Latest news with #genderwagegap
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
WNBA Union Calls on Nobel-Winning Economist in CBA Talks
Claudia Goldin is best known for her research of gender wage gaps and labor force earnings in the U.S., for which she won the Nobel Prize in economics. The 79-year-old Harvard labor economist admits she doesn't follow basketball closely beyond what her husband Lawrence shares. Yet Goldin is eagerly assisting the Women's National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA) as an unpaid consultant during collective bargaining negotiations. Advertisement More from The Bronx, N.Y., native received a cold email from WNBPA executive director Terri Carmichael Jackson and was intrigued by the collision of the league's rising business profile with its labor tensions and other growing pains. 'I help Terri think and calm her,' Goldin said in a phone interview. 'I'm not a major league [expert]. They have real people who know the ropes. I don't know the ropes, but I do know some economics.' Goldin has been involved in multiple union meetings where she provides feedback on confidential numbers and data points highlighted in the current CBA, as well as prospective proposals for the next accord. She's being asked to interpret and analyze various salary-related figures throughout the negotiations. The WNBPA and WNBA are four months away from the Oct. 31 expiry of their current CBA. Advertisement Phoenix Mercury star and CBA committee member Satou Sabally told reporters Tuesday that the league's recent counter proposal was a 'slap in the face.' Sabally said it's important to put 'emphasis on the players that are in our league right now.' Her comments came the same week the W announced it will expand to 18 teams by 2030. Goldin said the expansion news gives reason to further push back against team owners, who have pointed to years of financial losses to curb the prospect of seven-figure salaries. The Washington Post previously reported the league and its teams lost more than $40 million last season. Goldin isn't buying sour economic projections, though, especially as new media deals worth $2.2 billion are set to kick in next season. 'If team owners were losing so much money, then why is someone paying $250 million for a team?' Goldin asked, referring to the current expansion fee. 'There have been equity sales that have gone for enormous amounts. If they're losing money, why is so much being paid for parts of them?' Goldin, who recently penned an opinion piece on this subject for The New York Times, said her goal is to help create an equitable labor accord that reflects the demand for players. The NBA, which owns more than 40% of the WNBA, pays players 51% of basketball-related income, which is gross operating revenue gained by the league and its teams. Goldin says the strict definition of BRI in the NBA CBA provides a key advantage over the women counterparts, who receive 50% of incremental revenue, defined as earnings that exceed set certain growth targets. Advertisement Having such contrasting equity structures is unjust, she said, as WNBA franchises sell for record numbers on the backs of player performance and off-court influence. 'In a company that's growing rapidly, who gets the fruits of the increased value of equity? It's never the laborers, since they're considered to be replaceable,' Goldin said. 'But this is a case in which you almost want ownership by the players. … They create the value, so they should have a large piece of the increased equity.' Goldin says it's been a 'steep learning curve' operating in basketball union circles. She selectively finds times to chime in during meetings. Recently, get-togethers have mostly entailed union and league lawyers combing over proposal details. In the meantime, she is absorbing more about a sport she didn't get to play at the Bronx High School of Science. Along with her husband, another Harvard economics professor, Goldin plans to attend the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game in Indianapolis on July 19. That weekend, she will meet with more players as they push for a CBA that will usher in a new era for women's basketball. Advertisement And Goldin can boast of at least one sports accomplishment of her own when speaking with those athletes: She said one of her proudest moments was delivering a strike when she tossed the first pitch before a Boston Red Sox vs. New York Yankees game last July. 'I nailed it,' she said. Best of Sign up for Sportico's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Harvard Business Review
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Harvard Business Review
Research: The Gender Wage Gap Tipping Point
The gender wage gap has been in existence at least since the U.S. Civil War era, when an 1869 letter to The New York Times exposed unfair treatment of women working in government and argued that 'equal work should command equal pay without regard to the sex of the laborer.' Fast forward 156 years and women still only earn 83 cents for every dollar that men make, a number that has barely budged over the past two decades and is consistent across OECD countries. While there are numerous proposed explanations for this persistent gender wage gap—including women choosing to work in lower-paying jobs or working fewer hours than men, leaving the workforce for caregiving responsibilities, or facing gender bias and discrimination —some have argued that simply increasing the representation of women in the workforce is enough to naturally eliminate the gap. We know that this ' add women and stir ' approach is important and can yield some improvements, but it isn't enough on its own to solve the persistent wage gap problem. However, we wondered whether there is a specific point where the proportion of women in a given occupation meaningfully affects how much they're paid compared to men. Our research, published in Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: An International Journal, found that having more women in a job category does, in some capacity, help close the wage gap. But there's a tipping point: Once women make up a certain proportion of an occupation, the wage gap narrows more slowly. This shift suggests the relationship is more complex than it might appear; it is not as simple as 'the more women, the smaller the gap.' The Research Our analysis focused on the Canadian labor market, which compared to the U.S. offers a more representative view of OECD countries based on the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Gender Gap Index. The data is also widely inclusive of 40 diverse job categories like professional occupations, senior and middle management, office support, and care providers across different industries, making it particularly useful for examining the wage gap. The 40 job categories cover nearly all of Canadian employment. We analyzed 22 years of annual data from 1997 to 2018 for each of the job categories. For each job category, the gender wage gap is defined as female full-time workers' median earnings divided by male full-time workers' median earnings. Our results showed that the gender wage gap closed more quickly when there were fewer than 14% women in the category—in other words, when women were more underrepresented. But once women made up a certain proportion of the occupation—the 'tipping point'—progress continued but at a much slower pace. For example, before the tipping point, adding just 1 percentage point more women to a job category, say from 8% to 9%, shrinks the wage gap noticeably. But after that point, progress slows such that it takes adding about 3.6 percentage points more women, say from 20% to 23.6%, to achieve the same improvement. Why Is There a Tipping Point? The 14% data point we identified echoes findings from Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter's landmark work on tokenism. Kanter's research examined group dynamics when one group heavily outnumbers another, defining a 'skewed' group as one where there's 85:15 majority-to-minority ratio. Up to the point of 15%, underrepresented individuals are known to face polarization from the majority or be pressured to conform to stereotypes. Ultimately, these people are often seen as symbols or 'tokens' rather than individuals, and may feel isolated based on how they are treated. However, their sparse presence and anomaly status also heightens their visibility. And when there are social or legal pressures to improve equity or to achieve diversity goals —in our case, to improve gender equity specifically—the incentives to protect the organization's reputation and image may motivate companies to increase the proportion of women and/or improve pay equity. In short, a more deliberate effort is made to close the gap and early gains are made. However, once these initial gains are achieved and the pressure lessens, organizations may assume the problem is resolved and scale back their efforts too soon. As women become better represented, it can create a perception that gender barriers are breaking down and that equity is improving. Akin to reaching a 'false summit,' where a hiker mistakenly believes they have reached the top of a mountain when there is still more to climb, organizations might make the hasty determination that pay equity has been sufficiently achieved and cease making changes. Making Headway Despite a slowdown in the closure of the gender wage gap after the tipping point, there is some good news. Our analysis found that by 2002, there were meaningful improvements in the wage gap across almost all occupations compared to 1997. This improvement continued throughout the rest of the years studied, and by 2018 the wage gap was smaller for 36 of 40 occupations. As noted by Harvard economist and recent Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin, 'equalizing earnings within each occupation matters far more than equalizing the proportions by each occupation.' If pay equity within occupations is achieved, the overall wage gap shrinks, even if more societally embedded practices like occupational segregation remain. That said, we also found that those occupations with a rising share of female workers exhibited more improvement in the closure of the gender wage gap. Across the years of the study, for 31 of 40 occupations with improving female representation, the wage gap closed by an average of 10.6 percentage points from 1997 to 2018, almost twice the 5.6 percentage point average improvement for the nine occupations with declining female representation. Ultimately, closing the wage gap is about ensuring equal pay for equal work in concert with representation, and organizations not lessening efforts before real progress is made. . . . The false summit illusion we've identified doesn't mean pay equity is out of reach; it just means the journey takes longer than it first appears and organizations may be easing their efforts toward pay equity too soon. After the tipping point, our research also showed continued improvements in the wage gap closure, just at a slower pace, indicating that closing the gender wage gap requires both increasing representation and ensuring equal pay for equal work. Organizations must stay committed, push beyond early progress, and avoid complacency to achieve the sustained goal of pay equity.
