McCourt Student Co-Publishes Gender Wage Gap Research

Men earn more than women in almost all of the 112 occupations for which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes weekly full-time earnings data for both women and men, according to new research by Ariane Hegewisch and Stephanie Keller Hudiburg of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR). IWPR released this new fact sheet in time for Equal Pay Day this month.

Stephanie Keller Hudiburg, a first year student at the McCourt School, serves as a research intern with IWPR, a DC-based organization focused on research on domestic policy issues affecting women.

The study also found that women earn less than men in all twenty of most common occupations for women.

“As the country wrestles with policies that ensure better wages and improved economic security for workers, it is important to consider remaining barriers to entry to higher-paid occupations, the overrepresentation of women in low-paid occupations, and how we value different types of work,” said IWPR President Heidi Hartmann.

It’s opportunities like working with IWPR this that brought Keller Hudiburg to the Hilltop.

“Interning at IWPR has given me the chance to analyze firsthand the affects many economic and social policies have on women in the US. Having worked in the nonprofit and public sectors before coming to Georgetown, I had many opportunities to see how public policies impacted citizens’ daily lives on the ground but not to quantify or verify the impact I saw,” said Keller Hudiburg. “I came to McCourt to gain the skills that would allow me to critically analyze available data and feel confident assessing as well as recommending different policy solutions. McCourt’s connections to area think tanks and federal agencies have already helped me strengthen these skills and I have only just begun!”

Figure 1: The Gender Earnings Ratio, 1955-2013, Full-Time Workers

Source: “The Gender Wage Gap 2013” IWPR Fact Sheet C413