# Salary Differences **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 6, 2010, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/salary-differences/538540 "2010-05-06T18:52:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2010, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/salary-differences/538540/21 "2010-05-08T19:57:28Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > But she wasn’t doing the same job he was doing. > They may have started at the same level,;-- but he was a congenial team worker and she was a sourpuss. > He played the game, worked hard for more education,got the MBA and more responsibility–and yes, more pay. > > What’s the problem? Well, she may always have been a sourpuss, I don’t know. What I’m saying is that at the time they were both hired, he was hired at a better position, from the outset, because he was a man. As soon as he was hired, he was given an assistant. She was hired at a lower position, because she was a woman. The only thing she could get was a position as an assistant. That’s how things were in 1972. Knowing these two, my guess is that she probably had a higher GPA than he did. She was sort of the straight-A type. So I assumed she was a sourpuss because of that. Because of being male, he had opportunities she didn’t. Not that he didn’t work hard, but he had a path to being the CFO, and she did not. Now, had things been equal, 20 years later there still would have been only one CFO, and it might not have been her. But she might have had a shot. Women who got out of college in the 70s and were hired at lesser positions because of their sex are still in the workforce, and in many cases suffering from the fact that opportunities weren’t there for them when they first got out of college. A lot of them jumped the traces, many did not. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2010, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/salary-differences/538540/22 "2010-05-09T18:19:17Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > I did this in 1995, and the theory was that 20 years after the big feminist push, women were still making less. Turned out that women make less because they _choose_ to make less, and when men made the same choices, they made less also. (Example: one corporate attorney chose to work her career, but somebody had to do the thing with the kids, and that somebody was her husband, who became a “special counsel” instead of partnership track, with fewer hours and about 2/3 of the salary.) I concur. I got out of the computer industry and became a teacher choosing the security and time with my children and let the wife worry about making the $$. I wonder how many thousands of dollars that cost me. ---
**Author:** ![Crawlspace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Crawlspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crawlspace)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/salary-differences/538540/23 "2010-05-10T01:37:15Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > I don’t think they’d be that stupid. The way I’ve seen the stats has always specified that the disparity is _for the same jobs_. They’re not comparing secretaries to CEOs, generally speaking. But even comparing salaries at the same job doesn’t control for all the parameters. For example, I’ve seen studies that show female doctors make 75-85 cents on the dollar compared to their male counter parts. But most of these studies fail to control for specialty choice, hours worked per week, frequency of being on call, number of patients seen per week, sick days taken, etc. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/salary-differences/538540.md?page=1)