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The Gender Pay Gap
The Good News is ...
The pay gap between men and women has been shrinking over the past 30 years. In 1970, women earned about 60% of what men did. In 2009, they earned about 79% as much.
| 1979 | 2009 | |
| Men | $865 | $873 |
| Women | $537 | $687 |
The Bad News is ...
Women are catching up, but men aren’t getting ahead. Calculated in current dollars, men are earning almost the same median wage now that they earned in 1979. All of our technological development isn’t pushing up wages for the average guy.
The Real Story is ...
Real wages are rising for those who earn a bachelor’s degree. Many others are earning less every year. In 1979, men with no HS diploma earned a median wage of $694 weekly; by 2009 they only earned $500. Even men with associate’s degrees earn less today than they did 30 years ago, though women with this degree are earning more. However, both men and women with bachelor’s degrees have seen real growth in earning power.
Source: Highlights of Women’s Earnings in 2009. Report 1025. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 2010
Which Programs are Nontraditional?
The Carl Perkins Act, which contributes significant funds to Virginia’s CTE programs, requires school divisions to encourage and increase the enrollment and completion rate of nontraditional students. According to the Guide for Program Improvement for Perkins IV: Nontraditional CTE Program Participation and Completion:
“to comply with the accountability requirements of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006 (Perkins IV), states and locals will need to report on the participation and completion of students in nontraditional career and technical education (CTE) programs at the secondary and postsecondary level. States and locals will also need to disaggregate their data by gender, race/ethnicity and special population status.” (p. 1)
In addition,
“The Perkins IV accountability requirements now include provisions requiring states and locals to do more than just report the data. The new requirements include the implementation of improvement plans when states or locals are not meeting their negotiated performance measures and eventually sanctions, or loss of funding. In addition, states and locals are required to use the data to identify performance gaps between the disaggregated populations and all CTE students when reporting data, developing state and local plans and when developing improvement plans.” (p. 1)
Virginia’s CTERS User’s Manual contains all the instructions and regulations for reporting on nontraditional students in the SEDF and the Completer Demographics Report. It also contains the official list of state nontraditional courses and programs. This list designates each of the programs and courses that is nontraditional for females and each that is nontraditional for males. Students are only considered nontraditional if they are of the nontraditional gender officially assigned to a program code as listed in Appendix L of the CTERS User’s Manual.
In order to get full credit for the work that you do teaching nontraditional students, it is important to report about them correctly.
- Be sure to use the correct codes from the manual;
- Be sure to report your female students in courses/programs that are nontraditional for females and the male students in those that are nontraditional for males.
The CTERS User’s Manual Appendix L shows which courses are nontraditional for females and which are nontraditional for males. For help with course & program codes please contact: Anne Rowe or George Willcox at the Office of CTE Services, VDOE.
George.Willcox@doe.virginia.gov
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