<p>
[quote] Why the gap? **Men typically choose majors that result in more lucrative careers post-graduation, like engineering. Even if men and women major in the same subject, men tend to end up in higher-paying jobs. Men also work more hours, according to AAUW.
**But even when controlling for these factors -- by looking at men and women with the same majors, jobs and hours -- women were still paid 7% less than men.
<p>Where is this happening? It doesn’t happen in the public sector – at least the public sector I am familiar with – so is inequitable pay a widespread vice in the private sector or only in certain industries or geographic regions. Or are there still state and local governments in the US that think it’s still 1948?</p>
<p>The article in the Wash Post said 6.6 percent, but anyway …</p>
<p>The lead paragraph started with the big misleading figure that women earn 82% of what males earn.
Then they said, oh yeah, more women enter lower paying fields (teaching, nursing) than majority males fields (computer science, engineering).
OK, then they said the 6 or 7 percent.</p>
<p>Here is my guess:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Ask any male what he earns and he will lie and over-state the true figure by a factor of “x.”</p></li>
<li><p>Whatever the true number is between males and females is statistically insignificant and within a “margin of error.”</p></li>
</ol>
<p>As a woman engineer, this is a topic I have mixed feelings about. I absolute believe that women should be paid equal amounts for equal work. But not all work is equal. It does make sense to me that a new engineering grad should earn more than a new sociology grad, for example.</p>
<p>Business majors are a very diverse lot. I’ll bet those with concentrations in finance and accounting earn more than those with concentrations in marketing and human resources. And I would guess that the first two have relatively more men than women and vice versa for the last two.</p>
<p>Teachers are also diverse. I would guess that the science & math secondary teachers earn more than the primary teachers, and that the differences in subjects accounts for a lot of the gender based pay discrepancies.</p>
<p>I would guess that a lot of that remaining 7% gap would be further reduced if the study accounted for the type of differences I list above.</p>
<p>If this is the case for otherwise equal positions (by which I mean the same job, as I take “unexplained differences” to mean), then the unemployment rate for newly graduated women should be less than it is for newly graduated men. Is there any evidence that such is the case?</p>
<p>I don’t see why this is still happening once adjustments are made for the high pay professions that the males tend to enter where females are the minority. Unless there are other issues not being taken into account, such as more males willing to work away from parent’s home or other base, more males in teaching ,say, who are math/science majors. If this is happening purely on a level where women are being offered less for the same POSITION as a man, it is a crime. I know when DH hires, the pay for the job has nothing to do with the gender of the person. </p>
<p>Am wondering also if it is because women do not negotiate as much as men? Say a job has a salary range, and the employer gives a low ball salary but will likely go up if the employee negotiates it and females just don’t tend to do that, or do the employers just low ball the females more? That is really a question to be investigated.</p>
<p>^I was working at an engineering consulting firm in the early 90’s. There was a downturn and I went to a second firm at the same salary at which I had already been working for a year. While at the second firm, after I didn’t get any calls from the boss to discuss a raise, I asked my manager about it. He said that if there was money, “Joe” would likely make an offer, but things were tight, yada, yada. </p>
<p>So I didn’t go and ask “Joe” for a raise. I worked there two years at the same salary (so three years total at $X). Some time after I got laid off, “Joe” remarked to my old manager that he had just noticed they’d never given me a raise while I was there. The manager felt rather badly for having discouraged me from bringing it up.</p>
<p>I tend to think a man would have been a lot more likely to march in and ask. :(</p>
<p>For the same job, men get paid more because they demand more. A female engineering colleague described to me how she had no idea how low-maintenance women employees were, until she became the boss. </p>
<p>In contrast to her female engineer subordinates, her male engineer subordinates were constantly in her office arguing all kinds of things: raises, plum assignments, favorable performance appraisal verbiage.</p>
<p>DIL and S1 were hired by the same company. Their starting salaries are the same. What happens once they have been there long enough to have performance reviews will be interesting.</p>
<p>Will say that my employer for much of the past 20 years has paid women less than men. He preferred hiring women – they stayed around longer than the men, who were more aggressive about getting advancement and pay raises. (Getting a promotion just didn’t happen, as it is a small company with a very flat organizational structure.) </p>
<p>It was good in some ways for the women there (professional opportunity w/part-time/flex options), bad in others. I did put the kibosh on my boss when he tried to rehire me in 2008 at my 1996 salary. No dice! He immediately cave, which told me I should have been more assertive about salary all along. Frankly, for me – the flexibility, at first for the kids, and later for my medical issues, was more important than the dollars. </p>
<p>Yeah, I know. I’m not a good role model. But my DIL will not let that happen to her, I promise!</p>