Many Believe Women Earn Less, but Few Agree on Why

Over lunch Tuesday at the Arco Plaza downtown, the talk turned to money, sex and the intersection of the two. By and large, women made less money than men--on that, the two colleagues--one male and one female--agreed. They differed, however, on why.

The woman, who works at a Los Angeles County transportation agency, said her experiences in the workplace told her that, when it comes to salary, chromosomes make all the difference.

“It isn’t all gender,” her colleague respectfully countered. He said his wife is one of the best-paid lawyers in her firm. And yet, “she and my sister-in-law have this discussion all the time--that they’re the aggrieved females. . . . Generally at (law) firms the partners treat everybody like slaves. (Women) just tend to personalize it.”

Such was the talk around town on Tuesday, as Angelenos considered the results of a Times computer analysis of census figures that found women’s pay lags behind men’s in Los Angeles County by an average of 29%--and by 31% statewide. The news did not surprise many women, who said they learned long ago about the unfairness of the workaday world.

At the Western Beauty College on Western Avenue, owner Vickie S. Park said The Times’ data only confirmed what she already suspected: that female hairdressers and cosmetologists make just 65 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Before Park opened her school, she spent a decade as a hairdresser at a swank beauty salon in Beverly Hills. The pay inequities she saw there--men who only knew “a little haircut, a little blow dry” but who made more money than better-trained women--made such an impression on her that she decided to include a warning in her curriculum.

“I talk to my students frankly,” she said, describing how she inserts this dose of reality in between lessons on shampooing and manicuring. “I tell them, ‘For men, it’s easier to make money in our field.’ Women have to have triple the experience and triple the technique to be treated the same.”

On the other side of the divide, one man was brave enough to admit that, if not for the experiences of women he knows, he probably wouldn’t spend a moment thinking about gender-based wage discrepancies.

“You don’t hear it talked about much at the Jonathan Club,” said the chief financial officer of a small Los Angeles manufacturing company, who sat eating a sandwich with his wife at the Pacific Financial Center downtown. “It’s not discussed very often at all in ‘male circles.’ ”

Many men said it’s too simplistic to blame only gender for salary inequities. Men just might be more forceful in pursuing pay raises, speculated one man, who said he’d rather not have his name attached to this opinion. Another said women are more likely to make choices that keep their salaries down.

“If you’re aggressive and you hustle, you’re going to do well and it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female,” said Dr. Carey Strom, a gastroenterologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, who considered the Times’ study as he ate a bowl of soup in the hospital coffee shop.

Statewide, the study said, female physicians averaged just 57% of their male counterparts’ earnings. But Strom said a variety of factors, including the length of time in practice, the number of hours worked and a doctor’s specialization could be responsible for salary differences. Moreover, he said, when it comes to rearing children, it is still usually women who opt for the shorter hours, less money and possible career setbacks that can come with parenting.

“How many men do you know who are going to do that?” said Strom.

But though women were widely acknowledged to make such sacrifices to build a family, Jennifer Lambelet, an adult services coordinator at the downtown Central Library, said it is men who often get raises because they have families to support.

According to The Times’ study, female teachers and librarians, as a group, made 74 cents for every dollar made by their male colleagues. But a few years ago, Lambelet said, city librarians--who are mostly women--did a study of their own, comparing their skill level and pay to male-dominated city departments. When they found discrepancies, Lambelet said, city officials explained them by pointing to specific individuals’ situations.

“He supports the family,” Lambelet recalls being told about a male employee. In reference to a lower-paid female employee, an official said, “Oh, she has her husband’s income.”

But, as women will tell you, that’s business as usual in Los Angeles.

“It’s understood,” said a female independent consultant who said she left a job at a large “male-dominated” manufacturing firm in part because of salary inequity. “When you’re training the (male) person to do the job you used to do and you know they’re getting paid a lot more, it’s pretty obvious.”