Inch by inch, Mars and Venus continue orbiting closer.
As women's earnings and professional advancement improve, the gender gap in the modern workplace is narrowing, but slowly.
Chris Allen, branch manager at Hawthorn Bank's Jefferson City east branch, remembers what it was like to be the only woman on a Chamber of Commerce committee early in her career. But as she has risen through the ranks in her field, she's also seen more professional women join her.
"I think there's definitely still a gender gap in pay," Allen said. "But we're making progress. I think it's just a matter of time."
In 2012, 57.7 percent of working-age women particapted in the workforce nationally, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest report approximates. Even a decade earlier, Cole County saw 19.7 percent more women in its civilian labor force in 2000 than in 1990, according to the most recent data from the University of Missouri's Office of Social and Economic Analysis.
But when it comes to compensation, U.S. women continue to earn around 80 cents to every male-earned dollar.
Women are closer to earning an average pay equal to men's than they were 20 years ago, though. Where they now earn 80 percent, they earned only 72 percent of men's median annual wages in 1994, according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR).
Missouri has been slower on the upswing. The IWPR's 2014 report ranks the state No. 38 in the nation for women's employment and earnings, with an annual median income of $32,000 (74.4 percent of men's) and 38 percent of employed women in professional/managerial occupations (the national tally is 39.6 percent, but some states' exceed 45 percent).
In a small business-heavy locale like Jefferson City where many companies harbor a modest employment, the number of women-owned businesses can also be telling.
Missouri was the 20th-highest ranking state in terms of women-owned firms in 2007 - the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center's most recent tally - with 26.1 percent of the state's total firms. That number grew by 8.6 percent from 2002, but male-owned firms continue to outnumber female-owned ones almost 2 to 1.
Separate but unequal
"There's a lot of research that shows there's a gender pay gap and high levels of gender occupational segregation in the workplace," said Joan Hermsen, chairwoman of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri. "There are different explanations for why this exists."
A starting point is occupational segregation itself.
"We know there are gender gaps in pay across virtually all types of firms. Whether you're looking at low-end, less-educated employees or whether you're looking at high-scale, highly educated employees, the pay gap is there," Hermsen said. "Part of the difference in that gender pay gap is due to the fact that men and women do different jobs. In this country, we treat the work that women do as sort of less valuable, and it's compensated less even when it requires the same levels of education."
The three most common jobs for women in 2014 were elementary and middle school teachers, secretaries and administrative assistants, and registered nurses, while the most common jobs for men were managers, first-line supervisors of retail sales workers and custodians. Those top-populated jobs do not vary much in median earnings, but the highest-paying jobs in the top 20 occupations for women were managers and registered nurses, earning on average $1,105 and $1,086 a week, while the highest-paying jobs in the top 20 occupations for men were chief executives and software developers, earning $2,266 and $1,737 on average per week.
"You have a lot more women who are doing things like administrative assistance and those kinds of jobs that pay a lot less than jobs that have more men in them," Hermsen said.
Family ties
Women's lives are more than their jobs, of course, and some believe women remain more likely to take "family-friendly" jobs that impede their career advancement.
"Some people are choosing jobs that are less demanding so that they have more time to manage family issues, for example, if you don't want a job that's going to make you work at night and on the weekends because you have intense family demands," Hermsen said. "Women generally are more responsive to those demands than men are, and by being responsive to those demands they reduce their ambitions at work or their employer thinks they are even if they're not."
She offered the example of a supervisor considering employees for a promotion that involves travel and noting which employees, especially those who are mothers, have young children as a reason not to promote.
"Maybe this job that involves travel is an important career step in this firm," Hermsen said. "Even if employers say they don't believe that, they still act in a way that says they do."
While parenthood presents its own pressures, not all women feel it affects their work negatively.
"I personally had two children and worked, and it didn't slow me down. It's all about balance," Allen said. While her children were young she was working in real estate lending, a field that requires a high level of multitasking. "You're throwing so many balls in the air with real estate and with motherhood; it just kind of made it easier."
Girl talk
Another vantage point focuses on women's negotiating skills, whether innate or learned.
This theory claims that "if women knew how to negotiate better they'd have higher pay and they'd be better at negotiating their way into better training and all the things that help build your career profile to be successful," Hermsen said.
The theory might not be too far off, at least for women who have inhabited the working world for the past couple of decades.
"I think there is some truth to that. I know I wasn't very good at negotiating," said Mary Shackelford, owner of Mary Shackelford Wellness Solutions in Jefferson City. "I had not had that modeled or mentored to where I was confident enough to do that."
Shackelford worked in health care for more than 20 years before opening her business.
"When I got a promotion, the person who had that position before me was a man; and I know that I was not offered anywhere near what he made as a salary," Shackelford said.
Some women might shy away from trying to negotiate better salaries for themselves for fear of how they'll be received, Hermsen said.
"There's research out of the Harvard business school that even when women negotiate they still don't see the same increase in pay that men are able to negotiate, and that sometimes it can be detrimental to women in a way that it's not bad for men to negotiate," she explained. "When women negotiate firmly, they're sort of stepping outside the path of the typical woman, and not everyone is going to be comfortable with a woman who does that."
Shackelford, however, doesn't believe women should have to negotiate the same way men do in order to receive equal treatment.
"In decades in the past women had to act more like men. The world needs women to bring their own style and view on the world, and I think there's room for it," Shackelford said. "I had a boss that said I was "too nice,' but in my department I had the lowest turnover."
Attitude matters
Disparities between working men and women can sometimes still be attributed so simple discrimination. Gender discrimination in the workplace is prohibited by federal law, but today's version of discrimination might look a little different from the type that spawned the Equal Pay Act of 1963.
"Some people really feel it's not women's place to work like it's men's job to be breadwinners, and that women's incomes are always supporting incomes," Hermsen said. "If you feel strongly about that, then you may actually act on that and treat women systematically different than men in the workplace."
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that 1,141 sex-discrimination charges had reasonable cause in 2013, an improvement from a spike in sex-discrimination cases from 2000 to 2010 but still only 100 or so fewer than in 1997, the first year of data available on the EEOC's website.
"I suspect that number of people who believe that is probably quite small," Hermsen continued. "The gender gap is so pervasive across organizations and types of industries, it does make one think it's more than just individual people having discriminatory attitudes. It's probably more systematic."
To some female business owners in Jefferson City, the issue is not so much discrimination as general attitudes.
"For me, when I had to deal with things in the city as far as building permits, parking and all the things that you have to do, I felt that - whether it is accurate or not - because I was a single woman who was trying to do this by myself I was not given as much credit for knowing what was going on," said Deb Brown, owner of Brew House Coffee & Bistro and Prison Brews microbrewery and restaurant.
When Brown opened her businesses years ago, she didn't have problems securing start-up funds or facing actual discrimination, but she did struggle to get people to take her seriously as she began the projects, she said.
"Now I don't think I would have that many problems just because they have seen a project and it has been successful," she added.
Bridging the gap
Women like Allen and Brown are confident society is gradually closing the gender gap. But what should they and their companies do in the meantime to help it along?
"I think there are two pieces: the choices women are making - and these choices start early in one's career about how you will do work and family life and what are you willing to forego to keep pushing your career forward - and it's also about women experiencing roadblocks," Hermsen said.
As for the part of women themselves, Hermsen said the "lean in" strategy might be one piece of the puzzle.
"The idea is that the only way we're going to have more women leaders is if women lean in," Hermsen said. "We may have to do more than the men we work with to be recognized. Ultimately, if we want to have these opportunities in our careers, we may have to do that and lean into our jobs."
Genuine efforts shouldn't stop there for companies that care about their female representation, she continued.
"It also requires employers and human resources departments to take the data on their organizations around hiring, promotion and pay, and really systematically look at them on a regular basis," Hermsen said. "It's going to take organizations being committed to women's leadership in organizations, looking for women who have potential to be leaders and mentoring them along the way."
For now, working women may just have to continue forging ahead, developing and displaying confidence in their abilities.
"Once I proved myself, I've had no problems working with the men around here. They are very complimentary and accommodating and very supportive," Brown said. "But you have to prove yourself first."
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