Thirty-one percent of women in Cleveland earn more than their husbands. In Cincinnati and Columbus, about 30% of women earn more than their husbands.
Only 3.8% of U.S. women earned more than their husbands in 1960, according to the Pew Research Center.
The Self study ranks Ohio in the middle at No. 27 for states where women earn more than their husbands. The state with the most women who earn more than their husbands is Vermont, according to the study. Utah has the least number of women who earn more than their husbands.
Cassie Mullenger, who lives in Beavercreek, said she has made more than her husband their entire relationship. Mullenger is a scientist at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. She has Master’s degrees in public health and business.
Mullenger said she works in a male-dominated field.
“I am a little surprised at that statistic, but there are a lot of high paying jobs in the area so I can see how it would be 30%,” she said. “I think having those advanced degrees set me up to be higher on the pay scale when I entered the workforce.”
Mullenger’s husband was a stay-at-home dad for the first six months of their son’s life. Their son is now 2 years old and her husband is going back to school for an accounting degree.
“I like that my husband stayed home for six months. I have worked so hard to get where I am at and I don’t want to have to quit or take a break,” Mullenger said. “Plus, they like to have their boy time. My husband still works hard. He still makes a good living.”
John Tarwater, a finance professor at Cedarville, said it makes sense that about one third of married women in the Dayton area make more than their husbands. The largest employers in the area — Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Kettering Health Network and Premier Health — offer higher paying jobs.
“The fact that it’s 30%, that’s great because that is significantly more than what it was 10 years ago,” Tarwater said. “And if we check this same study out in five years, I anticipate the number would be even greater.”
The area also has a lot of college educated people because of the high number of local colleges and universities. The number of women who go to college has increased in the past decade, Tarwater said, and now they are being paid for their education.
The number of women in the workforce has also increased, he said, while the number of men in the workforce has decreased from 86% to 69%.
“When a woman has a child and decides to stay home for that child for a while, that can be a significant drop in their pay. And then when the mother is asked to go back to work, they often take jobs that have more flexible hours, so they’re not earning as much as they could. But it was a trade off that they took that explains part of that pay discrepancy,” Tarwater said.
Since 2004, the female-to-male earnings ratio has remained in the 80 to 83 percent range, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That discrepancy becomes smaller if you compare men and women in the same field, Tarwater said.
Mullenger has personally seen that the gender pay gap exists in her line of work and believes women who work in some fields need extra degrees to close that gap.
Amanda Hayes, who currently works as a revenue cycle manager for Gem City Home Health Care, said she has seen the gender pay gap in a previous vice president role where she dealt with payroll.
“More companies now are looking at the work you do period, not your gender, but what you bring to the table,” Hayes said. “The gap is getting closer, but we have far to come.”
She often gets the question, “Do you work outside the home?”
“Some people are surprised,” Hayes said. “And nowadays I am surprised by their surprise.”
Hayes said she and her husband, who is a lawyer in the public sector, have not stuck to traditional gender roles. They split child care. She does the yard work. He likes to cook.
Traditionally men chose more dangerous jobs, Tarwater said, like construction, mining, law enforcement or oil rigging, which tend to pay more because of the associated danger. Men comprise 92% of all workforce fatalities, Tarwater said.
Women can tend to choose college majors that can be associated with fields that earn less, Tarwater said, such as sociology and psychology. This newspaper found that female-dominated industries, like the hospitality and retail fields, were hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Women account for 52% of U.S. workers in restaurants and other food service businesses, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. They also make up nearly 55% of employees at bars and 58% of accommodations sector payrolls.
Samantha Nevling is an Army recruiter based out of Kettering. She and her husband got married and both joined the military.
He got out a few years ago and now Nevling is the breadwinner. Her husband stays home to care for their 6-year-old and 2-year-old. He is also going back to school.
“We looked at where our different military careers were going, and my career had the most potential for growth,” Nevling said. “And that’s not even looking at the personal side of it, you know, how we were both feeling about our jobs, and we made the best call.”
Nevling and her family moved to Beavercreek in October 2020. She said some people are surprised when she tells them her husband is a stay-at-home dad.
“We’re both parents, we both take the role. He’s having fun raising two crazy kids and he’s loving it,” she said. “Whenever we were both in the military, I spearheaded a lot on the home front because of the job he did. My husband’s job needed his 100% focus and I made sure he had it. Now that my career is taking off, my husband is enabling me to have 100% focus on my job and not worry about my home front.”
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