Will the gender wage gap ever close?

[davidn3600]

In the ultra progressive Nordic countries that have done the most to enforce gender equality, a gap stubbornly persists in the workplace. Can America really succeed where Sweden failed?

The gender gap debate has taken some surprising turns in recent days. Conservative critics have argued for years that the reason women make only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men is that they work fewer work hours and in lower paid occupations, not because of rampant sexism at the office or factory. Once it came to light that President Obama and several Democratic senators presided over sizable gaps in their own offices, this criticism of the 77 cent meme gained some new followers, including reliably left-leaning Ruth Marcus who went so far as to accuse the administration of “demagoguery.”

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Like Americans, Swedish women work substantially fewer hours than men; they are 2 times as likely to be part timers. They are the vast majority of social workers, teachers, and child care workers and a small minority of scientists (PDF) and CEO’s (PDF). In fact, Sweden’s labor market is among the most sex segregated (PDF) in the world and their wage gap shows it. Mothers take in only about 20% as men, much the same as in the United States.

The results in other countries committed to gender role busting are much the same. Iceland has been crowned the most gender equal country in the world by the World Economic Forum (PDF) every year since 2009. They provide many of the same supports as Sweden. So does Norway, third on the WEF list and famous as the first country to institute a 40% female quota in corporate boardrooms. Women in both countries are well represented in parliament—about 40%. Yet the ladies still work fewer hours than their male counterparts and they are two times as likely to be part timers. They remain segregated in more traditionally “female” occupations. Their mommy wage gap? About the same as Sweden and the U.S.

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Perhaps the predominance of single mothers as opposed to single fathers is also a result of social expectations. But with over 40% of American children born to unmarried mothers, the vision of half of all homes run by men and half of all institutions by women will remain a Nordic fairy tale for a very long time to come.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/22/can-the-gender-gap-be-solved.html

So in Sweden, women make up 45% of the legislature and in Norway women make up 40% of company boardrooms. But the gender wage gap is still no different than what we have in America?

Interesting...

[Warpy]

1. The only reason women have seemed to close the gap

between 59% to 77% is because men's wages have fallen so much since the early 70s.

Americans need a raise, especially female Americans who more and more are spending part of their children's lives as working mothers.

[oldhippie]

2. No

I don't see any basis to believe it will ever close.

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. We certainly could fix it.

a) we could enact gender-based minimum wages.
b) we could stop paying time and a half to workers (mostly men) who work overtime.
c) we could create higher minimum wages for female dominated professions.
d) we could mandate gender equity in male dominated ones (e.g. half of truck drivers must be women).

In the absence of an equal rights amendment there are a great many things that we could do.

We know the two main reasons for the gap (gender preference in occupations and a difference in hours worked) so let's hear some suggestions on how to change those parameters.

Are those ideas impractical? Maybe. I find problems without proposed solutions unfulfilling. "Paying women less for the same work" has been illegal since 1964, yet the gross wage gap persists, due mostly to the two factors above.

If the problem was mostly due to discrimination by the boss, the wage gap wouldn't also present among business-owning women making less than business-owning men.

[BainsBane]

5. False assumption

If the problem was mostly due to discrimination by the boss, the wage gap wouldn't also present among business-owning women making less than business-owning men.

No, you assume women are immune from sexism. That is clearly not the case. The assumption is absurd.

There was a movement in the 1970s called comparable worth that sought to establish greater equity in government jobs. That was brought to an end by the reactionary climate of the 1980s.

[Igel]

6. Sure.

We can have sex-based pay. In the interest of equality, equal pay for equal work, we ensure that what really counts is sex-based differences. Why? Because there are sex-based differences that we disapprove of. That's (a).

(b) is something progressives sort of fought for. So to make one group feel less bad, let's go back to oppression.

(c) Make some "pink-collar jobs" higher in pay. Why? Because the government'll punish you otherwise. It's much better to work 30 hours a week and make the same amount as somebody working 40 hours a week. And to base that on what used to be called "sexism."

(d) We've seen this in collegiate sports. The result is not getting more women involved--you can only force women to do so much against their will before it stops looking like "freedom" and "equality"--but limiting the amount of men. "Freight shipments in the US fell by 35% last year, causing food shortages and shortages at nearly every store, because men were prohibited from working more hours than the women shippers."

If there's one thing that should have been learned by now, it's that government compulsion of private choices and lifestyles isn't a winning option. People will try to work against their government, and what you have isn't a government of the people but a government over the people.

This is the kind of stat that pro-active measures, within reason, should be taken to mitigate. Equal pay for the same work, for instance. But if I choose to be an engineer versus work in daycare, that has consequences. However, there's no reason to cookie-cut people to make them fit an ideology or preconceived outcome. It's one thing to say culture and biology should be resisted; it's another thing to stipulate that they mustn't exist.

[BainsBane]

4. Sweden is NOT the same as the US.

http://www.weforum.org/news/increased-political-participation-helps-narrow-global-gender-gap-2013

Your point about Sweden is demonstrably false. The gender gap is not the same. Sweden ranks number 4 on the gender gap index and the US 23rd. Political participation is a different category from economic participation. Some countries rank more highly in some categories than others. Neither the US nor Sweden ranks highly in wage equality, 75 for Sweden and 64 for the US, but that means there are 63 countries that rank better than the US on wage equality. http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2013/#=

I see this post as an attempt to point to Sweden to insist there is something inevitable about inequality. Arguing that structural inequality is somehow natural or inevitable is really the worst sort of sexism, so it's not surprising that the article refers to the Obama administration's having the audacity to concern itself with ending discrimination in pay as "demagoguery." The Gender Gap Index by the World Economic Forum shows that the discrepancy is not as bad in many other countries. The excuses sited are in fact manifestations of sexism. Jobs that women predominate in are paid poorly, and as more women enter a profession the wages decline. The other factors listed are also examples of ways in which women are penalized for being women. That women give birth to children is a biological fact. That women disproportionately are responsible for the care of those children is a result of sexism.

The fact is there are a few invested in the oppression of the many, and that includes women. That commitment to keeping women subservient is evident in the argument that--even in the face of this kind of rampant structural inequality--feminists are responsible for fighting for the rights of men rather than women. Their sense of entitlement is so profound, they deny any legitimacy in women's activism on their own behalf. The argument that feminists fail in not fighting for the rights of men shows that they see women as duty bound to serve men.

Some are so committed to male dominance, as soon as a historically oppressed group starts to do well, like girls in schools, they insist something is wrong. Boys should do better simply by virtue of being male. That boys and men don't outperform girls on an even playing field is, for these reactionaries, the fault of feminists. Yet if MRAs really cared about boys' falling behind academically, they could set up volunteer tutoring programs, afterschool homework groups, etc. Instead, MRAs are more concerned with blaming feminism, and they really don't give a rats ass about academic achievement, least of all their own.

[davidn3600]

9. I think the point is that traditional ideas to combat this are failing

The idea that every corporation has some secret policy to pay women less than men is foolish. If that is true, why would a corporation even hire men if they can get away with paying women less?

Women and men have different attitudes, work ethics, motivations, and social expectations when it comes to choosing careers. Men have more social pressure to work hard, long hours, and succeed. That means men on average will push themselves into better careers and higher earnings. Men are better at negotiating wages and raises and promotions. Men will work overtime and graveyard shifts and do jobs that most women will shy away from no matter how much money is offered.
Then on the flip-side you got men who shy away from traditionally-female occupations. And men are simply not accepting to do more of the housework or childcare. There is no incentive or motivation for men to do any of that. And most women are not requesting men to do more of that.

The Nordic countries tried to fix those issues through legislation and politics...so far, it's failed. That's the point of the article. And if we put those same policies into place here, what makes you think they would be any more successful at closing the gap? Both genders need to change how they view career and family. That's not going to be easy. I've said it before many times...this is a cultural problem.

[laundry_queen]

11. I disagree that it's failed

Not according to the research I did. Not for Norway, anyway. According to some experts, it was asserted that it would take 1-2 generations for the results of the legislation to come to fruition, because for the most part young girls didn't see themselves in those positions because they didn't have any role models. Now that they had role models, that would likely change. Also, there was still reluctance on the part of the males with regards to the legislation, but it is predicted that will change (I'm assuming as younger men come in to those positions). So you can't say it's failed - it has barely even begun.

[davidn3600]

12. We are talking about averages though...

...most women who have children CHOOSE on their own to work less hours if they are able to. And that's where at least a piece of the gap is originating from. These Nordic laws won't fix that.

Women also tend to avoid many of the male-dominated fields...especially STEM majors. When women get to college, they don't tend to stay in those majors very long. A local engineering/technology school near me...73% enrollment is male.

[Ohio Joe]

7. Not as long as MRA's keep crying oppression...

That is not likely to happen any time soon, they are far to afraid of equality.

[BainsBane]

8. Two lines of attack

1) either inequality doesn't exist, or it is naturally and can't be changed
2) any success on the part of women is seen as oppression against men. They assume that men should earn more, out perform women, and have more simply by virtue of being male. When any of them don't, even just a few, they blame women and feminists in particular.

Actually I'll add a 3) feminists are responsible for securing men's rights, and the fact they have the nerve to focus on women's rights, MRAs argue, shows they don't care about equality. That argument shows their notion of equality is one in which men are privileged in all areas of life, so that if they fall even a little behind in one area, it is the responsibility of women to put things right.

[laundry_queen]

10. A few points on this:

So does Norway, third on the WEF list and famous as the first country to institute a 40% female quota in corporate boardrooms. Women in both countries are well represented in parliament—about 40%. Yet the ladies still work fewer hours than their male counterparts and they are two times as likely to be part timers.

Since I had to write a paper on the Norway experiment in my sociology class, I thought I'd make a few points.

One of the interesting things about Norway is that the corporations were very upset about how they were forced to put more women on their boards - yet, the companies that put the women on the boards did better overall than those that didn't. Which begs the question, why were they so against it?

So why did those companies do better? It was found women did a lot more prep work for board meetings, and spent more time doing the 'job' as opposed to the men who spent a lot more time socializing (basically, women spent more time 'getting down to business'). So to say that women 'work less' strictly based on hours may be a false assumption. Not saying this is normal across all jobs or businesses, but it's interesting that this is what happens at the top levels, and it's interesting that working fewer hours is associated with 'not as valuable'. Reminds me of my mom's old boss - he would show up at 7 am and not go home until 8pm nearly every night, but spent the vast majority of that time hanging out with the guys in the back shop, taking clients out for 2 hour lunches, going golfing and so on. My mom worked her ass off from 8:30-4:30 and got far more accomplished (she did sales too, and even though she had to put her sales through her boss's employee number, she once calculated it and found her sales surpassed his) in far less time. I witnessed it as a teen, and she did work extremely hard compared with her boss. For salary, she made 1/3 what her boss made and definitely did not receive the same bonuses.

Another interesting part of the whole Norway experiment was that those men who were pushed out of their positions were very 'concerned' that women who were 'inexperienced' were taking their positions - even though it was acknowledged that women on the board made for a more successful company (by tracking stock prices) - and thought that women shouldn't be on the boards until they had more 'experience'. Yet, when it was studied, it was shown that women were very rarely able to acquire any experience at lower levels despite being overqualified for those positions. In studying this in my sociology class, the text and my prof theorized this may be due to the "Ol' boys' club" thinking...they enjoy not working as hard (the felt compelled to work harder when the women were there), they enjoy socializing, their position on the BOD is part of their identity and yes, they did feel like they deserved the position more than the women did. The study also found that things were worse for women in terms of sexism if there was only 1 or 2 women on the board (1 woman was seen as the 'other' and representative of the entire sex, 2 women were seen as 'conspiring'), but that the whole dynamic changed as long as there were 3 or more women.

Very interesting stuff. I think the very premise that one must work long hours in order to get things done is, in and of itself, perhaps an antiquated view. It depends on the industry, of course. At the BOD level, at least, it doesn't apply.