Why is pay between men and women so different?

Female high school graduates, aged 21 to 24, earn an average of 92 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts. Curiously, in America and contrary to expectations, the salaries of female graduates, in general, are 79% of those of their male peers of the same age group. Only a year ago the figure was 84%. At 21-24 most women have yet to have to make choices about having a family and scaling their working hours back.

This growing disparity can only be accounted for for the big demand for young male graduates in technology and finance, regarded as male jobs. Women who majored in business studies, for example, earned an average of $38,000, compared with $45,000 for men. Across all fields, including the more feminine fields, and controlling for major, occupation,and grade-point average, women still earned 7% less than men. (Economic Policy Institute report co-author: Teresa Kroeger)

I have been a “feminist” since I was 17, in so far as I have always been convinced that the ability to do a job well trumps gender. If the employee is smart, hard-working, efficient and pleasant to work with, what difference does gender make? I think Epicurus believed this as well, and was known for welcoming women into his garden on equal terms with the men. But for some reason some men feel uncomfortable with clever women in a company if they perform well, and also feel uncomfortable with them in the office if they don’t. We really should be past this by now. I think it has a lot to do with self-confidence and amour propre, and the fear of being outshone or being ordered about.

Another take on the same subject, from The Times. Interesting! :

Is the gender pay gap just a myth?

Why do women in Britain still get paid less (by an average of 18%) than men? If you believe the “shock-horror headlines”, says Professor Alison Wolf, it’s proof of “pervasive discrimination”. Yet “study after study” has looked for evidence of significant gender bias in the modern workplace, and “there just isn’t any to be found”. If you compare like with like – employees of the same age, education and rank who put in equal hours at the office in the same occupation – the “gender pay gap” doesn’t exist. The real story here is of a much bigger social divide, between “the elite and the rest”. The vast majority of women in Britain work in low-paid jobs, often doing chores outsourced by richer families: cleaning, childcare, looking after old people, preparing takeaway meals. On top of that, low-paid women are far more likely than professionals to work part-time when they have children; they don’t worry about derailing their careers, because they know another low-paid job will be waiting for them. It is the inferiority of the female labour market itself that drags down average wages – and that is a much harder problem to tackle than misogyny.
(Professor Alison Wolf, The Times)

Which of the two points of view above do you subscribe to?

One Comment

  1. I think both points of view are right. Men are more likely to choose higher paying careers than women. A lot of part time work that suits women is poorly paid. And there isn’t much evidence of pay discrimination against women, mostly because it is illegal.
    Having said that, a gender pay gap as large as the one we have currently is far from inevitable. Encouraging more women to go into higher paying careers like finance, science and technology would help enormously. Also, the US and the UK should adopt a Nordic-style system of fully flexible maternity and paternity leave, so that men can choose to take more time off to spend with their children, while women can choose to go back to work sooner. A better funded childcare system would mean that women could work more.
    But even then, a big cause of the gender pay gap is culture. It’s part of our tradition for men to be the primary breadwinners. I personally know many families where the man earns quite a high salary while the woman stays at home. Ultimately the government can’t control the culture; there will need to be a radical altering of people’s mindsets if the gender pay gap is to be eliminated.
    There’s a good argument that now that discrimination is illegal, the gender pay gap isn’t a problem. As long as men and women are free to choose whatever careers they like, we should respect their choices. So if women choose to go into lower paid professions, it isn’t the role of the government to stop them.

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