If you have ever worked for a larger company, you will see why such a scenario is unlikely in terms of discrimination. Salaries are cross-checked and negotiated with multiple sources very step of the way beginning with the starting salary. Big companies have all kinds of rules and procedures for this type of thing with salary consultants sometimes being brought in to make sure everything is the way it should be. Males would need to consistently get better performance reviews over time to even pull ahead a little and that doesn’t happen in my experience.
I would not be surprised if some of the discrepancy between male & female salaries is due to this phenomenon. I’m not sure if it is society that teaches girls/women to accept offers & not push for more, or if it is something inherent is woman-nature (the feminist in me thinks it’s the former, of course!) I remember in my first job, a male coworker/good friend of mine confided his starting salary. It was about the same that mine had been (pretty darn low…the job market was not good in those days)…but he accepted it with the caveat that he would be reviewed for a raise after 3 months. It never occurred to me to ask for something like that! So, I do think men have a boldness that women sometimes lack, which may help them “get ahead” faster in some cases.
Not being able to read Swedish, I can’t tell if it’s feminist propaganda. I can decipher that the graph says that the average income of women is lower than men, but can’t tell what the article’s conclusions are…that is, what they believe the reasons are that womens’ salaries tend to be lower. I certainly don’t disagree that it may be a FACT that women’s salaries are lower, I can’t necessarily reach the conclusion (based on that data) that there is something insidious & unfair going on. Maybe you could offer some translation as to what they say in this regard?
Here I go again with the triple-post. Sorry! Keep thinking of things to add. Upon reading your reply here, it occurs to me that, although you say I have a good point, I think you missed it! 
That graph does NOT say that all womens’ salaries across the board are lower…what it says is that the AVERAGE salary of women, across the board, are lower. Individually, some women may make more than the average man, and some make much less, which is what drags down the average.
Sarahfeena, without translating the whole article I can safely say that is has no hidden feminist agenda. It’s merely stating the facts, that women do have lower salaries, but not why (be it due to taking time off sometime during their careers or something else). The whole article was a prognosis for the job market and what one ought to study now to be guaranteed a job when you’re finished studying.
But this train of thought brings up a similar issue that has been in focus the past year in our country: why are there less women than men with management positions in the job market? As many of you have already mentioned does it have anything to do with women not wanting these jobs as much as men? That they appease themselves with lower paying jobs? Or is it merely because there are less women working than men?
And, no, I didn’t miss your point. I just got stuck on another tangent. I blame it on my rusty english syntax.
But what you’re saying is:
- Women ALWAYS have the same salaries as their counterparts when they enter the jobmarket.
- If they take time off and then return, their salaries will not have increased as the mens most likely have. This in turn pulls down the mean for all women in that category.
- So even though the mean salary is lower than the mens, there are women out there who earn just as much as the men have.
That’s how I understood it.
But what if women and men had different salaries when they first get hired, keeping in mind that they have the exact same merits and job descriptions? Would that get you to raise your eyebrows?
It could happen in certain jobs and vice versa. However, there are a substantial percentage of jobs from government to big business where the individual isn’t considered that much at all after the initial requirements are met. They just break out the salary chart for a staring salary when they decide to hire someone (with rather small variations of course). That doesn’t apply to every job but, you could probably look there and, if you see differences, you would know that they are due to something else because some degree of equality is built into the system for equal jobs.
It could have to do with the factor that Cecil mentions at the end of his column. Managers often are selected from the dedicated rank and file of a company’s white-collar workers. If 75 - 80% of women elect to have children and structure their work choices so as to allow this - whereas probably only a few percent of men do something comparable - the pool from which the manager candidates are selected will not have a equal number of males and females.
What we need is a comparison of the salaries of men and women who do not take time off for child-rearing. I’ve heard that this shows a very narrow salary gap, as Cecil suggests. But I don’t know where to go for reliable data.
Xema, that would be interesting indeed.
Source: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba392/
This page has a lot of the data that has been discussed here regarding women’s preference for flexibility in the workplace, their decreased likeliness to choose technical careers, etc. I can’t vouch for whether they or any of their cites have agendas though.
I’m not sure you quite understand the point, which is that women on average loss earning power by taking time off to care for children. It’s not that all women are given an equal pay cut, it’s that having many women reducing their workload to have kids drops the average salary of women as a group.
This is a much harder thing to figure than you’d imagine, because it’s not as simple as just adjusting for women who take maternity leave. Women are also likelier to make career choices that reduce family-unfriendly job duties, like night shifts or business travel.
It absolutely would. The thing is, though, that in most jobs it’s nearly impossible for this to occur. Most salaried and wage positions in a modern, industrialized country have fairly narrow salary bands, and determine salaries based on fairly predictable set of criteria.
I do not necessarily agree with your point #1. I doubt very much that women always have the same salaries as their male counterparts when they enter the job market. I imagine that at the career-entry level, though, there is probably not a significant difference in most jobs. Points 2 & 3, I agree with.
Yes, of course it would…I just don’t see any evidence of that here.
People, sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar. And what looks like discrimination might actually be discrimination.
By this logic, the reason companies never hired black people for non-menial jobs prior to around 1950 was because blacks were incapable of doing these jobs. But then over a ten or twenty year period, black people developed the capability of working in higher level jobs and began being hired for them. Since around 1970, black people have been capable of doing the same type of work as white people and are now hired on an equal basis.
Of course, there is an alternative explanation - that black people were always capable of doing the same work as white people but companies simply chose, across the board, not to hire them for the higher level jobs despite their ability.
And this shows how it can work. If everybody in your business is paying men a salary of $60,000 a year, then you have to pay them around $60,000 to have competitive male employees. And if everybody in the same business is paying women a salary of $45,000 a year for the same job, you can pay female employees that as well. Because as long as everybody discriminates against a group equally, then the individuals in that group have no fair options to choose and employers have no need to pay more to attract individuals in that group.
But suppose men and women are equally qualified for a particular job. Men are commanding $60,000 for the exact same job with the exact same qualifications, and women are getting $40,000.
This means that a company that institutes a police to hire more women will reduce their payroll expenses by $20,000 for every woman they hire, with no loss in work output. Even if they don’t have a policy of hiring women, if they advertise the job as paying $40,000, no men would bother to apply since they can make $60,000 at other companies, but women are just as happy to work at either company.
How many companies do you know that happily pay out thousands of dollars when they don’t have to? The company that offers the job for $40,000 has every position filled with qualified employees. That company is going to be much more profitable. That company is more likely to expand and hire more people. Pretty soon every company that pays men a premium wage goes out of business, and only companies that pay the lower wage stay in business. The men either have to accept a pay cut to what the women get, or find another line of work. Eventually equally qualified men and women are paid exactly the same amount for the same work.
That is true but I think it is even more basic than that. In big companies (let alone all government jobs), there are lots of people, usually including female managers and personnel staff, that have input into payroll at the micro and macro level. I work as a consultant in an HR outsourcing company. There is no way such a discrepancy would slip by unnoticed even if there were no other controls in place. However, there are controls in place like salary bands, yearly salary reviews that look at both the employee and the position, and consultants that come in to study salary data to identify several types of problems including discrimination.
It may happen at small shops but it can’t at larger companies on a wide scale just because of the way things are set up. A lone cowboy misogynist manager couldn’t even affect that much on his own.
A couple of other points not mentioned:
Some of the high-paying male-dominated jobs have a large element of danger or remote or unpleasant working conditions. Oil rig operators, heavy duty mechanics, fishermen, commercial divers, linemen, you name it. These jobs pay extremely well, because they are either extremely hazardous or unpleasant, and employees have to be paid a premium to compensate for this in the market. Women are rarely in these kinds of jobs. So of the subgroup of men and women in blue collar jobs, women tend to be found more in the safer, more comfortable, and therefore lower paying jobs. Women are also heavily under-represented in the trades, and they make up the highest-paying categories among blue collar workers.
Second, the maternity thing can even explain lower starting salaries. If you were offered two equally qualified men for a position in your firm, but one of them had an 80% chance of leaving the company for an extended period of time or permanently at some point in the next few years and the other didn’t, which one would you value more? In white collar jobs, companies generally don’t hire people with the intention of having them fill the same role for years. Part of the value of a new employee is the chance that they might turn out to excel and be able to be promoted and add more value to the company in the future. An employee who’s career path is a dead end in a few years doesn’t have much upside - only the risk of a downside.
This may not be fair, but it’s reality. Now, it’s perfectly possible that females have natural advantages over males that counteract this so they do make the same starting salary, but all other things being equal, women are at a competitive disadvantage right out of the gate.
The converse of course is also true. 
A rose by any other name still doesn’t have to smell like discrimination…
Its a good point…though maybe not in the way you intended. Prior to the 1950’s, my guess is that the percentage of blacks who were qualified for what you are calling non-menial jobs (I assume you mean white collar professional type jobs) was probably fairly small…and of course, the black population itself is fairly small compared to the white population. So…we are talking about a very small amount of qualified people, percentage wise, vs the population at large. That being the case, companies could indulge them prejudice without adversely affecting their business.
During the war however (just prior to your 1950’s date), when suddenly the available man power (white) was cut due to the amount of people in service, companies could no longer indulge themselves…and were in fact forced to bring in women and minorities. This of course gave a wider group valuable experience…and made them more attractive to business…and thus made them more attractive as workers later on. Since there were a higher percentage of qualified workers suddenly, and ones who were (initially) willing to take less for their labors, that meant they became more attractive for companies…and thus gave companies willing to take them on an economic advantage.
And of course, there is an alternative to your alternative as well…see above.
I think its reasonable to assume that things have changed since the 1950’s wrt minorities and women. There is no longer a stigma attached to hiring women (or minorities) in professional positions…in fact, many companies go out of their way TOO hire women in certain positions. So…perhaps there are other factors involved here. If you read what Cecil says in that link I posted, when women act essentially like men (i.e. when they don’t have children and don’t hold their careers back due to family concerns), the gap in pay pretty well vanishes. I won’t say it completely disappears (though from my own perspective as a minority, I can’t say that whites with the same experience that I have make more than I do…and I know women who have the same experience that I do making both more and less than I make). But it becomes pretty small in that case.
This goes along pretty well with my own empiric experience in the tech field. Those female engineers who put their careers first, don’t marry, or marry and don’t have kids, pretty much make the same as male engineers of the same levels of experience…say within 1-2% plus or minus. The problem may be that this it is a minority of women who actually do this. This would have the effect of lowering the gross percentage of female salaries down and thus giving the impression that discrimination is rampant…when in fact, while discrimination is very real (still), its not the huge factor it appears.
I’ll give one anecdotal example…my own wife. My wife is a college graduate (business major)…and she makes significantly less than her male peers do. Were I to guess, I’d say she makes perhaps $20-30k less than males with the same education level, and amount of experience, doing essentially the exact same job. Why? Because through her own choice, she decided that she would stay home with each of our kids until they were over 1 year of age (mostly she stayed home until they were around 2 and could go to child care). We have 4 kids. Do the math. And many of my friends have similar situations…just vary the amount of time the wife takes off and number of kids. It all still adds up.
-XT
Government intervention’s track record isn’t any better, bub. Besides, what form would it take? Micromanagement and oversight of every salary negotiation? This isn’t like giving women the vote - government-mandated salary equalization would be a nightmare.
Generally the comparison made is average pay over the population, which as you said, is bogus. But even for the same job- I earn more than the two women working in my office doing the exact same job. Why? I have 10 years seniority over either (and it’s a gov job so seniority is important) and I have an advanced degree which they do not (but one is working on it) which give me another premium.
So if you just compared the raw numbers (DrDeth earns 20% more than Jane or Joan) it would seem terrible sexist. But few have a problem with seniority paying more or for an advanced degree getting more. Then again, my Boss is female, and she earns more than I do, so that kinda sets things in perpective.
I believe I saw a pay comparison where all the things like degrees, seniority and such were factored in, then Males still earned more- but by less than 5%. The figure of 2% dgrdfd cited seems about right. I am willing to accept that tiny difference may be due to sexism.
That’s the reason why there used to be dozens of jobs that were dominated by female employees. They were low-paying jobs that nobody would want if they could get a better job. Men could get better jobs and did. Women couldn’t and they got stuck with the low paying jobs. It’s the same reason wny black people using to “dominate” jobs like janitors, maids, or shoe shine boys - because these were the lousy jobs that were left after white people took all the good jobs.
Government intervention is often unnecessary. But sometimes, when a problem is big enough and entrenched enough, the government is the only thing big enough to take a whack at it and force things out of their set groove and get things moving.