Gender pay gap in the United States

Main article: Income disparity

2005 Census Statistics show great income inequity between the sexes among all races. White males for example made 48% more than white females.

Male–female income disparity, also referred to as a "gender gap in earnings", in the United States, also known as the "gender wage gap," the "gender earnings gap" and the "gender pay gap", is used by government agencies and economists to refer to statistics gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau, as part of the Current Population Survey, comparing median male wages to median female wages. The gender gap is usually expressed as the ratio of female to male earnings among full-time, year-round (FTYR) workers.

So, for example, in 2004 the median income of FTYR male workers was $40,798, compared to $31,223 for FTYR female workers (DeNavas-Walt et al, 2005). 31,223 divided by 40,798 is 0.765, so the gender earnings gap in 2004 was 0.235 (1 minus 0.765). This is often expressed as a percentage: e.g., "in 2004, women's wages were 76.5% of men's wages," or "in 2004, women earned 23.5% less than men earned." However, it is important to note that this statistic ignores differences in experience, skill, occupation and hours per week worked. Some studies, such as those done by the Independent Women's Forum, conclude when taking into account variables when comparing male and female employment within the United States - type of job, hours worked in a week, tenure, benefits (for example maternity leave) - women make 98% of men's income, resulting in a comparative gap of only 2%.

Trends in the Gender Earnings Gap

Women's pay relative to men's rose rapidly from 1980 to 1990 (from 60.2% to 71.6%), and has risen less rapidly from 1990 to 2004 (from 71.6% to 76.5%), though young women have started to outearn young men in some large urban centers with young women earning up to 20% more than their male counterparts .

According to a study published in the June, 2008 issue of the American Sociological Review, women can make inroads into male-dominated management ranks as companies scale-back workforces via downsizing. The study shows that firms apparently make an effort to balance gender inequities during staff shakeups. Women entered management ranks at rates up to 25 percent higher than men in some grade levels after downsizing, which created supervisory openings as older male managers took company-offered buyouts. Overall, women accounted for nearly 36 percent of the company’s managers after restructuring, compared with an average of about 24 percent during the period from 1967 to 1993, according to the study.

However, other trends are decidedly negative: a study at Cornell University concluded in 2005 found that women with children were less likely to be hired and if hired would be paid a lower salary then male applicants. Conversely, male applicants with children were likely to be offered higher pay than women with children or people without children. Carnegie Mellon also conducted a study, published in 2007, that found that women who applied for jobs were not as likely to be hired by male managers if they tried to ask for more money, while men who asked for a higher salary were not negatively affected.

In 2005, wives earned more than their husbands in 25.5% of dual-income families, and 33% of all families where the woman worked.

Causes of the gender gap

Occupational choice

Occupational segregation refers to the way that some jobs (such as truck driver) are dominated by men, and other jobs (such as child care worker) are dominated by women. Because jobs dominated by women are, on average, lower-paying than jobs dominated by men, occupational choice is an important cause of the gender gap.

Maternity leave

The economic risk and resulting costs of a woman possibly leaving work for a period of time or indefinitely to nurse a baby is cited by many to be a reason why women are less common in the higher paying occupations such as CEO positions and upper management. It is much easier for a man to be hired in these higher prestige jobs than to risk losing a female job holder. Thomas Sowell argued in his book Civil Rights that most of pay gap is based on marital status, not a “glass ceiling” discrimination. Earnings for men and women of the same basic description (education, jobs, hours worked, marital status) were essentially equal. That result would not be predicted under explanatory theories of “sexism”. However, it can be seen as a symptom of the unequal contributions made by each partner to child raising. Cathy Young argues that rather than men being disinterested in child-rearing resulting in an unequal burden for women, women barring men from taking on paternal responsibilities may sometimes be at fault. Many Western countries have some form of paternity leave to attempt to level the playing field in this regard. In addition to maternity leave, Walter Block and Walter E. Williams have argued that marriage in and of itself, not maternity leave, in general will leave females with more household labor than the males [[1]][[2]] [[3]][[4]].

"Women's jobs" and "Men's jobs"?

The reason for the difference in pay between "women's jobs" and "men's jobs" is disputed. Many conservatives would argue that the difference in pay reflects a tendency of women to freely choose low-wage jobs because women prefer less dangerous or more flexible work. Many liberals would argue that both discrimination by employers (Neumark 1996), and sexist social expectations, tend to steer women into lower-paying occupations and men into higher-paying occupations.

Some economists, particularly conservative economists, have argued that the tendency of women to congregate in "women's jobs" has led to "occupational crowding," in which the high supply of applicants for "women's jobs" drives wages for those jobs downwards. Sociologist Reeve Vanneman and his colleagues calculated that if 1990 patterns held, if every labor market in the U.S. had men and women equally distributed across occupations, there would be no gender gap in earnings.

Different choices

Women and men often make different choices: in college major, in hours and years worked, and in what jobs to take.

Critics of the discrimination theory, including men's rights activists, argue that these "free choice" elements are the source of virtually all of the gender earnings gap. According to these critics, women often choose to prioritize social and family life before their careers, and will therefore avoid jobs that require long or inflexible hours.

Proponents of the discrimination theory, including feminists, argue that such "free choice" factors, while significant, have been shown in studies to leave large portions of the gender earnings gap unexplained (Blau and Kahn 1997, Wood et al 1993). Furthermore, some feminists argue that the social expectation that women are the sex responsible for child and elder care is not an example of "free choice," but instead an example of sexism.

Male activist Warren Farrell has claimed that childless women who have never married earn 117 percent of their childless male counterparts, when the comparison controls for education, hours worked and age. However, Farrell's calculations and methodology have never been subjected to peer review. Economists publishing research in peer-reviewed scholarly journals have found that, even after accounting for parenthood status, education, job title, and other factors, there is still a significant income disparity in men's favor (Blau and Kahn 1997, Wood et al 1993).

Men may get more credit for their work

Some argue that work by men is often subjectively seen as higher-quality than objectively equal or better work by women (Goldin and Rouse, 1997; Johnson, 1997). This can impact who is offered mentoring, who is given a job assignment, who is offered a promotion, and so on - and all of these factors in turn have an effect on the gender earnings gap.

For example, one study of credit in the sciences, published in Nature, looked at productivity (measured in terms of publications in scientific journals, how many times a person was a "lead author" of an article, and how often the articles were cited in scientific journals) and sex. These factors were then compared to how an actual scientific review panel measured scientific competence when deciding on research grants. The results showed that female scientists needed to be at least twice as accomplished as their male counterparts to receive equal credit (Wenneras and Wold, 1997).

Is there a "danger" pay premium?

Men's rights activist Warren Farrell has argued that a significant cause of the gender earnings gap is men's greater willingness to take on physically dangerous jobs (New York Times 2008). Men's activists assert that men are taking more dangerous jobs, as suggested by the statistic that in 2006, men accounted for 92% of workplace fatalities in the United States. This men's rights argument contends that because employers have to pay a "danger premium" to entice workers to take dangerous jobs, and because women are not willing or able to take these jobs even for high wages, men's wages are higher.

However, feminists argue that the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. are not necessarily "male", but most often very low-paid jobs, generally performed by immigrants and other workers who have few occupational options. The Bureau of Labor Statistics investigated job traits that are associated with wage premiums, and stated: "Job attributes relating to interpersonal relationships do not seem to affect wages, nor do the attributes of physically demanding or dangerous jobs."

How much lower is the pay in "Women's jobs"?

Different economists have calculated it different ways. The sociologist Paula England looked at data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (a U.S. government study that measures changes in people's lives over time), and found that if a white woman in an all-male workplace moved to an all-female workplace, she would lose 7% of her wages. If a black woman did the same thing, she would lose 19% of her wages (England et al, 1996). The economists Deborah Figart and June Lapidus (1996) calculated that if female-dominated jobs did not pay lower wages, women's median hourly pay nationwide would go up 13.2% (men's pay would go up 1.1%, due to raises for men working in "women's jobs").

See also

• Discrimination
• Equal Pay Act of 1963
• Gender gap
• Gender role
• Glass ceiling
• Income disparity
• Income inequality in the United States
• Income inequality metrics
• Living wage
• Men's rights
• Parental leave
• Pink collar
• Potty parity
• Sexism
• Women's rights

References

• Blau, Francine and Lawrence Kahn (1997). "Swimming Upstream: Trends in the Gender Wage Differential in the 1980s." Journal of Labor Economics, volume 15 (1), part 1, January 1997, pages 1-42.
• DeNavas-Walt, Carmen, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Cheryl Hill Lee (2005), U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-229, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. Available online at http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p60-229.pdf .
• England, Paula, Lori L. Reid and Barbara S. Kilbourne (1996). "The Effect of the Sex Composition of Jobs on Starting Wages in an Organization: Findings from the NLSY." Demography, volume 33 (4), November 1996, pages 511-521.
• Farrell, Warren, "Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap - and What Women Can Do about It" ISBN 0-8144-7210-9
• Figart, Deborah and June Lapidus (1996). "The Impact of Comparable Worth on Earnings Inequality." Work and Occupations volume 23 (3) pages 297-318.
• Goldin and Rouse (1997), "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of 'Blind' Auditions on Female Musicians," NBER working paper No W5903.
• Institute For Women's Policy Research (2005), "The Gender Wage Ratio," available online at http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/C350.pdf .
• Johnson, Dan (1997). "Getting Noticed in Economics: the determinants of academic citations." The American Economist, volume 41 (1), Spring 1997, pages 43-52.
• "Knowledge Gets The Biggest Pay Premium" (1999). In Monthly Labor Review. October 5, 1999. Available online at http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/1999/Oct/wk1/art02.htm .
• Mishel, Lawrence, Jared Bernstein and John Schmitt (1999), The State of Working America 1998-1999, Economic Policy Institute.
• Neumark, David (1996). "Sex Discrimination in Restaurant Hiring: An Audit Study." Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 1996, pages 915-941.
• Nielsen, Arrah (2005). "Gender Wage Gap Is Feminist Fiction." Available online at http://www.iwf.org/campus/show/18948.html. This is not a scholarly, refereed article. It is a publication of a capitalist think tank, AWF, supporting male activist Warren Farrell.
• Rones, Phillip, Randy Ilg and Jennifer Gardner (1997). "Trends in Hours of Work Since the Mid-1970s." Monthly Labor Review, April 1997, pages 3-14.
• Wenneras, Christine and Agnes Wold (1997). "Nepotism and Sexism in Peer-Review." Nature volume 387, May 22 1997, pages 341-343.
• Wood, Robert, Mary Corcoran, and Paul Courant (1993). "Pay Differences Among the Highly Paid: the male-female earnings gap in lawyers' salaries." Journal of Labor Economics, volume 11 (3), pages 417-441.