Wyoming's wage gap won't decrease until women's attitudes change, Gov. Dave Freudenthal said Friday during a report on the status of Wyoming women.

"I think part of the reason is the attitude of women, including women in the legislature who vote against child care bills," Freudenthal said. "I think there's an awful lot of acceptance of current circumstance."

The Wyoming Women Status Report, compiled by the bipartisan, governor-appointed Wyoming Council for Women's Issues, showed that as of 2004, Wyoming has the largest disparity between men's and women's wages in the nation. The gap widened to an average of more than $17,000 in 2006.

"This report is a concerted effort to both identify and track indicators of women's true status in the Equality State," said Teresa de Groh, WCWI chair. "The good news is that women are attending post-secondary educational programs in significant numbers. The not-so-good news is that this is about the only area of those which we looked at in which women are doing as well as or better than men."

While Wyoming men earn an average of just under $40,000 per year, women in the state earn an average of just over $20,000. Much of this is because traditionally male-dominated jobs - such as those in natural resources, mining and manufacturing - pay significantly more than traditionally female jobs, de Groh said. However, she also noted that women are paid less even within the same markets as men, particularly in the health field.

"One of the largest gaps is in the health and social services industry, which has a higher proportion of women than men," de Groh said, "yet men make about $56,000 a year while on average and women make about $24,000. It happens across the board."

De Groh said that the governor "has supported the Wyoming Council on Women's Issues tremendously throughout his administration."

And although the governor knew he would "probably get into trouble for this," Freudenthal was quite frank about his thoughts on women's role in the wage gap.

"It does seem to me that young women are less inclined to be hard-nosed about the negotiations of a new job," Freudenthal said. He later added, "I'm not convinced that the issues surrounding this are some bunch of males holding the women (back). It doesn't have to be that way."

But the governor didn't put all the blame on the women of Wyoming. He said that attitudes of other residents were keeping the wage gap open as well.

"There are some attitudes afoot in Wyoming that I thought had gone away," Freudenthal said. "We had people talk about how we shouldn't be doing child care (in the workplace) because it would encourage women to leave their husbands and not go back. We discovered comments like 'My wife stayed home to raise the kids and so should other women.' The underlying attitudes with regard to women's issues in this state probably means our claim for being the Equality State are not as positive as we would like to represent."

Contact reporter Megan Lee at (307) 266-0589 or megan.lee@trib.com