Study Finds Pay Gap at Wal-Mart

Female workers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation’s largest private employer, earned 4.5% to 5.6% less than men doing similar jobs and with similar experience levels between 1996 and 2001, according to a study conducted as part of a federal discrimination lawsuit.

The study, based on an analysis of Wal-Mart payroll data obtained under the litigation, found that among nonsalaried workers, men earned an average of 37 cents an hour more for similar work.

The pay gap widens higher up the management ladder, the report said. It found that male management trainees make an average of $23,175 a year, compared with $22,371 for women trainees.

At the senior vice president level, the average man makes $419,435 a year, the report said, whereas the four women in the position earn an average of $279,772.

Wal-Mart executives, reached late Monday, had not seen the study by Oakland-based statistician Richard Drogin and would not comment. But the company, which employs 1 million people, maintains it does not discriminate on the basis of gender.

Drogin’s report did not compare Wal-Mart’s salary structure with those of other retailers. His study and an analysis of women in management at Wal-Mart and other retailers were submitted to Wal-Mart lawyers Monday by a coalition of six law firms that are pursuing the discrimination suit.

The reports will be used to bolster an attempt to win class-action status for the case, which was filed in federal court in San Francisco in June 2001.

The proposed class -- women hired nationwide since 1999 -- could include more than 1 million current and former employees, making it the largest single job discrimination case in U.S. history.

“Women start out being paid less, and the gap just widens,” said Brad Seligman, executive director of the Impact Fund, an Oakland-based nonprofit legal organization that is pursuing the suit.

“At every level, men get paid more than women, and it does not appear to be explained by anything objective like seniority or anything else that we can identify,” Seligman said. “The only difference is gender.”

Although Wal-Mart has boosted the proportion of women in management, from 1.7% in 1975 to 34.5% in 1999, it still lags behind industry norms, according to the management analysis, which was based on reports the retailers made to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The analysis was conducted by Marc Bendick, a Washington economist and public policy consultant, for the plaintiffs.

Bendick’s report points out that 20 comparable retailers employed a greater average percentage of women in 1975 -- 41.6% -- than Wal-Mart did more than 20 years later.

Today, women make up an average of 56.6% of the management positions at those competitors, the report said.

The management analysis, which compared Wal-Mart with like retailers in 375 labor markets, found that women were underrepresented in management in Wal-Mart in 49 states. The greatest gender gaps were found at Wal-Mart stores in Texas, Florida and California.

The plaintiffs’ reports are based on the analyses of more than 1 million pages of documents, including depositions of Wal-Mart executives, internal corporate memos, government-reported employment demographics and payroll data.