This statistic remains disturbing for a number of reasons; first, there are more and more women in the workforce and second, more and more of us are making more money than our husbands.  The common statistic that has been around for the past five years is that 1 of every 3 women outearns her husband.  The results of The Working Mothers Survey show that 44% of working mothers, not just working women, outearn their husbands.  Not only that, but 32% of all working mothers make 68% or more of their family income, making them the family breadwinners – the majority of the financial support for their family.  Furthermore,  16% of all married working mothers are the sole financial support for their families.

Given this – what further excuse can we, as a society have, for this wage gap?  We can no longer justify it by saying that many of these women don’t care about work to the same extent that their male counterparts do.  That when these women have children, they will leave the workforce and get on the “mommy-track.”  Our survey data shows that this is just not true, in fact more and more mothers are NOT leaving the workforce and are juggling not only careers and motherhood, but doing so with the pressure of financially providing for their families on their shoulders.

What can we, as working mothers do? For one, write to your congresspeople and urge them to support legislation that furthers the cause for equal pay. For another – if you find yourself at the negotiating table with a new prospective employer remember this one word – Negotiate.  Human Resource representatives will tell you that part of the issue with the wage gap is that women simply settle for less pay when they take on new positions – and that can be a very costly mistake. 

• One study calculated that women who consistently negotiate their salary increases earn at least $1 million more during their careers than women who don’t.
• By not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60—and men are more than four times as likely as women to negotiate a first salary.
• Women are more pessimistic about the how much is available when they do negotiate and so they typically ask for and get less when they do negotiate—on average, 30 percent less than men.

Unbelievable but true. For more information on this phenomenon, why it occurs and what it costs women, go to http://www.womendontask.com/stats.html.  And remember – your worth as a working mother is equal to that of your male counterparts. For many of us, our worth might even be higher because our family’s livelihood and security are riding on our earnings.   If that knowledge isn’t enough to help working mothers recognize their worth, I can’t imagine what is.

Finally – wear red today in support of equal pay for equal work!

As you can imagine, we gathered a LOT of data through this survey and it will take some time to review, analyze and post all the results.  I’ll try to get through this as quickly as I can but hey, I’m a working mother, how much time do I really have to do all this? So please bear with me, and do let me know if there are any areas of particular interest to you and I’ll try to analyze and publish those survey results first.

In the meantime, I’d like to announce the winners of our prize drawing. They are:

First prize – 8GB iPOD Touch: Sheri Champlin from Golden, Colorado

Second prize – $100 Spa Certificate: Cecelia Muir from Lakewood, Colorado

Third Prize – $50 gift card to Amazon.com: Louise Fredericks from Shaker Heights, Ohio

Congratulations you lucky ladies!   Now please read on for some high-level survey results. . .

We received a total of 515 responses from across the U.S. and also a few from our neighbors in Canada and in Mexico!  The top 10 responding states (in order) are:

1. Colorado
2. California
3. Virginia (thanks to Heather and Christine for sending this on to your working mother groups!)
4. Massachusetts
5. Minnesota
6. Texas
7. Illinois
8. Washington
9. New York
10. Florida           

We did not receive any responses from working moms in Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, South Carolina, Vermont or Wyoming. Hello?

Thanks again to all of you for taking the survey and for passing it on to others and to your groups. Additional special thanks go out to Melodie, Jane and Mandy for sending this to your readers and forum members.

I had hoped to load a number of pretty graphs and charts to visually depict the rest of the statistics I am about to share, but being technology-challenged, I haven’t quite figured out how to make the uploaded files visible to anyone but me. I’m open to ideas if anyone wants to share. . . Please?

Nevertheless, some additional statistics for your contemplation:

HOW YOUNG ARE WE?

• No respondents were under the age of 25
• 7% are between 25 – 30
• 20% are between 31 – 35
• 58% are between 36 – 45
• 12% are between 46 – 56
• 2% are over 56

HOW MANY CHILDREN DO WE GET TO LOVE ON A DAILY BASIS:

We turned out to be a pretty stereotypical group on this question – a good thing when you are hoping your survey results are representative of the sample population:

• 51% reported having 2 children. The national average for families with children is 1.8.  I know, you’re wondering the same thing I am, and thinking it’s just not possible
• 33% have 1 child
• 13% have 3 children
• 3% have 4 children (and their sanity intact) and,
• 1% have 5 or MORE children and have received the title of Living Saint

WHERE WE LIVE:

• 68% live in the suburbs
• 26% in urban areas
• 9% in rural and
• 3% listed other (mountains, towns, etc.)

WHERE WE WORK:

• 54% of us are employed with a large business or organization
• 21% are employed in a small business or organization
• 11% are self-employed or independent contractors
• 7% are small business owners
• 1% are co-owners or partners in a venture
• 5% listed other

HOW MUCH DO WE WORK – at work, not including the work we do after we get home from work. We’ll get to that later:

• 63% work 40+ hours a week (yikes!)
• 11% work part-time with benefits and 11% work part-time without benefits
• 10% work full-time without benefits or with self-purchased benefits (double yikes!)
• 3% work occasionally and
• 2% listed Other (responses included retirement, you lucky devils)

That’s all for now. Please check back often or sign up for the blog feed and you’ll be informed every time I have new information posted.

Thanks to all of you who have participated in the survey. We have received slightly over 200 responses so far! I have received a few inquiries on the survey so I thought I would post an update.

Many of you have expressed great interest in the project and have asked when you could expect to see results and how you would get these results. We would like to have a good representative sample before we publish any data. For the population of working mothers in the US – a really good sample size would be slightly over 1000 surveys. We’re getting there but I don’t expect we’ll reach this goal for another 4 to 6 weeks, unless the survey “goes viral” as they say and takes over the internet. I will keep you posted as we progress and am happy to share some preliminary results before we have the final sample. Results will be posted here and if you provided us with your e-mail, we will let you know when these are available.

We have also received some questions regarding why there was no Latino/Hispanic option to choose from on the race question. We did a lot of research on race and ethnicity as we developed this survey and decided to go with the published standards as used by the US Census. Below is some information we uncovered in our research:

 http://www.census.gov/dmd/www/pdf/d3249c.pdf 

“The Census Bureau defines “Hispanic or Latino” as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.”^[“Amendment: NIH Policy and Guidelines on the Inclusion of Women and Minorities as Subjects in Clinical Research“. National Institutes of Health (2001-10-09). “

Our goal is to be as inclusive as possible with this survey so we have added a Hispanic/Latino option to the question that asks about race so that participants have the option to self identify in this way.

Thanks everyone. Please keep your comments and suggestions coming!

In order to get us talking about some of the issues we working mothers face, we are currently conducting a confidential nationwide survey focusing on the attitudes of working mothers and their relationships with their spouses/significant others. To take our survey please follow this link  
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB228FTGRDPZL   

It’s fun, thought-provoking and everyone is doing it!  But in case you need another reason to participate, at the end of the survey you will have the option to be entered into a drawing for the following fabulous prizes:

1st prize is an 8GB iPOD Touch

2nd prize is a $100 Spa certificate

3rd prize is a $50 Amazon.com giftcard

Please note that all responses will be kept confidential.  We will publish highlights of the survey results on this blog for your comments and review once we compile the survey responses.

We are also collecting personal stories and antecdotes (the funny, the sad, the triumphant and the really ugly) about your experiences as working mothers and the impact this has had on your family dynamics.  Please feel free to post your stories or comment on those you find on this blog.

Please tell all your working mother friends about the survey and this site. Lets get the dialogue started – the more the merrier!