Pay gap: How salaries compare by gender for federal employees --- Women working for the federal government earn less than men overall but the gap is shrinking and most of the difference is due to women being more concentrated in occupations that are lower-paying, a government report issued Friday found. -- The report from the Office of Personnel Management shows an overall gender pay gap for white-collar occupations of 12.7 percent as of 2012, down from 19.8 percent in 2002 and 30 percent in 1992. However, it added that all but 3.8 percentage points of the 2012 gap can be explained by differences in occupation and certain other factors. -- “The differences in the distribution of males and females across occupational categories appear to explain much of the pay gap,” the report says. -- OPM’s report — which shows a closing gap but still significant work to do — caps a week of intense debate over the issue of gender pay equity. On Tuesday, President Obama issued two executive orders meant to push federal contractors on pay equity, a move that drew praise from advocates and criticism from conservatives who debated the legitimacy of a pay gap between men and women and accused the administration of pandering to female voters for the November midterm elections. -- Also, the Senate this week failed to muster the needed 60 votes to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act that would have strengthened employee protections under the Equal Pay Act. Obama’s orders require government contractors to report on salaries they pay by gender and bar them from retaliating against employees who discuss salaries among themselves. -- The raw pay gap number for the federal workforce falls well below the 23 percent figure that the White House and some outside groups commonly use as the overall difference between male and female salaries, a figure that some others criticize for not taking into account differences such as work experience and hours of work. -- OPM said that while its study “shows that some portion of the male-female pay gap is unexplained—that is, not explained by the factors included in our analysis—that does not mean that the unexplained gap is necessarily attributable to discrimination.” - More, Eric Yoder, Washingtonpost, at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/04/11/how-salaries-compare-by-gender-for-federal-employees/