We’ve all heard the stat that women are still payed 70 (or some such number) of cents on the dollar for equivalent work. It was mentioned in last night’s episode of Glee, which brought it back to my mind.
How true is it?
Don’t watch Glee, so I’m not sure about the context, but I think it’s closer to 80 cents on the dollar now. There’s some basic info here, with much of it boiling down to women being penalized for being primary caregivers of any children or aging parents, while men may actually get a boost. I’d also hazard a guess, from my own observations, that women also get penalized for being potential caregivers – the idea that they might get pregnant or start a family and be left caring for the kids more than their partner (regardless of whether or not they want kids, may be infertile, may have a partner who wants to stay at home, etc.) can make them less valuable.
There is also the persisting idea that a man *must *be paid more – he’s probably got a wife and family to care for, or will, very soon. Whereas a woman may have taken her job as a hobby, and can rely on a second income (or will, very soon, if she’s smart). Old-fashioned, but I’ve heard it from supposedly smart, modern bosses.
I’ve also read interesting pieces on women being socialized not to demand raises or negotiate higher salaries, or even job descriptions (IME, maybe 10 years ago, when a male secretary got brought in he had his title tweaked and never got called a secretary, even casually. He also didn’t clean up after our catered lunches – but one of my female colleagues did). This could also be extended to claiming credit for any work done (and more), and having that reflected in bonuses and promotions. But this is tricky, too, because while it’s tempting to say this could simply be solved by having women be more assertive, I’m not sure our perceptions of assertive men and assertive women are quite in line with this. If someone thinks the same words coming out of a male recruit’s mouth are ambitious, but pushy from a woman, it could backfire. It’s also difficult to gauge when there’s no salary transparency – if someone’s being told there’s no room in the budget for a raise and have no one to compare notes with, they may take this at face value.
Thanks for the link, although I should point out that it’s from 2001. Not that I think the problem has magically fixed itself since then, but I’d be surprised if things haven’t gotten better, given the extent to which it’s been an issue that is prominent in the public consciousness.
In addition to what Cat Fight posted, there is also a certain level of sexual segregation of career paths. Certain jobs are female dominated while others are male dominated. Overall, jobs dominated by males make more money. This is more a sociological issue rather than direct discrimination.
From everything I have seen if you look within a job category the wage gap between childless women and men almost disappear. That does not mean there is no issue it just changes its nature. We are almost past the stage of directly discriminating policies where a law suit or anit-discrimination law will improve the situation. This leaves us to ask:
[ol]
[li]Why are women more likely to take primary responsibility for children?[/li][li]Why do more women than men choose career paths that pay less?[/li][li]Why do “women’s professions” pay less?[/li][/ol]
Once we understand those and other factors affecting the pay difference, then we can work on fixing it.
17.4% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Cite.
That women earn less than men, on average, is true. THe notion that this is because of sexism is much more problematic.
Women more often choose lower-paying professions than men - nursing school rather than medical school, for instance. They are less likely to choose dangerous professions like logging or mining. Women on average have lower levels of math skills, and so are under-represented in fields like engineering. Women cannot compete head to head with men in most major professional sports like football, baseball, basketball, soccer, MMA, boxing, or hockey.
Women also tend to have less seniority. They also often take time out from working, to give birth and to care for small children. Single parents are usually women, so they more often lose time/are unavailable to work to care for their children, and thus have trouble getting the well-paid but time-consuming jobs. Women work part-time more often than men.
Certainly sexism and discrimination exist, but they are not the primary factors behind the disparity.
Regards,
Shodan
This is a difficult question because of all the factors in play. Women choose different types of jobs, work fewer hours than men, and leave the work force more frequently than men. See this article . http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba392 and also the research of June O’Neill who has found that women make about 98% of what men do if you control for all the other factors that affect wages.
I found this article that says that never been married and never had children women earn more than never been married and never had children men.
http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/12/women-wage-gap-cx_wf_0512earningmore.html
I also am dubious about this “70-80%” figure. But the GAO report claims it
“accounts for factors such as occupation, industry, race, marital status and job tenure”. So different career paths and seniority ought not be at issue.
I work for a government office where pay is strictly based on seniority. Moreover, my particular office is somewhat of a matriarchy, with well over 50% of the staff and management women. So my personal experience is at odds with what I hear about the “glass ceiling.”
I would guess that there would certainly be some industries where women would do less. Private law firms for example. But I’m always suspicious of claims of disparate pay across the board.
And then there’s the classic response: IF this is true, why don’t big corporations fire all their male employees and replace them with women? They’d save 30% of what they pay in salaries, right?
Haven’t you heard of the’he-cession’?
A possible factor, from here (though it doesn’t apply to all industries):
Pretty much agree with what Shodan said here. Certainly there sexist type motives as well, but overall I think that women earn less on average because of other factors. I seem to recall that Cecil did an article on this once (or maybe it was in one of his books). If so, I’ll see if I can dig it up when I get back to my hotel room tonight.
-XT
This is a little silly. As was seen in Ledbetter case companies pay have in the past (and some may still, although it is illegal) valued women workers less than men. Slower promotions, smaller raises and worse assignments. They did it because they believed that women were less valuable, less likely to complain, and in some cases because they viewed women as putting the job second.
Your argument could be applied to any group who has been discriminated against. So why didn’t all the corporations hire immigrant, black, disabled women without high school diplomas? They could have saved a bundle!
Are women paid less than men for the same work?
Cecil’s column is from 2002, and it doesn’t really add anything to what’s already been said in this thread.
Because they’re too busy firing all their American employees and outsourcing the jobs to countries where wages are a lot lower?
No, it couldn’t, because the question relies upon the supposedly discriminated against party doing the same work. A disabled person without a high school diploma should be discriminated against in many cases, because, surprisingly enough, being disabled and uneducated makes you less capable of doing the same work as everyone else.
Not to worry. In 1986 I believe it was sixty-seven cents to the dollar. Now that’s progress!
And we’ve already got permission to vote and own land several decades after male slaves got it, so what’s to complain about?
I notice you didn’t address the black and immigrant portion of the description. But letting that go, the point I was making was that the pay gap was not a simple matter of greed. The companies valued men more than women. They felt they did more or better work, or that they were more reliable, and so on. The type of thought processes that would lead to assuming that women are less valuable would also lead to only hiring them for less important jobs.
Historically this can be seen in two jobs that today are are dominated by women: secretaries and tax preparers.
Secretary used to be a prestigious job (why do you think the head of the State Department is the Secretary of State?). Technological and organizational changes made the position more clerical and less responsible and it became a woman’s job. Something similar happened when tax preparation software was developed(I am referring to professional prep software that predated TaxCut and the like). It took less skill and therefore demanded less pay and now has more women.
I didn’t address the woman portion either. The reason I didn’t is because they are irrelevant when there are far greater reasons to discriminate against this specific group. If you’re a black immigrant disabled woman with no education and people refuse to hire you, it’s not because you’re black, or because you’re a woman. It’s because you’re dead weight.
Cause she’s a woman, duh.
And the reason for large male/female wage gap in the past was that women were considered more dead weight than men. And to argue that there was no wage gap because otherwise corporations would have hired more women ignores the fact that you don’t necessarily want the lowest paid work force you could get.