Some more thoughts on the idea of this gender pay gap. When I was in West Virginia reporting on the Sago mining accident, everyone said that coal mining offered the only opportunity for good pay in the area. With experience and overtime one can make $75,000 or so in a state with a very low cost of living. But despite that there were hardly any woman coal miners. I did meet one kinda burly woman who had once mined coal, but overwhelmingly the women I met down there worked at the hospital or schools or in retail or restaurants. It seemed like women just didn’t want to work this dangerous, manual-labor job.
Go figure, huh?
It seems to me really bizarre to assume that even if we lived in a discrimination-free Utopia that men and women’s salaries would be the same. Men and women are very different and have different interests, want different things and often seek a different work/life balance, IMHO.
Sometimes economists try to quantify discrimination by comparing male and female earnings in the “same occupation.” But what, pray tell, is an occupation? Is being a doctor an occupation? Well, maybe, but women are more likely to enter lesser-paying medical fields like family practice and pediatrics. Being a surgeon requires a grueling residency at the same time most women are interested in having kids.
But even if you define surgery as an occupation — there are neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons, and the length of their residency isn’t equivalent. And you can even break it down further: there are orthopedic surgeons who specialize in hand surgery, for example.
It’s the same in probably every other profession, from reporting (investigative reporting vs. community news reporting) to coal mining. The guy who guys in first (the “fire boss”) to check for dangerous gases gets a premium.
When it comes to highly-trained, highly-compensated employees, I think it’s particularly hard to assume the pay gap is largely due to discrimination, because that’s the area where the labor market is most competitive. If Meagher, White & Brown were discriminating against their female associates by paying them 25% less you think they’d get poached by another firm, right? This is an age of headhunters, where a good skilled employee is prized asset.
I’m sure women face more discrimination than men … but still skeptical that it’s a significant explanation for why women continue to earn less than men.
Derek–you are a bright young guy, but only dance and lick around the edges of this issue.
You may know that Tom Leykis, love him or hate him, has a standing $20K for anyone showing different pay for the same work and experience in a job.
Use my “easy to use” anti bullsheyt test.
If the supposedly underpaid wimmin’ were worth more, then I will open a company, hire only those underpaid (25%?) wimmin’, and drive the competition out with my lower wage costs. Don’t tell me that would be illegal, because so is the differential pay that this argument is built on.
Fact is, the reason for the pay gap is the same reason you found no wimmin’ miners. Women have choices, not bound by socialization. They do not NEED to make the same money as a man, because they are not EXPECTED to support anyone other than themselves. They would rather work inside, in a heated space, not get dirty, etc. etc.
Go downtown and see who is working the high iron. Not wimmin’ by and large. Of course they can, the unions scream to get them into apprenticeships, the unions fall all over themselves having wimmin’s caucuses, and the like, but fact of the matter is, they choose less stressful, less dangerous, more free time, less overtime jobs.
Case closed.
Your style is more confrontational than my own, but I mostly agree with what you’re saying.
Or if a company was paying its men $125,000 and the women $100,000 to do the same work… why wouldn’t they just fire all the guys and just hire women? Discrimination is bad business, although I’m sure you can still find isolated examples of it.
There are many issues about why women get paid less, but I agree with the above links. If women were 25% cheaper for the same work, then companies with male employees could not compete with companies with female employees. Now this is true in some industries, and in those industries there are no men. Because men won’t do the job unless they get paid more than the women who do do the job (see housecleaning, for example, very few men in that business).
But some business decissions are based on personal friendship and feelings like that. So it certainly does happen that men at times get paid more because the powers that be believe that the guy needs the money more to support his wife and kids. Not a smart business move, but not every move in business is based on dollars and sense.
But in general, there can’t be quite the level of rampant pay discrimination that some people argue that there is.
And frankly, how many times have you heard a woman saying she doesn’t like to work with women? I’ve even heard women in power positions say that they don’t intend to hire women below them because they don’t want to work with them. That has got to have a negative economic effect and there really isn’t anything that guys can do about this.
All I know is that in my industry (media), I have never seen any gender discrimination in my 15 years in it. Women get paid less because they have fewer years’ experience or are in lesser-paying career tracks within the industry, but that happens to the men as well. Never have I seen a woman of equal skill, with equal experience, paid less because she is a woman.
I’ve seen several women think they’re getting paid less because they’re female (now that I’m in management ranks and know who gets paid what), which irritates me royally.
I esp. agree with Tallman’s last point. Women can be much more mean and catty to each other than guys.
It is possible that men are more agressive about seeking a higher salary in general. If more men are unwilling to settle for less money, then they might get the salary simply for asking for more.
It’s not as simple as assuming that they’d just fire the men for asking for more. If a company needs to retain 10 employees, and five are women, but the men are asking for more money – or are more aggressive about negotiating – the company will pay for them. It’s not that simple to fire a trained and experienced employee just because they’re asking for more money, and in order to lure an experienced employee from another company, you’d have to offer more.
Of course none of this amounts to discrimination, but it can explain a differential.
Since we’re talking about large numbers, is it possible that the trends are that more men play a better game of hardball than women out of the pool of professionals out there? Since we’re talking averages, some women would successfully negotiate the higher salary as well, and some men would not, but we’re talking about a trend.
Dave I also think men tend to think of ourselves more as breadwinners and let money more influence our career choice. (In part because we think — with some justification — that higher income will let us do better in the marriage market). E.g., I have a guy friend who is getting his MBA just so he can be a better provider, even though he isn’t even dating anyone.
IMHO guys are simply more likely to go into boring, high-paying jobs that involve, say, number crunching … as well as dangerous, high-paying jobs like mining and construction. As well as physically demanding jobs such as working at UPS.
Also I think women tend to go into careers where they can take a few years off at a time without penalty. Not all career tracks allow you to do that.
Further, when couples have children they often choose to arrange things such that the husband often spends more time at work while the wife spends more time raising the children. (I have yet to understand why this is an unfair division of labor, btw).
I think woman should get paid more because we do to much and its much more work to be done because its more single woman with children, and why should we have to worry about trying to cook while cleaning and washing and running around town and trying to feed children, we worried about our pay because why should a man make more money buy exspensive things, while we are doing the high labor, the man just geting home from a fancy dinner with his self being the jerk he is
debate rocks im 13 help me and give me some positive and negative feed back on what i said plz before 12/14/07 thanx
woman are just going to keep bablin’ till we get what we want because were sophisticated angry and sensitive
well my debate is over thanx 4 the help any ways we won wooooohhhh lol but yup im just good like dat