Eliminating the salary gap
February 22, 2012
Many mothers decide to begin or finish working toward a college degree in order to maximize their earning potential.
After all, those with a bachelor's degree typically make significantly more money than those without one. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in 2009, the average salary for adults ages 25 to 34 with a bachelor's degree was $45,000, while those with a high school diploma or other equivalent degree earned an average of $30,000 per year.
Regardless of whether you have a college degree, a recent report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that women are still making less money in the workforce than men. The report revealed that female workers make 81 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make.
However, the New York Times recently joined forces with Payscale, a company that collects salary data, to find the college majors with the lowest salary gap between the sexes.
The newspaper reports that women who graduated with a major in information technology actually make slightly more than their male coworkers - $55,400 per year versus $54,900.
Two majors were found to offer both male and female graduates equal salaries - mechanical engineering and management info systems.
Several, including electrical engineering, civil engineering, communications, English, sociology and psychology were found to offer men salaries that were 1 percent higher than women.
Majors with the largest pay gaps between men and women include architecture, education, and criminal justice (5 percent), as well as business and marketing/management (4 percent).
However, BusinessWeek points out that simply choosing to pursue a degree in a field that has been shown to offer more equal pay for men and women isn't enough.
"Each major can lead to any number of careers, and the pay levels for careers can vary wildly," the publication reports. "So if men and women studying business pursue different career paths, it will affect their pay and ultimately the wage gap for that major."
Those who are interested in seeing how much money they stand to make or if they are being paid fairly for their job in a specific geographical area can visit Payscale.com.
Mothers who want to increase their earning potential by going back to college to get a bachelor's degree should know that there are many different forms of financial aid available to help make getting a degree more affordable. Various grants for parents, scholarships for mothers and single mother scholarships can help offset costs.
