Years ago, if you were looking for a job, you could pick up any newspaper and look over the “male help wanted” and “female help wanted” ads. Those days are long gone, but many of the assumptions underlying those ads remain. Women still earn, on average, about 71 cents for every dollar a man makes. And in Wyoming, the “Equality State”, the wage gap is the biggest in the nation. One solution is for women to seek the higher-paying jobs that are still dominated by men. That is exactly what Liz Nelson did, as yard boss of an auto recycling yard. As Chronicle producer Stefani Smith tells us, “it’s tough work and Liz loves it.” Later in the program, we will speak with Cathy Connolly, the author of several studies on gender wage inequality, and Kerry Anderson, owner of KMH Construction in Greybull about her experience making it “in a man’s world”.
Web resources:
Wyoming Women’s Foundation webpage:
Latest research paper on gender wage gap by Cathy Connolly:
Wyoming Women’s Foundation. Prepared by Dr. Cathy Connolly. (2012). The Economic Status of Wyoming’s Working Women 2011. [White Paper]. Retrieved from http://www.wywf.org/documents/EconomicStatusofWomen2011final_000.pdf.
