women make less than men, always

[niyad]

Women Make Less Than Men. Always


The pay gap between the genders doesn’t appear to be disappearing anytime soon. According to Amanda Hess at GOOD, new data out shows that women continue to make less than men, regardless of the field or of the education level examined.

“Among Americans with some form of post-high school education—a vocational, associate’s, bachelor’s, or advanced degree—men make more than $800 above women’s pay every month,” Hess writes. “And the gap widens as men and women climb educational ranks. Men with bachelor’s degrees in business make $1,000 more each month than their female classmates; among men and women with advanced degrees in business, the gap widens to $1,400 a month. In the natural sciences—the only sector in which men and women earned fairly equal pay at the associate’s and bachelor’s degree levels—the equity was erased among advanced degree holders. Men with advanced degrees in the natural sciences make about $2,600 more per month than their female peers (couldn’t you use an extra $31,200 a year?). Even in sectors traditionally regarded as feminine—education and liberal arts, for example—male earners outstripped female ones.”

Hess notes that in many cases, in order for pay to be equal, a man would only need a bachelor’s degree, where as a woman would require an advanced degree.

So, if the wage gap isn’t going away anytime soon, I’m going to make a different suggestion — let’s make college tuition costs different depending on your gender. After all, if a woman needs more classes and degrees in order to get the same salary as a man, then her schooling should come at a lower cost. Especially once you consider how many less dollars she’s earning in order to pay off those degrees

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/women-make-less-than-men-always.html#ixzz1o5fxrgn6

[niyad]

1. and counting down to. . . .

[TeamsterDem]

2. The wage gap is a national embarrassment

That any group of our citizenry is treated as anything less IN ANY WAY is and should be a deplorable, vile act. We're all Americans. We all deserve fairness. We don't need a fricking ballot measure so the backward knuckle draggers can decide who gets equal rights and who doesn't. We should all just have them. It's the way an advanced civilization words. Or should work.

[uponit7771]

3. amen

[Fumesucker]

4. And yet I read here on DU just yesterday that women make 85% of consumer purchases..

That doesn't quite compute..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002376086#post1

[Curmudgeoness]

6. Helloooooo!

Did it ever occur to you that women have to make the consumer purchases, because the men act like they are incapable of it.

The woman has to go buy him new socks and underwear because he thinks it is sexy to have holes in them. The woman has to go buy groceries because if she sends a man, he will act like he can't find anything but the snack aisle. And how many men do we know who would buy curtains?

This is not to say there are not men who will do shopping, but my experience has been that the woman ends up with this duty, along with a list of other duties men act like they can't do.

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. So the patriarchy compels women to pick out the house and make investing decisions? n/t

[niyad]

9. right on schedule.

[lumberjack_jeff]

13. Your op would be useful if it controlled for anything relevant.

The careers, hours, experience and salary negotiations all would be relevant... which is why they're not included.

I gave you the link to the AAUW study which proves my point, but you know that and are sticking with your story anyway. Good for you - I'm sure that someone gives points for blind consistency.

[Curmudgeoness]

15. You can deluge yourself with all the statistics

that men have put together, but I know otherwise. At least I know from my own experiences.

I have done the accounting and payroll at many companies over the years. I still do it. I can verify that the women in our company who do the same work as the men are being paid less. Some of the women are working more hours and have more experience than the men. Every single case is the same. There is not one woman who is paid more than any one man.

I am the only person in the company besides the owners who know this. All the women say things like "if only I had a dick". But they do not realize the level of the discrimination.

So don't tell me that it is all about the womens' decisions. That is just a copout and a way for men to feel better about themselves....sure, they are more worthy.

[lumberjack_jeff]

17. "statistics the men have put together"?

You do know that AAUW stands for, right?

http://www.aauw.org/learn/research/upload/behindpaygap.pdf

See page 16

[shcrane71]

24. What's you're point? More women are graduating from medical and vetrinarian schools than men.

It's not as if women aren't choosing the hard sciences. Even so, the Great Recession has shown that money is in business management and banking. Did you see the disparity in men and women's pay in business management. Why is that? Should we just ignore the fact that women are making 20% less than men in that field?

What of when the recession hits and women in these jobs are laid off more than their male counter-parts because "oh he has a family to support". I know for a fact of this happening.

But sure, it's all women's fault for picking occupations that don't pay.

[lumberjack_jeff]

26. Sorry. Read page 17.

If a woman and a man make the same choices, will they receive the same pay? The answer is no. The evidence shows that even when the “explanations” for the pay gap are included in a regression, they cannot fully explain the pay disparity. The regressions for earnings one year after college indicate that when all variables are included, about onequarter of the pay gap is attributable to gender. That is, after controlling for all the factors known to affect earnings, college-educated women earn about 5 percent less than college-educated men earn.

The only problem with this is that they didn't look at "all variables". The fact that men negotiate for best salary and change jobs more frequently in search of best pay explains that 5% quite easily.

[Curmudgeoness]

32. Why do you think that women do not negotiate salary as well

as men do? Do you think that if a woman did a more hard-nosed negotiation that she would be able to close the gap? Or do you think that if she negotiated for more, they would pass her over and hire a man at that pay?

[lumberjack_jeff]

41. I think it because studies show it.

http://www.womendontask.com/stats.html

And yes, 5% is a trivial amount to negotiate for.

[Curmudgeoness]

43. I ask for an opinion, and I get

"because it says so" as an answer. Bleah.

We already know that studies have shown this is true----but why?

[lumberjack_jeff]

44. I have no idea why women tend to not negotiate for salary.

I suspect it has something to do with the the perceived value of nonmonetary reward.

A woman applicant has a nonmonetary reason for choosing that employer - the monetary reasons are often secondary to her.

Men? "Show me the money".

I misunderstood your question, I thought you were challenging the observation - not asking for my opinion of why the observation is true.

[Curmudgeoness]

45. I don't know if that is true for most women.

I know for me it has always been "show me the money". But I will say that I have done negotiations, and I have a lot of experience to negotiate with (I have never been the I-want-kids type). Still, I have been told that my requests are above the amount they are willing to pay. I have got the best that I can get, only to later have access to payroll information on the previous person in my position, and other people in the firm. It is at that point where I have knows that they could have done better, and probably would have done better if I were a man.

And that pisses me off. I truly believe that woman are looked at as if they are inferior. Maybe I am just jaded. I believe that there is a dynamic working that we have not figured out how to control.

[shcrane71]

47. So true.

I actually believed one boss when he flat out lied to me that I was making more than anyone else in the department. Ha! The joke was on me.

[Curmudgeoness]

48. The prime reason that it is a fireable offense

at so many workplaces to discuss your pay. My employers are dumber than dumb----when I am being hired to, among other things, do the payroll. Duh.

[shcrane71]

40. ah... have you ever hit a glass ceiling?

So, how many times can a worker can move around for better pay without it adversely affecting that worker? Why are 73% of a graduates from journalism schools women, but around 40% of print newsrooms, and 20% of broadcast journalists are women? I guess they're just promoting the best "man" for the job. Literally, the best man.

[Igel]

35. You have a datum.

Here's another.

A university dept. had to hire a professor. One had retired and a review of the dept. said they needed to replace this guy. Since the dept. was all male, they should try to recruit a woman. They did the job search for the senior position. The dept. reported back to the dean, who promptly referred the matter to the admin/faculty committee that had required they hire a replacement.

The 3 shortlisted candidates were all males in their 40s or above. All white. The committee promptly raked the dept. over the coals. The committee didn't care that advertising in all the usual places--university depts., government research institutions, prominent universities overseas--had netted nearly a hundred applications, all but one or two of them men. Or that the women's applications were automatically put on the short list but had withdrawn after having a phone interview.

A month later the dept. returned with professional society and government stats. Senior level faculty meant the candidate had to be in the field for something like 10 years and have x number of publications. From 10 to 40 years before there'd been some relatively small numbers of PhDs and their applicant pool was pretty consistent with this. The one woman that they had interviewed had been shortlisted at more than half a dozen universities before two Ivy League schools engaged in a bidding war for her. Her starting salary was close to the tenured salary of the search chair. He was a big name. She was undistinguished.

The committee finally relented and said that men on the new short list they'd have to put together had to be senior level, but they could hire a woman at any level. They put together a new list, 3 women and one man in the #4 position and did quick phone interviews. The dean stopped approving increases to the offers. They hired the one man after all the women withdrew when the university couldn't match the other schools' offers. The women all got higher salaries than the man.

It wasn' until a couple of openings later that they managed to hire a woman faculty member in that dept., which made the dept. a few percentage points more female than the entire field of PhDs for the previous decade.

Such is life. And another datum.

Oddly, the APS recently published a similar kind of report. In the field, if you control for experience--things like years off for child-rearing, decisions to choose family over job, etc.--women are at par with men. Until you get to senior-level jobs, where the women make more on average than men. In that field, of course. The key is controlling for personal choices.

One acquaintance graduated with a PhD in nuclear physics. She knew she could be a good teacher. Or a good researcher. Not both. She also knew she'd hate just doing research because she wanted to interact with people more, and she also couldn't bring herself to slight her students in a traditional teacher/researcher professorship. There weren't openings for the kind of job she wanted, so she got her secondary school certification and is now teaching high school. Personal choice, one that a lot of men wouldn't have made but doesn't strike me as that odd for women. Perhaps because I know another woman physics PhD who made exactly the same choice perhaps 10 years ago.

This doesn't hold true for all fields, for all age cohorts. My mother earned less than her male peers, even though she had more seniority. When she was hired open discrimination was okay--so her hourly starting pay was less. Percentage-based pay increases only widened the gap. She was passed over for promotions because she was a woman. She became bitter and resented men--including her second husband and her two sons.

Where my wife was professor the men earned more than the women for a few reasons. One big reason was the summer 9ths. There were more men than women in fields that had decent outside grants. The grants paid their summer 3 months' salary. The women faculty tended to not get outside grants. Their income was quite a bit smaller as a result. Child leave wasn't an issue--that time was simply not counted. You could work there 8 years and only have 7 years accrued. A fair number of men took child leave, too. But a study showed that in higher ed men who take child leave before they get tenure generally return with a book or a lot of papers written; the women who return tend to do so with a child and a few months of catch-up reading to do. One helps get tenure, the other doesn't. The usual statistics crunching would just count "time off" as a factor without noticing what, exactly, men and women did differently during that time.

Where I teach the men typically earn less, on average, than women. When you start controlling for variables like the subject taught or factor out child leave the divide actually gets bigger. Men make up a greater percentage of the teachers in science and math, which come with additional stipends. But the divide utterly vanishes when you look at years of experience. The men typically don't settle for a teacher's salary for 25 or 30 years and the women do. This overwhelms the male bias in receiving stipends.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

31. And possibly well deserved

[alittlelark]

30. Men do not want the tedium of grocery shopping.

At the local market I see 1 man for every 8 women +/-. When I go to the store to buy clothes for the kids I have rarely seen a man shopping. The dry cleaners has mostly female customers. The pharmacy has almost exclusively women or older men in line. Costco is probably 3-1 female (less on the weekends). The bookstore I go to has more women shopping. Office Depot is 3-1 or so female (many getting school supplies). Heck, even our local home depot is about 50/50 - discounting contractors.

This is a generalization, but men seem to like buying cars, stereos, and large appliances. I'm sure there are some who do most of the shopping - but they are not in the majority.

My husband will wear undershirts until they are waxy and dead. I don't know if he has bought any in 10 or so years.

Women make most of the purchases because they are the ones willing to do it.

[niyad]

8. one of the saddest things I used to see in FL was a man, wandering the aisles of the supermarket,

totally confused. Why? because his wife, who had done all the shopping, had died, and this was the first time he had ever been forced to do his own shopping. no, this wasn't supposition--I would talk to these men, and that was how I learned what had happened.

[Fumesucker]

12. Even if you know *what* to buy you don't know where it is..

It takes me three or four times as long to grocery shop in an unfamiliar store vs one I know well, I feel pretty lost in a large store I haven't been in before and I've been grocery shopping for over forty years now..

Part if it is due to I comparison shop everything and every store has a different mix of brands/sizes/prices..

[niyad]

46. and clearly, you missed the part about where I actually talked to these men, and they told me

that this was the first time they had had to do the shopping.

but hey, had you actually paid attention to that little bit, your point would have been beside the point.

[Fumesucker]

52. So, were you talking to these strangers in the hopes of humiliating them further?

You seem to have an extremely bigoted concept of men as helpless, if someone else was to portray women in as negative a light as you do men I doubt you'd be happy with them.

[Fumesucker]

10. More people than ever are living singly..

So there's fewer female/male relationships in which your stereotype plays out.

It's not that men can't do those things so much as it is they have different standards and different focus for the most part, after a while you get tired of being criticized for every single purchasing decision that you don't get exactly as another person would want.

It's not like that dynamic is solely restricted to heterosexual couples or even sexual couples, Felix and Oscar had similar issues in The Odd Couple.

[Curmudgeoness]

19. Yes, there are more people living singly.

But most households are still involved in some relationship. Less married, more live-ins.

LOL, yes, it is not that men cannot do these things! I am convinced that men are not too dumb to do shopping if they treated it as a necessary thing. But to use the excuse that men are always criticized for purchasing decisions is the same as saying that all of us women are just harpies. Maybe next time a man is asked to go buy a package of cotton underwear for his girlfried/wife, he will not come home with crotchless panties because that is what he wants.

As a disclaimer, I have known men who could competently clean the house, do the shopping, cook, and do laundry. But in my experience, this has not been the norm. It has been the pleasant surprise. And I have loved them all the more for it.

[Fumesucker]

25. The differences that you point to between men and women in these matters..

Do you think they are biologically determined, culturally determined or some mixture of the two?

[Curmudgeoness]

29. Personally, I think

that they are mostly culturally determined. I do realize that there is a biological difference in the sexes, and most of that difference is ruled by hormones. I do not know how much the difference in hormones factors in to it, but I do not believe it is great.

I come to my conclusion based on how well some men are able to the things that I have accused men of not doing well. And how poorly some women do things that seem to be "women's" work. It is obvious that there is much more to it than biology.

[Fumesucker]

33. So the differences between individuals are greater than the differences between the sexes?

Speaking on average of course.

[Curmudgeoness]

34. No. On average,

women as a group fall into one category and men as a group fall into another one.

What I am saying is that it is more of a cultural difference. It is how we were raised, what we saw others doing as we were growing up, how we were treated from birth. Even when people try to keep cultural male/female differences out of their child-rearing, they rarely success. You can buy trucks and tool kits for your daughters and dolls for your sons, and they will still be influences by all the other people they see. It is ingrained in society.

[Fumesucker]

38. Here's an interesting anecdote..

My son in law was an advanced helicopter mechanic in the service and yet my daughter is more mechanically inclined than he is. The thing is though that he's interested in it and she isn't but when she puts her mind to it she's better than he is at repairing mechanical things if you allow for the difference in their training.

I think one of my granddaughters might have the mechanical aptitude too although she's headed toward a career in art or music most likely.

Personally I have quite a few very stereotypically male attributes but completely lack others such as interest in sports..

[magical thyme]

5. and women are forced to do work that men aren't required to do... at least where I work

I was forced by bullying and covert legal threats to work 12 hour overnight shifts. Supposedly everybody has to do it.

Except everybody doesn't. The man who has been there for a couple years (2 years, versus my 5 months when this started), is full time with full benefits, and has *never* been asked, let alone forced, to work the overnight 12 hour flat-out shift. Never.

I am per diem. I accepted NO BENEFITS and NO PAID TIME OFF in order to say be able to say NO. And in return, was bullied, terrorized and threatened by the lab manager.

The lab supervisor, who does the scheduling, is now trying to repair next week's schedule, because I said never again. She is afraid to let the lab manager find out. I told her I will not be threatened. The lab manager is not the only person with a lawyer in her family.

Something similar happened to me back in '07, when I was forced to do 24x7 on call pager work that had not even been discussed in my job interview. There was a man there who had never once even been asked to do it. Not once. Those rat bastards had the gall to visit my farm and assault a tiny filly who had just been weaned from her mother and was away from her home for the first time in her life. Those rat bastards went out of business. Hopefully the rat bastards where I work now will too.

I quit the job in '07. I will be quitting this job, too, as soon as I either find another or sell my house and get the hell out of here.

[Occulus]

11. every woman i work with who is a full timer makes more than i do

[ProgressiveProfessor]

14. What about education, civil service, military, and union jobs?

The claim of always is clearly not true...

[hughee99]

16. In modeling and pornography, women make more, too.

The word "always" is almost always improperly used.

[TeamsterDem]

18. Military employment is covered by the UCMJ, and advancements (pay increases) ...

are handled by the chain of command ... laden with dudes. While the officer corps is increasing in terms of female membership, the men still hold the powerful jobs ... because they appoint other men. The military is wildly sexist, almost openly so. While there are "official" policies against it, that unfortunately is going to take time. I wish not but I'm afraid so.

The other 3 you mentioned are almost always uniform in pay, but even still you're talking about a minority of the workforce (even adding up all education, civil service, and union jobs). That is to say that in those 3 you get almost uniformly equal pay versus the private sector which is decidedly not uniform. So a minority of the workforce gets equal treatment but the vast bulk has no such guarantees. As is almost always the case, non-unionized private sector jobs lag far behind in terms of equal pay/benefits. About the only time I've ever seen a nearly equalized pay distribution is where a union wage threat exists to the employer, and they equalize pay to preempt any unionization drive.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

21. What does the UCMJ have to do with it?

Women E-4s make what men E-4s make with the same years in.

[TeamsterDem]

22. They make the same but they're not promoted equally

especially in terms of the higher paying jobs in the upper echelons. Are there some women in the upper ranks? Yes. But they're a small share.

[lumberjack_jeff]

20. You misunderstand what she's saying

She's saying that preeschool teacher with a bachelor's degree makes less than a utility lineman with a bachelor's degree.

There might be some reasons for that, if one were to scratch the surface.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

23. That kind of comparison has been obsolete for some time

Different degrees and different careers have different compensation. A person with a MS in Comp Sci or Physics will often make more $$$ that someone MA in Childhood Education or Journalism and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

I read this as saying there is significant disparity within career fields even with similar experience, education, and other quals.

[lumberjack_jeff]

28. you read it wrong, exactly the way you were intended to read it.

the basic premise of the OP is that we're paid for our education, not for what we do with it.

92% of workplace fatalities are men. Is that discrimination or is it a byproduct of career choices?

[Zalatix]

51. Hold up, pal, that's DIFFERENT. Who gets paid the most is far more important than who dies the most.

The day we make an issue about who gets killed the most in the workplace is the day we take a long, long step backwards in the push for gender equality.



Seriously, though, that's probably why you haven't gotten any responses: more men get killed on the job than women and the flat out truth is that nobody gives a fuck. Actions speak loudly: if they did, this would be a major issue. Anyone who thinks I'm wrong, feel free to show me how many threads on the DU talk about how many men die on the job...

[Curmudgeoness]

37. The argument about pay disparity

is really based on two people of different sexes in the same profession doing the same job....and not being paid equally.

[lumberjack_jeff]

39. "the argument" or "the op"?

The OP has nothing to do with people in the same profession.

[MrSlayer]

27. Not in my business. Union!

Everyone makes the same rate be they man, woman, black, white or whatever.

[jeff47]

36. Um...no, not always

There's lots of women where I work who make more than I do.

Indeed, there is a pay gap on average. But that doesn't mean "always".

I'm not totally sure some of their comparisons are truly valid. For example:

In the natural sciences—the only sector in which men and women earned fairly equal pay at the associate’s and bachelor’s degree levels—the equity was erased among advanced degree holders. Men with advanced degrees in the natural sciences make about $2,600 more per month than their female peers

If I go back to my college days, the female natural science professors had fewer years of seniority. Several of the male physics and chemistry professors at my small school seemed to have an aversion to retirement, so the ancient fossils made more. And since it was a small school, a small number of professors can greatly skew the overall stats.

So if you consider those ancient professors their peers, then the women indeed made less. However, if you count only the biology department, women made more - there was only 2 male professors with tenure, there were 4 women with tenure, and a host of male and female associate professors. So the average of the biology department would show women making more.

This is not to say there isn't an overall pay gap. Indeed, there is. But what to do about it can greatly depend on the reasons for the gap.

There's a huge pay gap in my own household, because my wife is a stay-at-home mom. The fact she's paid less than me isn't a problem that needs to be fixed because we'd prefer to have one stay-at-home parent, and my career field simply pays more than hers did. On the other hand, if one of my female coworkers is getting less only because she has ovaries, that's a problem.

To sum up: I'm not sure lumping people into that large of groups, as this study does, is really sufficient analysis when it comes to doing something about the problem.

[Zalatix]

49. construction laborers, construction supervisors, maintenance painters, and aircraft mechanics

are just a few of the exceptions where women make more than men, on average.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2011/03/14/jobs-where-women-earn-more-than-men/2/

[Major Nikon]

50. Another study which is misleading because it fails to take sociological considerations into account

Let's face it, women on average take greater responsibility for the care of their children than men do. That is a simple reality of the culture in which we live. As such they seek jobs which may pay less, but offer better benefits. They also seek jobs which offer more flexible working conditions which limits their choices. Women with children are also far more likely to take off work to tend to family business which lowers their productivity and pay. Conversely men who are married make more than men who aren't. One reason for this may be because since men take a diminished role in the household, they feel more responsibility to be more productive in the workplace. If you want to try and figure out what part of pay disparity is due to illegal discrimination, take a look at women and men who have never been married and have never had a child...

Table 9 (last column) further highlights the relative importance of family
responsibilities versus labor market discrimination by examining the gender gap among
men and women in apparently similar lifetime family situations—namely men and
women who were never married and never had a child. In this case, the unadjusted
gender gap is actually positive—women earn about 8% more than their male
counterparts. This observation is an important one because it suggests that the factors
underlying the gender gap in pay primarily reflect choices made by men and women
given their different societal roles, rather than labor market discrimination against women
due to their sex.

Never-married men and never-married women without children are similar in that
they are not responsible for the financial support of a family as are most married men.
Nor do they have the of responsibility of child care that is usually assumed by women
with children. However, never-married women have better credentials than never-married
men with respect to education, AFQT scores and even years of work experience (Table
11). But never-married men are not notably inferior to other men. In fact, compared to
other men a higher proportion of never-married men are college graduates and they have
about the same AFQT scores. When we control for these differences in characteristics,
the gender gap in favor of women is eliminated, but the negative coefficient is small and
is not statistically significant.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w11240.pdf

[FreeState]

53. Nothing like assuming all men are white and heterosexual - always? no not true n/t

[Bonobo]

54. And short men earn less than tall men.

And thin women earn more than heavier women.