Graduating to-a-pay-gap-the-earnings-of-women-and-men-one-year-after-college-graduation

Graduating to a Pay Gap
The Earnings of Women and Men
One Year after College Graduation

Empowering women since 1881

The Earnings of Women and Men
Christianne Corbett, M.A.
Catherine Hill, Ph.D.

Published by AAUW
1111 Sixteenth St. NW
Washington, DC 20036
www.aauw.org
connect@aauw.org
202.785.7700
Copyright 2012 AAUW
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First printing: October 2012
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012951114
ISBN: 978-1-879922-43-3

021-13 5M 10/12

This report was made possible by

The Mooneen Lecce Giving Circle
This giving circle honors the legacy of Mooneen Lecce, whose passion for the
mission of AAUW continues to inspire volunteerism and charitable giving
dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls.

and

The Eleanor Roosevelt Fund
The generous donors to this fund support all of AAUW’s research initiatives.

Contents
Foreword

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

About the Authors

ix

Executive Summary

1

Chapter 1. Why the Pay Gap Matters

5

Chapter 2. The Pay Gap, One Year after College Graduation

9

Chapter 3. High Student Loan Debt Burden

23

Chapter 4. Narrowing the Pay Gap

27

Appendix. Methodology and Regression Analysis

35

Bibliography

41

Figures
Figure 1: Average Annual Earnings One Year after College Graduation, by Gender

9

Figure 2: Average Annual Earnings One Year after College Graduation,
by Gender and Institution Sector

11

Figure 3: Gender Composition of College Majors

12

Figure 4: College Major Choice, by Gender

13

by Undergraduate Major and Gender

14

Figure 6: Employment Status One Year after College Graduation, by Gender

15

Figure 7: Occupation One Year after College Graduation, by Gender

16

by Occupation and Gender

17

by Hours Worked and Gender

19

Figure 10: The Pay Gap One Year after College Graduation, with and
without Explanatory Variables

20

Figure 11: Student Loan Debt Burden One Year after College Graduation,
by Year and Gender

24

Figure 12: Share of Women and Men with High Student Loan
Debt Burden One Year after College Graduation, by Year

26

Figure 13: Signiﬁcant Coefﬁcients from Regression of Log of Annual
Earnings One Year after College Graduation

37

Foreword
Women are paid significantly less than men are in nearly every occupation. Because pay equity affects
women and their families in all walks of life, it is not surprising that many women consider the issue
important. Many business leaders also believe that pay equity is “good business,” because it improves
morale and productivity. Yet progress in closing the gap between men’s and women’s pay has been slow
and, in recent years, has stagnated.
For more than 130 years, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) has advocated
for gender equity in education and the workplace. During this time, women have gone from a small
minority on college campuses to a majority of the student body. Today, women make up half the workforce, but they continue to earn less than men do throughout their careers.
Why does this gender pay gap persist? This question is a focal point of AAUW’s research and advocacy work. Graduating to a Pay Gap finds that women working full time already earn less than their
male counterparts do just one year after college graduation. Taking a closer look at the data, we find
that women’s choices—college major, occupation, hours at work—do account for part of the pay gap.
But about one-third of the gap remains unexplained, suggesting that bias and discrimination are still
problems in the workplace.
At AAUW, research informs action. As an organization of college-educated women, we believe that
the pay gap among college-educated workers and its ramifications—starting with higher student loan
debt burden immediately after college graduation—are of great importance. AAUW is proud to share
research that you can trust. We hope this report will inspire you to join us in taking action to eliminate the pay gap.

Carolyn H. Garfein
AAUW President

Linda D. Hallman, CAE
AAUW Executive Director

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vii

Acknowledgments
AAUW thanks Robin Henke and Jennie Woo of MPR Associates for their work on the technical
report that provided the basis for the data analysis used in Graduating to a Pay Gap. We thank Matt
Reed from the Project on Student Debt for his thoughtful comments on the student debt portion
of the report. AAUW also recognizes its staff and member leaders for their contributions. Special
appreciation goes to Jill Birdwhistell, chief operating ofﬁcer, for her role in shaping this work; Julie
Smolinski, former research intern, for her work on the report’s ﬁgures; Rebecca Lanning, director of
art, editorial, and media, for managing the editorial process; Beth Pearsall, freelance editor, for editing the report; and Allison VanKanegan, graphic designer, for designing and composing the report.
Finally, AAUW thanks the members of its distinguished research advisory board for their thoughtful comments and guidance: Lauren Asher, Donna Bobbitt-Zeher, Kelvie Comer, Patricia Roos,
Kimberlee Shauman, and Peggy Williams.

About the Authors
Christianne Corbett is a senior researcher at AAUW, where she writes about
gender equity in education and the workplace. She is a co-author of AAUW’s Why
So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (2010) and Where
the Girls Are: The Facts about Gender Equity in Education (2008). Before coming to
AAUW, she worked as a legislative fellow on Capitol Hill and as a mechanical
design engineer in the aerospace industry. Corbett holds a master’s degree in
cultural anthropology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and bachelor’s
degrees in aerospace engineering and government from the University of Notre
Dame.
Catherine Hill is AAUW’s director of research and the co-author of many
AAUW reports, including Crossing the Line: Sexual Harassment at School (2011), Why
So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (2010), and Behind
the Pay Gap (2007). Previously, she was a researcher at the Institute for Women’s
Policy Research and an assistant professor at the University of Virginia. Hill
earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Cornell University and a doctorate in
public policy from Rutgers University.

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ix

Executive Summary
Nearly 50 years after the passage of the Equal
Pay Act of 1963, women continue to earn
less than men do in nearly every occupation.
Because pay is a fundamental part of everyday
life, enabling individuals to support themselves
and their families, the pay gap evokes passionate debate. Although the data confirming the
persistence of the pay gap are incontrovertible,
the reasons behind the gap remain the subject of
controversy. Do women earn less because they
make different choices than men do? Does discrimination play a role? What other issues might
be involved?
Graduating to a Pay Gap explores the pay gap
between male and female college graduates
working full time one year after graduation.
You might expect the pay gap between men and
women in this group of workers of similar age,
education, and family responsibilities to be small
or nonexistent. But in 2009—the most recent
year for which data are available—women one
year out of college who were working full time
earned, on average, just 82 percent of what their
male peers earned. After we control for hours,
occupation, college major, employment sector,

and other factors associated with pay, the pay
gap shrinks but does not disappear. About onethird of the gap cannot be explained by any of
the factors commonly understood to affect earnings, indicating that other factors that are more
difficult to identify—and likely more difficult to
measure—contribute to the pay gap.

Why do women graduate to a pay gap?
Education and occupational differences between
men and women help explain the pay gap.
Explaining or accounting for a portion of the
pay gap simply means that we understand the
effect of certain factors, not that the gender
differences related to those factors are necessarily fair or problem-free. Both discrimination
and cultural gender norms can play a role in the
“explained” portion of the pay gap. With that in
mind, we find that college major is an important
factor driving pay differences. Men are more
likely than women to major in fields like engineering and computer science, which typically
lead to higher-paying jobs. Women are more
likely than men to major in fields like education
and the social sciences, which typically lead to

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lower-paying jobs. But college major is not the
full story. One year after graduation, a pay gap
exists between women and men who majored
in the same field. Among business majors, for
example, women earned just over $38,000, while
men earned just over $45,000. Gender differences in college major only partially explain the
pay gap.
Occupational factors also drive differences in
pay. Although the choice of major is related to
occupation, the relationship is not strict. For
example, male engineering majors are more
likely than their female counterparts to work
as engineers after graduation. Women are more
likely than men to work in business support and
administrative assistance occupations and as
teachers, social services professionals, and nurses
and other health care providers one year after
college graduation. Men are more likely than
women to work in business and management
occupations, computer and physical science
occupations, and as engineers. The jobs that
primarily employ men tend to pay more than the
jobs that primarily employ women.
Differences in the number of hours worked also
affect earnings and contribute to the pay gap.
One year out of college, women in full-time jobs
reported working 43 hours per week on average,
and men in full-time jobs reported working an
average of 45 hours per week. Economic sector
is another part of the equation. Men were more
likely than women to work in higher-paying sectors of the economy.
Yet, when we control for each of these factors,
women still tended to earn less than their male
peers did. Within a number of occupations,
women already earned less than men earned just
one year out of college. Among teachers, for

2


example, women earned 89 percent of what men
earned. In business and management occupations, women earned 86 percent of what men
earned; similarly, in sales occupations, women
earned just 77 percent of what their male peers
earned.
When we compare the earnings of men and
women who reported working the same number
of hours, men earned more than women did. For
example, among those who reported working
40 hours per week, women earned 84 percent of
what men earned. Among those who reported
working 45 hours per week, women’s earnings
were 82 percent of men’s.
Finally, when we control for economic sector,
again men typically earned more than women
did. In the two largest economic sectors—the
for-profit and government sectors—men earned
significantly more than women did one year after
college graduation. Occupation, hours worked,
and economic sector help us understand the pay
gap, but these differences do not fully explain it.

What accounts for the unexplained gap?
Consider a hypothetical pair of graduates—one
man and one woman—from the same university
who majored in the same field. One year later,
both were working full time, the same number
of hours each week, in the same occupation and
sector. Our analysis shows that despite these
similarities, the woman would earn about 7 percent less than the man would earn. Why do
women still earn less than men do after we control for education and employment differences?
Gender discrimination is one potential contributor to the unexplained pay gap. The increasing
numbers of claims filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the millions

of dollars employers pay annually in awards,
settlements, and other legal fees make clear
that gender discrimination remains a serious
problem in American workplaces. Experimental
evidence confirms that many people continue
to hold biases against women in the workplace,
especially those who work in traditionally male
fields. Thus, there are solid reasons to believe
that gender discrimination is a problem in the
workplace.
Yet discrimination is impossible to measure
directly, and many who discriminate—both men
and women—may not be aware that they are
doing so. For all of these reasons, it is likely that
at least part of the unexplained gap results from
discrimination.
Another possible explanation for the unexplained portion of the pay gap is a gender difference in willingness and ability to negotiate
salary. Negotiating a salary can make a difference in earnings, and men are more likely than
women to negotiate their salaries. In part, this
difference may reflect women’s awareness that
employers are likely to view negotiations by men
more favorably than negotiations by women.
Nonetheless, negotiation may account for some
portion of the unexplained gap.

One immediate effect of the pay gap is
high student loan debt burden.
For many young women, the challenge of paying back student loans is their first encounter
with the pay gap. “Student loan debt burden” is
defined as the percentage of earnings devoted
to student loan payments. A high student loan
debt burden is an indicator that repayment may
create hardship. Individuals with high student
loan debt burden are less likely to own a home,
have a car loan, or even make rent payments.

High student loan debt burden is a challenge
for a growing number of college graduates, men
and women alike, but is particularly widespread
among women, in large part because of the pay
gap.
Women and men pay the same amount for their
college degrees, but they often do not reap the
same rewards. Among 2007–08 college graduates, women and men typically borrowed similar amounts to finance their educations, about
$20,000. Because women earn less than men do
after college, student loan repayments make up a
larger part of women’s earnings. In 2009, among
full-time workers repaying their loans one year
after college graduation, nearly half of women
(47 percent) were paying more than 8 percent of
their earnings toward student loan debt compared with 39 percent of men. These numbers
have risen in recent years. In 2001, 38 percent of
women and 31 percent of men in the same situation were paying more than 8 percent of their
earnings toward student loan debt. Among those
with very high student loan debt burden, we
again see a gender difference. In 2009, 20 percent of women and 15 percent of men working
full time and repaying their loans one year after
graduation were paying more than 15 percent of
their earnings toward student loan debt. Women
are more likely than men to have high student
loan debt burden in large part because of the pay
gap.

Recommendations
What can be done about the pay gap? To begin
with, we must publicly recognize it as a problem.
Too often, both women and men dismiss the pay
gap as simply a matter of different choices. But
even women who make the same educational
and occupational choices that men make do not
typically end up with the same earnings.

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Although women cannot avoid the pay gap completely, they can make choices that enhance their
earning potential. A critical first step is paying
attention to the salaries associated with college
majors and occupations and understanding the
long-term financial implications of those decisions. Women can also seek out union jobs and
negotiate salary offers to improve their earnings.
Taken together, these individual choices can help
close the pay gap.
A problem as long-standing and widespread as
the pay gap, however, cannot be solved by the
actions of individual women alone. Employers
and the government have important roles to play.

4


Federal equal pay laws have laid the groundwork,
but new legislation is needed to modernize and
strengthen these laws. Guided by better public
policies, employers can invest in fairer and more
transparent pay systems and be confident that
their competitors are taking similar steps.
The pay gap has been part of the workplace for
so long that it has become simply normal. Yet
the pay gap has serious ramifications for women
and their families throughout their lifetimes.
Graduating to a Pay Gap sheds light on the roots
of the gender pay gap among recent college
graduates and provides recommendations for
what we can do about it.

Chapter 1

Why the Pay Gap Matters
Women earn considerably less money than
men do. Although the earnings of men and
women are more similar today than they were
in 1963 when the Equal Pay Act was signed, a
sizeable gender pay gap remains, and in recent
years, progress in narrowing the gap has stalled
(AAUW, 2012; DeNavas-Walt et al., 2012). In
this report, we explore the reasons behind the
pay gap among a group of similarly situated men
and women at the beginning of their careers.
Using the latest nationally representative data
available, we examine the gender pay gap among
college-educated, full-time workers just one year
after graduation.
The pay gap has far-reaching consequences for
women and their families. According to one estimate, college-educated women working full time
earn more than a half million dollars less than
their male peers do over the course of a lifetime
(Carnevale, Rose, & Cheah, 2011). Having less
money means that women have more limited
choices. The pay gap inﬂuences the neighborhoods in which women live, the educational

opportunities they offer their children, and the
food they put on their tables. The pay gap can
have especially dire consequences for single
mothers, since they are often the only breadwinners for their families.
Because married couples tend to prioritize the
career of the higher-earning spouse, the pay gap
negatively affects married women’s careers in
other ways. Women are more likely than men
to relocate for their spouses’ jobs (McKinnish,
2008), and they are more likely to leave the workforce or reduce their work hours after becoming
parents (AAUW Educational Foundation, 2007).
With each of these decisions, the gap between
men’s and women’s current and future earnings
widens. In the long run, the pay gap contributes
to a higher poverty rate among elderly women,
with 11 percent of elderly women compared with
6 percent of elderly men living in poverty in 2011
(DeNavas-Walt et al., 2012). Overall, the pay gap
makes achieving economic security more difﬁcult for women and their families.

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Do women’s choices explain the pay gap?
Few dispute the existence of the pay gap, but
some argue that it is simply the result of men and
women making different choices. Many studies
have explored this question, including AAUW’s
report Behind the Pay Gap (AAUW Educational
Foundation, 2007). Behind the Pay Gap found
that part of the pay gap is indeed explained by
differences in the jobs men and women hold, the
hours they work, and their education and training, factors that are influenced—although not
solely determined—by individual choices. The
report also found that a portion of the gender
pay gap is not explained by any of the factors
known to affect earnings. Likewise, other studies
of the pay differences between men and women
have been unable to fully explain the pay gap
(Lo Sasso et al., 2011; Broyles, 2009; Black et al.,
2008; Blau & Kahn, 2007, 2006; Bobbitt-Zeher,
2007).
For example, a recent analysis found that specialty accounted for much of the overall gender
difference in the salaries of physician researchers. Women were far less likely to work in higherpaying specialties than men were. But women
still earned an unexplained $13,399 less than
their male colleagues did each year, even after
the authors considered and controlled for factors
that had a significant effect on salary, including
specialty, age, parental status, additional graduate degrees, academic rank, institution type,
grant funding, publications, work hours, and
time spent in research (Jagsi et al., 2012). Similarly, a recent analysis of pay differences between
male and female full-time managers found that
female managers were younger and had less
education than male managers did. But even
after researchers controlled for age, education,
hours worked beyond full time, industry sector,
marital status, and presence of children in the

6


household, female managers still earned just
81 percent of what male managers did, leaving
an unexplained 19 percent pay gap (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2010).
In discussions of the pay gap on television, in
newspapers and magazines, and online, there is
often an underlying assumption that the only
troubling part of the pay gap is the part that is
unexplained. Yet explaining or accounting for
a portion of the pay gap simply means that we
understand how various factors affect earnings,
not that the resulting salary disparities are fair or
desirable. For example, women are more likely
to become teachers, a relatively low-paying job
for a college graduate, while men are more likely
to enter higher-paying fields such as engineering.
Although different job types “explain” part of
the pay gap, cultural and other external factors influence the occupations in which men
and women work. The AAUW report Why So
Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering,
and Mathematics (2010) chronicles some of the
cultural norms and pressures that drive choices
about college major and the type of job pursued
after graduation. Both the explained and the
unexplained portions contribute to the pay gap,
and each points to its own set of solutions for
narrowing that gap.

Discrimination persists in the workplace.
Gender discrimination, overt and subtle, persists
in American workplaces. It occurs when employers and co-workers treat women in a particular
way because they are women rather than on
the basis of individual merit. In 2011 alone, the
federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received more than 28,000
complaints of sex discrimination, an increase
of about 18 percent compared with a decade
earlier. Although the EEOC will not find all of

these cases to have merit, each year millions of
dollars are awarded to individuals who file sex
discrimination claims. Monetary awards for
cases resolved through the EEOC in 2011—not
including monetary benefits obtained through
litigation—totaled just over $145 million (Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission, 2012).

applicants (Moss-Racusin et al., 2012). Since discrimination is difficult to measure directly—and
other factors may be at play—we do not know
how much of the unexplained pay gap is due to
discrimination. But because gender discrimination is so common, it is probably responsible for
at least part of it.

Additional money is awarded each year in
cases that are resolved through the courts. In
one notable case in 2010, a federal jury found
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation liable
for gender discrimination in pay, promotion,
and pregnancy-related matters. Twelve former
Novartis sales representatives were awarded
$3.36 million in compensatory damages, and
5,600 female Novartis sales representatives were
awarded an additional $250 million in punitive
damages (Velez v. Novartis Pharmaceuticals). It is
likely that many more women who face similar
circumstances do not bring charges against their
employers. The millions of dollars awarded each
year as a result of gender discrimination claims
demonstrate that gender discrimination in the
workplace continues to be a significant problem.

Gender discrimination may also play a role in the
explained portion of the pay gap. For example,
an employer who assumes that women prefer
positions traditionally held by women may not
consider them for higher-paying, traditionally
male jobs. An individual’s occupation falls into
the explained portion of the pay gap, but if
employers hire women only for “women’s jobs”
and men only for “men’s jobs,” this portion
of the pay gap is explained, in part, by gender
discrimination. To the extent that women earn
less than men earn because of discrimination, we
have a societal ill in need of a remedy.

Gender discrimination probably accounts for
at least part of the unexplained portion of the
pay gap. A strong body of experimental research
shows that most men and women continue
to hold biases—often unconscious—against
women in the workplace, especially against those
who work in traditionally male fields (AAUW,
2010; Jost et al., 2009; Heilman et al., 2004;
Eagly & Karau, 2002). In a recent experiment,
science faculty members from research-intensive
universities selected a higher starting salary for
male applicants than they did for identically
qualified female applicants for a laboratory manager position. Female and male faculty members
were equally likely to exhibit bias against female

Why focus on recent college graduates?
This report examines the pay gap between
men and women working full time in 2009, just
one year after college graduation in 2007–08.
We limited our analysis to full-time workers to
make a valid comparison of earnings. Because
of the poor labor market in 2009, both men and
women were less likely to be working in a fulltime job one year after graduation (60 percent of
male graduates and 53 percent of female graduates) compared with 2001 (74 percent of male
graduates and 67 percent of female graduates),
the last time these data were gathered (AAUW
Educational Foundation, 2007). Still, the majority of 2007–08 college graduates were working
full time one year after graduation. This analysis
does not include recent graduates who were
unemployed or working part time in 2009. Likewise, it does not address how graduate or profes-

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sional degrees affect earnings or differences in
earnings among college graduates further along
in their careers. We focus solely on earnings
differences among women and men working full
time one year after earning their first bachelor’s
degree.
Analyzing the gender pay gap among college
graduates at the beginning of their careers provides valuable insight. Most are young (23 years
old, on average), are relatively inexperienced in
the workplace, have never been married, and are
not raising children. The broad similarities in the
lives of men and women at this time set the stage
for a solid comparison.
This focus on recent college graduates is also
important because college graduates are an
increasing proportion of the labor force, and this
is especially true for women. In the civilian labor
force in 1970, only 11 percent of women ages
25 to 64 had attended college for at least four
years; in 2010, 36 percent of women in the same
age group were college graduates. In fact, today,
working women between the ages of 25 and 64
are more likely than their male counterparts to
have a college degree (36 percent of women compared with 33 percent of men) (U.S. Department
of Labor, 2011b, table 9). By looking at earnings
differences between men and women working
full time one year after graduating from college,
this report examines the pay gap in an increasingly large segment of the workforce at a time
when gender differences in work experience and
family responsibilities are relatively small.
This report uses descriptive statistics and
regression analysis to describe pay differences
between women and men one year after college
graduation. All gender differences reported in

8


the text and shown in the figures are statistically
significant (p < 0.05, two-tailed t-test) unless
otherwise indicated. Statistics in this report
were calculated using data from the 2008–09
Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study
conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) at the U.S. Department
of Education, unless otherwise noted. This
most recent Baccalaureate and Beyond cohort was
chosen from 2007–08 bachelor’s degree earners
and interviewed in 2009. NCES interviewed,
mostly by telephone or online, approximately
15,000 individuals. This nationally representative sample represents all individuals who earned
their first bachelor’s degree between July 1, 2007,
and June 30, 2008, by age 35 or younger at institutions eligible for federal financial aid (Title
IV-eligible institutions) in the United States and
Puerto Rico. Wherever earnings are reported,
the analysis is restricted to full-time workers,
with the exception of the regression analysis. In
the regression analysis—presented in figures 10
and 13—full-time workers and multiple-job holders were included, and hours worked were held
constant.
The remainder of Graduating to a Pay Gap focuses
on how factors such as college major, occupation, and hours worked affect earnings and the
pay gap among recent college graduates and
provides an estimate of the unexplained portion of the gender pay gap. We also examine
one immediate effect of the pay gap for many
women—high student loan debt burden—and
suggest ways to address that burden, along with
steps that individuals, the government, and
employers can take to eliminate the pay gap. For
a detailed description of our methodology, see
the appendix.

Chapter 2

The Pay Gap, One Year
after College Graduation
One year after college graduation, men and
women have much in common. In 2009, most
women and men who had earned bachelor’s
degrees the year before were young, single, childless, relatively inexperienced in the workplace,
and working full time. We might expect to find
little or no gender pay gap among this group
of workers at the start of their careers. Yet just
one year after college graduation, with their
newly printed degrees in hand, men already earn
more than women do. Women working full time
earned $35,296 on average, while men working
full time earned $42,918 (see figure 1). These
figures represent a female/male earnings ratio of
82 percent, which is slightly higher than it was
in 2001 when, among the same group, women
earned just 80 percent of what their male peers
earned (AAUW Educational Foundation, 2007).

Note: This chart shows average earnings among 2007–08 bachelor’s degree recipients employed
full time in 2009 and excludes graduates older than age 35 at bachelor’s degree completion.
Source: Authors’ analysis of U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education
Statistics, 2008–09 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study data.

Why does a pay gap already exist between the
earnings of men and women who have just graduated from college? In this chapter, we look at
the effect on earnings of gender differences in
factors such as college major, occupation, hours
at work, economic sector, and the presence of

children. Using regression analysis, we then
examine the earnings of women and men after
controlling for all of these factors taken together.

FIGURE 1. Average Annual Earnings One Year
after College Graduation, by Gender
Women

$50,000

Men

82%
$40,000
$30,000

$42,918

xx%= Women’s
earnings as a
percentage of men’s
earnings

$35,296

$20,000
$10,000
0

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Gender differences in education account
for part of the pay gap.
A college degree improves earnings considerably (AAUW, 2012), and this statement is even
more true today than it was in the past (Goldin
& Katz, 2008; Blau & Kahn, 2007). In 2009,
among full-time workers, women with a bachelor’s degree typically earned 161 percent of what
women with just a high school degree earned,
up from 153 percent in 1990 (authors’ analysis of
table 391, Snyder & Dillow, 2011). For men, this
trend is the same.1 According to one estimate,
individuals with a bachelor’s degree earn, on
average, $1 million more over the course of a lifetime than do individuals with just a high school
degree (Carnevale et al., 2010).
But not all college degrees result in equal earnings. How does attending a selective college or
university affect earnings? Do good grades make
a difference? And what is the effect of college
major? Two of these factors have little effect on
the pay gap, whereas the third turns out to make
a considerable difference.
Women and men graduate from similar kinds of
colleges and universities.
For the most part, women and men graduate
from similar types of colleges and universities,2
and the colleges and universities from which
they graduate are similarly selective. Just over
half (52 percent) of 2007–08 college graduates
graduated from “moderately selective” schools,
and nearly half (47 percent) graduated from public universities. Women were more likely than

men to have graduated from colleges (36 percent
of women compared with 29 percent of men)
rather than universities. Men, on the other hand,
were more likely than women to have graduated
from “very selective” colleges or universities (34
percent compared with 30 percent) and from
public universities (51 percent compared with 45
percent). Apart from these differences, men and
women earned their degrees from similar kinds
of institutions.
Earnings one year after graduation varied by
institution type and selectivity, with graduates
of very selective, private universities typically
having higher earnings. Because men and women
generally graduated from institutions of similar
type and selectivity, however, the differences in
earnings based on institution type and selectivity do little to explain the pay gap. In fact, the
pay gap exists within nearly every category of
institution and level of selectivity. Among public
and private college graduates, women earned
81 percent and 86 percent, respectively, of what
men earned one year after graduation. Women
who graduated from public universities earned
86 percent of what their male peers earned. The
pay gap was largest among graduates of private
universities, where women earned just 75 percent
of what men earned (see figure 2). Among graduates of similarly selective schools, women earned
between 81 percent and 84 percent of what men
earned. No matter which type of institution a
woman graduates from or how selective it is, one
year later, chances are good that she is earning
less than the men with whom she graduated.

1
In 2009, median earnings for men ages 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree working full time, year-round were 158 percent of median earnings for men with just a high school degree, up from 147 percent in 1990 (authors’ analysis of table 391, Snyder & Dillow, 2011).
2
A university is defined here as an institution that offers doctoral, four-year, and other degrees. A college is defined as any four-year school
that does not also offer doctoral degrees.

10


FIGURE 2. Average Annual Earnings One Year after College
Graduation, by Gender and Institution Sector
$50,000

Women

75%

Men

$49,699

86%

81%
$41,842

$41,603

$40,000
$37,094

xx%= Women’s
earnings as a
earnings

86%
$38,587

$35,585

$34,100

$33,330

$30,000

$20,000

$10,000

0

Private nonprofit university

Public university

Public college

Private nonprofit college

Note: This chart shows average earnings among 2007–08 bachelor’s degree recipients employed full time in 2009 and excludes graduates older than age 35 at bachelor’s degree completion.
Source: Authors’ analysis of U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2008–09 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study data.

Women and men earn similar grades.

Men and women major in different fields.

Women as a group had a slightly higher grade
point average (3.30 on a 4.0 scale) than did
their male peers (3.18). In 2009, one year out of
college, 19 percent of women compared with
15 percent of men had graduated with a grade
point average of 3.75 or higher. For both men and
women, earnings tend to increase with higher
grades. Still, when we compare men and women
with similar grades, men earned more than
women did, on average, at every level. Academic
achievement does not shed any light on why
women earn less than men do.

Although men and women attended similar
types of colleges and universities and earned
similar grades, they tended to major in different
fields. Despite the dramatic increase in women’s
educational achievements in recent decades,
deep-rooted gender differences remain in field
of study (Zhang, 2008; Bobbitt-Zeher, 2007;
England, Allison, Li, et al., 2007; McDonald
& Thornton, 2007; Charles & Grusky, 2004;
Charles & Bradley, 2002). Research on doctoral
degree recipients, for example, shows that the
proportion of doctoral degrees awarded to

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FIGURE 3. Gender Composition of College Majors
Women
Men
No significant gender
difference in major
composition

Health care fields

88%

Education

81%

Social sciences

63%

Other applied fields1

61%

Humanities

60%

12%

19%

37%

39%

40%

Biological and physical sciences,
science technology, mathematics,
and agricultural sciences2, 3
Business2
Computer and information sciences
Engineering and engineering technology

19%

18%

81%

82%

Note: This chart shows undergraduate majors among 2007–08 bachelor’s degree recipients and excludes graduates older than age 35 at bachelor’s degree completion.
1
Includes architecture, communications, public administration and human services, design and applied arts, law and legal studies, library sciences, and theology and religious vocations.
2
Women and men each make up about half of graduates who majored in these fields. Percentages are not significantly different for men and women (p < 0.05, two-tailed t-test).
3
Although these majors are gender balanced as a group, the representation of women varies substantially among the majors included in this category. Women are more likely than men to major in the
biological sciences, and men are more likely to major in the physical sciences, agricultural sciences, and mathematics (National Science Foundation, 2011, table 5-1).

women has increased dramatically (from 14 percent to 46 percent between 1971 and 2002), but
there has been little change in the fields in which
men and women study (England & Li, 2006).
Because field of study is viewed as a free choice,
many people do not consider the segregation of
men and women into different college majors to
be an issue of equal opportunity. Yet subtle and
overt pressures can drive women and men away
from college majors that are nontraditional for
their gender. The segregation of men and women
into different college majors is a long-standing
phenomenon that persists today.
Among 2007–08 college graduates, young men
and women typically chose different college
majors. Women made up the large majority of

12


graduates in health care fields (88 percent) and
education (81 percent). At the same time, women
were a distinct minority in engineering and
engineering technology (18 percent) and computer and information sciences (19 percent; see
figure 3). Other majors, like business, are more
gender balanced, but most major categories tilt
either male or female. Looked at another way,
about 11 percent of women majored in education compared with only 4 percent of men (see
figure 4). Women were also more likely than men
to major in the social sciences and health care
fields. Business was the most popular major for
both men and women, but it was more popular
for men (27 percent of men and 19 percent of
women majored in business). Men were also
more likely than women to major in three areas:

FIGURE 4. College Major Choice, by Gender
1%

Women

19%

Men

18%

27%

16%

14%

14%

13%2

12%2

11%

4% 2%

Business

Education

General studies and other2, 3

Social sciences

Health care fields

Other applied fields1

Biological and physical sciences,
science technology, mathematics,
and agricultural sciences

Engineering and
engineering technology

Humanities2

10%

9% 2%2

7% 3%2 2%

12%

5%

xx%= Percentage of
degrees awarded
within gender

Computer and
information sciences

Notes: This chart shows undergraduate majors of 2007–08 bachelor’s degree recipients and excludes graduates older than age 35 at bachelor’s degree completion. Percentages may not add up to 100
because of rounding.
1
Includes architecture, communications, public administration and human services, design and applied arts, law and legal studies, library sciences, and theology and religious vocations.
2
Percentages are not significantly different for men and women (p < 0.05, two-tailed t-test).
3
Includes general studies, community and citizenship studies, liberal studies, humanistic studies, multi- and interdisciplinary studies, developmental and remedial education, and others.

science and math, engineering, and computer
and information sciences. Women have made
great inroads into higher levels of education, but
they have done so largely without desegregating
the various fields of study.
Different college majors lead to different earnings. When we look at women’s and men’s
earnings by undergraduate major, clear patterns emerge. Graduates who earned degrees in
female-dominated majors tend to get jobs that
pay less than the jobs held by graduates who
earned degrees in male-dominated majors. For
example, one year after graduation, the average
full-time-employed female social science major
earned just 66 percent of what the average fulltime-employed female engineering or engineering technology major earned ($31,924 compared
with $48,493). Men who majored in a social

science field, likewise, earned just 70 percent of
what men who majored in engineering or engineering technology earned ($38,634 compared
with $55,142; see figure 5).
Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the majors
that offer higher earnings one year after college
are the same majors that provide higher earnings throughout the course of a career. A recent
analysis conducted by Georgetown University’s
Center on Education and the Workforce (Carnevale, Strohl, & Melton, 2011) determined
median salaries for college graduates at all levels
of their careers, combining salaries of workers
from ages 25 to 64 to arrive at one median salary for a specific major. This analysis provides
a sense of the comparative earnings of majors
over the span of a lifetime career. Researchers
found that individuals who majored in science,

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FIGURE 5. Average Annual Earnings One Year after College Graduation,
by Undergraduate Major and Gender
$60,000

$50,000

Men
No significant gender
difference in earnings

$51,296
$48,493

88%

xx%= Women’s
earnings as a
earnings

Women

$55,142

$45,582

$40,000

$45,143
$39,618

$38,634

$38,034

77%

84%

$34,989

$36,208
$33,180

$31,924

$30,000

$31,382

83%

$31,015

87%

$20,000

$10,000

ies
nit
ma
Hu

ed Oth
fie er
lds
*
pli
ap

es
nc
cie
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cia
So

sin
es
Bi
s
ph olo
ys gic
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ien al l a
ma ce t scie nd
ag the ech nce
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ult atic log
ur s, y,
al an
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Ed
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Bu

inf Co
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ma pu
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en

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rin eri
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He
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0

Notes: This chart shows average earnings among 2007–08 bachelor’s degree recipients employed full time in 2009 and excludes graduates older than age 35 at bachelor’s degree completion. In majors with
red and green columns shown, men earned significantly more than women earned. In majors with one blue column shown, there were no significant gender differences in earnings one year after graduation.
*Includes architecture, communications, public administration and human services, design and applied arts, law and legal studies, library sciences, and theology and religious vocations.

engineering, and business tended to be better off
financially, on average, throughout their careers
than those who majored in the liberal arts and
humanities, education, and social work. The
pay differences associated with different college
majors are not trivial. For example, the highestearning major in the Georgetown study (petroleum engineering, with median annual earnings
of $120,000) earned four times as much as the
lowest-earning major (counseling psychology,
with median annual earnings of $29,000).
Yet choice of major explains only part of the
pay gap. As figure 5 shows, even when men and
women choose the same major, women still
often earn less than men do one year after college graduation. Among business majors, women

14


earned just over $38,000, while men earned just
over $45,000. Although earnings for men and
women were similar in some majors, such as
health care fields and education, in others like
engineering and engineering technology, computer and information sciences, and the social
sciences, women earned between 77 percent and
88 percent of what men earned.
Educational factors—primarily gender differences in college major and, to a lesser extent,
differences in college type and selectivity—help
explain a portion of the pay gap. For the most
part, men and women graduate from similar
types of colleges and universities. When we compare the earnings of men and women who graduated from the same kinds of institutions, women

FIGURE 6. Employment Status One Year after College Graduation, by Gender

Women

53%

Men

16%

60%

Full time, one job

Part time, one job

Multiple jobs

15%

12%

Unemployed

12%

8%

8%*

10%

7%*

Out of labor force*

Notes: Excludes graduates older than age 35 at bachelor’s degree completion. Percentages may not add up to 100 for each gender because of rounding.
* Percentages are not significantly different for men and women (p < 0.05, two-tailed t-test).

typically earn less than the men with whom they
graduated. Women earn higher grades in college,
on average, than men do, so academic achievement does not help us understand the pay gap.
The most influential education difference is that
men and women tend to choose different college majors. Traditionally “male” majors tend to
lead to jobs that pay more than jobs associated
with traditionally “female” majors. Yet when we
compare the earnings of men and women who
chose the same major, women still often earn less
than their male peers do one year out of college. Education does affect earnings, but gender
differences in college major and other education
factors do not fully explain the pay gap.

Gender differences in employment also
explain part of the pay gap.
Despite the poor job market in 2009, the large
majority (84 percent) of women and men who
graduated in 2007–08 were employed one year

after graduation (see figure 6). Most graduates
were working full time for one employer, and
this situation was more common for men than
for women (60 percent of men compared with
53 percent of women). Just as with education,
gender differences in employment help explain
part—but not all—of the pay gap. How do
occupation, hours worked, and economic sector
affect the earnings of full-time workers, and how
do women’s earnings compare with men’s earnings when we control for each of these factors?
Women and men tend to work in different
occupations.
One year after graduation, women and men tend
to work in different types of jobs (see figure 7).
Women are more likely than men to work in
business support and administrative assistance
occupations and as teachers, social services
professionals, and nurses and other health care
providers. Men are more likely than women to
work in business and management occupations;

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15

FIGURE 7. Occupation One Year after College Graduation, by Gender
1%1

Women

20%

Men

18%

28%

10%

15%

5%

9%1

8%1

8%1

7%1

7%

7%

15%

2%

1%

Business/management

Other white-collar occupations1, 2

Other health care occupations3

Business support/
administrative assistance
PK–12 educators

Other occupations2

Math, computer, and
physical science occupations

Sales occupations1

Nurses
Social services professionals

Engineers

7%

10%

5% 3% 2%

10%

1%

1%1

xx%= Percentage of male
or female graduates
within a specific
occupation

Life science occupations1

Note: This chart shows occupations among 2007–08 bachelor’s degree recipients employed full time in 2009 and excludes graduates older than age 35 at bachelor’s degree completion.
1
2
See footnotes in appendix, figure 13, for lists of occupations included in the “other white-collar occupations” and “other occupations” categories.
3
Includes health care practitioners and technical occupations (except registered nurses, emergency medical technicians/paramedics, and licensed practical/vocational nurses), and health care support
occupations.

math, computer, and physical science occupations; engineering; and “other,” mainly bluecollar, occupations.
Since men and women tend to major in different
ﬁelds, it may not seem surprising that they often
end up in different occupations. But occupational segregation is a stubborn and persistent
phenomenon that occurs even among students
who graduate with degrees in the same ﬁelds.
Among social science graduates, for example,
men were more likely to work in business or
management occupations (26 percent of men
compared with 11 percent of women), while
women were more likely to work as social services professionals (16 percent of women but
only 6 percent of men), in health care occupations (7 percent of women compared with 1 percent of men), and as PK–12 educators (7 percent

16


of women compared with 2 percent of men).
Among engineering and engineering technology majors, 57 percent of men were working as
engineers compared with 39 percent of women.
In contrast, 20 percent of women who graduated
with an engineering or engineering technology
degree were working in a white-collar occupation other than engineering, science, or business,
compared with 4 percent of men. Other research
has found that female science and business
majors are twice as likely as their male counterparts to enter clerical work. Men in these majors
are more likely to go into management jobs (Joy,
2000, 2006).
Gender differences in occupation translate into
different earnings for men and women. Not only
do men and women tend to work in different
occupations, men tend to work in higher-paying

FIGURE 8. Average Annual Earnings One Year after College Graduation, by Occupation and Gender
Women

$60,000

No significant gender difference
in earnings
xx% Percentage of women in occupation

Men
93%

xx%= Women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s earnings
$55,046

$37,579

54%

$29,069

$30,829

$31,033

68%

51%
46%

36%
$25,998

$20,000

87%

53%
$32,488

$33,434

$36,092

$30,000

$42,244

89%

$38,138

$40,000

$41,648

77%

69%

$48,485

$48,447

78%

$48,120

$30,413

79%

86%

$34,889

83%

$50,000

$10,000

24%
15%

Ot

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tiv up
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es
ss rt/
ist
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ce
ep
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fes
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na
ls
Sa
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oc
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Bu
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sin
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es
ns 3
s/m
an
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em
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cc
up
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ica th
s3
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e o ter
cc , an
up d
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s
En
gin
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0

Notes: This chart shows average earnings among 2007–08 bachelor’s degree recipients employed full time in 2009 and excludes graduates older than age 35 at bachelor’s degree completion. In occupations
with red and green columns shown, men earned significantly more than women. In occupations with one blue column shown, there were no significant gender differences in earnings one year after
graduation.
1
The number of male nurses was too small to meet the reporting standards, so we were unable to test for significant gender differences in earnings among nurses.
2
Includes health care practitioners and technical occupations (except registered nurses, emergency medical technicians/paramedics, and licensed practical/vocational nurses), and health care support
occupations.
3
See footnotes in appendix, figure 13, for lists of occupations included in the “other white-collar occupations” and “other occupations” categories.

“male” jobs, and women tend to work in lowerpaying “female” jobs (Hegewisch et al., 2010; see
figure 8).3 For example, although salaries are high
in engineering, women made up just 15 percent
of recent college graduates working in that field
in 2009. In the not-so-distant past, employers
explicitly assigned “female” jobs lower wages
than “male” jobs simply because women held
them. Inertia in wages and gender ratios within
occupations contributes to the persistence of

lower wages in “female” jobs (England, Allison, &
Wu, 2007; Kim, 1999).
Occupational segregation contributes to the
gender pay gap but cannot explain it completely.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor
(2011a), men earn more than women do in the
vast majority of occupations. Our analysis finds
that in many occupational categories, women
already earn less than men do just one year out

Nursing is a clear exception, with relatively high wages as well as high female representation one year after college graduation. Other
research has indicated that wage growth in some nursing fields is low (Lovell, 2006). Some types of nursing, however, provide relatively high
wages throughout a career.

3

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17

of college. In some fields, the earnings of men
and women were similar, but in no occupational
category did women earn significantly more
than men. Among business support workers
and administrative assistants, for example, men

Do Women Prefer Lower-Paying Jobs?
In a court case against the grocery chain Lucky Stores,
both sides agreed that female store employees earned,
on average, between 76 percent and 82 percent of what
male employees earned due to sex segregation in jobs.
The plaintiffs argued that the differences were the result
of discrimination, while the employer argued that the
differences resulted from women’s and men’s choices.
The plaintiffs said that women were regularly placed in
jobs that paid less than jobs given to male co-workers,
even though there was no significant difference between
their education and experience. Lucky Stores said it
assigned women and men to different jobs because
that’s what the employees preferred. For example, one
manager testified that women were more interested in
cash register work, and men were more interested in
floor work.
Ultimately, the judge ruled that “sex discrimination was
the standard operating procedure at Lucky with respect
to placement, promotion, movement to full-time positions, and the allocation of additional hours” (Stender
v. Lucky Stores, 803 F. Supp. 259, N.D. Cal. 1992). The
case illustrates how discrimination can play a role in the
explained portion of the pay gap when employers mistakenly assume that female employees prefer lower-paid
positions traditionally held by women and—intentionally or not—place men and women into different jobs,
ensuring higher pay for men and lower pay for women.
Occupational segregation is likely affected by both individual choices and discrimination (Blau & Kahn, 2007).

18


and women had similar earnings. Among teachers, however, women earned 89 percent of what
men earned. Likewise, in business and management occupations, women earned 86 percent of
what men did. The two occupational categories
with the largest pay gaps were sales occupations, in which women earned just 77 percent
of what their male peers earned, and “other
occupations,” a category that includes mainly
blue-collar jobs, such as food service, farming,
and construction occupations, in which women
earned just 68 percent of what men did.
Among full-time workers, men report working
more hours than women do.
Although full-time work is typically considered
to be 40 hours per week, full-time workers
reported working considerably different numbers of hours. Some full-time workers reported
working as few as 35 hours a week, and others
reported that they worked more than 50 hours
a week. One year out of college, women in
full-time jobs reported working an average of
43 hours per week; men reported working an
average of 45 hours per week. Half of full-timeemployed men reported working more than 40
hours per week compared with one-third of fulltime-employed women. Yet when we compare
the earnings of men and women who reported
working the same number of hours, men still
earned more than women did (see figure 9).
Among workers who reported working 40 hours
per week, women earned 84 percent of what men
earned. Similarly, among those who reported
working 45 hours per week and those who
reported working 50 hours per week, women
earned just 82 percent of what men earned. Gender differences in hours worked explains part,
but not all, of the gender pay gap.

FIGURE 9. Average Annual Earnings One Year
after College Graduation, by Hours Worked
and Gender
$50,000
$40,000
$30,000

82%

82%
$40,474

$48,445

$46,127

84%

$39,839

$37,617

$34,109

$20,000
$10,000
0

40 hours

45 hours

50 hours

Hours worked per week
Women
Men

xx%= Women’s earnings as a
percentage of men’s earnings

Note: This table shows average earnings among 2007–08 bachelor’s degree recipients employed
full time in 2009 and excludes graduates older than age 35 at bachelor’s degree completion.

Women and men work in different economic
sectors.
Women and men tend to work in somewhat
different parts of the economy. In 2009, among
full-time workers one year after college graduation, the majority of both men and women
worked in the for-profit sector. Men were more
likely than women (70 percent compared with
52 percent) to work in this sector. Women, on
the other hand, were more likely than men to
work in the nonprofit sector (19 percent compared with 7 percent). Compared with their male
peers, women were also more likely to work for
the government (18 percent compared with
13 percent), and less likely to be in the military
(1 percent compared with 3 percent).

Earnings varied by sector, as did pay gaps. Earnings were highest overall in the military and
for-profit sectors. Earnings were highest for
women in the military, where only 1 percent of
women worked. Men’s earnings were high in the
military as well. As a result, there was no pay gap
in the military (average earnings were $44,325).
Men earned significantly more than women
earned in the for-profit and government sectors, where more than three-quarters of recent
college graduates who were working full time
were employed. Among full-time workers in the
for-profit sector, women earned just 80 percent
of what their male counterparts earned ($35,841
compared with $44,638); among government
workers, women earned 86 percent of what their
male colleagues earned ($34,848 compared with
$40,613).4 In the nonprofit sector, as in the military, there was no significant pay gap between
men and women one year after graduation (average earnings were $35,015).
Gender differences in occupation, hours worked,
and employment sector help explain a portion of
the pay gap. One year after graduation, women
typically were working in lower-paying “women’s
jobs,” and men were typically working in higherpaying “men’s jobs.” Men reported working
longer hours than women did and were more
likely to work in the higher-paying for-profit and
military sectors. Yet when we control for each
of these factors, we find that men still tended
to earn more than their female peers earned. In
many occupational categories, women earned
less than their male peers did one year after college graduation. When men and women worked
the same number of hours, men earned more
than women did. When men and women worked
in the same economic sector, men typically

These findings are consistent with other research showing that the pay gap between men and women is wider in the private sector than in
the public sector (Miller, 2009; U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2009).
4

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19

earned more than women earned. Employment
affects earnings, but gender differences in occupation, hours worked, and other employment
factors do not fully explain the pay gap.

FIGURE 10. The Pay Gap One Year after
College Graduation, with and without
Explanatory Variables

Demographics and personal characteristics
do little to explain the pay gap.
A number of demographic factors and personal
characteristics are relevant to earnings but do
little to help explain the pay gap between men
and women. These include race and ethnicity,
geographical location, age, and marital status.
Differences in parenting responsibilities
between mothers and fathers are often cited
as a major factor behind the pay gap. Indeed,
becoming a mother can negatively affect women’s earnings, while becoming a father does not
typically have the same effect (Correll et al.,
2007). Women are more likely than men to leave
the workforce or reduce their work hours after
they have children, thus reducing their earnings (AAUW Educational Foundation, 2007).
Research has found that even among full-time
workers, mothers face an earnings penalty in
the workforce compared with women without
children (Correll et al., 2007).
In this analysis, we examined the pay gap
between men and women at a time in life before
most respondents had children. Among those
who did have children, though, both men and
women earned more than their counterparts
without children. Mothers tended to be older
than other female graduates, which may account
in part for their relatively higher levels of pay.
Not surprisingly, among full-time workers just
one year after college graduation, the pay gap
cannot be explained by motherhood.

20


Women’s average earnings as a percentage
of men’s average earnings

100
80

93%
82%

60
40
20
0

Pay gap overall
among college
graduates

Pay gap among
college graduates
after controlling
for factors found
to affect earnings

Notes: The chart shows the pay gap among 2007–08 bachelor’s degree recipients in 2009. The
column on the left shows the pay gap among all bachelor’s degree recipients working full-time one
year after college graduation. The column on the right shows the pay gap among bachelor’s degree
recipients working full time or in multiple jobs after controlling for factors found to affect earnings.
Factors controlled for include occupation, economic sector, hours worked per week, multiple jobs,
months unemployed since graduation, undergraduate GPA, undergraduate major, undergraduate
institution sector, institution selectivity, age, region of residence, and marital status. This analysis
excludes graduates older than age 35 at bachelor’s degree completion.

One-third of the pay gap is unexplained.
Although education and employment factors
explain a substantial part of the pay gap, they do
not explain it in its entirety. Regression analysis
allows us to analyze the effect of multiple factors
on earnings at the same time. One might expect
that when you compare men and women with
the same major, who attended the same type of
institution and worked the same hours in the
same job in the same economic sector, the pay
gap would disappear. But this is not what our
analysis shows. Our regression analysis ﬁnds
that just over one-third of the pay gap cannot
be explained by any of these factors and appears

to be attributable to gender alone. That is, after
we controlled for all the factors included in our
analysis that we found to affect earnings, collegeeducated women working full time earned an
unexplained 7 percent less than their male peers
did one year out of college (see figure 10; see also
figure 13 in the appendix).

One year out of college, the pay gap is
already established.
Women and men who earned bachelor’s degrees
in 2007–08 attended similar kinds of colleges.
On average, women earned slightly higher grades.

Most women and men entered full-time employment after graduation. Yet one year later, women
working full time earned only 82 percent of what
their male colleagues earned. Gender segregation in undergraduate majors and the subsequent
segregation of the workforce partly explain the
pay gap, but a pay gap also exists within fields of
study and occupations. Indeed, after accounting
for factors known to affect wages, about onethird of the gap remains unexplained. In 2009,
among full-time workers one year after college
graduation, women earned an unexplained
7 percent less than men did.

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Chapter 3

High Student Loan Debt Burden
For many female college graduates, an immediate outcome of the pay gap is high student loan
debt burden. “Student loan debt burden” is
defined as the percentage of earnings devoted to
student loan payments.5 A high student loan debt
burden is an indicator that repayment may create hardship. Graduates with a high student loan
debt burden are less likely to buy a home, get a
car loan, or even make rent payments (Choy &
Li, 2005). Most research indicates that a college
degree pays for itself over time. But as college costs rise and more students borrow more
money to finance their education, a surprisingly
large and growing percentage of students—especially women—are graduating with high levels of
student loan debt burden.
Student loan debt affects both men and women,
but it is especially onerous for many women.

Among 2007–08 college graduates, women
and men typically borrowed similar amounts
of money to finance their educations—about
$20,000.6 The median monthly student loan
payment for both men and women one year after
graduation was just over $200. Repaying student
loans is likely to present a hardship for more
women than men for two reasons. First and
foremost, women earn less than men earn one
year after graduation. Because women earn less,
student loan repayments make up a larger portion of their earnings. Second, more women have
student loan debt, in part because they are more
likely to go to college than men are. In 2007–08,
women earned 57 percent of the bachelor’s
degrees awarded. Women are also more likely
than men to borrow money for school: Among
2007–08 college graduates, 68 percent of women
borrowed money for college compared with

5
The shorter term “debt burden” has also been used to describe student loan payment as a percentage of earnings (see American Council on
Education, 2004). Here, we use “student loan debt burden” to emphasize that the debt burden to which we refer is only the debt burden
related to loans from public and private sources (excluding family and friends) to pay for undergraduate education. Many recent graduates
carry other types of debt. Student loan debt is only a part of the debt picture for many graduates.
6
We present the median amount borrowed because it indicates the amount a typical student borrows. Half of borrowers borrowed more than
$20,000, and half borrowed less. The mean, or average, amount borrowed is also a useful measure. The mean is influenced by those who borrow very high amounts; therefore, it may give an inflated sense of the amount students typically borrow. In terms of averages, college students
borrowed around $24,000 to pay for college, and women borrowed slightly more than men did.

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63 percent of men. Because of these factors, high
student loan debt burden is a particularly widespread problem among women.

FIGURE 11. Student Loan Debt Burden One Year
after College Graduation, by Year and Gender
100%

Higher percentages of recent college graduates—especially women—were paying a sizeable
portion of their earnings toward student loan
debt in 2009 than in 2001. Among full-time
workers who were repaying their loans in 2009,
nearly half (47 percent) of women one year after
college graduation were paying more than 8 percent of their earnings toward student loan debt,
compared with 38 percent in 2001. Among men,
39 percent were devoting more than 8 percent of
their earnings toward student loan debt in 2009,
compared with 31 percent in 2001. Among those
with very high student loan debt burden, we
again see a gender difference. In 2009, one year
out of college, 20 percent of women working full
time and repaying their loans were paying more
than 15 percent of their earnings toward student
loan debt, compared with 15 percent of men (see
ﬁgure 11).
How much student loan debt is too much? For
many years, analyses of student debt considered a student loan debt burden of 8 percent
or less (i.e., paying 8 percent or less of one’s
earnings toward student loan debt) manageable
and anything more than 8 percent unmanageable (Greiner, 1996; Scherschel, 1998; American
Council on Education, 2004). More recent
analysis suggests that there is no single percentage beyond which student loan debt is unmanageable, as borrowers with higher earnings can
afford to devote a higher proportion of their
earnings to debt repayment without sacriﬁcing
basic expenditures (Baum & Schwartz, 2006).

24


8%1

11%1, 2

23%

28%2

80%

60%

15%

20%

24%1
27%1

69%
62%

61%
53%

40%

20%

0%

Men

Women

Men

2001

Women
2009

Share of earnings devoted to student loan payments
More than 15%

9–15%

1–8%

Notes: Student loan debt burden is the percentage of earnings devoted to student loan payments.
This chart shows student loan debt burden among 1999–2000 and 2007–08 bachelor’s degree
recipients who were making non-zero payments on their student loans and were employed full
time one year after graduation. This analysis excludes graduates older than age 35 at bachelor’s
degree completion. Percentages may not add up to 100 because of rounding.
Statistics, 2000–01 and 2008–09 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study data.
1
2
Before rounding, these numbers add up to 38 percent.

For a typical recent graduate, however, the 8 percent guideline provides a fairly close estimate
of manageable student loan debt burden. We
estimate that a typical woman working full
time one year after college graduation in 2009
could reasonably afford to devote 7.8 percent
of her $33,753 annual earnings to student loan
payments. We estimate that her typical male
counterpart, who made $39,985 a year, could
reasonably afford to devote 8.9 percent of his
earnings to student loan payments. In 2001, the
comparable numbers were 9.5 percent for men

Estimating Manageable Student Loan Debt Burden for a Typical Man or Woman
When estimating manageable student loan debt burden
(MSLDB), we based our calculation on the formula the
U.S. federal government uses to determine eligibility
for federal student loan payment reductions through the
Income Based Repayment (IBR) program (U.S. Department
of Education, Federal Student Aid, 2012). IBR currently
sets the threshold for eligibility at 15 percent of discretionary income, where discretionary income is income minus
150 percent of the federal poverty level. IBR’s threshold
for eligibility is soon scheduled to drop to 10 percent of
discretionary income. IBR considers only federal student
loans when determining eligibility for loan payment
reductions; we considered not only federal student loans
but also student loans from private sources, states, and
colleges and universities. Among 2007–08 graduates,
federal loans made up about 70 percent of the total student
loan amount borrowed by a typical borrower. Because we
consider nonfederal as well as federal loans, we approximate MSLDB using 15 percent of discretionary income
rather than the 10 percent of discretionary income to which
IBR’s threshold is soon scheduled to drop.

We used median earnings to provide an estimate of manageable student loan debt burden for a “typical” man and a
“typical” woman one year after college graduation.

Our formula is
MSLDB = Maximum Reasonable Annual Student Loan
Payment (MRASLP)/Annual Earnings, where MRASLP =
15% [Annual Earnings – 150% (poverty level)].

For poverty guidelines by year and household size, see
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2012).

and 8.5 percent for women. (See the sidebar for
a description of the method we used to estimate
manageable student loan debt burden.)
This analysis takes a conservative approach in
estimating debt burden among recent student
loan borrowers. For one thing, we look only at
student loan debt. Many recent college gradu-

In 2009, for individuals working full time with a family size
of one and who lived in the 48 contiguous United States or
Washington, D.C., one year after college graduation,
MSLDB for a typical man =
15% [$39,985 – 150%($10,830)]/$39,985 = 8.9%
MSLDB for a typical woman =
15% [$33,753 – 150%($10,830)]/$33,753 = 7.8%
In 2001, for individuals working full time with a family size
of one and who lived in the 48 contiguous United States or
Washington, D.C., one year after college graduation,
MSLDB for a typical man =
15% [$35,000 – 150%($8,590)]/$35,000 = 9.5%
MSLDB for a typical woman =
15% [$29,900 – 150%($8,590)]/$29,900 = 8.5%.

ates also have other forms of debt, such as credit
card debt and car loans. Second, we include only
payments on student loans obtained from the
federal government, states, colleges, universities,
banks, and other private lenders. In addition to
these student loans, some recent graduates have
borrowed money for college from family and
friends, and these loans are not included. Many

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FIGURE 12. Share of Women and Men with
High Student Loan Debt Burden One Year after
College Graduation, by Year
Women

60%

Men

50%

53%

40%
38%

39%

30%
20%

27%

10%
0%

2001

before finishing their degrees (Nguyen, 2012) or
who graduated but were either unemployed or
working part time one year after graduation.
Among full-time workers repaying their loans
one year after college graduation in 2009, just
over half of women (53 percent) and 39 percent
of men were paying a greater percentage of their
earnings toward student loan debt than what we
estimate a typical woman or man could reasonably afford to pay. By comparison, in 2001, 38
percent of women and just over one in four men
(27 percent) in the same group were paying a
greater percentage of their earnings toward student loan debt than was affordable for a typical
woman or man (see figure 12).7

2009

Notes: Student loan debt burden is the percentage of earnings devoted to student loan
payments.This chart shows the share of 1999–2000 and 2007–08 bachelor’s degree recipients
working full time and making non-zero payments on their student loans one year after graduation
who were paying a higher proportion of their earnings toward student loan debts than a typical
individual could reasonably afford. We estimate that, in 2009, a typical man could reasonably
afford to devote 8.9 percent of his earnings to student loan payments, and a typical woman could
reasonably afford to devote 7.8 percent of her earnings to student loan payments. In 2001, those
percentages are estimated at 9.5 percent and 8.5 percent for men and women, respectively. This
analysis excludes graduates older than age 35 at bachelor’s degree completion.
Statistics, 2000–01 and 2008–09 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study data.

parents have also borrowed money to finance
their children’s education. Our analysis does not
include payments on any of these other debts.
Finally, this analysis includes only students who
completed their bachelor’s degrees and were
working full time one year after graduation.
Student loan debt often causes even greater
difficulty for those who dropped out of college

An increasingly large proportion of men and
women are experiencing high student loan debt
burden one year after college graduation. This
analysis understates the full magnitude of the
overall debt problem among recent college graduates because it considers only student loan debt
among those working full time one year after
college graduation. Assessing the full magnitude
of the debt problem among recent college graduates is a subject for another study. Here, we show
that even when we look only at student loan debt
facing recent college graduates fortunate enough
to be working full time, we have a significant and
growing problem. Women are especially likely
to have high student loan debt burden, largely
because of the pay gap.

Not all recent graduates paying a high percentage of their earnings toward student loan debt were necessarily experiencing economic hardship. Some of those with a high student loan debt burden may have been earning more money than is typical and, therefore, could more easily devote a higher percentage of their earnings toward student loan debt. Likewise, some of those with a high student loan debt burden may
have had other resources to lessen the actual burden of the debt. Still, the gender difference in percentages of men and women who were
paying more than was typically affordable is noteworthy. Similarly, figures 11 and 12 both illustrate that student loan payments constitute a
sizeable portion of more college graduates’ budgets in 2009 than in 2001.

7

26


Chapter 4

Narrowing the Pay Gap
Remedies for the pay gap have been put forward,
but implementation remains slow and not always
steady. What can employers, public policy makers, and individuals do to narrow the pay gap?

Employers’ pay policies have far-reaching
consequences.
Employers have a great deal of discretion in pay
decisions. Recent research shows that managers
may substitute procedural fairness for actual fair
pay for women, consciously or unconsciously
creating and maintaining the pay gap (Belliveau,
2012). Many supervisors make decisions about
hiring, pay, and promotion with little guidance.
As long as employers do not discriminate on the
basis of characteristics such as gender, race, and
age and follow the minimum wage rules, they
are free to offer as much or as little as they like.
Employees rarely know if they are paid fairly
because they do not know what their colleagues
or others in the industry earn.

Make pay systems transparent.
Nearly half of all workers nationally are either
forbidden or strongly discouraged from discussing their pay with colleagues. Pay secrecy is
much more common in the private sector, where
61 percent of employees are either discouraged
or prohibited from discussing wage and salary
information. Only 14 percent of public-sector
employees are discouraged or prohibited from
discussing pay (Hegewisch et al., 2011).
This greater transparency may be related to the
greater gender pay equity found in the public
sector, including the federal government. A
recent report found that among federal workers,
women earned 89 percent of what men earned,
compared with 78 percent in the workforce as a
whole (U.S. Government Accountability Ofﬁce,
2009). Federal workers can easily see how their
salaries compare with those of others at their
grade level and geographic location because the
U.S. Ofﬁce of Personnel Management makes

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public the salary and wage range for each level
of federal worker and additional locality pay
for areas where the cost of living is higher. This
information is easily accessible on the Internet
(www.opm.gov/oca/12tables/indexGS.asp).
Increased transparency about pay can also
increase job satisfaction among employees.
Transparency does not mean that everyone must
know everyone else’s salary. Rather, simply by
making salary ranges for specific job titles available to all employees, employers provide workers
with information that puts wages in context and
helps them assess the fairness of their earnings.
Employers may be hesitant to provide salary
ranges for fear that many employees will ask for
more money. Transparency in pay scales increases
a sense of fairness among workers, however, and
evidence indicates that employees’ performance
and morale are better when they believe their
employer is fair (Kim, 2009; Cohen-Charash &
Spector, 2001; Colquitt et al., 2001).
Conduct a pay equity study.
In addition to increasing transparency in pay
systems, employers can create fair workplaces
by assessing the pay gap within their organizations and taking steps to address any gender pay
differences they find. The state of Minnesota
provides a good example. Public-sector employers in Minnesota are required to conduct a pay
equity study every few years and eliminate pay
disparities between female-dominated and maledominated jobs that require comparable levels of
expertise. Employers use a job evaluation tool to
compare the complexity of issues encountered,
the depth and breadth of knowledge needed,
the nature of interpersonal contacts required,
and the physical working conditions. This allows
employers to identify jobs—for example, deliv-

28


ery van drivers and clerk typists—that, despite
being different, require similar levels of knowledge and responsibility. An analysis then compares wages for predominantly female jobs with
those of predominantly male jobs of comparable
skill levels. If the results show that women are
consistently paid less than men are paid for
jobs requiring similar levels of knowledge and
responsibility, the employer makes the necessary
salary adjustments (Minnesota Management and
Budget, 2012).

Good public policies are critical to pay
equity.
The government has a role to play in both eliminating the pay gap and alleviating the burden
of student loan debt. As we describe in chapter
3, women are more likely to experience high
student loan debt burden, largely because of the
pay gap. What can the government do to help
reduce student loan debt burden and narrow the
pay gap?
Address the burden of student loan debt.
Protect Pell grants. One way to help slow the
growing burden of higher education debt is to
protect and fund the federal Pell Grant Program,
which provides financial assistance to students
with demonstrated need. Since Pell grants are,
as the name implies, grants and not loans, they
do not add to student loan debt and help reduce
the need to borrow. Despite relatively recent
increases in the maximum grant, its current
purchasing power is the lowest in the grant’s
history: less than one-third of what it costs to
attend a public four-year college or university as
an in-state student. AAUW supports increasing
grant levels and ensuring that eligibility for Pell
grants is not eroded.

Ensure that borrowers are well informed. For
students who must borrow to finance their education, Congress can take action to ensure that
they are well informed about their borrowing
options. It is critical that students exhaust their
federal grant and loan options before taking on
risky private student loans. Private student loans
typically have uncapped variable rates that are
highest for those with the weakest credit histories. Even fixed-rate private loans usually set
higher rates for those who can least afford them.
Private loans also lack the consumer protections and flexible repayment options that come
with federal student loans. Borrowers may only
realize the unfavorable terms that accompany
private loans when they enter repayment or hit
hard times.
Although the annual volume of new private loans
has declined substantially from the 2007–08
peak, students are still taking out billions of
dollars in new private loans every year. At some
colleges, private loans—despite being one of
the riskiest ways to pay for college—account
for a majority of their graduates’ debt (Project
on Student Debt, 2011b). About half of students
who took out private student loans in 2007–08
could have borrowed more in federal student
loans than they actually did (Project on Student
Debt, 2011a). A bill before Congress, the Know
Before You Owe Act, would require students to
be counseled on federal aid eligibility as well as
the different terms and conditions of federal and
private student loans before the lender issues a
private loan. This type of disclosure is important
for helping students make the most informed
decisions when they must borrow.
Increase awareness of student loan relief
programs. The U.S. Department of Education’s
Income-Based Repayment (IBR) program is an

important, underused tool that provides relief
for college graduates with high student loan debt
burden. IBR caps federal student loan payments
at a manageable level—as low as $0—based on
an individual’s income and family size. It also
provides a light at the end of the tunnel for
those who are seriously overburdened by student loan debt by forgiving any remaining debt
after 25 years of payments (or as few as 10 years
if an individual works for a public or nonprofit
employer). AAUW encourages the Department
of Education to increase awareness of IBR and
make the application process as user-friendly
as possible. Because women are more likely to
experience high student loan debt burden, IBR
can be especially useful to them.
Treat private student loans like other private
loans. While IBR and related programs can help
keep federal student loan payments manageable
for many borrowers, some still find themselves
overwhelmed by their debt. Student loan debt
is not discharged in bankruptcy like many other
types of debt. Since 2005, private student loans
have been treated just as harshly in bankruptcy
as federal student loans, even though private
loans are not a form of student aid. AAUW
supports passage of the Private Student Loan
Bankruptcy Fairness Act, which would remedy
part of the problem by allowing private student
loans to be discharged in bankruptcy like similar
types of unsecured consumer debt, such as credit
cards and payday loans, helping borrowers in
severe financial distress.
Until such proposals to strengthen protections
for private student loan borrowers become law,
students and graduates have a new resource in
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s
student loan ombudsman, who can help borrowers navigate their student loan repayment

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options and file complaints. AAUW encourages
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to
use its full authority to protect consumers from
abuses by private student lenders, servicers, and
collection agencies.
Eliminate the pay gap.
Federal and state laws can help ensure fair pay
for all employees. The Equal Pay Act of 1963
prohibits employers from discriminating on the
basis of sex by compensating workers differently for jobs that require equal skill, effort, and
responsibility. The federal Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces
both the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, religion,
national origin, and sex. Thousands of charges
have been brought against employers with these
laws, resulting in millions of dollars in awards
and settlements.
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, passed in 2009,
clarifies that the 180-day statute of limitations
for filing an equal pay lawsuit for pay discrimination resets with each new discriminatory paycheck. This measure is a narrow fix that returned
legal practices and EEOC policies to what they
were before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its
problematic 2007 decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber—nothing more, nothing less.
Legislative measures that have been pending
in Congress for several years could improve
both enforcement of pay equity laws and public awareness of the pay gap itself. Key among
these measures is the Paycheck Fairness Act
(S. 797/H.R. 1519), a comprehensive bill and a
much-needed update to the Equal Pay Act of

30


1963. It would create incentives for employers
to follow the law, empower women to negotiate
for equal pay, and strengthen federal outreach
and enforcement efforts. Passed by the House in
January 2009 with a bipartisan majority, the Paycheck Fairness Act was narrowly defeated on a
procedural vote in the Senate in November 2010.
The bill was reintroduced in the 112th Congress
and unfortunately failed in procedural votes in
summer 2012, this time in both the Senate and
the House. AAUW remains vigilant in urging
Congress to support this legislation.
Equal pay laws provide protection against
discriminatory practices by employers, but
litigation is an action of last resort and can be
prohibitively expensive. In 2011, the Supreme
Court refused to allow a class-action suit against
Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer,
to proceed, saying that the size of the group of
female employees alleging pay discrimination
was too large (Wal-Mart v. Dukes). This decision makes it much more difficult for women to
band together to challenge companywide pay
discrimination. Without the option to participate in class-action lawsuits, many deserving
plaintiffs find it financially infeasible to pursue a
pay discrimination lawsuit. As discussed above,
employers can and should take steps to address
the pay gap within their organizations to prevent
the need for sex discrimination lawsuits in the
first place.

Individual choices make a difference.
A problem as long-standing and widespread as
the pay gap cannot be solved by the actions of
individual women alone. Women cannot choose
to avoid the pay gap, but they can make choices
that enhance their earning potential.

Choose your college major carefully.
An individual’s college major has lifelong financial implications. Our analysis finds that engineering, health care fields, and computer and
information sciences are some of the best-paying
majors for women one year after graduation.
Other analysis has shown that these are some
of the best-paying majors throughout a lifetime
as well (Carnevale, Strohl, & Melton, 2011).
Women are already well represented in health
care fields, but not all health care fields pay the
same. Choosing a higher-paying health care
major like pharmaceutical sciences or nursing
will make achieving economic security easier for
women. Similarly, choosing a major in one of the
typically “male” fields of engineering or computer science tends to lead to higher earnings.
Of course, future salary is not the only factor to
consider when choosing a major. Research shows
that young women tend to choose fields where
they see themselves as helping others, while
young men tend to be driven more by financial
considerations and personal interests (Eccles,
2011; Shauman, 2006). Fortunately, the highestpaying majors for women—engineering, health
care fields, and computer and information sciences—also lay the groundwork for careers that
have great potential to help people. Women (and
men) who are motivated to help others need not
sacrifice their own economic security in pursuit
of that worthy goal. It is possible to simultaneously do work that benefits society and earn a
good salary. Considering the financial return on
a college major along with other factors will benefit women and help reduce the gender pay gap.
Research your intended occupation.
It is equally important for young women to
prioritize earnings when they choose a first job.

An individual’s first salary provides the foundation on which future raises are based and earnings expectations are formed. Our analysis shows
that occupations like nursing; engineering; and
math, computer, and physical science occupations are the best-paying jobs for women one
year out of college. These tend to be occupations that are well paying throughout a career as
well. Even though traditionally male jobs tend
to pay more than traditionally female jobs do,
eliminating the pay gap is not simply a matter of
encouraging women to pursue jobs in historically
male fields, because there is a wage gap in nearly
every field (U.S. Department of Labor, 2011a). In
addition, some evidence shows that when fields
attract more women, wages fall (Levanon et al.,
2009; Steinberg, 2001; England, 1992). So if we
try to tackle the pay gap merely by encouraging women to enter traditionally male fields, we
will probably fall short of achieving our goal. It
is important for young women to research the
likely future earnings associated with different
occupations when they decide what job to pursue after graduation.
Learn how to negotiate.
Recent graduates can become their own best
advocates by understanding what they are worth
and negotiating their first post-college salary and
benefits. Many college women are not aware of
the pay gap, how it affects their long-term financial future, or how critical their first salary after
college is to their finances over the long haul.
Research has found that women have learned
behaviors and expectations that minimize their
pay. Women tend to expect less and view the
world as having fewer negotiable opportunities
(Babcock & Laschever, 2003). At the same time,
some evidence indicates that employers tend to
penalize women more than men for initiating

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negotiations. Women are still expected to be
“nice,” and women who negotiate for a higher
salary can be perceived negatively (Bowles et al.,
2007). $tart $mart salary negotiation workshops,
a collaboration between AAUW and the WAGE
Project, provide college women with the knowledge and skills they need to negotiate salaries
and beneﬁts so that they receive fair compensation when they enter the job market.
Seek out union jobs.
Union membership is associated with higher
earnings for women and a smaller pay gap
between men and women. In 2011, women union
members who were working full time had weekly
median earnings of $879 compared with $653
among their peers who were not represented
by unions (U.S. Department of Labor, 2012). In
other words, the average woman working full
time who is represented by a union earns more
than 30 percent more than the average woman
working full time who is not represented by a
union. Women union members working full time
earned 90 percent of what their male counterparts earned. In comparison, among full-time
workers who were not represented by unions,
women earned just 82 percent of what men
earned (authors’ analysis of U.S. Department of
Labor, 2012).
Although overall union membership is declining,
college-educated workers make up a higher proportion of union members today than in decades
past. In 2008, nearly four out of 10 union members were college graduates compared with just
two out of 10 in 1983 (Schmitt & Warner, 2009).
And although men are still more likely to be
union members than women are, women represent an increasing proportion of union members, approaching 50 percent (U.S. Department
of Labor, 2012). In 2011, workers in education,

32


training, and library occupations had the highest
unionization rate at 37 percent. Teaching is one
of the most popular occupations for college-educated women in which unions are strong.
Union membership varies dramatically by
geographical area, with states on the east and
west coasts much more likely to have high rates
of union membership than states in the south.
Union membership varies considerably by economic sector as well: In 2011, public-sector workers had a union membership rate more than ﬁve
times higher than that of private-sector workers (37 percent compared with 7 percent; U.S.
Department of Labor, 2012). Seeking out union
jobs can help women achieve economic security.

Recommendations
Help eliminate the pay gap and address the burden of student loan debt. Here are some steps
employers, public policy makers, and individuals
can take.
Employers
Increase transparency in pay systems.
Create clear structures for evaluation.
Conduct internal pay equity studies and take
steps to address any gender disparities.
Learn about implicit biases at www.implicit.
harvard.edu.
Public policy makers
Strengthen pay equity laws, and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 797/H.R. 1519).
Protect Pell grants.
Ensure that student loan borrowers are well
informed about their borrowing options and
the terms under which they are borrowing.

Pass legislation that allows private student
loans to be discharged in the event of
bankruptcy.
Increase awareness of the Income-Based
Repayment program for individuals overburdened by student loan debt, and make the
application process user-friendly.
Protect student loan borrowers from abuses by
private student lenders, servicers, and collection agencies.
High school and college students
Educate yourself about typical salaries for various college majors. Consider future earnings
when making the critical decision of college
major. Your choice will affect the economic
security of you and your family throughout
your lifetime.
If you must borrow money for college, educate yourself about the terms associated with
public and private student loans. Exhaust your
federal borrowing options before considering
more risky private student loans.
Attend a $tart $mart salary negotiation workshop at a campus near you.
Recent college graduates
Consider future earnings when deciding which
job to pursue. Like college major, occupation has a significant effect on earnings. Your
paycheck affects many parts of your life, from
quality of life to your health to your retirement
savings. Choose your occupation carefully.
Know what your skills are worth in the labor
market. Be skeptical of salary offers and pay
raises, and negotiate if you believe your contributions are worth more.

Consider pursuing a job where you are represented by a union.
Parents and teachers
Help your children and students understand
the financial implications of various fields
of study and work so they can make wellinformed decisions.
AAUW members and other activists
Join the AAUW Action Network. Subscribe to
receive e-mail notices to contact your members of Congress when pay equity issues are
being considered on Capitol Hill, find detailed
information on legislation currently under
consideration, and write letters to the editor of
your local paper.
Get involved with AAUW’s $tart $mart salary
negotiation workshops, conducted in partnership with the WAGE Project. Recruit a
campus to hold a $tart $mart salary negotiation workshop, become a $tart $mart facilitator, encourage your branch or community to
sponsor a $tart $mart facilitator training, or
become a $tart $mart leader in your state.
Use AAUW pay equity Programs in a Box
to educate your community about equal pay
issues and how to advocate for pay equity.

Conclusion
The gender pay gap among college graduates
starts immediately after graduation. Although
men are less likely to attend college than women
are, men who do invest in a college education
have higher earnings than the women with
whom they graduate beginning in the first year
out of college. Among full-time workers just one
year after college graduation in 2009, women

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33

earned 82 percent of what men earned. This pay
gap is not merely the result of women’s choices.
Among recent graduates who made the same
education and career choices, women still earned
just 93 percent of what men earned, leaving a
7 percent unexplained pay gap. We know from
previous research (AAUW Educational Foundation, 2007) that the pay gap only grows larger as
women spend more years in the workforce.
The pay gap has implications from the moment
college graduates throw their caps in the air.
More than half of women working full time and
repaying their college loans one year after college
graduation are paying a higher percentage of

34


their earnings to student loan debt than a typical
woman can reasonably afford. Lower earnings
have an immediate effect after college, setting
into motion a chain of disparities that will follow
women throughout their careers. Women experience the consequences of the pay gap from
their very ﬁrst paycheck to their very last Social
Security check. Nearly 50 years after the passage
of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, it is surprising that
women continue to earn less than men do, even
when they make the same choices. Making equal
pay for men and women a reality will require
action on the part of employers, public policy
makers, and individuals.

Appendix

Methodology and Regression Analysis
Data
This report is based on the 2008–09 Baccalaureate
and Beyond Longitudinal Study, by the National
Center for Education Statistics at the U.S.
Department of Education (U.S. Department of
Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). This study provides nationally representative information on the lives of students
who received a bachelor’s degree between July
1, 2007, and June 30, 2008, one year after college
graduation.

Sample selection
Participants in the 2008–09 Baccalaureate and
Beyond Longitudinal Study were chosen from
lists of enrolled students provided by institutions participating in the 2007–08 National
Postsecondary Student Aid Study. The sample of
approximately 15,000 graduates who responded
to the 2009 survey represents the 1.6 million
students who completed the requirements for
a baccalaureate degree between July 1, 2007,
and June 30, 2008, in Title IV-eligible institutions in the United States and Puerto Rico. The
weighted student response rate was 78 percent.

To reduce within-sample variation in age and
work experience—both factors that affect labor
market outcomes—the sample in each year was
restricted to those who were age 35 or younger
at the time of bachelor’s degree completion.
To avoid the confounding influence of prior
bachelor’s degrees, the sample in each year was
restricted to those for whom the bachelor’s
degree that qualified them for participation was
their first bachelor’s degree. Prior certificates,
licenses, associate degrees, or postsecondary
enrollment without program completion were
permitted.

Data collection
Data collection included conducting a web- or
telephone-based student interview as well as
obtaining administrative data from the U.S.
Department of Education’s financial aid records,
information on postsecondary institutions in the
United States from NCES’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, SAT and ACT
scores from students who were under 30 years
old, enrollment data from the National Student
Clearinghouse, and student transcripts from
degree-granting institutions.

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Data analysis
After data collection, the Baccalaureate and
Beyond data were edited, imputed, and weighted.
Logical edits were imposed to correct inconsistencies in responses. When participants did not
provide responses or provided incorrect data
to individual items, hot-deck imputation methods were used, in which data from similar cases
within the sample were applied to fill in missing
values. Analysis weights were computed to correct for oversampling and undersampling of specific populations (e.g., oversampling of graduates
majoring in STEM fields). These weights allow
analysts to generate estimates that represent
the national population, not just the sample of
graduates who responded to the survey. In addition, because the Baccalaureate and Beyond sample
is clustered—that is, students were sampled only
from sampled institutions—replicate weights
were computed to allow variance estimates that
take the nonrandom sample design into account
to be computed. Cataldi et al. (2011) provide further information on the methods used in gathering data for the 2008–09 Baccalaureate and Beyond
Longitudinal Study.
Descriptive statistics
The bivariate analysis presented in this report
allows us to understand the association between
an individual variable and earnings. It also indicates whether earnings for men and women are
significantly different after controlling for one
variable.
Regression analysis
Regression analysis allows us to assess the combined effect of all the factors at the same time
as well as estimate the effect of gender on wages
net of other factors.

36


In estimating the regression equation, we
defined the dependent variable as the natural
log of average annual earnings. The resulting
regression coefficients can be interpreted as
the percentage change in annual earnings for a
one-unit change in the independent variable. For
the regression, we specified an equation in which
log annual earnings one year after graduation
are a function of the employee’s characteristics,
including job and workplace, employment experience and continuity, education and training,
and demographic and personal characteristics.
We selected model variables from those examined in the bivariate analyses on the basis of preliminary tests of multicollinearity. We entered
multicategorical variables in their entirety even
if some categories were not significant. We
analyzed earnings for all full-time workers and
those with multiple jobs. Variables that were not
significant were not included in the final model
(see figure 13 for a list of the variables used in the
regression equation).
We combined earnings for women and men
and used an independent variable of gender to
see whether women’s and men’s earnings were
statistically significantly different after controlling for other choices and characteristics. The
regression coefficient of gender (see the top line
in figure 13) can be interpreted as the remaining
percentage difference in earnings when taking
into account the other variables in the model.
This model shows that in 2009, women working
full time or multiple jobs one year after college
graduation earned, other things being equal, 6.6
percent less than their male peers did. This estimate controls for differences in graduates’ occupation, economic sector, hours worked, employment status (having multiple jobs as opposed to
one full-time job), months unemployed since

FIGURE 13. Significant Coefficients from Regression of Log of Annual Earnings
Gender (female)

-0.066

Education and Training
Undergraduate GPA

Job and Workplace Characteristics

0.000

Undergraduate major

Occupation
Other white collar

†

Education

†

Business and management

0.246

Computer science, engineering, science, technology, math

0.125

Life sciences

—

General studies

0.104

0.323

Social sciences

0.070

0.464

Humanities

—

Nursing

0.401

Health

0.266

Other health professions

—

Business and other applied

0.106

1

Math, computer, and physical science
Engineering

Education

0.174

Social services

—

Public university

†

Sales

—

Private university

—

Business support

—

Public college

—

Other

—

Private college

-0.073

For-profit four-year institution

—

2

Economic sector
Institution

-0.189

For-profit

—

Nonprofit

†

All government

0.080

3

Institution sector

Very selective institution

0.083

Demographic and Personal Characteristics
Age in bachelor’s completion year

0.018

Region of residence

Military

0.133

Self-employed

—

Northeast

†

Other

—

Midwest

-0.108

South

-0.092

West, outside U.S.

-0.059

Hours worked per week

0.075

(Hours worked per week) squared

-0.001

Multiple jobs

-0.071

Single, never married

Months unemployed since graduation

-0.012

Married/cohabiting

0.052

Divorced/separated/widowed

—

Marital status

Multiple R2

†

0.3646

Notes: This table includes 2007–08 bachelor’s degree recipients employed in one full-time job or multiple jobs in 2009. Results shown are significant at p < 0.05. This analysis excludes graduates older than age 35 at
bachelor’s degree completion.
1
The category “other white-collar occupations” includes social scientists and related workers (except clinical, counseling, and school psychologists); lawyers, judges, and related workers; education, training, and library
occupations (except primary, secondary, and special education school teachers); arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations (except commercial and industrial designers, fashion designers, and floral
designers); social science research assistants; and law clerks.
2
The category “other occupations” includes drafters; protective service occupations; food preparation- and serving-related occupations; personal care; service occupations (except supervisors, animal care and service
workers, and entertainment attendants and related workers); farming, fishing, and forestry occupations; construction and extraction occupations; installation, maintenance, and repair occupations; production occupations;
transportation and material moving occupations (except air transportation workers); military specific occupations; farm/ranch/other agricultural managers; farmers and ranchers; cartographers and photogrammetrists;
surveyors; athletes and sports competitors; coaches and scouts; umpire/referee/other sports officials; and emergency medical technicians/paramedics.
3
”Institution,” in this case, is defined as the school from which respondents earned their bachelor’s degree.
— Results not significant (p > 0.05).
† Reference category for comparison.

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graduation, grade point average, undergraduate
major, kind of institution attended, age, geographical region, and marital status.

Statistical significance
All gender differences reported in the text and
figures are statistically significant (p < 0.05, twotailed t-test) unless otherwise indicated.

Employment status
Throughout the report, earnings are reported
for full-time workers only. In figures in which
full-time employment status is not indicated, we
include all 2007–08 graduates. In the regression
analysis, we include full-time workers as well
as those with multiple jobs. Hours worked per
week and having multiple jobs are both significant coefficients in the regression analysis.

Regression results
The regression analysis of earnings one year after
graduation for the combined sample of women
and men shows a gender pay difference of 6.6
percent, controlling for education and occupational choices as well as demographic and personal characteristics (see figure 13). That is, when
we include all the selected job and workplace,
education and training, and demographic and
personal variables, women earned 6.6 percent
less in 2009 than men earned.

ings. Graduates have higher earnings when they
choose business and management occupations;
math, computer, and physical science occupations; engineering; nursing; and education compared with other white-collar occupations.8
The regression results also show that sector of
the economy affects earnings. When we consider
all the factors together, one year out of college,
individuals working in the government or the
military earned more than those working in the
nonprofit sector. Graduates working for the
higher-education institution from which she or
he graduated earned less than those working in
the nonprofit sector.
Hours worked per week significantly contributed to pay. Having multiple jobs and more
months of unemployment were associated with
lower earnings.
Education and training characteristics
Also not surprisingly, undergraduate major
affects pay. Majoring in a health field, computer
science, engineering, science, technology, or
math was associated with higher pay compared
with majoring in education. The same is true to a
lesser extent for graduates majoring in business,
general studies, and social science. Attending a
private college was associated with lower earnings, whereas attending a very selective institution was correlated with higher earnings.

Job and workplace characteristics
Not surprisingly, the regression results show that
occupation exerts a strong influence on earn-

Age at the time of bachelor’s degree completion affects earnings positively (for this sample,

The category “other white-collar occupations” includes social scientists and related workers (except clinical, counseling, and school
psychologists); lawyers, judges, and related workers; education, training, and library occupations (except primary, secondary, and special
education school teachers); arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations (except commercial and industrial designers, fashion
designers, and floral designers); social science research assistants; and law clerks.

8

38


which included only recent graduates ages 35 and
under), although the effect is small. Individuals
living in the northeast earn more than people
living in other parts of the country. Being married or cohabiting is also associated with higher
earnings.

Summary
Overall, the regression analysis of earnings one
year after graduation suggests that a 6.6 percent
difference in annual earnings remains between
women and men after accounting for all variables
known to affect earnings. This is referred to in
the text as the “unexplained” wage gap between
men and women.

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39

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AAUW

45

AAUW Research Reports
Recent AAUW reports may be downloaded for free at www.aauw.org/research.

Crossing the Line: Sexual
Harassment at School (2012)

Why So Few?

Women in S cience,
Technology,
Engineering,
a nd Ma t hema t ics

Women at Work (2003)

Why So Few? Women in Science,
Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics (2010)

Harassment-Free Hallways:
How to Stop Sexual Harassment
in Schools (2002)

Where the Girls Are: The Facts About
Gender Equity in Education (2008)

Hostile Hallways: Bullying,
Teasing, and Sexual Harassment
in School (2001)

Behind the Pay Gap (2007)

The Third Shift: Women
Learning Online (2001)

Drawing the Line: Sexual
Harassment on Campus (2006)

Beyond the “Gender Wars”:
A Conversation About Girls,
Boys, and Education (2001)

Tenure Denied: Cases of Sex
Discrimination in Academia (2004)

¡Si, Se Puede! Yes, We Can:
Latinas in School (2000)

Under the Microscope:
A Decade of Gender Equity
Projects in the Sciences (2004)

Tech-Savvy: Educating Girls in
the New Computer Age (2000)

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*AAUW national individual membership dues are $49. Of that amount, $46 is tax deductible as a charitable contribution, and $3 is not
deductible because it supports the AAUW Action Fund’s section 501(c)(4) Lobby Corps and get-out-the-vote activities.
** The AAUW national student affiliate fee is $17. Of that amount, $16 is tax deductible as a charitable contribution, and $1 is not deductible because it supports the AAUW Action Fund’s section 501(c)(4) Lobby Corps and get-out-the-vote activities.

Join AAUW
Personal Information
Name _________________________________________

Degree earned/sought ___________________________

Street _________________________________________

Year graduated/anticipated graduation _____________

City_____________________________ State ________

I wish to join as an

Zip _____________________
Phone (H) (_________) __________________________
(W) (_________) __________________________

AAUW National Member ($49)
AAUWGraduate Student Member ($18.81)
AAUW Student Afﬁliate ($17)

E-mail address _________________________________

You may qualify for FREE e-student afﬁliate membership. Visit
the AAUW website at www.aauw.org to see if your school is an
AAUW partner member. If yes, contact AAUW at 800/326-2289
for your school representative.

College/university _______________________________

For college/university partner memberships, visit www.aauw.org/
join.

State __________________________________________

Total enclosed $____________
M13GTPG

Payment Information
Check or money order payable to AAUW
Credit card (check one):
MasterCard

VISA

American Express

Discover

Credit card billing address
Same as above

Card #__ __ __ __ - __ __ __ __ - __ __ __ __ - __ __ __ __

Name _________________________________________

Exp. date ______________________________________

Street _________________________________________

Name on card __________________________________

City______________________________ State ________

Signature ______________________________________

Zip _______________

Today’s date ____________________________________

Mail completed membership application to AAUW,
P.O. Box 96974, Washington, DC 20077-7022.

We Need Your Help
Please give today!
Founded in 1881, AAUW has championed the rights of women and girls in education and the workplace for
more than 130 years. Hundreds of thousands of women and men have contributed their time and ﬁnancial
resources to help AAUW break through educational and economic barriers so that all women and girls have
a fair chance. Today, our message remains as true as ever: Educating women and girls helps individuals, their
families, and society. With 150,000 members and supporters, 1,000 branches, and 700 college and university
partners, AAUW provides a powerful voice for women and girls—in Washington, D.C., our state capitals, and
our communities. AAUW’s work would not be possible without generous contributions from people who share
our commitment to education, passion for equity, and unwavering belief that women are an instrumental part of
leadership, change, and growth. With your support, AAUW can continue its research and scholarship on issues
of importance to women and girls.
Yes! I support the work of the AAUW community. Please accept my tax-deductible contribution of
$250
$100
$50
$25
Other (specify______)
Name ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Address ________________________________________________
State ____________________

City ___________________________________

Zip ________________ E-mail address __________________________________

Payment Information
Check or money order payable to AAUW
Credit card (check one):

Billing address

Same as above

Discover

Address________________________________________

Card #__ __ __ __ - __ __ __ __ - __ __ __ __ - __ __ __ __

City___________________________________________

Exp. date _____________ Today’s date _____________

State____________________ Zip__________________

Signature _____________________________________

Fax your completed form to 202/463-7169 (credit card
payments only) or mail it to AAUW, P.O. Box 98045,
Washington, DC 20090-8045.

MasterCard

VISA

American Express

Name on card _________________________________

To learn more about AAUW or to make contributions online, visit www.aauw.org.
AAUW is a 501(c)(3) corporation. Donations are tax deductible.

AAUW Board of Directors
Carolyn H. Garfein, President
Patricia Fae Ho, Vice President
Kathy Anthon
Amy Blackwell
Kathryn Braeman
Julia T. Brown
Sandra Camillo
Kathleen Cha
Charmen Goehring-Fox
Connie M. Hildebrand
Millie Hoffler-Foushee
David Kirkwood
Betsy McDowell
Dot McLane
Peggy Ryan Williams

AAUW Executive Office
Linda D. Hallman, Executive Director
Jill Birdwhistell, Chief Operating Officer
Mike Gellman, Chief Financial Officer

AAUW Research Department
Catherine Hill, Director
Christianne Corbett, Senior Researcher
Andresse St. Rose, Senior Researcher

AAUW Art, Editorial, and Media Department
Rebecca Lanning, Director
Hannah Belec, Editor/Writer
Elizabeth Bolton, Managing Editor
Katherine Broendel, Media and Public Relations Manager
Alan Callander, Social Media Manager
Mukti Desai, Art Director
Lisa Goodnight, Senior Media and Public Relations Manager
Emily Long, Editorial Assistant
Allison VanKanegan, Graphic Designer
Rachel Wallace, Staff Writer

By joining AAUW, you belong to a community that breaks
through educational and economic barriers so that all women
have a fair chance.
AAUW advances equity for women and girls through advocacy,
education, philanthropy, and research.
AAUW values and supports diversity in principle and practice.
There shall be no barriers to full participation in this organization
on the basis of gender, race, creed, age, sexual orientation,
national origin, disability, or class.

1111 Sixteenth St. NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202.785.7700
connect@aauw.org
www.aauw.org

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