DDi - November/December 2009 - (Page 64)

64 | Shopping with Paco The shifting gender wage gap I n 2005, a magical statistic stood out: for the first time in history, young women under the age of 30 overtook men in earning power in the largest American cities. It was a shift that began in the late ’90s in urban areas like Los Angeles and Dallas. By the year 2000, it had migrated to New York, when male and female wages came in more or less in a dead heat. Five years later, full-time working females between the ages of 21 and 30, who lived in one of the five boroughs of New York City, brought home 117 percent of the wages of equivalent working males. To put it another way, for every guy pulling in a median salary of $30,560, an equivalent female was banking $35,653. And Texas isn’t associated with big bucks, big hair and big everything for nothing. In Dallas, women’s wage-earning advantage over men was 120 percent—the highest in the nation. Pay inequities between men and women overall? Everyone knows they’re still out there. But in early 2009, President Obama signed an equal-pay bill designed to end gender-based income disparities. It has been long overdue. This increase in female earning power parallels employment figures around the globe. Starting in the United States, with its current 2009 unemployment rate of 9.5 percent (at time of press), the chances of being 25 years old and gainfully employed are higher if you’re a female than a male. These odds go up even further if we don’t consider immigrants, AfricanAmericans and Latinos. In our current recession, more than 80 percent of job losses befell men, who tend to be disproportionately represented in industries like construction and manufacturing. Historically, women are apt to work in fields such as education and health care that are more resistant to economic swings. Here’s an obvious fact: the more highly educated you are, the better chance you have of being successfully employed in a well-paying job. Male or female, if you didn’t manage to make it through high school, your employment rate hovers around 73 percent. A high school diploma raises your chance for some kind of employment by nearly 5 percent, but with a college or grad school degree, your professional opportunities go up accordingly. In the United States currently, 140 women are awarded bachelor degrees for every 100 men. It’s a gender gap that’s only going to increase. Between 1969 and 2000, the number of male undergraduates increased by only 39 percent. At the same time, the number of female undergraduates rose by 157 percent. Females today are outpacing men in practically all post-secondary institutions, and also within African-American communities, where two university-educated women exist for every one university-educated man. Another critical reason women are making such headway in their careers—and really, I can’t emphasize this enough—is babies. Or rather, the option to choose if, when and with whom you have one. We’ve stepped over a magical line in the history of our own human species. Thanks to birth control, we’ve decoupled sex from procreation, and moved away from biology. Female sexuality—the reproductive kind—is in flux and in play. If you harbor any doubts, rent an old season or two of “Sex and the City,” or watch the movie. After graduating college or getting an advanced degree, many young women are in no hurry to pair up and settle down, which gives them the time, space, momentum and luxury to pursue a professional track, and make good money. And yes, just like Carrie, they’ll buy shoes, dresses and cosmetics. But don’t sell them short; they are also buying cars, technology, houses and everything else. By being able to control the reproductive aspect of our lives, we’ve fundamentally changed some of the premises rooted in human beings as far back as the caves of east Africa. This isn’t good or bad—it just is. And the implications to our retail community are profound. —Paco Underhill is the founder of Envirosell and author of the books “Why We Buy” and “Call of the Mall.” Considered to be the retail industry’s “first shopping anthropologist,” he shares some of his insights with DDI in a bimonthly column. | November/December 2009 www.ddimagazine.com http://www.ddimagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of DDi - November/December 2009

DDi - November/December 2009
Contents
From the Editor
Newsworthy
Quick Tips
Greentailing
Editor’s Choice
State of the Retail Design Industry Survey
Channel Focus: Sportswear
Tommy Hilfiger
JCPenney
Saks Fifth Avenue
New York Retail Map
Retail Design Collective
Showroom Map
Products
Right Light
In-Store Technology
Product Spotlight
Advertisers
Calendar
Classifieds
Shopping with Paco

DDi - November/December 2009