W
omen lead 52 JCC Association-affiliated camps and Jewish Community Centers, out of a total of 155. That’s 34 percent, a significant increase over ten years ago. “We are very proud that women professionals have made such meaningful gains,” said Alan Goldberg, vicepresident, professional leadership and governance consulting, “and we have a lot of really talented women in the pipeline moving up.” Those gains have not resulted in equal pay, however. JCC Association’s most recent salary survey confirms that men earn roughly 14-19 percent more than women in comparable jobs at the supervisory level or higher. Disturbingly, these salary differences are larger than in 2003 and 2006, indicating that the gender gap is growing. At the executive level, there was a 6 percent difference in 2003; in 2011, the difference increased to 19 percent. There is less of a gap at smaller JCCs and more at the bigger ones. JCCs are not unique when it comes to paying women less. The same situation exists in other Jewish organizations. In a study called “Jewish Communal Professionals in North America: A Profile,” done by the Berman Jewish Policy Archive for the Jewish Communal Service Association in 2009 and 2010, findings reveal that although women make up two-thirds of Jewish professionals, they trail men in compensation with an overall gap of $28,000 on an average salary of $78,000. (On average, JCC professionals, the majority of whom are women, earn almost $56,000 a year.) Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community, an agency that acts as a “catalyst for change,” has recommended methods to change the status quo, including organizations vowing to pay men and women the same salary for the same position. “To me the question is, what do we want to do about the salary gap,” said Shifra Bronznick, AWP director. “Women are leaving a lot of money on the table, money that they can’t get back.” One of the reasons may be a huge gender gap in negotiation, she suggested. A Catalyst 2010 survey found that women with M.B.A.’s earn less right out of the gate, she noted, and that may be because men and women see and experience negotiation very differently. “Men are received more warmly when they self-
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