GAO Report Reveals Unexplained Gender Gap in Federal Pay

A persistent but unexplained seven percent pay gap between annual salaries for men and women working for the federal government was reported in a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) study. The unexplained pay gap remained constant over the 20-year period studied by GAO from 1988 to 2007, while the "explained" portion of the gap fell from 21 percent to just 4 percent. According to GAO, from 1988 to 2007 the gender pay gap— the difference between men's and women's average pay before controlling for other factors—narrowed from 28 cents to 11 cents on the dollar. However, for each year that GAO analyzed, all but seven cents of the gap was attributed to differences in measurable factors, predominantly the occupations of men and women and, to a lesser extent, other factors such as experience and education. GAO opined that factors that it could not measure—perhaps discrimination or lack of federal job experience—may have accounted for some or all of the persistent seven cent gap. See "Women's Pay: Gender Pay Gap in the Federal Workforce Narrows as Differences in Occupation, Education, and Experience Diminish," GAO-09-279, March 2009. The full report is available at www.gao.gov/new.items/d09621t.pdf.

Hadassah Award Cites Israeli Lawyer's Work to Advance Status of Women and Girls

A Jerusalem lawyer was awarded the inaugural Hadassah Foundation Bernice S. Tannenbaum Prize, which was established to reward emerging professionals who have demonstrated a high degree of talent, commitment, and accomplishment in their work to advance the status of women and girls. Hadassah presented the award to Vardit Dameri Madar, director of the legal department at YEDID–The Association for Community Empowerment, at a ceremony on June 15 in New York, according to Hadassah Magazine, June/July 2009, p. 68. YEDID promotes social and economic justice in Israel through a national network of Citizen Rights Centers in disadvantaged communities. In her six years at YEDID, Madar, a 31-year-old mother of two, has brought dramatic changes to the way YEDID approached its role in the legal community, Hadassah reported. "She saw the work that she was doing not purely as legal work but in the wider context of an opportunity to empower the disempowered," said Sari Revkin, executive director of YEDID, in her nomination letter. "Vardit is a unique mix of passion and professionalism, not merely taking on a case because of an injustice, but because there is a solid legal basis to win."