"Equal Pay for Equal Work"

[Airk]

This may not be the place for this, feel free to move it, but it’s a request for info, not a “lets argue over this” so I didn’t put it in GD.

So. “Equal pay for Equal work” as in, “Women get paid less than men for the same work”; Someone has challenged me for a cite on this one, and my lazy research provides only two real studies - one by the Journal of the American Medical Association, which is fine, and one by the American Association of University Women, which could be construed as a biased source.

Anyone else got any data on this?

[tim-n-va]

To piggback, some jobs are paid based on not just what you do but also consder experience, education, credentials, etc. Are there studies that compare salaries for those factors?

[Shagnasty]

The Master speaks.

This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer with any satisfaction. It is true that women as a whole make, an average, less than men. There are a number of reasons for this including choice of careers, taking time off for parenting or other family priorities, and fewer lifetime working hours on average.

However, less pay on average does not mean that women get paid less for truly equal work. The challenge is finding groups that are truly equal to compare and it is harder than it sounds for some jobs. When you look at groups matched as evenly as possible among the sexes, the gap disappears or almost does at least for specific jobs. Large companies, the military, and other government jobs usually just have narrow salary bands that determine pay for a given position and sex is not a part of that. People that have minimum wage jobs also get paid the same regardless of sex. Those categories of jobs include a significant percentage of the workforce so the accusation is false by some measures.

[gracer]

There are of course many different sources, so it would help if you clarified a little. Eg: specific country, or world wide? Are you looking for articles, or scientific studies? Does wikipedia count?

Here is a recent, general article. Not a scientific one, but could be helpful to send to doubtful friends as a starting point? It would be useful to note that there are different discussions when talking about equal pay. There is explained unequal pay, that is, women get paid less on average and we know why (they work less, do “soft” degrees). Then there is the unexplained wage gap: women get paid about 7% less and we can’t explain it. This is when you factor in how much women work, what their education is etc, in short you compare apples with apples. This article in TIME explains it too, and gives stats.

To find studies on this go to Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) and search “unexplained wage gap” or “gender + wage disparity” or similar.

Here is a study that looks globally at both forms of unequal pay.

This article presents stats and sources, and discusses various issues.

[fumster]

There were times in the not so recent past where women doing the same work were explicitly paid less. Today it is more subtle.

[blindboyard]

This:

Some of Farrell’s findings in Why Men Earn More, such as his analysis of census bureau data that never-married women without children earn 13% more than their male counterparts; or that the gender pay gap is largely about married men with children who earn more due to their assuming more workplace obligations, led to Farrell receiving criticism by some feminists who challenged that the pay gap is more about gender discrimination.[41]

That, and the act women are more likely to be successful in applying for jobs, and the well known issues normally accounted for, like men doing more work and less pleasant work, makes discrimination and implausible cause.

[Xema]

Overhead in a recent discussion related to this subject:
“If a company can get women to do the same work for less pay, why would they ever hire a man?”
What’s the factual response to that?

[MonkeyMensch]

@gracer

There are of course many different sources, so it would help if you clarified a little. Eg: specific country, or world wide? Are you looking for articles, or scientific studies? Does wikipedia count?

Here is a recent, general article. Not a scientific one, but could be helpful to send to doubtful friends as a starting point? It would be useful to note that there are different discussions when talking about equal pay. There is explained unequal pay, that is, women get paid less on average and we know why (they work less, do “soft” degrees). Then there is the unexplained wage gap: women get paid about 7% less and we can’t explain it. This is when you factor in how much women work, what their education is etc, in short you compare apples with apples. This article in TIME explains it too, and gives stats.

To find studies on this go to Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) and search “unexplained wage gap” or “gender + wage disparity” or similar.

Here is a study that looks globally at both forms of unequal pay.

This article presents stats and sources, and discusses various issues.

I appreciate the cites but like many articles I’ve read over time on this subject they are of a summary and shallow nature. The Straight Dope, in general, and this thread, in particular, are as good of places to ask if anyone has links to the substantive studies on this matter that have been carried out over the past years. Does anyone have a link?

ETA: The first link does look like a good read.

[even_sven]

While the “But women work fewer hours!” argument is not as pat as it may seem. There is a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem here. When a household decides to have one person stay home with the kids, it’s pretty common for them to choose the partner who is earning less money. So in many cases, women work fewer hours precisely because they earn less money, rather than the other way around.

@Xema

Overhead in a recent discussion related to this subject:
“If a company can get women to do the same work for less pay, why would they ever hire a man?”
What’s the factual response to that?

Discrimination is often caused by a lack of the imagination. People are perfectly capable of seeing similar quality work from two people, and perceiving that there are significant differences based on some some discriminatory notion. For example, we are familiar with the study that found that resumes with typically African-American names received fewer callbacks than the exact same resume with a more typically white name.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Xema

Overhead in a recent discussion related to this subject:
“If a company can get women to do the same work for less pay, why would they ever hire a man?”

What’s the factual response to that?

Because there simply aren’t many female candidates for the positions with the widest gender earning disparity. For example, Lilly Ledbetter was a district manager for Goodyear’s manufacturing arm. She was the only female amount 15 male managers.

[casdave]

What you are talking about is ‘Job Evaluation’

Whilst in principle this could be a good idea, too many employers use it as a way to reduce the payroll costs per employee.

You can google up the principle easily enough, but the real life practice of it belies all the HR speak.

[Crawlspace]

@even_sven

While the “But women work fewer hours!” argument is not as pat as it may seem. There is a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem here. When a household decides to have one person stay home with the kids, it’s pretty common for them to choose the partner who is earning less money. So in many cases, women work fewer hours precisely because they earn less money, rather than the other way around.

This is only relevant if mom and dad have the same job. Otherwise it only speaks to the real or perceived tendency for women to enter lower paying career tracks than their mate.