this was likely because Asian Americans in Las Vegas are more likely to be recent immigrants and more likely to be in service-sector jobs. The institute's report also shows that the lowest-earning Asians are Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders and Vietnamese, two groups that are well represented in Nevada.

Winter noted that the national report counted only women with full-time, year-round employment, not part-time or seasonal workers or women who are not in the workforce.

In Nevada, 60 percent of women are full-time members of the workforce.

Winter said she did not think the demographics of Nevada had changed significantly since the census was taken, despite the state's explosive growth.

"There are more people here, yeah, but we still have the same structure to the economy, with a significant number of women in lower-paid kinds of jobs," she said.

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