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SALT LAKE CITY — A recent report showed a 45-cent wage gap between male and female workers in Utah. Experts say a big reason is that many women are choosing part-time and lower-paying jobs, but Utah women say there's more to that number.
Following our report Monday night, KSL News received a flood of emails, tweets and Facebook messages from women saying, 'Hey I have the same education, same work experience, and I'm doing the same job as my male coworkers, but I am still paid less." Shanaz Lavasanie is one of those women.
"It's been almost a year," Lavasanie said. "I'm angry."
Lavasanie graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in computer science and has 21 years of work experience in the field. But she says her resume wasn't enough.
"I saw my colleague at my same level, but of course my salary was less," she said.
That colleague, she claims, was getting promoted while she was continually passed up. And for five years, Lavasanie says she made about two-thirds what her male coworkers earned.
According to statistics comparing full-time working women and men in Utah, there's about a 31-cent difference.
"Typically, the closer you match demographic to demographic, occupation to occupation, hours worked to hours worked, that wage gap gets smaller and smaller," explained Lecia Langston, regional economist for the U.S. Department of Workforce Services.
But Shauna Scott-Bellecomo, president of the Utah Women's Lobby, said this is still a cultural issue. "Often it's a man doing the hiring and firing process, and he thinks a woman may not need to earn as much money as a man does because her real job is taking care of the children at home," she said.
But Scott-Bellecomo says when a women is paid less it also hurts her family. She cautions anyone — man or woman — who feels they're being discriminated against because of their sex to document everything and file a complaint with the Utah Labor Commission.
