I>W Stanach Zjednoczonych ponownie zwiększa się różnica pomiędzy wysokością wynagrodzenia kobiet i mężczyzn.

Women’s groups in America are worried because it is happening. American economists are worried because they don’t understand why it is happening. The cause of this worry? The growing gap between male and female pay.

For nearly two decades, the gap between the sexes grew narrower. Now, there are signs that the differential is widening again.

From 1979 to 1993, the median weekly earnings of full-time working women rose from 52 per cent of men’s earnings to 77 per cent. According to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this year they have fallen to 75 per cent.

"It’s a puzzlement." Francine Blau, an economist at Cornell University, told the Wall Street Journal. "At this point, it doesn’t mean we’re actually going backwards. It’s more a slowdown, a plateau, a consolidation after a period of rapid social change. The concern i s what has happened to that robust upward trend we had for so many years, and what’s going to happen in the future."

The narrowing of the earnings gap was seen as evidence that women were getting more equal opportunities in the labour market. Most experts believed that this trend would continue indefinitely. Now they are not so sure. "We are coming into a new equi-librium." says economist Claudia Goldin at Harvard University.

The growing gap is not necessarily evidence of increased discrimination,, however. It could also be the result of a change in the composition of the workforce. with an increased number of women moving into low-paid jobs. Alternatively, the result may simply be a statistical fluke.

Almost as worrying as the Statistics them-selves is the fact that economists do not understand them. "There’s definitely some-thing real going on, and it’s worrying that we don’t have a good explanation," says Janet Bernstein, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

• gap - przerwa, luka
• differential - różnica
• median - średni
• puzzlement - zagadka
• robust - zdrowy, energiczny
• evidence- dowód
• equal opportunities - równe szansę, możliwości
• indefinitely - w nieskończoność
• equilibrium - stan równowagi
• workforce - liczba zatrudnionych
• fluke - fuks, przypadek