<p>I don’t believe that this is true any longer at least for accounting (my own profession).</p>
<p>One thing that I have observed is that young women are frequently advised to take that front desk job just to get a foot in the door. The problem is that even if it leads to a better position, the young woman will have spent a year or two in this low paid position while the young men (who are never given this advice) are starting off in a career path position. I have seen this many times.</p>
<p>I am very disappointed by the results of this survey, but frankly not surprised.</p>
<p>My husband is a statistician. He insists the only fair way to judge the discrepancy is to do a paired sample T test matching people with common degrees from common universities (e.g. a female accounting major from XYZ university with a male accounting major from XYZ university). It will eliminate possible sources of bias. As this was done, the methodology is flawed.</p>
<p>The 6.6% difference found is trivial given the methods used. Survey data on income can easily be off that much and perhaps men are more likely to puff their income a bit.</p>
<p>There are many more interesting findings in that report. Income by major, influences of school type and quality, location etc.</p>
<p>FallGirl–that is absolutely true for biz majors where women will gravitate to marketing and mgr/HR over finance. Finance nearly always pays more.</p>
Well it was in my case (see post #14 above), alh. I don’t think “fault” is the right word. Women are still learning the ropes on this. Younger women are probably more likely to be more aggressive on the issue than my generation. It’ll work itself out, but these things take time.</p>
On the first half of this quote I don’t know why anyone would be surprised or irritated. It’s simply true that there aren’t many females entering one of the fields with the highest starting salaries. I’ve hired new college grads for engineering (computer science) and I think I’ve only interviewed one female. There simply are very few female engineering grads and very few in the field. I wouldn’t consider the gender, or race, or any of the other physical attributes as a factor at all in the decision to hire and not in the decision as to a starting salary or increases. </p>
<p>On the latter half of the paragraph, I find it weird that ‘men work more hours’ if looking at a young cohort. I find it understandable later on when there are kids to care for but that shouldn’t affect at least the first few years.</p>
<p>Perhaps the point is that they shouldnt even NEED a day in court.</p>
<p>There are theories of why men make more than women which move along the line of, “women make less money because the jobs they take have traditionally been underpaid.” Around here, the average teachers salary is close to 90,000+ a year. We have a pretty even distribution of male teachers and female teachers, particularly starting in Jr. High. </p>
<p>When the union negotiates, the male teachers are always the first to be willing to strike if they don’t get a raise, and they do demand more, more loudly. It works out well for the women, though, too. </p>
<p>So, yeah, I think the girls need to learn how to negotiate. I used to think about that when I was a young girl. I would babysit, a very demanding and way more important job than lawn mowing, and my brother, who got to use the family lawn mower, made a fortune compared to me, for very little time invested. </p>
<p>Now, good luck getting a girl to babysit for less than 10+ an hour. She’d never come back to your house. So, I imagine the girls have learned to know their value.</p>
<p>I’m a woman and while I do want equal pay for the same job I do think a lot of the studies are flawed. I’m sure there is still a gap in certain parts of the country. I’ve had customers call at work and refuse to speak with me and want a man - it’s still the mind set for many people that men are more “qualified” for certain jobs. </p>
<p>Many more men major in computer science and engineering then women… and they tend to have higher salaries. I would guess that a female computer science or engineering person would make the same as the male - unless as mentioned above the man is more demanding towards a pay raise and the woman is more quiet. I was one of 2 females in my college intro to programming c++ class and the only female in my database systems class, etc… </p>
<p>business as a whole is a very wide field - you may graduated with a business degree and start working customer service somewhere for like 10 bucks an hour just to get your foot in the door. I think a woman is more likely to do this. a large majority of our customer service new hires are women and many of them have this type of degree. I have seen more men lately, but it’s not usually a field that as many men tend to choose for work. i think more men are getting into it lately because of the economy.</p>
<p>business could be catergerized as straight business, international, hr, marketing, information systems, accounting, finance etc. it all depends what the reports are using to determine ‘business’. some of these majors are more female or more male driven which again could result in different salaries. my sister has an entry level accounting position making less then 15/hr. i looked into hr positions but most didn’t pay enough to make ends meet. but IS/finance? those will pay pretty well and most times are made up of men.</p>
<p>once in jobs for a few years girls tend to take off and have kids or stay home with them which could influence their over all salary relative to the men.</p>
<p>gladgrad, i think it’s interesting about the overtime as well… but i do think that the men at my company tend to work more overtime then the women. Generally speaking i think the women tend to get stressed out and more easily tired where the men want the money and will put up with it. I could be wrong on this, it’s just an observation.</p>
<p>side note:
when I got my most recent position at my company they offered me somewhere between a 15-20 percent raise from my old position at the company. I said yes right away and the HR lady was like “wow that was the quickest response i’ve ever had, you didn’t even need to think about it.” The moment she said that, i realized i probably could have countered for a higher salary and gotten it - but the thought didn’t even cross my mind since I was getting a nice raise.</p>
<p>But the findings are based on shaky data.
They called people up on the phone and asked them how much they earned.
What would you answer if someone asked you?
Or people filled in a web form.
If there were any missing items, the researchers filled in the blanks themselves.</p>
<p>They also allowed anyone who had certifications, licenses or associates degrees to be included.</p>
<p>There could be all sorts of reasons for the small difference.</p>
<p>Even if you use a paired sample, there’s an important factor you’re not taking into account – geographic mobility and how couples make decisions about where to live and work.</p>
<p>By the time they graduate from college, some young people are involved in serious relationships. They may be living with their significant other. They may be engaged. A few may even be married.</p>
<p>Now these couples have to go find jobs in the same geographic location. Often, the best location for one of them will not be the best location for the other. Someone has to compromise.</p>
<p>I wonder how much of the pay gap in young adults results from women following their male partners to the location where he has the best job opportunity rather than men following their female partners to the location where she has the best job opportunity.</p>
<p>Many women that I know take lower paid jobs that give them more flexibility for their families. I know very few men who have adjusted work schedules to be there for the kids after school or take off years to spend time raising their families. A very good friend is an attorney. She worked only three days a week for 12 years while her kids were at home while her husband - also an attorney - worked about 80 hours a week. Both had the exact same job but she got paid much less. Fair? I think so - she worked a lot less. I think for two childless workers doing the same job they should get paid the same but once you get kids in the mix based on my experience the balance changes. Whoever is putting in the long hours at the office should be making more money. I hire people in my small office and am not in a position to offer high salaries but I do offer a lot of flexibility for my working moms. One of the perks is being able to leave the office and go during the day to the Halloween parties or bring their kids to the office if need be. Having a schedule that allows them to be home to get their kids both on and off the school bus is more valuable to them than making a higher salary in a less flexible position. I know in my small business I could have earned a lot more money if I had put my kids in day care a lot more or let them be home alone more often after school. There are trade offs in everything we do. If I hire anyone - man or woman- who is willling to work longer, inflexible hours - I should be willing to pay them more.</p>
<p>Geographic mobility and the willingness to work far from friends and family could easily make up the 7% difference. Many of the very highest paying jobs require you to work on an off-shore oil rig or in remote parts of Alaska or North Dakota or overseas in less-desirable places. Such jobs can easily pay two or more times the median pay, if you can stomach the conditions.</p>
<p>Another factor could be the ratio of job offers to job acceptances. Women may be more inclined to accept the first job offer with an acceptable company; men may be more inclined to walk away from an initial low-ball offer. It could well be that women are the real total income optimizers because they start collecting a paycheck earlier while men take longer to begin work, as their price for holding out for higher starting pay.</p>
<p>GolfFather,
The data was collected by by the National Center for Education Statistics at the U.S.
Department of Education (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics,2012). If you have concerns about the data collection, raise it with them. The AAUW folks did a regression analysis on these data.</p>
<p>At this point in time, shouldn’t there be just as many fathers as mothers opting for flexible hours over salary? So the statistics aren’t skewed towards women making less for that reason?</p>
This is a good point. Maybe instead of just looking at salary as the only job compensation or measure they should do a study where every “value” is given some measure of consideration - pay, flexibility, environment, overall satisfaction that one is doing a useful thing, etc. Since money is not the only reason that we work (YMMV :)) shouldn’t other types of “compensation” be taken into account?</p>
<p>To Alh - yes I think at this point in time there should be just as many fathers who want flexibility and I believe there are far more than in the past - but overwhelmingly I see women still taking the primary caregiver role in families. Not only for children but for aging parents as well. I personally know dozens of moms who have voluntarily limited work hours or taken years off paid employment. I can’t think of a single dad that I know personally who is a primary caregiver unless it is a result of a job loss.</p>
<p>Just yesterday I met with a young couple with two small children. He has a very high salary but works 12 hour days. She has taken the last 6 years off to be home with their two young boys. They are both college graduates and in their late 20’s so potentially famiies like theirs would have been in this survey.</p>
<p>I know this survey was about new grads just out of school so you would think that most wouldn’t be parents yet, but it would be interesting if that was one of the variables that was considered in this survey.</p>