海角大神

Stroll the streets and peek into the shops here and you鈥檒l see hints of why this Atlanta suburb is one of the few places in the United States where women outearn men. Women engineers run an architectural firm specializing in renovations. An art gallery that doubles as community space was the dream of its woman owner. Even the proprietor of the city鈥檚 beloved Great Depression-era barber shop is now a woman, as are half its barbers.

Nationally, women workers earn 80 to 82 cents to the dollar of male workers. But in Chamblee, women on average earn $1.37 for every dollar earned by men, the largest gender-reversed disparity in the country. In an analysis of 2,700 US locations by The Pew Charitable Trusts, women outearned men in this small city and just six others. But the answers as to why these communities鈥� gender pay gaps are reversed lie in more than just the achievements of women, and highlight the persistent challenges to better wages and opportunities everywhere.聽聽聽聽

A combination of affordability, quality of life, and proximity to Atlanta anchored Amy Spanier to Chamblee as she opened her dream project: an art gallery that blurs the lines between amateur and professional, fine and folk. She worked as an interior designer in New York City and Los Angeles before eventually returning home to the South. 鈥淚t becomes so much effort and it鈥檚 so expensive to live that you never have anything extra, even if you are earning well,鈥� Ms. Spanier says of her time in Manhattan. Her showroom is a historic grocery facing old train tracks, next to a stylish tea shop, a space she says she could never afford in a bigger city. 聽

Phyllis Stallman was also attracted to Chamblee鈥檚 charm and reasonable cost of living when she moved her language translation business into a former preschool here. Its success underscores how both circumstance and choices made by women to support each other boost the town鈥檚 community of women in business. Ms. Stallman says providing flexibility, along with benefits comparable to large companies 鈥� such as personal days and six weeks of paid maternity leave 鈥� strike a chord with her group. Her dozen employees stagger their start times between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. By the time afternoon rolls around, they鈥檙e joking with one another and their pace becomes more relaxed. 鈥淚 like the fact that they look forward to coming to work,鈥� Stallman says.

Women helping women

A generation after Stallman ventured into self-employment, she took a bet on another young woman looking to transition her career. Stallman鈥檚 son ran across a former high school classmate who said she had tired of working as a lawyer and was interested in starting her own business; he suggested she speak with his mother. That evolved into Stallman asking Lindsey Cambardella if she would like to join hers rather than go it alone. Stallman 鈥� who had begun to plan for retirement and decided she did not want to sell her 鈥渂aby鈥澛�聽鈥� eventually looked to the younger employee to keep the translation company alive. She offered her the job of CEO.

鈥淲omen are always encouraged to be brave and go out on their own when they are among other women who have done the same thing,鈥� Stallman says. Ms. Cambardella herself founded a local network for women business leaders, a group that meets monthly.

Mayor Eric Clarkson says the city has not done anything special to encourage its unexpected superlative regarding women鈥檚 salaries, though he鈥檚 long been pushing ways to increase his city鈥檚 appeal to earners across the income spectrum. Mr. Clarkson鈥檚 wife, a buyer for a children鈥檚 clothing store, is the top earner in their home. He jokes that鈥檚 why he can spend his time as a public servant; he鈥檚 been mayor for the past 17 years.

From Spanier鈥檚 art gallery, heading through the small streets of sweetly modest bungalow homes takes you to Chamblee鈥檚 southern side, where signs change into Spanish, Vietnamese, and Chinese. Here, the city hosts about three miles of metro Atlanta鈥檚 famous Buford Highway, a multi-city corridor whose strip malls have been repurposed by the waves of immigrants and dubbed a 鈥淕lobal Food Paradise鈥� by the Travel Channel. But if Chamblee is the聽kind of town where individual hardworking women can succeed,聽here it becomes visible that a seemingly progressive statistic doesn鈥檛 tell the whole story.

More than one-third of Chamblee residents are foreign-born, and most of those are not citizens. Latinos are projected to outnumber whites as the largest ethnic group in the city by 2022. Non-citizens are far more likely to be men than women 鈥� in a ratio of nearly 2 to 1 鈥� and earn a median annual salary of $21,300, compared with $51,100 for their native-born women counterparts.

It鈥檚 not surprising that an area with racial diversity and even significant poverty, like Chamblee, would perform against the norm on rankings of the gender pay gap, according to Kevin Miller, a senior researcher with the American Association of University Women. Salaries for workers in poor sectors approach a 鈥渇loor effect" 鈥� which means employees making minimum wage can only have so much disparity amongst themselves, Dr. Miller says. At the same time, jobs with six-figure earnings are 鈥渕uch more segregated by gender.鈥� That points to the role of white male earners, who make such disproportionately high salaries that just their absence decreases pay disparities. Even in Chamblee, according to the Pew report, women on average earn less than men when comparing employees in the same fields. Miller likens Chamblee to the New York City borough of Queens, a majority-minority urban area where women鈥檚 economic achievements occur alongside poverty.聽

Low-wage workers, mostly male聽

Plaza Fiesta, a hub for Latin Americans on Buford Highway, is a 300-plus store shopping mall in the city鈥檚 dense commercial zone. Two decades ago, preparations for the 1996 Summer Olympics and a coinciding housing boom had boosted demand for manual laborers and immigrants. Plaza Fiesta鈥檚 manager, Julio Pe帽aranda, says those early years were a time when up to a dozen immigrant men may have shared one home, taking turns to use beds in living rooms as they slept according to their work shifts: morning, afternoon, overnight.

The immigrant population is skewed toward men because of the type of jobs offered and the fact that many hope to return home to families they support abroad after a few years of earnings, Mr. Pe帽aranda says. Women come in smaller numbers, fearing for their safety when they cross the border from Mexico. 鈥淚mmigrants come here and do the menial jobs,鈥� says Pe帽aranda. 鈥淲e do the jobs people don鈥檛 want to do. We鈥檙e picking vegetables, we鈥檙e picking [up] litter.鈥澛�

Chamblee鈥檚 days as a hub for migrants could be hitting a wall, though: Pe帽aranda points to four nearby large apartment complexes recently demolished to make way for luxury homes. Last fall, The New York Times wrote that 鈥渇ew places in the United States have simultaneously beckoned undocumented immigrants and penalized them for coming like metropolitan Atlanta,鈥澛燿escribing northern Atlanta鈥檚 participation in a Trump-era crackdown on undocumented migrants. 聽

If Chamblee鈥檚 noteworthiness as the city where women most outearn men proves to be fleeting, the less apparent and more durable cultural effects of such daily contact with successful women figures may not be. Katy Young, an advertising producer, who moved to Chamblee in the 鈥�90s, says both the valedictorian and salutatorian at her son鈥檚 recent high school graduation mentioned #MeToo in their speeches. The same son attended the 2017 Women鈥檚 March in Washington, D.C. She thinks that political orientation may have been the result of her sons鈥櫬燽eing raised by a woman breadwinner. 鈥淭hey saw a great example,鈥� she says.