Gender Pay Gap, Once Narrowing, Is Stuck in Place

[dropkickpa]

By DAVID LEONHARDT
New York Times Published: December 24, 2006

Throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, women of all economic levels — poor, middle class and rich — were steadily gaining ground on their male counterparts in the work force. By the mid-’90s, women earned more than 75 cents for every dollar in hourly pay that men did, up from 65 cents just 15 years earlier.

Largely without notice, however, one big group of women has stopped making progress: those with a four-year college degree. The gap between their pay and the pay of male college graduates has actually widened slightly since the mid-’90s.

For women without a college education, the pay gap with men has narrowed only slightly over the same span.

These trends suggest that all the recent high-profile achievements — the first female secretary of state, the first female lead anchor of a nightly newscast, the first female president of Princeton, and, next month, the first female speaker of the House — do not reflect what is happening to most women, researchers say.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/business/24gap.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all

One section states

"There is no proof that discrimination is the cause of the remaining pay gap, Ms. Blau said. It is possible that the average man, brought up to view himself the main breadwinner, is more committed to his job than the average woman.

Ms. Blau is one of the main researchers. How the fuck are women going to get ahead when even the main woman studying this spouts off crap like this? It's this fucking shit that keeps being spouted off as the reason for women being less committed. How is it being less committed to your job when you deal with earning less for doing the same, if not more, work than your male counterparts?

[melnjones]

1. So...

are they including maternity leave as "lack of committment"?

[dropkickpa]

2. I would not be surprised in the least

cuz, dontcha know, all women care 'bout is havin' babies!! :sarcasm:

[Warpy]

3. Stuck in place, hell, it's INCREASING

We lost a whole penny in the last couple of years measured against men's wages.

Don't you just love the MSM's misleading headlines?

[Solo_in_MD]

4. Usual non-equal pay double talk...

- It fails to address career field choices. A BA in English or other liberal arts field gets around $32K as a starting salary. Technical degrees start around $45K. Many more women are choosing liberal arts. That can be viewed as a pay disparity, but it is in fact free choice since women starting in the technical fields make as much as the men. That liberal arts majors make less than the technical majors is the market at work, and is not gender discrimination (unless one claims that women inherently are not as good in the technical areas...)

- The backend of the story was about the medical professions. Clearly some specialties make more than others. Again, its the market at work. However the woman being focused on chose a lower paying specialty knowingly...again, thats not pay disparity, thats choice.

Such articles also ignore that for teachers, gov, unions, large companies...all use gender neutral formulas to set pay just to avoid pay disparities, and by and large its working. I have yet to see a recent example of structual pay discrimination. The example at Sams Club I find surprising, and somebody should get nailed for it.

[Morgana LaFey]

5. Those are the mythical excuses, but not usually borne out in

the data. The reason for the pay gap is discrimination based on sex, pure and simple.

[Nikia]

6. And strangely the higher percentage of women in a field

The less the work is valued monetarily in comparision to other fields requiring levels of skill and education.

[Nobody]

7. How true that is. For instance, the secretary

Once upon a time in the 1800s and early 1900s a secretary was an honorable profession. It required high education, tact, the ability to do a variety of tasks, it was paid well and was mostly men.

Once women started entering this profession it ended up being perceived as mainly letter typers and coffee makers and though the tasks were largely the same, the opinion of secretary as a profession dropped.

Then Hollywood got into the act. In any visual medium you have to show background characters doing something, anything, or the scene doesn't look real. So in walks the hero and what is the secretary doing? Filing her nails or painting her nails. The directors of these early movies needed her at her desk, she needed to have no lines at that point (if you have a certain number of lines or more you must be paid more so directors are careful about who gets to speak in a scene), they weren't very creative at coming up with what a secretary really does at her desk that doesn't involve being on the phone speaking. Thus she ends up grooming herself and a stereotype is born.

Also consider physicians. In the 80s (don't know about now) most of the female doctors were pediatricians. Guess which specialty paid the least and had the least prestige. Think it might have something to do with the fact that pediatrics involves children? Ever notice that any career that involves working with children isn't very well paid or very prestigious and that mostly women are in those fields?

[bettyellen]

8. "tha market at work" is male CEOs making decisions that some jobs are less worthy...

ever actually really think about this? or just accept it as is because it benefits your "choices".