Although a quick check to a calendar confirms that we’re well into the 21st century, women still earn 77 cents to every dollar that a man makes, according to a White House report in March.

This alarmingly persistent gender wage gap is a key point in President Barack Obama’s current campaign to raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour. Because women are disproportionately represented in minimum wage jobs, the White House stated in a report released last week, the increase would disproportionately benefit women.  Estimates from Obama’s Council on Economic Advisors suggest the wage bump could knock five percent off the stubborn pay gap.

Obama should be commended for addressing the gender wage gap in a comprehensive manner. While 1963’s Equal Pay Act may have settled the issue in the eyes of the law, it is not dismissed so easily in reality. The White House admirably takes the issue one step further by considering what jobs women are holding in addition to how much they’re being paid in them.

Women constitute more than 55 percent of jobs that pay $7.25 per hour and 72 percent of tipped jobs that pay $2.13 per hour, according to the White House report.

And of the 2.8 million single parents who would benefit from a wage increase, 80 percent are women.

While no one on Capitol Hill seems to be addressing why women predominantly hold low-wage jobs, despite their increasingly active roles as family breadwinners, it’s hard to argue with a practical, concrete plan to support the — often female — working poor.

This is particularly true in tipped professions, such as restaurant servers or hairstylists. The hourly $2.13 wage, which in theory is flushed out to the full minimum wage by customers’ tips or the employer’s intervention, hasn’t been raised in 20 years, according to the White House report. Adjusting for inflation, the White House report states, this leaves the tipped wage at just 29 percent of the full minimum wage, or the lowest ratio since the tipped minimum wage was established in 1966.

The White House supports bumping the tipped minimum wage to $4.90 per hour by 2016 and later adjusting it to 70 percent of the full minimum wage. This would be huge, considering the White House reports tipped workers are twice as likely to live under the poverty line; servers are three times as likely.

While in many ways the proposed wage increase can be chalked up to a political move to rally female democratic support, Obama’s campaign admirably puts a new face on the gender wage gap argument. It’s easy to think about the gender wage gap in terms of the society’s upper class — stories of high-ranking female CEOs who find out they’re earning just three-quarters of the hundreds of thousands that their male counterparts do. And while this isn’t right by any means, it’s also important to consider the wage gap at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Obama’s statements call attention to the deeper societal structures that place more women in restaurants and retail. Increasing the minimum wage, in turn, is the key step that takes the issue from the recognition stage to the action stage.

Nicki Gorny is a junior newspaper and online journalism and Spanish major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at nagorny@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @Nicki_Gorny. 

Published on April 2, 2014 at 1:09 am