Gender-Related Pay Equity by State and Industry

Abstract

The purpose of this quantitative nonexperimental comparative study was to examine whether and to what extent there are differences in gender-related pay equity in the public sector, among states, and among industries in the United States. The theoretical framework for this study was provided by John S. Adams’s equity theory. The study was conducted with archival data from The American Community Survey. The analyzed dataset included 1,834 cases, with data for gender-related pay equity (measured as a percentage of females’ pay relative to males’ pay), state (51 states (including D.C.)), industry (five major industries), and subindustry (36 subindustries). District of Columbia lacked data from two subindustries. The data for the dependent variable had been aggregated from an original sample 2,145,639 survey participants. Two research questions addressed the differences in gender-related pay equity among the 51 states and among the five industries. The results of two one-way ANOVAs showed a significant difference in the gender-related pay equity among the 51 states (including D.C.), F(50, 1740) = 1.69, p = 0.019, and among the five major industries, F(4, 1735) = 17.00, p < 0.01. The study findings point to the national scope of pay equity problem, across states and across the major industries. These empirical findings provide a basis for the development of policies needed to address pay inequity, which negatively affects 74.6 million female American workers in the public sector only.