Earning a living in a rural county is not easy regardless of what state you're in, but if you're in Maine and you're a woman it's even harder still. Washington County has the second highest gender pay gap in the state as a percentage of income, a fact that leaves many women led households struggling to make ends meet.
      "Men, in most industries, are just making or being paid more than women pretty consistently across the board, although of course with some variation," says Charles Rudelitch, executive director of Sunrise County Economic Council (SCEC).
      By the numbers, men in Washington County earn a median annual income of $52,493, while women earn a median of $38,757, leaving a gap of $13,736 or 35.4% of women's earnings. That's second only to Piscataquis County, with a gender pay gap of $15,303 or 37%. By comparison, the smallest gender pay gap in the state is in Waldo County, where the difference is $6,642 or 14.2%.
      "It is a pretty consistent pattern that men earn more than women in a given industry, but the data on its own doesn't explain why that is," Rudelitch says. "There could be a lot of reasons. The data doesn't say what type of position people have. Of course, it also doesn't account for gender discrimination. We don't understand or I don't know exactly what is driving this, but it's a consistent pattern that we see."

Factors in play
     Looking at the gender pay gap in isolation can be somewhat misleading, says Tora Johnson, co director of Sustainable Prosperity Initiative at SCEC, as the numbers don't hold up across the board.
      "For instance," Johnson says, "according to the U.S. Census, females in Washington County have far higher rates of educational attainment than males, and the pay gap is smaller for those with bachelor's degrees and is reversed for those with graduate degrees -- with males with graduate degrees making less, on average, than females."
      However, Johnson continues, the pay gap is much larger for women without college degrees, exceeding 40%, "likely because the higher paying jobs for those without a degree are overwhelmingly in male dominated fields, especially fishing and the trades." The percentage of people without college degrees is about 71% of the workforce in the county, "so that picture of the less educated workers dominates the pay gap stats, and it points to where the pay gap challenge is most critical: There are far fewer employment options that pay a living wage for female residents with lower levels of education."
      Women in Washington County are 26% more likely than men to attain a higher degree, while men are 67% more likely to have no high school diploma, according to data from the U.S. Census.
      Having a degree matters. Women with graduate degrees -- representing 5.5% of women in the county -- earn an average of $43,100, compared to men with graduate degrees earning $42,300. For all other categories, the balance flips, with women with bachelor's degrees earning $32,700 to men's $39,100. People with some college but less than a bachelor's degree see another big disparity, with women earning $19,000 to men's $37,300. Those with a high school diploma are similarly affected, with women earning $16,800 to men's $29,700. At the bottom of the tier, women with no high school diploma earn an average of $14,000 a year to men's $23,500.
      The lack of employment opportunities that pay a sufficient wage to women weighs heavy on Washington County households, Johnson says. "It likely contributes to our very high rates of child poverty compared with the rest of the state and the rest of the country, because many women in this bracket are raising children."

Impact on county households
     Virtually every household in Washington County with a woman is affected by the gender pay gap. According to the 2022 American Community Survey, of the 13,585 households in Washington County 6,134 are comprised of married couples and 3,466 are comprised of women only. Of the latter, 435 are raising children, which causes added financial stress.
      "I see women entering into fields that are not paying enough for them to meet basic needs for themselves and their children," says Charley Martin Berry, director of the Community Caring Collaborative. "Often these jobs are in entry level social services, health and behavioral health and childcare."
      Contributing to the underlying problems of the wage gap, Martin Berry says, are the "types of work girls and women are encouraged to pursue and a general lack of public will to pay living wages for many of those jobs. Caregiving for children, people who are disabled or older adults, for instance, is essential and maybe even sacred work, and what does it say about our values as a society when those jobs are poorly compensated?"
      Martin Berry notes that a single parent household would need to earn just over $98,000, or $47.17 an hour at 40 hours per week, in order to support their family without public assistance. "There are only a couple of occupations available in the county with wages this high -- management and some healthcare practitioner jobs -- and these require years of education and professional experience."
      While many women are simultaneously working toward attaining a degree and also caring for their children and laboring in a lower-paying field, doing so is "financially and logistically challenging and can mean staying in those lower paying positions longer," Martin Berry says.
      During the pandemic, many two earner households chose for their lower earning parent to step back out of the workforce and care for family members, Martin Berry says. "Practical family decisions like this are tied to the wage gap and can lead to slower career advancement, lower lifetime earnings and smaller retirement and Social Security income in later years for women."
      Contending with lower household incomes, women are often forced to rely on public assistance for basic needs, but doing so does not serve to improve their standing in the long term. For that, women are looking to other resources.

Turning the tide
     While the wage gap can be discouraging in its severity, it paints a clear picture of the need for educational attainment as a means to offset it, and that's where many women are turning. "Women are leveraging existing community infrastructure in order to enter into education and workforce opportunities so they can improve their wages, advance their careers and pursue their dreams," says Martin Berry. She references several organizations in Washington County that are dedicated to helping residents move toward obtaining educational degrees and entering career pathways, including the University of Maine at Machias, Washington County Community College, Maine Department of Labor Career Centers, Passamaquoddy Workforce and Education programs and Washington County Adult Education.
      Some programs are specifically designed to bolster the income of families, such as Family Futures Downeast (FFD). Designed nine years ago by CCC, alongside over a dozen Washington County and federal organizations, FFD aims to work with parents by enrolling them in college degrees while simultaneously providing educational childcare to their children. Since its launch, 200 families have finished the program, resulting in more than 60 completed degrees, 60 ongoing degrees and a slew of parents entering the workforce to earn higher wages than they would have previously, Martin Berry says.
      According to data on FFD's early cohorts, parents -- 95% of whom were women -- had a 93% increase in wages since starting the program, representing a higher growth rate than the county average in the same time period. "With these exciting gains, it is still a long road to living wages for many participants, and many of the same partners who collaborate to offer the program are committed to broad efforts to improve economic opportunity in Washington County," Martin Berry says.
      "As a county wide collaborative supporting health and well-being for all community members, the CCC is aware how complex these wage challenges can be," Martin Berry continues. She describes how low paying positions are funded through slow moving public reimbursement structures that rely on MaineCare or the Childcare Affordability Program, causing wages to stagnate behind inflation. As a result, "We see staff in partner agencies meeting financial eligibility criteria for the services those agencies administer. That is bitter irony for employers, and we see them working hard to increase wages and salaries every year."