Women’s Place in the National Park Service: Earning Equal Pay

Abstract

In most workplaces, women earn less than their male counterparts. The gender pay gap has multiple, complex, interrelated causes. Federal organizations follow several best practices to work to reduce pay inequity based on gender, but some of these practices risk institutionalizing tendencies toward gendered organizational structures and confounding maleness with the constructions of idealized workers. The National Park Service (NPS) is the context in which these constructs are applied to examine differences in pay based on gender. Collaborating with the NPS Office of Equal Opportunity, anonymized employee-level data were utilized in a regression-based analysis to control for multiple factors influencing pay. The analysis allowed for statistical control for the effects of multiple relevant factors on NPS employee pay—moving beyond descriptive information. The results showed some patterns of gender pay inequity that can be explained by occupational segregation rooted in an understanding of gendered organizations and occupational identities that favor maleness. Concrete applications to address the discrepancies in pay found in the analysis are presented.