In many Utah cities, the "glass ceiling" that keeps female employees from advancing to top executive positions shows no sign of cracking.
There are notable exceptions, but most women who work in city government remain in relatively low-paying jobs as secretaries, police dispatchers and librarians. When it comes to directors or heads of city departments, women are rare.
"The meetings I go to are mostly men," said Mary DeLaMare-Schaefer, director of marketing at Provo's energy department. "It's unusual. I'm not used to that."
DeLaMare-Schaefer, who worked in city governments in Oregon and California before Mayor Lewis K. Billings hired her as director of community and governmental relations two years ago, said she doesn't feel discrimination. But it's impossible not to notice the effect of Utah's patriarchal society on city jobs.
"By comparison, (women) don't really do well in Utah," said Layton human resource officer Linette McGee, who took a significant pay cut eight years ago when she left a job in California. "That's something we've been working on for the last 15 years."
DeLaMare-Schaefer ranks as Provo's 16th-highest paid employee (and top-paid female) at $83,287 per year. By contrast, 82 percent of the city's full-time female employees do not even earn the median for city employees, which is $38,495 annually. On average, women in Provo earn $8,750 less each year than men.
Perhaps Provo is an exception, but the numbers in other Utah cities are not far off. Much of the earnings gap comes because women gravitate or are steered toward traditional female-dominated jobs that don't pay as well as male-dominated jobs.
Some female employees say mentoring is inadequate and opportunities are few for women to move into midlevel management positions that would allow them to be considered for executive slots.
"There's probably been a tradition for so long of male leadership in Utah government that nobody notices," said one female city employee who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. "I personally think more women should apply and should get those jobs."
Employees and personnel directors interviewed by the Deseret News offered numerous explanations for the paucity of women in high-level city jobs. In some cities, the highest-paying jobs are held by "lifers," meaning there's little turnover and few chances for women — or men — to move up.
Sometimes, women opt to leave the work force for child-rearing duties or other reasons, thereby limiting tenure. Level of education plays a role, too.
But the fact remains that women who work in city governments along the Wasatch Front tend to be located toward the bottom of the pay scale.
In Provo, women make up just 5 percent of the top one-fourth of full-time employees ranked by salary. Provo has 110 male employees and only two female employees who make more than $50,000 per year, according to data obtained April 17 from Provo's personnel department through a Government Records Access and Management Act request.
"Provo can do better," DeLaMare-Schaefer said.
In Orem, 14 percent of city employees in the highest-paid quarter are women, and in Layton, it's 15 percent. Women represent about 25 percent of the total number of employees in Provo, Orem and Layton.
Generally, the underrepresentation of women increases as one moves further up the pay scale. But women in some cities fare better than in others. Salt Lake City, for example, had 14 women (25 percent) and 42 men working as department or division heads as of March.
"It is an issue for women in city governments," said Brenda Hancock, human resources director for Salt Lake City. "Municipal governments are primarily blue-collar services. You've got to have women firefighters to make it up to fire chief."
National figures released recently by the U.S. Census Bureau seem to indicate that women were faring better in the workplace. The government estimated that in 1998, there were 7.1 million women in full-time executive, managerial or administrative positions, compared to 9.4 million men in the same kinds of jobs.
But the Census Bureau also said in March that the median earnings of women age 25 years and older who worked full-time, year-round in 1998 equaled only 73 percent of their male counterparts' earnings ($26,711 and $36,679, respectively).
"About 30 percent of the pay gap arises from the clustering of women in traditionally female jobs, such as clerks, secretaries, cashiers, librarians and child-care workers, which also tend to be low-paid," wrote Carolyn Hughes Crowley last year in an article for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
In Utah, it appears that those female city employees who manage to achieve the same job titles as men do comparatively well. In Provo, for example, there are 15 positions held by both men and women. Of those, the female employees' average salaries are higher than the male employees' averages in nine jobs.
However, women whose average salaries are higher than those of men in eight of those nine jobs are outnumbered 46 to 10. The only job in which women had a higher average salary and also outnumbered men was "Office Specialist III," a clerical position. In that job, 17 Provo female employees earn on average $26,108 per year, while the lone male earns $22,715.
The International Women's Rights department of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees argues that cities and other employers should pay workers in female-dominated jobs wages equivalent to employees in male-dominated jobs requiring similar skills. Last year, the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington, D.C., wrote that "paying women less than comparable men — those of the same age, with the same education, who work the same numbers of hours — costs working women's families in (Utah) a staggering $1.5 billion each year."
That estimate took into account not just city and other government jobs but all jobs in Utah. The issue of pay equity, or equalizing salaries between traditional male jobs and traditional female jobs with similar requirements, is met with varying degrees of action by Utah cities.
"We try to equalize positions based on level of responsibility," said Jim Bristow, Ogden's human resource manager. "But we haven't done a citywide study on that issue since I've been here."
Like many Utah cities, Ogden's work force is about 25 percent female. Also like most cities, a lot of those female employees work in traditional female jobs. Nearly 50 percent of the jobs held by women in Ogden are in the office/clerical category. Nearly a quarter are technicians, another 20 percent are police officers or firefighters and just a handful (6 percent) are in administrative or professional positions.
Layton's McGee said there's no discrimination against women, but there simply aren't a lot of women who apply for many jobs. In many cases, she said, the city would like to hire women, but there are no female applicants or at least no qualified ones.
"It's a tough philosophical question," said Billings, Provo's mayor. "Do you hire someone who is a woman just so you can have that statistic, or do you have an obligation to hire the best qualified person?"
One female city employee who did not want her name used for fear of retaliation by superiors said the lack of qualified women comes from a cultural lid on women's potential.
"There really is a limit on what women are expected to accomplish," she said. "Women don't feel as valued as their male peers.
"A lot of us are hoping it gets better for our daughters."
E-mail: carter@desnews.com