A Woman’s Lifetime Earnings Lost To Pay Gap Could Feed A Family Of Four For 37 Years
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/17/465554/pay-gap-feed-family-37/?mobile=ncBecause of this gap women working full time are able to afford less education, housing, transportation, food, and health care for themselves and their families than their male counterparts. As a result women and female-headed households are more likely to be in poverty and less likely to have health insurance. The pay gap translates into a significant economic disadvantage for women and their families, especially when nearly two-thirds (63.9 percent) of women are now either the primary breadwinner or a co-breadwinner, bringing home at least 25 percent of their family’s income.
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Men are 93% of workplace fatalities.
They choose dangerous careers because they pay better.
The pay gap isn't the gap between men and women, it's the gap in pay between safe jobs and unsafe ones.
You should commission a study... 
(unless of course, you're simply attempting to be clever...)
The key words are full time, year round.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File
ersonal_income.png
(Graph is from 2006. I'll see if I can find a more current one.)
Median:
1. In 2010 women who worked full time, year round, still only earned 77 percent of what men earned. The median earnings for women were $36,931 compared to $47,715 for men, and neither real median earnings nor the female-to-male earnings ratio have increased since 2009.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/04/wage_gap_facts.html
Median:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File ersonal_income.png
"Half of all women working as full-time wage and salary workers earned $669 or more per week in 2010. This median weekly wage was 81.2 percent of that earned by men."
http://www.dol.gov/_sec/media/reports/femalelaborforce/
Now factor in the other disparities: women more likely to work in the public sector (18% v. 12%), in service occupations (20% v. 11%), sales (20% v. 11%) and other "pink-collar" jobs (by choice or inertia of tradition), women less likely to work OT, etc. -- and what you have left is something like a 10% or disparity.
The law of the land is equal pay for equal work. That can be gotten around in various ways, but more often in high-paying jobs than in low-paying ones, and more often in private jobs where job descriptions can be tailored or duties added to justify the income of chosen "stars".
Paying women less than men for the same work is not the main reason for male-female wage disparities. Active discrimination against women is not the main reason for the disparities. I'm a woman, btw, one who's been in the workforce 40 years and worked everything from minimum wage to professional jobs, factory jobs to academia. My opinion on the matter and my experience is every bit as valid as any other woman's.
Focusing narrowly on that statistical gap in earnings excludes a wealth of other data points that could be used to make a case for discriminatory practices *favoring* women.
Men's wages at or under the median have been flat since 1973. Women's median wages have increased about 30% -- which means that gains for women at or under the median have all come at the expense of their male compatriots, and the wage "savings" for median workers have all gone to upper income groups.
17% of men in the labor force support children under 18, v. 16% of women. But the earnings gap between full-time moms and dads is *smallest* between black men and women (16%), *largest* between white men and women (and asian men and women) at 27% -- which to my way of thinking indicates more privilege and choice for white & asian women than black women -- not more discrimination, even though the typical reading of this "income gap" would indicate the opposite.
In my opinion this pitting of men v. women is designed to take the focus off the concentration of income and power to the top 20% and above.
Oh come on, lumberjack...you have such an obvious chip on your shoulder, always needing to prove that men are bigger victims than women.
Maybe you've been victimized in your life by women. It seems so, and you have our sympathy.
Still, One bad woman doesn't make your tarring of all women and women's issues true.
Your playing with facts is getting tiresome.
Here is a truckload of references rebutting your claims, but based on your behavior over the time I've seen you, my guess is that you'll ignore it all.
In 2010, the most recent data available, women on average earned 77.4 cents for every dollar earned by men holding the same full-time, year-round job, according to Census data analyzed by the National Committee on Pay Equity.
The gap was virtually unchanged from 2009, when it was 77 percent and 2008 when it stood at 77.1 percent, before the law was enacted.
Pay inequity remains most pronounced among women of color. African-American women made 67.7 percent of what was earned by men in 2010, according to the Census, while Hispanic women earned 58.7 percent, both figures largely unchanged from the year before.
Unpaid work is largely done by
has been and remains unequal in many occupations and places around the world, scholars sometimes distinguish between "work" and "paying work," including in their analysis a broader spectrum of labor such as uncompensated household work, childcare, eldercare, and family subsistence farming.
+Women's median pay was less than men's in each and every one of the 20 industries and 25 occupation groups surveyed by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2007.3 Even men working in female-dominated occupations tend to earn more than women working in those same occupations.4
+A study by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) examined how the wage gap affects college graduates. Wage disparities kick in shortly after college graduation, when women and men should, absent discrimination, be on a level playing field. One year after graduating college, women are paid on average only 80 percent of their male counterparts' wages, and during the next 10 years, women's wages fall even further behind, dropping to only 69 percent of men's earnings ten years after college. According to the AAUW report, even after "[c]ontrolling for hours, occupation, parenthood, and other factors normally associated with pay, college-educated women still earn less than their male peers earn. . . . A large portion of the
gender pay gap is not explained by women's choices or characteristics." 7
...But anyone who declares that women have “won” the new economy is premature at best. Women may be over-represented in growing sectors, but those jobs pay poorly, offer few benefits, come with grudging work and provide little opportunity for advancement. The edge on wages experienced by young women evaporates as they progress in their careers. When women do get to middle management, they’re paid less than men and they struggle to advance much further up the ladder. And women with children are left far behind.
So what happened to the “mancession” once the recovery officially began in June 2009? Women’s unemployment has continued to rise as men have gained their jobs back. Women gained less than 8 percent of the 1.9 million jobs added, and now men’s and women’s unemployment rates have converged at 7.7 percent. Public sector layoffs have hit women particularly hard. Across the country, women have lost 414,000 government jobs, many due to teacher layoffs. As of October, 300,000 educator jobs had been lost, accounting for over half of those lost at the local government level.
Women have been losing ground across private-sector industries too. Secretaries and administrative assistants, both female-dominated positions, have been laid off in droves. As employers ask their workers to do more work for the same or less pay in tough times, secretaries have become disposable. Women had lost 925,000 of these jobs as of July, but men had gained 204,000.
But women were stuck in disposable, low-income jobs long before the recession. One of the trends that got Rosin excited is that women dominate many of the industries projected to grow over the next decade, including retail sales and healthcare. It’s true that women disproportionately hold retail sales, home health and personal care jobs, all of which are set to see the most growth. But these jobs not only pay poorly and have few benefits; they are also unstable and are poorly protected by labor laws or unionization.
3. The more education a woman has, the greater the disparity in her wages. This certainly doesn’t mean women should shy away from professional positions, but they should be aware that they may have to battle harder for equal pay. Women in professional specialty occupations were found to earn just 72.7% of what men in the same position earned, and women in upper level executive, administrative and managerial occupations earned even less at 72.3%. If you compare this against the average of 77.5%, the numbers speak for themselves, and this graphic from the New York Times makes it even easier to see.
4. Women may work longer to receive the promotions that provide access to higher pay. One example provided by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that women often have to work three years longer in a teaching position to be promoted to a principal than their male counterparts. Some studies suggest that this is because women and men adapt different strategies when it comes to management and pursuing promotions, yet other studies connect it less to work and more to gender-based biases.
....according to the Cornell study Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty, working mothers aren’t just getting paid less; they’re also being perceived differently. The study’s experiments found that mothers were penalized on a host of measures, including perceived competence and recommended starting salary.
Men were not penalized for, and sometimes benefited from, being a parent. The study actually showed that employers discriminate against mothers, but not against fathers. According to Robert Drago, Research Director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, these differences are a reflection of an even bigger problem.
Women deliberately choose jobs that pay crap, out of the love in our hearts, while men understand the value of a dollar and hard work, as someone here is trying to claim........ YEESH!!
Two friends of mine are health care workers...one a nurse, the other a home health-care worker. The physical work they have to do, a too-heavy patient load and SHIT PAY drives me up a wall. It's NOT RIGHT!!
It realllly drives me up a wall to read remarks from DUers like that, blaming women and consistently trying to paint men as the wronged party. He also fails to recognize that when a field changes from a male work-force to a female work-force, the pay drops, and men in female-dominated jobs make more than their female coworkers. Female college graduates in careers are promoted less often and for lesser pay increases than their male colleagues. Secretaries used to be male. Telephone operators used to be male. Clerks --clerical workers-- used to be male. Then, in the 19th century, managers realized they could hire droves of women and pay them less for the same work. Voila: pink collar workers.
Here's a snip and link from a specific field, published in a professional e-journal you might find interesting. I thought it was pretty interesting, anyway--especially coming from professionals in a specific field.
http://respiratory-care-sleep-medicine.advanceweb.com/Salary-Information/Salary-Survey/Gender-Gap-Still-Exists.aspx
Gender Gap Still Exists
Ten years ago, male respiratory therapists and sleep professionals outnumbered females by two to one. But the field is no longer a boy's club of medicine. Sixty percent of the profession are women, and an equal percentage of managerial roles are held by females.
But on one measure, women continue to fall short - salary. And the difference is not just a women's issue. "Traditionally, when positions become female-dominated, they become less attractive to men, and the salary goes down," said Page S. Morahan, PhD.
On average, women in the cardiopulmonary field make 87 cents for every dollar men make, according to results from the ADVANCE 2010 Salary Survey. Their hourly wage, $27.69, is almost $10 short of their male colleagues.
"I cannot believe that," said Dawn Short, RRT, of Sheldon, Ill., when she learned of the wage difference. "In this particular job, I thought it would be really equal."
Groups like the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine Program (ELAM) for Women work to counter that assumption. ELAM for Women strives to promote females to management roles in equal numbers as men.
That's what the menfolk do.
