After six months of meetings and research, Alabama’s Workforce and Wage Gap task force released recommendations for the state legislature Thursday, aimed at closing the state’s gender wage gap.

Alabama women earn $12,700 less than their male counterparts on average. Advocates say pay disparities are solvable through a mix of legislative action and local investment — and could yield big gains for Alabama.

“Closing the pay and workforce participation gap could yield radical gains to the tune of an estimated 59,000 new jobs, $15 billion in new income deployed in Alabama businesses, and a boost to our state’s economy by up to $22 billion,” said president and CEO of the Women’s Foundation of Alabama Melanie Bridgeforth.

The task force focused on three goals:

• Strengthen equal pay protections
• Investing in child care
• Streamlining and strengthening the workforce development pipeline for women and girls

Citing the National Women’s Law Center, the task force wrote that women in Alabama earn 67 cents for every dollar a man earns, amounting to a gap of more than $514,000 over their time in the work force. A woman would have to work until age 74 to earn what a man in Alabama earns by age 60.

Black women earn 52 cents and Hispanic women make 41 cents for every dollar a white man earns.

Rep Adline Clarke, who introduced the joint resolution creating the committee and sponsored the Clarke Figures Equal Pay Act in 2019, said a “great deal” of research was conducted to aid the task force’s efforts.

“I am optimistic that most, if not all, of the recommendations of the task force will be adopted by the Alabama legislature to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of Alabama women, families, children, and communities,” she said.

The legislative session will begin March 7 in Montgomery.

Strengthening equal pay protections

The task force made two recommendations to expand protections for equal pay in Alabama:

• Prohibit employers and third-parties from requesting that a job applicant share their salary history
• Incentivize equal pay audits

Sometimes women and people of color who are paid less than their counterparts at one job never make up the difference in subsequent jobs, experts say.

“Employers’ reliance on salary history to make hiring and compensation decisions is particularly harmful for women, as the practice can unintentionally relegate women to lower pay based on prior discrimination,” the report reads.

Alabama law currently prohibits retaliation against anyone who doesn’t provide prior salary information, but does not prevent employers from asking.

“The majority of states put the onus is on the employer not to ask, rather than the employee not to tell,” Jenna Bedsole, who chaired task force’s wages subcommittee, said in October. “While we want to protect from retaliation, the onus would be on the employer not to even put it on the application.”

Additionally, the task force recommended incentivizing equal pay audits for companies by creating a “good faith defense.” They encouraged Alabama lawmakers to emulate Rhode Island, Colorado and Massachusetts by allowing recent audits to serve as “evidence of good faith” in reference to equal pay statute violations. The defense would not pertain to violations of the salary history ban.

Investing in child care

Child care in Alabama presents a unique struggle for workers. In recent years, the cost of child care has increased by about 11% across the state in the last four years, comprising up to 18.1% of a family’s annual income in some counties. Employed Alabama parents also miss work because of child care issues at the highest rate in the country. Alabama also has a 40% gap in child care availability, meaning about 85,550 children lack access to care.

Additionally, women are more likely than men to miss work for child care reasons.

The task force recommended:

• Creating tax incentives to increase the supply and affordability of child care
• Using all available federal funding, including temporary COVID relief, to support access to child care
• Exploring ways to close the child care supply gap, like revolving funds or start-up grants
• Creating an intra-agency council on workforce and child care, known as the Alabama Workforce Council.

The task force report referenced Louisiana’s child care tax credit program, which incentivizes parents, providers and employers to participate in the Quality Start program. Those who participate in the program are eligible for tax credits, including families with children under six, child care business owners, teachers and directors and businesses that provide financial support to child care programs.

The task force recommended that the legislature consider using funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to provide grants for new and expanded child care programs and suggested creating a revolving fund or providing start-up grants to offset the cost of expansion operations.

Additionally, the Alabama Workforce Council would include representatives from the Alabama Department of Human Resources, the Department of Early Childhood Education, the Alabama Community College System, the Department of Labor and the Department of Commerce.

Strengthening the workforce development pipeline for women and girls

During the earlier meetings of the task force, members discussed the concept of occupational segregation, or the over-representation of women in jobs with lower pay.

Members of the task force advocated for helping women and girls find pathways to participate in higher paying jobs.

The task force recommended:

• Adding representatives to the Alabama Workforce Council to focus on gender dynamics in the workforce and development
• Increasing funding for programs preparing girls for careers in STEM fields
• Increasing funding for apprenticeship programs/”earn and learn” programs
• Increasing funding for career coaches and workforce navigators

The task force encouraged lawmakers to increase STEM camps across the state, writing that a camp for 65 girls costs about $50,000.

Members suggested aiming intervention programs toward 12 and 13-year-old girls to help them pursue careers and competencies in science, math and related subjects.

“Immersive camps focused on STEM careers, like the Tech Trek Camp hosted by the University of Alabama at Huntsville, have been successful in reversing stereotypes and convincing young women that competency in spatial learning, math and science is learned through study and experience, not determined by innate abilities,” the report reads.

In addition to placing a representative on the Alabama Workforce Council, the task force suggested additional funding for those helping job seekers access the resources they need, such as transportation, child care and housing.

Finally, the task force suggested additional funding for programs that allow women in Alabama to learn new skills or trades while remaining employed through apprenticeship or “earn and learn” programs. Members suggested that this would not only allow more women to learn skills that would allow them to pursue careers of their choice, it would help fill worker shortages in the state as well.

Some lawmakers prefile bills, but most will begin filing when the session begins on March 7.