The US Gender Gap: Past, Present, and Future

You may have seen gender gap described in the media this way: “Women are only paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to men.” We will talk about where that measure comes from and how it relates to gender discrimination. Professor Byker will discuss how the gender gap has evolved since the 1980s and where it may be going particularly in light of the Covid pandemic.

Tanya Byker (B.A., Swarthmore; PhD, University of Michigan) joined the Middlebury Economics faculty as an assistant professor in the fall of 2014. She teaches courses in regression, and the economics of gender. Her research falls under the categories of labor and development economics and focuses on the interrelated choices individuals make about education, work and parenthood. She has studied how birth-related career interruptions in the US vary by mother’s education, and the ways that parental leave laws impact those labor-supply decisions. In a developing country context, she has studied how access to family planning impacts fertility and longer-term outcomes such as schooling and employment in Peru and South Africa.

Hosted by Sarah Stroup, Associate Professor of Political Science.

See the Faculty at Home website for additional information, including how to register for this free event: https://www.middlebury.edu/office/provost/faculty-home