Is The Wage Gap An Issue

[Scrib]

So I was reading this article on the male/female wage gap and it got me thinking.

Is there really a wage gap in America that needs to be dealt with? It seems that the whole wage gap comes from women working different jobs than men, jobs that pay less, if so do you think this is an issue that needs to be legislated on? Or are there simply sexist hiring policies? I can't see a reason why, since both men and women can take time off for their children's birth (although perhaps I guess women take pregnancy leave on top of that) so it's not like employers are losing more money. Yet none of these articles ever cite this, or any studies done on sexism in hiring.

Hell, one article I read claimed that women were simply more easily satisfied career wise (boy I bet that was a popular opinion) and that the level that women were comfortable easing back was lower than men's because they didn't feel the compulsive need to push forward.

So I'm just curious, is there really a wage gap on the same jobs and industries (a lot of these articles seems to be speaking in terms of the entire economy it seems) or is it due to the choices of jobs people make?

[Simon_Jester]

There is, it's documented even in the same industry between people with equal work experience.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/ ... CI20120417

[weemadando]

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/ ... aphic.html

Here's a nice, simple article that lays out what a significant issues or is.

[Count Chocula]

Ask the President's staff if it's an issue. The women there are paid less than men doing the same job. The Reuters and americanprogress studies also do not take into account economic starting points, education level, or promotion/career prospects.

[Instant Sunrise]

Even today, a white cisgendered woman earns 77 cents for every dollar her male counterpart makes.

But to say that the pay gap is a 'myth' because women work different jobs or different hours, that argument doesn't hold up.

Today is a holiday that no one is interested in celebrating. No, not Tax Day; some people are proud to pay their taxes. I’m talking about Equal Pay Day, a sort of anti-holiday invented by the National Committee on Pay Equity to mark the sad fact that women and men still don’t earn equal pay for equal work. According to the American Association of University Women, women working full-time jobs still only earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men with full-time jobs, a 23% gap. Today, April 17, marks how far into 2012 women would have to work in order to match what men earned in 2011.


We’re not talking about pocket change. In 2010, the last year for which we have data, American men working full time took in roughly $47,700; women earned only $36,900, a gap of $10,800. That’s almost enough to cover average housing costs for an individual over the course of a year. (Or one gigantic shopping spree at the dollar store.) Over the course of a career, the typical woman earns a staggering $434,000 less than her male counterpart.

But what if this giant pay gap is the result not of discrimination, but of something less pernicious – like the different life and career choices made by men and women? When you look more deeply into the numbers, critics suggest, the alleged wage gap simply disappears. On the conservative FrontPageMag.com, for example, John Perazzo argues that the wage gap is “a complete fiction. A gargantuan lie, actually.”

Women, he argues, are more likely to work in non-technical fields, to avoid dangerous jobs, to seek jobs offering more flexible hours.

An even more significant cause of the gender pay gap is that women tend to compile fewer years of uninterrupted service in their jobs than men. Indeed, women are far more likely to leave the workforce for extended periods in order to attend to family-related matters such as raising children.

As a result of these sorts of differences, Perazzo argues,

when men and women work at jobs where their titles, their responsibilities, their qualifications, and their experience are equivalent, they are paid exactly the same.

Well, not exactly.

Perazzo is right that different “life choices” do account for some of the wage gap. But not all of it. According to a 2003 report by the US Government Accountability Office, even after accounting for different work patterns between men and women, and other such factors, there’s still a 20% wage gap. A 2009 report prepared for the Department of Labor by the CONSAD Research Corp suggests that the gap is considerably smaller. According to CONSAD, “observable differences in the attributes of men and women … account for most of the wage gap.” The real gap, the report argues, is only between 4.8 and 7.1%.

So should we really be “celebrating” Equal Pay Day sometime in January? Well, no, because the different “work patterns” and “attributes” of men and women explain less of the differences in pay than the critics claim. Take the issue of motherhood. As Perazzo argues, motherhood does indeed have a large effect on women’s wages: while childless women make 94% of what childless men make, mothers make only 60% of what fathers make. (Men, by contrast, get an economic boost from fatherhood.) Indeed, economist Jane Waldfogel argues that motherhood may account for up to half of the wage gap between men and women.

But career interruptions only account for some of the “motherhood penalty.” As sociologist Michelle Budig points out,

Having children reduces women’s earnings, even among workers with comparable qualifications, experience, work hours, and jobs … That mothers work less and may accept lower earnings for more family-friendly jobs partially explains the penalty among low-wage workers, and that mothers have less experience, due to interruptions for childbearing, explains some of the penalty among the highly paid. But a significant motherhood penalty persists even in estimates that account for these differences: the size of the wage penalty after all factors are controlled is roughly three percent per child, which, in 2009, means the typical full-time female worker earned $1,100 less per child.

Some of the wage gap, as critics like Perazzo point out, is due to the fact that women tend to work in fields that pay less than fields dominated by men. But when women enter these higher paying fields, they still tend to earn less than their male counterparts. The gender wage gaps in heavily male dominated science and technology jobs, for example, range from 81% in civil engineering to a relatively egalitarian 94% in chemistry, according to government data recently compiled by the AAUW.

Moreover, talking about the differences in the career paths of men and women as the result of free “choice” can be misleading. As psychologist Hilary M. Lips puts it,

The language attributing women’s lower pay to their own lifestyle choices is seductive—in an era when women are widely believed to have overcome the most serious forms of discrimination and in a society in which we are fond of emphasizing individual responsibility for life outcomes. …

[But] the language of “choice” obscures larger social forces that maintain the wage gap and the very real constraints under which women labor. The impact of discrimination, far from being limited to the portion of the wage gap that cannot be accounted for by women’s choices, is actually deeply embedded in and constrains these choices.

One reason women may be less likely to enter tech fields, for example, is that they have been taught their whole lives that women aren’t good at that sort of thing. “From childhood onward,” Lips writes,

we view media that consistently portray men more often than women in professional occupations and in masculine-stereotyped jobs. Not surprisingly, researchers find that the more TV children watch, the more accepting they are of occupational gender stereotypes. Why does the acceptance of gender stereotypes matter? Gender-stereotyped messages about particular skills (e.g., “males are generally better at this than females”) lower women’s beliefs in their competence—even when they perform at exactly the same level as their male counterparts. In such situations, women’s lower confidence in their abilities translates into a reluctance to pursue career paths that require such abilities.

It doesn’t help, of course, when the relatively small number of women who take engineering courses at the college level are treated like exotic creatures, sex objects or ersatz men.

You may recall the infamous talking Barbie doll that told young girls that “math class is tough!”

Well, inequality is tough. Not just tough to fight; tough to understand. And to really understand it, you need to go beyond the numbers.

[Ryan Thunder]

A part of me kind of cynically wonders if this is why the charity I work for seems to have a male:female ratio of less than 1:2 in the office I work at.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Even today, a white cisgendered woman earns 77 cents for every dollar her male counterpart makes.

But to say that the pay gap is a 'myth' because women work different jobs or different hours, that argument doesn't hold up.

I remember reading an article a while ago that the pay gap does still exist, but the actual ratio of earning is not as severe as the figures your article cites, but unfortunately I can't seem to find it again, now. It said that the real figure was something like 85 cents for every dollar, when you use more rigorous statistical models. But I can't find it ....

[salm]

Apparently a contributing factor is that men are better at negotiating salaries.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Apparently a contributing factor is that men are better at negotiating salaries.

Is it that men are inherently better, or that the current system is engineered (even if unintentionally) such that men get an advantage? Or, rather, is there a way to engineer a system such that men do not get this advantage? After all, it isn't that men are necessarily better, but that they are, on average, more aggressive (evidence). There is a strong subconscious pull on humans to associate aggressive individuals with power, which is why these negotiating strategies pay off.

EDIT:

Oops, didn't realize that not everyone would have access to the paid archive, so that link would just appear as an abstract not an article. Here is a related one.

[Eleas]

Apparently a contributing factor is that men are better at negotiating salaries.

Is it that men are inherently better, or that the current system is engineered (even if unintentionally) such that men get an advantage? Or, rather, is there a way to engineer a system such that men do not get this advantage? After all, it isn't that men are necessarily better, but that they are, on average, more aggressive (evidence). There is a strong subconscious pull on humans to associate aggressive individuals with power, which is why these negotiating strategies pay off.

That, plus the little fact that it's trivially easy to look at who gets to talk the longest and the most in classes even as far down as first grade. The one who enjoys an unearned advantage in verbal competition will likely be perceived to be the one being "better at negotiating" in favor of himself.

[Starglider]

Most male-dominated industries in the US - manufacturing, construction, transport, farming, mining, engineering - either already have heavy decline in payrolls and wages, or starting to be outsourced en masse. Female-dominated industries such as healtcare, education and media have been expanding fast. This is quite clear in wage growth over time;





Excluding the tiny elite of CEOs and hedge fund managers, obsolete males are trapped in labor surplus conditions and have experienced stagnant real wages for three decades. Female income has continued to grow with GDP. Furthermore the gender gap in degrees awarded continues to widen in favor of women, which given the strong correlation of tertiary education and career average salary, almost assures that median female income will surpass median male income in around a decade;



As such no legislation is needed. It will certainly be interesting to see what the coming popping of the student loan bubble does to the graduate gender ratio.

Actually it's interesting to ask anyone who thinks the gender wage gap is an issue, do you also acknowledge that the gender tertiary education gap is an issue?

[Simon_Jester]

Most male-dominated industries in the US - manufacturing, construction, transport, farming, mining, engineering - either already have heavy decline in payrolls and wages, or starting to be outsourced en masse. Female-dominated industries such as healtcare, education and media have been expanding fast. This is quite clear in wage growth over time;

There' still an issue if women still get paid less, even in female-dominated industries, because "female-dominated" actually means "most of the employees are women" here.

All the trends you project mean is that we get two semi-permanent underclasses. We get a mostly-male 'inert drone' class, who can't find work. And we get a mostly-female 'white-collar minion' class. Who can find work, but are paid poorly compared to the handful of males on the managerial track.

Hm. Are women who are too poor and overworked to raise a family the functional equivalent to the sterile-females who make up the worker population in an anthill or beehive? No, I think that's stretching the metaphor too far, but it's interesting to think about.

[Bakustra]

Actually it's interesting to ask anyone who thinks the gender wage gap is an issue, do you also acknowledge that the gender tertiary education gap is an issue?

Look, you motherfucker, anybody who understands English, human behavior, and has had anything beyond Feminism 101 will understand that you're implying "feminists don't care about men!!!" here, so you might as well post it blatantly.

Of course, you could always be so ignorant about feminist thought as to not understand that a large portion of third-wave feminism has been about developing an understanding of how patriarchal society harms men, including problems such as the inequality of postgraduate degree awards. Or do you seriously think that this is the result of some sort of feminist conspiracy- oh, wait, you'll never actually open up enough to admit yes or no, so I might as well replace this entire thing with Rolling Stones lyrics for all the good it will do.

"Female-dominated" fields generally have a paucity of women in administrative positions, by the way. Doctors and hospital officials and principals and superintendents and producers and executives are still mostly male, and the glass ceiling is still present, so your rosy prediction of how ~market forces~ will, after four hundred years of doing fuck-all for women, suddenly swoop to the rescue (in the richer part of the world at least- though gender biases are less of a problem in the developing countries we are damaging in the name of globalization, so I guess they have semi-equally shit treatment, though sexual harassment probably still is a problem) and solve the problem.

In conclusion, I have to say that while people bloviating about the physical sciences are generally mocked, this sort of bloviation about the social sciences or humanities is treated with far more respect than it deserves.

[Bakustra]

Hmm, it seems that treating other people with contempt doesn't produce any sort of happy feeling. Guess Starglider's just a broken shell of a human, then!

Anyways, the wage gap is a problem even if we presume that there are no differences in wages paid for the same work (which isn't necessarily true), because the arguments used to support the "job gap" rely on various patriarchal stereotypes- women don't want to work a job that pays more, women are inherently more nurturing, women, since they have pregnancy leave mandated via the FMLA, will use that to get off of work, women have children and thus will leave a career... These are either crap or apply equally to men.

Other explanations, such as men working more overtime, are products of the home-life split. Men still do less than 50% of the housework on average, leaving them with more free time to cut into for the benefit of management and their continued favor with it, while women have less of a gap without living in a pigsty, which nobody really wants to do.

So, basically, the wage gap is still a major issue for several reasons- it tells us how far we are from equality, why single mothers have it harder than single fathers, that the patriarchal power structure denies that men are capable of caring for children...

[Instant Sunrise]

To expand on a point I made earlier, the 77 cents on the dollar wage gap is only for white women compared to white men.

TransGriot Link

Today Is Equal Pay Day, and the statistic is getting trotted out today ad nauseum that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.

However, that statistic as you probably guessed is WHITE women's wages compared to WHITE men's wages. For BLACK women it is worse at 68 cents for every dollar a white male earns. For Latinas it is even more abysmal at 59 cents for every dollar a white male earns.


And for transwomen? Don't even get me started on that. All I have to say is pass ENDA and any local or state anti-trans discrimination laws.

Eliminating the ability for people to overtly discriminate against us transpeople will be a good start to helping us get gainfully employed so we can get a solid foothold in the economic game, begin contributing to the nation's economy and address some of the ills of our community.

Interesting post that breaks the equal pay stats down in the trans community, and looking forward to seeing that same Kristen Schilt-Matthew Wiswall 2006 study replicated and broken down by race.

It's even worse for transgender women. Trans women make 68 cents on their dollar before coming out as women. While trans men make $1.50 on their dollar before coming out as men.

The wage gap still exists, it's still an issue, and it gets worse if you aren't white or cisgendered.

[Eulogy]

Man, it's like women should start forming a union or something, that they need to somehow get the power to force employers to be much more fair to them. Men who aren't shitheads will support the women in their endeavours for fairness.

And yes, people often confuse feminism for misandry, which are two different things.

[Starglider]

Ah good, SDN still conforming to stereotype, still responding to a polite presentation of relevant data with incoherent insults and screeching about how the poster is not liberal enough to count as a human being.

[Starglider]

All the trends you project mean is that we get two semi-permanent underclasses. We get a mostly-male 'inert drone' class, who can't find work. And we get a mostly-female 'white-collar minion' class. Who can find work, but are paid poorly compared to the handful of males on the managerial track.

Correct. However the management gender ratio has been steadily improving, and will continue to swing towards females regardless of political factors, due to the widening gap in female education and employment. The pool of management track candidates will increasingly consist of female graduates with relevant internships and a record of working through university, going up against males with no degree and long stretches of unemployment on their CV. As such we should continue to monitor this, but I don't think any action is needed beyond vigorously enforcing existing equal opportunities legislation.

Worsening male outcomes (outside the 1%) is a problem that deserves attention, because we have a thirty year downward trend rather than a sixty year upward trend, and no solutions to hand. To be clear, this is not an issue of direct competition; the factors causing male employment decline are mostly unrelated to the factors restricting female salary advancement. While in theory I would be ok with a multi-decade overcorrection to average compensation significantly in favor of females - given the historical situation, it would be hard to oppose this if it's necessary to eventually converge on equality - in practice we are seeing an accelerating trend towards outright unemployment, not just under-compensation. This comes with significant risks to social stability.

[Simon_Jester]

Okay, that makes a bit more sense.

Without trying to deliberately read a 'gloating evil' overtone into your post that might not be there, I see what you're talking about: the idea that this trend is or appears to be reversing itself, therefore there is not a problem.

What I should have asked more clearly is: do you think the wage gap per hour worked in a given job is closing? That seems to be the question the thread starts with, and your data doesn't really answer it. The median female income was very low up through the 1980s because of the huge number of women out of work, and is now increasing because of the huge number of men out of work, but that doesn't tell us whether Joe Smith the chartered accountant or Jane Smith the chartered accountant are getting paid the same for equivalent levels of experience and education.

If male accountants still get paid more than female accountants, there's a problem even if male accountants are in the minority. Likewise for human resources personnel and managers. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this as a trend consistent with the globalized neoliberal economic model: women are hired for all the white-collar work because* you can get away with paying them less, repeating in the office the hiring practices found in the mines and mills of the 19th century.

*("In part because," technically, but you get the idea).

If we want to talk about patriarchy, for most of history "patriarchy" involved a small number of male lords dominating everyone, with a mass of oppressed men mated to a mass of even more oppressed women. The gap in privileges between a male aristocrat and a male peasant could easily be as large or larger than the gap between a male peasant and a female peasant. The decline of upper body strength as an important thing for peasants to have, and the rising need for meek peasants* might well just make the pyramid reshuffle so that the female peasants are higher-status than the male ones, without removing the "rule by men" at the peak, and thus without removing "patriarchy."

*(since the peasants now seem to outnumber the aristocrats more than they used to; the real aristocracy is the top multimillionaires and not even the relatively massive "one percent")

[Bakustra]

Ah good, SDN still conforming to stereotype, still responding to a polite presentation of relevant data with incoherent insults and screeching about how the poster is not liberal enough to count as a human being.

I'm sorry that you're so broken you have to lie about my posts, Starglider. But since you're an idiot who thinks that "liberal" and "socialist" are fundamentally equivalent, I guess it was to be expected. Politeness requires that you treat other people with respect, not that you condescend about how feminists obviously aren't worried about anything that hurts men. You don't get to claim politeness when you're essentially repackaging a feminazi rant, no matter how politely you phrase it. It's simply ridiculous, and indeed a literal style over substance fallacy.

For example, "I do believe that the world would look better without you in it, and I intend to do something about this abominable situation." is substantially a death threat, even though it looks nicer than "Fuck you, douchebag." Do you get what I mean? No, of course you don't, but maybe your response to this will be hilarious enough to get people to stop treating you like you're going to respond honestly.

For example, you furiously defending the rise of the "service economy" and now talking about how the decline of manufacturing needs to be addressed is blatant dishonesty that nobody else will fucking call you out on, it seems. Even if you're somehow the world's worst communicator and indeed entirely honest, you should probably develop a consistent system of thought before speaking politically.

[Simon_Jester]

not that you condescend about how feminists obviously aren't worried about anything that hurts men.

When did he say that was obvious, again?

For example, you furiously defending the rise of the "service economy" and now talking about how the decline of manufacturing needs to be addressed is blatant dishonesty that nobody else will fucking call you out on, it seems. Even if you're somehow the world's worst communicator and indeed entirely honest, you should probably develop a consistent system of thought before speaking politically.

Me, I have a different problem with Starglider: I know damn well he's being sarcastic much of the time, and that annoys the hell out of me sometimes... but I don't have trouble grasping the idea that he's capable of sarcasm.

[Starglider]

Without trying to deliberately read a 'gloating evil' overtone into your post that might not be there, I see what you're talking about: the idea that this trend is or appears to be reversing itself, therefore there is not a problem.

I'm not sure what you mean. I've stated that the male unemployment and graduation trends are unfortunate and concerning, but the silver lining is that it should carry the overall female management participation trend up and over equality. Decline of the gender gap is a long term trend was otherwise in danger of stalling;



(unfortunately that's the most recent chart I have to hand that's adjusted for position / education / experience etc; the data I actually work with is almost all raw economic aggregates)

That seems to be the question the thread starts with, and your data doesn't really answer it.

I assumed everyone read the linked article and was providing some perspective beyond the statistics presented there. It is fine to compare like for like but it is wrong to do so to the exclusion of employment numbers and population-global medians.

If male accountants still get paid more than female accountants, there's a problem even if male accountants are in the minority.

Maybe. We'd have to examine the group and see if gender alone is the causitive factor, rather than factors such as males taking greater risks in changing companies more often (from personal experience, a significant factor in the finance industry). The original article went into quite a lot of detail on how these factors account for some but not all of the pay gap. Of course we'll need to keep this analysis up to date as the overall pay gap closes and male employment declines.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this as a trend consistent with the globalized neoliberal economic model: women are hired for all the white-collar work because* you can get away with paying them less, repeating in the office the hiring practices found in the mines and mills of the 19th century.

Replacement of this type was very common in the last half century due to near-universal male employment; the increase in the quantity and quality of female labour available lead the increase in the quantity and quality of positions employers were prepared to hire women for, resulting in depressed compensation. It's unfortunate that a labor price discount was necessary to convince assorted misogynists to hire females, but it most likely did achieve a faster growth in female employment than would have occured under strictly enforced equal pay rules.

The offshoring of non-financial economic growth has changed the situation. In the current environment, an employer can easily get hundreds or even thousands of applicants for any position that doesn't require highly specialised experience. Even if we assume employers pay no heed to equal opportunity legislation, there is no reason why females should be cheaper than males - in fact given that males are significantly more likely to be unemployed;



they should now be cheaper - unless pride is preventing them from taking low-wage positions (ultimately, to their own cost). However these effects will take some time for this to work its way through the career ladder. The point about increased female graduation being insufficient in the linked article seemed to make this mistake - comparing the current graduation gap to the earnings gap in people who have graduated (on average) decades ago - although I could be wrong here as I didn't track down the methodology of that claim.

The gap in privileges between a male aristocrat and a male peasant could easily be as large or larger than the gap between a male peasant and a female peasant.

Sure, that's why I've consistently said 'outside of the 1%' (to adopt the preferred SDN argot for the well-off). However the ratio of male-to-female 1%ers is by definition irrelevant to the welfare of the vast majority of the population, and overall income inequality is another subject entirely.

the real aristocracy is the top multimillionaires and not even the relatively massive "one percent")

The people who actually make the decisions to destroy companies in leveraged buyouts and offshore millions of jobs are the 0.01%, yes. I'm glad you appreciate this point as it's generally lost on N&P.

[Simon_Jester]

I've got nothing I'd argue with you over in all this, really. And, hm.

the real aristocracy is the top multimillionaires and not even the relatively massive "one percent")

The people who actually make the decisions to destroy companies in leveraged buyouts and offshore millions of jobs are the 0.01%, yes. I'm glad you appreciate this point as it's generally lost on N&P.

To me it seems blindingly obvious, and I think it's obvious to a lot more of the N&P crowd than you admit.

[ArmorPierce]

Okay how about this guys

http://www.time.com/time/business/artic ... 74,00.html

But now there's evidence that the ship may finally be turning around: according to a new analysis of 2,000 communities by a market research company, in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group. In two cities, Atlanta and Memphis, those women are making about 20% more. This squares with earlier research from Queens College, New York, that had suggested that this was happening in major metropolises. But the new study suggests that the gap is bigger than previously thought, with young women in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego making 17%, 12% and 15% more than their male peers, respectively.

of course this comes with a qualifier

Here's the slightly deflating caveat: this reverse gender gap, as it's known, applies only to unmarried, childless women under 30 who live in cities. The rest of working women — even those of the same age, but who are married or don't live in a major metropolitan area — are still on the less scenic side of the wage divide.

On a somewhat related side note, I am concerned by the fact that equalizing of wages for women has had the counter intuitive effect of further consolidating wealth in those in power (white people). White women tend to combine their wealth with white men after all. The increase in women wage actually has been at least partly the cause for the increase in wealth divide between white people and minorities.

[Simon_Jester]

Pierce, the inner cities are concentrated pockets of male unemployment. There's a distorting effect there for the reasons Starglider noted. It's not that the women are getting paid well, it's that 30 or 40% of the men don't have jobs in that age bracket, which drags their median wage through the floor.