DENVER — Colorado has made a lot of gains in narrowing the gender wage gap in ways other parts of the country haven’t been able to. However, those gains aren’t reaching everyone in the state.
Both the CEO of the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce and a Metropolitan State University (MSU) economics professor point to new laws in Colorado that are playing out in a way experts had hoped for.
These are laws that demand equal pay for equal work and transparency, which is why you see a salary range posted for open jobs and laws ensuring paid family leave.
“We have a stronger toolkit for advocating, and then employers have more, you know, accountability to ensure that they are adequately compensating women at parity,” said Simone Ross, CEO of the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce.
While the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment shows women’s earnings rose to 77.2% of men’s across all occupations in 2023, Ross said more recent data, gathered through the Women’s Foundation that advocated for these laws, show it is higher — at 85 cents for every dollar paid to similarly qualified men. Ross said it’s in part thanks to these new laws, in particular demanding equal pay for equal work and transparency.
“I think the key thing to note is that men are not being paid less,” Ross said. “And that data is being tracked because, for some weird reason, people think that if you close the wage gap, you're taking dollars out of men's pockets. Yeah, that's not a thing.”
However, Ross is still worried because not everyone is benefiting from the improvements.
“I'm concerned about the opportunity gap that we're seeing nationwide,” she said.
For one, Ross said there is still a lot of disparity for minority women that needs to be studied more. The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment also pointed out bigger wage gaps in certain industries, like arts, entertainment, recreation, transportation and health care.
Then there are the moms who had to leave work during the pandemic.
Colorado saw a disproportionate number of women leave the workforce because their jobs were shut down for COVID, or they had to stay home because of childcare challenges when schools and daycares were shut.
While they are returning to the workforce, they are still feeling the impact on their pay.
“The 'mommy tax' is very real when you've taken a couple of years off,” Ross said.
“To fully close the gap, that’s more difficult,” added Professor Christina Huber, of MSU Denver. “There would have to be systemic and structural changes.”
Huber said it would require changing the way we value childcare and even looking at ideas like matching school years and hours to match work hours and schedules. What will also take time is closing the gap at the highest level.
“If one in 16 women of color are occupying C-suite positions, it's going to take about 150 years for our C-suite to be at parity with our society,” Ross said.
Both Huber and Ross said Colorado is faring better than national numbers. Huber also mentioned there is always an element of personal choice too and how people want to balance personal and professional lives.
One of the areas the chamber wants to help women with is negotiating, which is why they actually teach and offer resources to learn how to negotiate.
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