The picture of a gay couple living in a Midtown condo with fantastic views, within walking distance of their well-paying jobs, Piedmont Park, and their season tickets to the Fox Theatre fractures in the light of several recent studies.
Most of Georgia’s gay couples make more as a couple but less individually, earn significantly less once they have children, and live well outside the boundaries of Midtown.
Since same-sex couples were first able to identify themselves by checking "unmarried partners" on the 2000 Census, researchers have examined the results to try to learn the truth behind the stereotypes of "the gay lifestyle."
“Men in same-sex couples, and gay men more broadly, take a hit [financially],” said Adam Romero, a public policy fellow at the Williams Institute, a UCLA think tank that researches gay issues.
A recent report from the Williams Institute crunched Census numbers to offer an economic snapshot of gay Georgians.
On average, a gay couple in Georgia earns $81,107, compared to $74,462 for married couples, because both partners are more likely to work. But a gay man living with his partner makes $43,414 on average, compared to $50,340 for married men and $33,274 for partnered lesbians.
The disparate numbers lead some to argue there is a “pink ceiling” for gay workers — that while a company may be comfortable hiring gay people, it may not be as comfortable with gay people in higher-paying upper management roles.
“While we didn’t study that directly, it would likely be discrimination in some form,” Romero said.
Dr. Gregory B. Lewis oversees the joint Georgia Tech/Georgia State Doctorate Study in Public Policy. Lewis, who is gay, authored several papers about the gay population in Georgia and said married men out-earn everyone, not just gay men and lesbians.
“There is a real big gap between married men and men in same-sex relationships, but it’s not that different between unmarried men and married men,” Lewis said. “When I looked at the 2000 [census] numbers, men who lived with men made 16 percent less than married men, while men who lived with a female partner made about 13 percent less than married men.”
The idea of a "pink ceiling," similar to the "glass ceiling" women face in the job market, may exist more in certain industries and smaller companies, said Ronald Moore, director of diversity and inclusion for Kimberly-Clark.
“I think that’s very industry specific," said Moore, who also serves as political board chair for Georgia Equality. “I think when you look at the large companies, top 50 companies, it’s less of an issue.”
Lesbians tend to buck the trend when compared to heterosexual women. In Georgia, coupled lesbians had higher salaries than their straight counterparts by earning $33,274 to $26,433, but still $17,000 shy of the average salary of a married Georgia man.
Lesbians incomes
Romero attributed some of the gap to lesbians being less likely to raise children.
“Studies show lesbians consistently do better than straight women, and one of the reasons for that is that married women tend to step out of the workforce to raise children,” Romero said.
Lewis speculated it might have more to do with life decisions.
“One reason that has been given, and we don’t know it’s so, is that lesbians expect to work their entire life, they need to be employed, and straight women are less likely to expect that,” he said.
Teri Gann and her partner of 14 years live in east Cobb County, where they raised two children together. Gann is a vice president for Integrity Bank in Roswell, and said sexual orientation might not be a stumbling block.
“I certainly have been with companies in 26 years where individuals were not comfortable with having a gay employee. But if I was not comfortable there I would go somewhere else,” she said. “If I wanted to move ahead, or move to another level, I just go somewhere else. A ‘pink ceiling’? I don’t think that exists, but I definitely think there is a glass ceiling for women.”
Gann did say in a conservative field like banking, being extreme, either in behavior or appearance, can hold someone back.
“I do think there is some subconscious discrimination that goes on if you’re a more effeminate man, or a very masculine woman,” she said.
Married men earned more than women and unmarried men across the board, regardless of sexual orientation. Lewis said researchers are at a loss to explain what makes married men such good wage earners. One of the three popular theories is that straight women pick the cream of the heterosexual crop.
MARRIED MEN MAKE THE MOST
“We know that there are things we cannot measure, and one story is that women tend to recognize those indicators and marry more productive men,” Lewis said.
The second is marriage forces men to focus on their jobs.
“Being married causes you to become more productive,” Lewis said. “One example people throw out is the wife and family at the picnic, but another is division of labor. She specializes in home production, you specialize in workforce production, therefore you are more productive.”
Married men might also benefit from networking connections that gay men can lack.
“The third explanation is discrimination,” Lewis said. “I haven’t been able to figure it out yet. I’ve read most of the stuff that’s out there, and the studies come to different conclusions.”
Lewis said there are several possible reasons married men appear more productive than coupled gay men.
“Either we as gay men are inherently less productive than married men, or we are far less judges of those productive indicators than women are [when forming couples],” he said.
Another possible explanation for why gay men in couples earn less than married straight men is their career fields. Gay men are more likely to take jobs traditionally held by women and more creative jobs that pay less, according to several studies.
“Gay men are much more likely to be in artistic professions; those do tend to pay less,” Lewis said. “But when you look at the numbers as a whole it doesn’t account for a significant portion of the overall difference.”
Once gay couples have children, their income drops significantly. On average, a gay Georgia couple with children reported earning $56,130 compared to the average heterosexual family’s $74,482.
“Household income varies from state to state, what doesn’t vary is that same-sex couples with children earn less than heterosexual families,” Romero said.
Earnings for gay couples with children in Georgia match up favorably to nearby other states. In Florida, the difference is $51,486 for gay couples to $71,391 for straight couples, and Alabama, $42,666 to $62,142.
GAY PARENTS EARN LESS
Researchers have identified several explanations for the gap between married and gay couples. Lesbians are more likely than gay men to have children, and the research shows that two lesbian incomes typically don’t equal an average gay male couple's income, much less a married man’s income.
“We didn’t include this in the report, but couples that [have children also] tend to be non-white, and race becomes a factor,” Romero said.
Denetria Mayfield lives in DeKalb County and has worked for several companies in Atlanta. She said she never felt that being openly lesbian cost her a job or a raise.
“If it was a problem it’s never been brought to my attention,” Mayfield said. “I do think as far as pay scale goes, it's just my inkling, that race and gender may have been a factor. I don’t think my preference was an issue.”
When Rebecca and Jennifer Stapel-Wax decided to have children, they made decisions for the emotional security of their family, more so than financial prosperity.
“We started our kids’ life in Ormewood Park, but the house was so tiny and we were gentrified right out of our neighborhood,” Rebecca Stapel-Wax said.
As Caleb, 4, and Oren, 2, were born, the couple shared taking time off so that one of them could always be the primary caregiver for the boys. The couple also decided to work for gay businesses — Rebecca Stapel-Wax is the director of the Rainbow Center, part of Jewish Family & Career Services. But money isn’t what concerns them most.
“It's not about disposable income, it's not that it’s easy, it’s the choice that we made for us, and we enjoy it,” Rebecca Stapel-Wax said. “We’ve made it right for us.”
A straight income-to-income comparison doesn’t show the entire picture, Lewis said. The average age of a married couple in Georgia is 45.8 years old, while the average gay couple is 38.9 years old. Since the straight couple is on average older, they should, on average, be more advanced in their careers and earning more than their gay and lesbian counterparts.
The study also doesn’t look at gay men and lesbians who aren’t in relationships because Census data doesn’t contain this information, so Romero warned not to draw conclusions about individuals based upon his work.
MULTIPLE FACTORS
“Well, they do represent the larger gay and lesbian population [of couples], but that doesn’t extrapolate to the larger gay and lesbian community,” he said.
Without being able to identify single gays and lesbians through Census data, there is no way to determine the true earnings of the gay population as a whole. It is possible that couples earn less than singles because gay couples are more likely to be open at work, and thus more at risk for discrimination, Romero added.”
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