Pay equity stalled in state

NM study finds women still earn less than men

By Denise Tessier 04/23/2008

The paychecks of women in some New Mexico counties have improved slightly over the past five years, but for most of the state, progress has stalled and the wage gap persists, according to a study released Tuesday.

In fact, the 57 cents women get for every dollar men get in Los Alamos County is less than the 59 cents women across the nation earned on every dollar, which is what prompted President John F. Kennedy to sign the Equal Pay Act in 1963.

Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, joined by the author of the study and others, called for immediate action Tuesday to bring women’s paychecks up and at the same time address the overall pay inadequacy, for both men and women, that leads to poverty.

Prepared by the Southwest Women’s Law Center, the study follows up a state pay equity task force report from 2003, which called pay inequity a “compelling problem … unlikely to change without intervention.”

At the press conference, Denish said she personally will:

Urge Gov. Bill Richardson to revisit the 2003 New Mexico Pay Equity Task Force report and use it as a guide to repair problems that still exist.
Ask the N.M. Commission on the Status of Women to develop an award to recognize employers who pay workers fairly, and
Ask the State Procurement Office to use pay equity as a factor in awarding contracts to private businesses.

“This is a New Mexico issue, a national issue, a family issue and a taxpayer issue,” Denish said at Albuquerque’s Frontier Restaurant.

It affects taxpayers, she said, because those who are not paid fairly are forced to seek social services.

The SWLC report analyzed 1999 earnings for all New Mexico counties. Data from 2006, available for seven counties, showed some improvement between 1999 and 2006, particularly in Santa Fe County, said Jane Wishner, executive director and founder of the law center. “But we have a long way to go to eliminate the earnings disparities between men and women,” Wishner said.

Among the results Wishner listed at the press conference:

More than half of the women working full time in 29 of 33 New Mexico counties earn so little they are eligible for food stamps and child care assistance.
In every county but two, women’s poverty rates are higher than men’s. The exceptions are the wealthiest county -- Los Alamos -- and the poorest -- McKinley -- where “the poverty rates for men and women are about the same.” The highest wage gap between men and women is in Los Alamos County, which has the lowest poverty rate in the state. Women there earned only 57 percent of what men earned, “demonstrating that the wage gap cuts across all income levels.”
The bright spot in the state was Santa Fe, where women earned 83 percent of what men earned in 1999, which shot up to 91 percent -- a figure near parity -- in 2006. “Two factors explaining these higher rates appear to be the increase in the minimum wage in Santa Fe and that the state employs many residents of the county,” Wishner said.

Denish said she “had back-and-forth emails” with the governor the morning of the press conference, advising him she would be pushing for a look at the 2003 task force recommendations. She said his response was, “Thanks for the heads up; we’ll work on it.”

She said she will set a meeting with Richardson and “see if we can set priorities and get things in motion.”

Dr. Martha Burk, a noted feminist and senior adviser to Richardson, noted that his program for addressing the pay gap was “the most progressive” among candidates during the governor's presidential campaign.

Overall, the SWLC study showed that women in New Mexico in 2006 earned, on average, 78 percent of what men earned. The gap was even wider for women of color. In 2004, Latinas earned 53 percent, Native American women 55 percent, African-American women 58 percent and Asian-American women 79 percent of what white men earned. Earnings for minority men were also lower than for white men, the report said.

Wishner called on private employers “to develop plans for identifying and eliminating wage disparities in their own workforces.” Her center’s report also calls on state policy makers to develop a long-time strategy for eliminating the gap, focusing particularly on minority workers.

Denish said it took five years of grassroots lobbying “just to pay for the pay equity study.”