# Let's debate equal pay for women **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 10, 2004, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281 "2004-08-10T23:35:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2004, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/41 "2004-08-11T19:07:11Z")
[bold]The study hildea cites says: ## Full-time employees in public maintained schools, secondary education teachers with a higher university degree: Basic salary men: 31 737, women: 30 856 (including overtime etc: 32 944 and 31 817) Full-time employees in the ICT-sector, clerks:[/bold] In all of the states that I am familiar with in the US, public seconday school teacher’s salaries are determined strictly by years of experience and educational level ( eg. a master’s degree bumps them up a salary level and a certain number of graduate classes beyond that another level). The school principle or even the superintendent cannot give an individual teacher a raise at all. Please let me know if there are other factors in other states. I would guess that the same is true in Norway given that is more socialized than the U.S. (let me know if there are other factors in Norway). That means that the small discrepancy in pay can only be accounted for by men obtaining a greater number of advanced degrees or a greater number of years experience. Because women often want or need to stay home for a while after they have kids, that alone could account for the _small_ difference in pay. If all of this is correct, then it makes all of the Norwegian studies findings suspect for the conclusions that are drawn. Thoughts or rebuttals to this? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2004, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/42 "2004-08-11T19:24:23Z")
If anyone is interested in what The Master has to say on this subject, here is a [link](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020823.html). > [@Cecil Adams](#): > > If you want to be literal about it, yes, it’s a bunch of hooey. Paying women less than men for the same work violates U.S. law. The federal government being the model of efficiency that it is, we can be sure this type of discrimination has been totally stamped out. One may object: But everybody knows women get paid less than men! Of course, but the question was about pay for the same work. The thing is, women, in some people’s eyes, don’t do the same work as men. They stay home having babies and knitting dirndls while the men are out hunting bear and fending off the Visigoths, so naturally they get paid less. You may detect a note of sarcasm here, but dressed up in slightly more refined terms this is largely the argument used to explain wage differentials today > [@Cecil Adams](#): > > Whatever the effectiveness of equal pay legislation, it didn’t attack what many felt was the core problem: occupations historically dominated by women (e.g., nursing, teaching) pay less well than those dominated by men. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which among other things prohibited discrimination based on sex, seemed to offer a way to address this issue. The Supreme Court ruled that under Title VII, pay differences for dissimilar jobs were possibly evidence of discrimination. However, proving one’s case in the absence of clear intent turned out to be difficult. Employers have successfully argued that if they pay the market rate for different jobs they’re not discriminating, even if the market decrees higher wages for jobs usually held by men. Women’s advocates have proposed the concept of “comparable worth,” which attempts to equate dissimilar jobs based on the required level of skill, effort, responsibility, and so on, but this notion has not caught on with U.S. courts or legislators. > [@Cecil Adams](#): > > Despite progress, women on average still get paid much less than men. In 1979 women working full-time earned about 60 percent as much as men; by 1998 that figure had climbed to 76 percent. Does that reflect an injustice? Many say no, arguing that women earn less because they take time off to care for children or elderly parents (and thus have less seniority) or accept lower pay in return for more flexible working arrangements. Women also tend to go into lower-paying lines of work, shunning higher-paying technical fields. It’s easy to caricature this view (dirndls versus Visigoths, etc), but there may be some truth in it. Some research suggests that when women behave as men do–not having babies, mainly–the income gap largely disappears. If so (I won’t claim the matter has been definitively settled), the question facing women is a stark one: What do you want, kids or cash? FWIW, my own personal take on this from my own anacedotal well is that, at least in the tech industry, women who do the same work are generally paid the same amount as men…its all about the number of hours billed verse overhead. I had several peers when I worked for the various telco’s and other IT vendors who were women and the ones who did the same work as I did, and more importantly BILLED the same that I did (which meant extensive travel), generally made exactly the same as I did (give or take a few thousand based on senority of course)…and got the exact same bonus and stock packages I did. These were professional women with no husbands or families generally, and worked (and billed) the same hours and did the same travel that I did. YRMV of course. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2004, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/43 "2004-08-11T19:28:45Z")
> [@hildea](#): > > It would have been better if the statistics had been even more specific. There are no tables which take into account gender, age, business, educational level and occupational group at the same time. But I can take a single industry, say [wholesale and retail trade](http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/06/05/lonnvare_en/), and find that:[ul][li]Men earn more than women when comparing different [occupational groups](http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/06/05/lonnvare_en/tab-2003-12-19-02-en.html)[/li][li]Men earn more than women when comparing different [levels of education](http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/06/05/lonnvare_en/tab-2003-12-19-07-en.html)[/li][li]Men earn more than women when comparing different [ages](http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/06/05/lonnvare_en/tab-2003-12-19-08-en.html)[/ul][/li]Given this, I’m hardly taking a great leap of imagination when concluding that it’s exceedingly likely that men in general earn more than women with the same occupation, education and age. In other words: In Norway, where where we tend to see ourselves as [world champions in gender equality](http://www.ssb.no/english/magazine/art-2003-12-04-01-en.html), and where we have laws in place to prevent gender discrimination, there’s a very good chance that **possesion of a penis will get you a wage increase**. Does anyone want to bet that the situation is better in other countries? But do you see that your conclusion is totally invalid, even if these three variables were the only relevant ones? Yes, if you control for occupational group, men earn more. If you control for education, men earn more. If you control for age, men earn more. But really, you’d need to control for all three at the same time to make that claim, since men in the same occupation as women might have more education and have more experience and would therefore earn more. Men with the same education as women might have different occupations and have more experience. And men of the same experience might have different occupations and more education. So when you see that men and women with the same educational level make different salaries, and men and women with the same occupation make different salaries, and men and women with the same age make different salaries, you CANNOT therefore conclude that men and women with the same education, occupation and age make different salaries, although they may. Of course there are other factors you would have to control for anyway, like number of hours worked and seniority. For instance, there is a very strong correlation between height and illiteracy. Short people are much more likely to be illiterate than tall people. Proven statistical fact. Shocking! Except short people are much more likely to be children than tall people are. When you control for age the discrepancy disappears. So you can’t just control for one variable at a time and conclude that since there is still a discrepancy with each variable there must be gender bias. There may be, but you haven’t shown it. I would also suspect that gender bias would be more prevelant in some occupations and less prevelant in others. But even there, you’d have to somehow compare workers with the same occupation, the same experience, the same skills, the same education, the same number of hours worked annually, the same level of uninteruppted seniority. ---
**Author:** ![grand\_poobah\_bear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e36b37/32.png) [@grand\_poobah\_bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grand_poobah_bear)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2004, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/44 "2004-08-11T22:22:47Z")
Is there data that show salaries for women compared with that of men in similar jobs when the person with the power to decided on their salary is male Versus the case when the decision maker is female? is there a trend there? I wonder if men typically feel that women are less productive, or feel threatened by them… There was also a study (I forgot who it was) that indicated that women are less likely to negotiate or prolong a negotiation particularly when it comes to salary. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2004, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/45 "2004-08-12T01:24:09Z")
> [@grand poobah bear](#): > > Is there data that show salaries for women compared with that of men in similar jobs when the person with the power to decided on their salary is male Versus the case when the decision maker is female? is there a trend there? I don’t know that such a study would tell us anything useful. If we assume that lower earnings for women are evidence of sex discrimination then such a study might tell us whether women are less likely to be guilty of sex discrimination than men, but in the context of this discussion that’s not an assumption that we seem to be willing to make. Conversely, if we assume that women _are_ less likely to be guilty of sex discrimination than men, and we found that women managers tended to pay women workers the same as men, we might argue that pay differentials are indeed evidence of sex discrimination. But that’s not an assumption I’m prepared to make, and I don’t see any evidence for it. Without making either of these assumptions, I don’t see what conclusions we could draw from such a study? ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2004, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/46 "2004-08-12T02:17:42Z")
> [@Misnomer](#): > > As a single, professional woman in my early 30s with no foreseeable plans to start a family, I have mixed feelings about the way women may or may not be treated once they become pregnant. However, I have very strong feelings about a potential employer looking at me and thinking (consciously or not): “hmm, she might get married and want a baby while she’s working here, so to offset that potential downtime I’m just going to offer her a lower salary than if she were a man.” > > See the difference? Sure, but it’s always in the back of a lot of peoples heads. “How long will she stay in this job?”, “is it worth giving her a more senior roll” and so on. Right or wrong, a lot of people have those biases. Actually, I recall starting a thread on this very same topic a short time ago. Unfortunately it was moved to the Pit and shut down after some…unpleasentness. ---
**Author:** ![grand\_poobah\_bear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e36b37/32.png) [@grand\_poobah\_bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grand_poobah_bear)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2004, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/47 "2004-08-12T02:21:05Z")
so are you saying that sexual discrimination does not play a part in the salary disparity? ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2004, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/48 "2004-08-12T03:04:15Z")
> [@grand poobah bear](#): > > so are you saying that sexual discrimination does not play a part in the salary disparity? It may well do, but the figures don’t demonstrate that it does. It’s worth noting that the salary gap has narrowed since equal pay legislation was introduced, and it’s reasonable to infer that this has happened at least in part _because_ equal pay legislation was introduced. So at least some of the effect of sex discrimination has been filtered out. My hunch is that the remaining disparity is partly due to sex discrimination and partly to other factors, and that it would be very difficult to disentangle the two. It would also depend on your political/philopsophical stance. If women tend to attach a higher value to flexibility and a lower value to earnings, relative to men, is that a legitimate and freely-expressed preference, or the result of sexist conditioning and unwelcome social pressures? There isn’t a clear answer to that. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2004, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/49 "2004-08-12T05:05:11Z")
> [@](#): > > And in all fairness, should a woman receive the same pay as a man who bills more hours and works longer because he doesn’t take maternity leave? Only if her baby was fathered by a working man. (House work counts.) Should a man be penalized in senority and salary for his part in the conception of a child that leads to the necessity of a woman having to take a break to give birth? Should on-the-site daycare be mandated for businesses of a certain size so that _fathers_ don’t have to leave their jobs to tend to matters involving their children? Should a woman have to stop teaching when she is five months pregnant _regardless_ of what her doctor says? (That was the rule during my child-bearing years – a rule made by an all male school board, I might add.) How many of you fathers have been asked how you manage to juggle a career, housework and child-rearing? > [@](#): > > **Martin Hyde** : It is certainly not outside the realm of possibility that we will start to see women given preferential admissions (in fact this already happens) to engineering colleges, or medical schools, simply because they have two X chromosomes and other people with that similar condition tend to not choose the same career path as them. According to a CBS interview with the Dean of Admissions at Harvard University, the opposite is happening. Harvard is having to give men preferential treatment in order to keep the freshman class admissions at at 50-50 ration. 70% of the most qualified applicants to Harvard are women. > [@](#): > > **Martin Hyde** : One solution people might advocate is more equalization of income. That is bullshit because a doctor just simply deserves more pay than a nurse. You are right. She does. Her training is longer, more demanding and more expensive. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2004, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/50 "2004-08-12T05:11:58Z")
An additional comment about the field of education: Yes, more women enter the field. More men are promoted to administrative positions. In Nashville there has never been a female Director of Public Schools. Only once has the position been offered to a woman. So much for a female dominated profession. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2004, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/51 "2004-08-12T05:16:14Z")
I found this to be enlightening. Make of it what you will. ---
**Author:** ![hildea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ebca7d/32.png) [@hildea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hildea)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2004, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/52 "2004-08-12T10:01:36Z")
I do agree that the statistics I quoted don’t _prove_ that there’s unequal pay for equal work with equal qualifications within the same business. That’s why I wrote “exceedingly likely” and “a very good chance” instead of “proven” and “certainity”. > [@Shagnasty](#): > > To find out if males make more than females, you have to have study that selects males with a given occupation (being very specific; see the teacher example above), education level, age group, work status (part-time or full-time); years of experience, breaks in employment, number of overtime hours worked for hourly employees with females matching these same characteristics. Repeat for all jobs. Well, some of those factors are covered in the statistics I quoted. They cover wages for full time jobs, not part time. Overtime is (supposed to be) compensated separately, and is given as a separate figure in the tables. (As I mentioned there’s a loophole in the laws about overtime compensation, so this is probably not completely true for all high-level jobs.) Breaks in employment because of maternity leave isn’t _supposed_ to influence wages ([relevant part of gender equality act](http://www.likestillingsombudet.no/english/act_act.html#3)). Another aspect is that the wage differences follow all ages. Even if maternity leaves made a dent in someone’s experience and expertise a few years after it was over, it shouldn’t matter much fifteen or twenty years later. But yes, I agree, I’d prefer statistics which take into account all factors. It’d also be interesting to see stats comparing wage differences in businesses with different wage policies. I remember reading an article about a big insurance company which switched from determining wages based on strict rules (experience, education, position in the company) to a more flexible system, and the result was increasing gender differences in wages. I don’t remember enough specifics to be able to dig up the article again, unfortunately. > [@Shagnasty](#): > > In all of the states that I am familiar with in the US, public seconday school teacher’s salaries are determined strictly by years of experience and educational level … > I would guess that the same is true in Norway given that is more socialized than the U.S. (let me know if there are other factors in Norway). That means that the small discrepancy in pay can only be accounted for by men obtaining a greater number of advanced degrees or a greater number of years experience. Because women often want or need to stay home for a while after they have kids, that alone could account for the small difference in pay. It’s mostly true, but there are some additional payment for specific tasks, such as being main teacher for a class (means some extra administration and responsibilities). We don’t know, of course, if more men than women have such tasks because of choice or because the tasks are offered unequally. As I said above, time spent away from work because of maternity leave is supposed to be included in years of experience when calculating wages. Whether reality follows legislation is another question, but I’d expect public institutions to be pretty good about following the letter of the law, at least. > [@esquilmalt](#): > > I understand, but the study in Norway campared the salaries of men & women in the same industries doing similar jobs. I was curious if the person that referenced that study thought the same held true in the US, that women in general make 73 cents per dollar (the Now Study) & women in similar positions with men made 95 cents per dollar. I have no idea what the working situation for women is in Norway compared with the US. My gut feeling is that in the arena of gender equality, Norway can beat USA (and most of the world) without working up a sweat. But I freely admit that this might be mindless patriotism - I haven’t seen statistics comparing the two countries. > [@Cecil Adams](#): > > Some research suggests that when women behave as men do–not having babies, mainly–the income gap largely disappears. This sounds interesting, I’d like to hear more about it. If Cecil was following this thread, I’d ask “Cite?” 😃 Both Cecil Adams’ article (quoted by **xtisme** ) and some cases described by the [Norwegian Gender Equality Ombud](http://www.likestillingsombudet.no/english/) point to a nice little Catch 22. It’s legal (both in Norway and in US) to determine wages based on market rates. So, in some (many?) situations it’s legal to pay women less because they earn less. If we want to earn more, we’ll just have to make sure that we earn more first… Thinking about this issue, it seems to me that a reservist in the US Army is in a somewhat similar position as a woman in fertile age. For both of them, it’s possible that they might have to leave work for a long stretch of time, possibly on short notice. (Please correct me if I’ve misunderstood how the reservist system works.) If you (generic you) were in a job interview, would you think you’d be less likely to get the job if you admitted that you were a reservist? A related question: I’ve got the impression that if a reservist in the US Army is called to active duty, his/her employer has to keep his/her job for him/her while (s)he’s away, and reemploy the reservist when (s)he returns? I’ve also got the impression that if a parent wants more than a very few weeks off for taking care of an infant, (s)he usually will have to quit, and the employer has no obligation to take her/him back when the child is older. Is that correct? And if it is, do you agree that it’s grossly unfair? ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2004, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/53 "2004-08-12T19:06:49Z")
> [@hildea](#): > > I do agree that the statistics I quoted don’t _prove_ that there’s unequal pay for equal work with equal qualifications within the same business. That’s why I wrote “exceedingly likely” and “a very good chance” instead of “proven” and “certainity”. > > But yes, I agree, I’d prefer statistics which take into account all factors. It’d also be interesting to see stats comparing wage differences in businesses with different wage policies. There’s an important fact you’re not getting here. Normalized data isn’t just _better_ than non-normalized data; rather, the former is useful, while that latter is _worthless_. You can’t take unadjusted, raw data, add a pinch of speculation, and let the conclusions start flying. It tell us nothing to compare the salary of 2 groups, if those 2 groups do not have the same level of education, experience, time off, and hours worked, because we don’t know _which_ factor is responsible for the inequity. You can speculate all you want, but unless you use proper controls, it remains only speculation. Let’s say I do a study, and find that wearing green clothing causes a reduction in life expectancy. I can speculate all I want about possible toxins in green dye, but if I didn’t make allowance for the fact that soldiers wear green uniforms, my speculation is meaningless. ---
**Author:** ![js\_africanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/87869e/32.png) [@js\_africanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/js_africanus)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/54 "2004-08-13T15:29:02Z")
Women’s Figures Independent Women’s Forum And I’ll just paste this one: [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi\_m0HSP/is\_1\_4/ai\_66678566](http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HSP/is_1_4/ai_66678566) FWIW, of course. ---
**Author:** ![B.Serum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/b.serum/32/14266_2.png) [@B.Serum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B.Serum)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/55 "2004-08-13T18:29:20Z")
When discussions of this nature come up, I generally see a subtext that says “You awful men are keeping us women down!” Moreover, I think that this was generally the case up to the mid-20th century. Since then, women have fought an ongoing uphill battle to demand the equality they deserve. Though I do agree that the “old boy’s network” has played a (declining) role in wage discrepancy, I believe there are of course additional and complex factors at work as well. I agree with the other posters who have suggested that the question “why does pay discrepancy happen?” is the real matter we are grapppling with. There have been several opinions posted, I’d like to add some of my own to the discussion soup… **Conjecture:** I believe that there is less of a direct relationship between the amount someone is paid versus how hard they work than there ought to be. In addition to work ethic, I believe a person’s pay is most directly related to how well they manage their own career. Opportunism. How aggressive does a person negotiate their salary? How important is it to that person to be that aggressive? Has there ever been a study done on the disparity of “Type A” individuals versus others? I wonder if there is inequality of pay in that case? I also believe that there are basic biological imperatives that may play an important factor in the disparity of pay. At the most basic level, men are programmed to be providers. Being a strong provider is generally valued by women when choosing a mate. Is it not reasonable then, that a male will be more inclined to adopt as many wage-increasing traits as possible because “that’s what the ladies are looking for?” Is it not reasonable that a woman (being programmed at a basic level with a whole other set of imperatives) is not _as_ inclined to do whatever it takes to advance and climb that corporate ladder (though there certainly are some that do?) Put in the the simplest of terms, though many women have a _desire_ to succeed in business, most men have a _need_ to succeed in business. That may dynamic may play a factor — that’s all I’m sayin’. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/56 "2004-08-13T19:13:31Z")
Now we’re into the whole “nature vs. nurture” debate. I see lots of examples of women who have no problem being competitive in _any_ field, so I suspect that any differences that exist between the genders is more a holdover from societal expections that women be more demure than men. If it really were due to biology, I would think that _all_ women would have trouble being competitive, and that’s clearly not the case. At any rate, that all seems moot to me, because if women _are_ short-circuiting their own careers due to their biology (or that men’s innate competitiveness is “stronger”), then it would just tend to prove that discrimination _doesn’t_ exist - that they’re doing it to themselves. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2004, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281/57 "2004-08-14T11:13:02Z")
> [@grand poobah bear](#): > > There was also a study (I forgot who it was) that indicated that women are less likely to negotiate or prolong a negotiation particularly when it comes to salary. I was thinking something along these lines. While it certainly wouldn’t completely explain all cases of pay gaps, I did come up with a thought experiment that could shed light on the question. I’d like to see a study showing the cost gap of purchasing a new car, which is traditionally a highly negotiated purchase. You could easily compare the exact same makes, models and years. It would be interesting and valuable to note whether men and women, when faced with the same negotiation, came out spending the same amount on average, or if the men negotiated a better price. If it were the latter, we would at least have a “negotiation normalization” variable to play with when comparing negotiated salaries. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-debate-equal-pay-for-women/259281.md?page=2)