Noted Wage Gap Between Working Moms and Working Dads in Management Positions

While women have always struggled for equal pay and equal consideration alongside men in the modern workforce, it seems that working moms are at the most significant disadvantage when it comes to reaping a fair salary, and the higher they climb the corporate ladder, the wider the wage gap becomes. A recent study conducted by the Government Accountability Office (as reported in The New York Times) found that on average, mothers working in management positions, whether at large or small companies, earned about 79 cents to each dollar earned by their male colleagues who happened to be fathers. This wage gap reflects some common (and unfortunate) perceptions about working parents.
Having a family can work in favor of the men trying to get ahead in a corporate environment. Having a growing family at home can make a man appear stable and committed. Conversely, a working mother often has both her commitment and her priorities questioned. Congressman Carolyn Maloney of New York summarized the realities of this disparity bluntly to Moneywatch, stating, "When men become fathers, their pay goes up and when women become mothers, their pay goes down." Despite the attention give to gender issues and anti-discrimination policies in the corporate work environment in recent years, the gender wage gap among men and women in business management positions has remained unchanged for more than a decade.
It is perhaps this disparity, and the underlying misconceptions about gender roles and abilities, that causes many women in leadership and executive positions to opt not to, or at least to postpone, having children. In a very real way, there are many industries in which women may feel they genuinely have to choose between advancing in their careers and building a family. The financial services industry, for example, has seen a reduction of more than 300,000 women in its workforce over the past ten years, while the number of men in the same industry has grown by approximately 90,000.
While many women may leave the job market, or work only part time, in order to stay home and raise a family, women who do make the decision to be working mothers (for any number of reasons) deserve to have that choice available to them, and deserve all the rights and rewards of the male colleagues working alongside them.