Women and minorities working at six US Department of Energy laboratories are not treated significantly differently from men and white people in terms of promotions and merit pay increases, but “statistically significant” differences in salaries exist between women and men at five of the six labs, according to a new Government Accounting Office (GAO) study.
The study, conducted at the request of Representative Judy Biggert (R-IL) as a follow-up to a similar 2002 study limited to the DOE weapons labs, found that women were paid 2% to 4% less than their male counter-parts. The lab where women’s pay was equal to men’s was the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.
In addition to Pacific Northwest, the laboratories studied by the GAO were Argonne in Illinois, Brookhaven in New York, Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley in California, and Oak Ridge in Tennessee. Pay for minorities was...
