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Though the pay gap between men and women has closed significantly over the last half a century, female city managers in California are still only making 87 cents to their male counterparts. An analysis of the 2019 salaries of 368 California city managers found women were still earning less than men for doing comparable work.

 

“I started my career in local government 20 years ago and it is definitely a male-dominated field,” said Gloria Molleda, city manager for the city of Rosemead. “You feel out of place. When all the department heads and city managers are men, you feel like you have to fill a certain role.”

 

Molleda, who has served as city manager for almost four years, is no stranger to pay gaps. She said she had to take on more responsibilities in her position to be taken seriously and paid the same as her colleagues. “I never wanted to be a city manager because I never thought I’d have that opportunity,” Molleda said.

 

Each city in California varies in location, population, assets, priorities, budget, elected officials, staff size, businesses and tourism. Nearly every city’s council—made up of elected representatives—works with the appointed city manager to negotiate their salary, benefits and pensions compensation for leading the city. All these aspects play a role in determining a city manager’s salary and could explain the vast difference one might see between salaries. Larger cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego and Fresno, do not have city managers but rather employ “strong mayors” to lead the ship.

 

However, even when differences in city revenues and populations are considered, women still made an average of 5% less.

 

When Jennifer Gomez was appointed as the city manager of Farmersville in 2018, it was not until she had negotiated her salary with the City Council that she realized three-quarters of her department heads were making more than her.

 

“I thought it was strange and it made me wonder why they asked me to start my salary so low,” Gomez said. “It was frustrating because I would think the council would have shown the position more respect, regardless of whether it was a man or a woman, and offered a salary that would represent the position. Whether that was because I was a woman, I don’t know.”

 

A year later, Gomez went to negotiate a raise and compared her salary to neighboring cities. She found the male city managers were making considerably higher wages, though they had served their cities for less time.

 

Nationally, the wage gap between men and women exists for several reasons. As reported by the National Women’s Law Center, low paid and low skilled jobs continue to be overpopulated by women and the majority of senior roles in any given industry are still held by men. In fact, only 78 of the California city managers evaluated in this analysis were women. And, unsurprisingly, discrimination around pregnancy and maternity also adds to the pay disparities. Even in 2021, women are more likely to play a greater role in raising children or supporting their families, according to the Center for American Progress, so they take part-time jobs or jobs with less commitment.

 

Emily Nix, assistant professor of finance and business economics at the University of Southern California, explained research shows that most of the income gap comes after people have children.  

 

“A lot of the remaining gap is due to more structural issues like unequal impacts of child rearing within the family that have repercussions on one’s career trajectory,” Nix said. “Even when women come back full-time, if they had to drop out of the labor force completely, it definitely penalizes them later in their career.”

 

Overall, closing the pay disparity would increase the wages paid into the economy by $513 billion, nearly equivalent to the gross domestic product of Ireland, according to the American Association of University Women. 

 

To reduce the pay gap, California passed one of the strongest pay equity laws in the nation in 2015, the California Fair Pay Act. The act spurred a statewide Pay Equity Task Force to provide resources, guidelines and best practices for employers to utilize in their efforts to close the pay gap.

 

Mandating equal pay can address one of the challenges contributing to the pay disparity but it is not an overarching solution. Nix noted that from her own research and personal experiences, women tend to ask for lower salaries to begin with. “Women, on average, tend to undervalue themselves and their contributions,” Nix said. “Women want to be agreeable and not ask for too much. It’s something women have to unlearn.”

 

Molleda said she believes simply encouraging women in lower-level government roles to pursue the city’s top spot could go a long way. “I never thought of even being a city manager,” Molleda said. “Just feeding that information to your employees and to women who are in government and letting them know that it is possible for them to be in higher roles is really important. Women need to encourage each other more.”

 

Rancho Santa Margarita’s city manager, Jennifer Cervantez, suggested that encouraging more women to get involved in government work should start in grade school. “Students are taught a lot about American history, but they’re not taught about government,” Cervantez said.

 

“It’s not until they’re a senior in high school that they take civics so there’s a need for an emphasis on our political process and being involved in government earlier," Cervantez said. "Then, when kids are making formulations in their heads about what they want to do when they’re older, they may consider government work.”

 

Female or male, Cervantez said emphasizing the role local governments play in everyday life would ideally encourage everyone to be more involved, whether that’s through employment or actions like voting, attending council meetings or becoming a member of a board or commission.

 

“It’s really everyone’s job to be involved and engaged in their government, rather than one segment of the population—whether that be a racial, ethnic or gender segment,” Cervantez said. “It’s everyone’s responsibility and right to be involved and engaged in their political system. And that involvement would go a long way.”

 

Methodology:

 

To report this story, I gathered the 2019 total pay (not including benefits and pension) of 368 city managers in California through Transparent California. I did not include the salaries of cities with populations below 2,000 people or the salaries of interim or acting city managers. Then, I gathered the 2019 populations from the United States Census Bureau’s estimates and the FY 2019-2020 adopted revenues for each city, before revenues were altered due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

To find the wage gap, I divided the median of the female city managers’ salaries by the median of the male city managers’ salaries. To find the average percentage of difference between men and women’s salaries, I paired each woman’s salary with a male salary similar first by budget, then by population, and found the rate of change.