Gender Pay Gap, Once Narrowing, Is Stuck in Place

[Herman Munster]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/business/24gap.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Last year, college-educated women between 36 and 45 years old, for example, earned 74.7 cents in hourly pay for every dollar that men in the same group did, according to Labor Department data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute. A decade earlier, the women earned 75.7 cents. The reasons for the stagnation are complicated and appear to include both discrimination and women’s own choices. The number of women staying home with young children has risen recently, according to the Labor Department; the increase has been sharpest among highly educated mothers, who might otherwise be earning high salaries. The pace at which women are flowing into highly paid fields also appears to have slowed.

Like so much about gender and the workplace, there are at least two ways to view these trends. One is that women, faced with most of the burden for taking care of families, are forced to choose jobs that pay less — or, in the case of stay-at-home mothers, nothing at all. If the government offered day-care programs similar to those in other countries or men spent more time caring for family members, women would have greater opportunity to pursue whatever job they wanted, according to this view.

The other view is that women consider money a top priority less often than men do. Many may relish the chance to care for children or parents and prefer jobs, like those in the nonprofit sector, that allow them to influence other people’s lives. Both views, economists note, could have some truth to them.

“Is equality of income what we really want?” asked Claudia Goldin, an economist at Harvard who has written about the revolution in women’s work over the last generation. “Do we want everyone to have an equal chance to work 80 hours in their prime reproductive years? Yes, but we don’t expect them to take that chance equally often.”

[Warpy]

1. That isn't stagnation, it's a DROP

which is just what those right wing Christians want. They want us all to magically morph into June Cleaver, wear our power suits, pearls and high heels to scrub the kitchen floor, and be happy with our positions as unpaid domestic servants.

Stagnation, my flabby old arse.

[Herman Munster]

2. well the article brings up some valid points

If women have different priorities than men (less interest in making money, less interest in working long hours at the expense of their family and social realationships) than the wage difference makes sense.

[Warpy]

3. Women are less interested in making money????

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

However, we do have two full time jobs, one for a paycheck and another one when we get home. Those of us who work 60-80 hours a week had better be earning enough to hire a maid, because if we don't do it, it doesn't get done.

Less interested in fair pay for our work? How dumb is that?

[Herman Munster]

5. do you work a corporate executive type job?

Those are the jobs many women don't have interest in. The sell your soul to the heartless corporation rather than work 80 hours a week and be treated like garbage. Many women, and men for taht matter, rather work non-profit or other less demanding jobs where they can have a quality of life.

There's nothing wrong with that and the research has shown that men are more money driven and are willing to sacrifice more for money than women.

There's nothing wrong with that. To me it shows that women have their priorities in the right place while many men do not.

[countingbluecars]

6. Did you read the rest of the article?

"Whatever role their own preferences may play in the pay gap, many women say they continue to battle subtle forms of lingering prejudice. Indeed, the pay gap between men and women who have similar qualifications and work in the same occupation — which economists say is one of the purest measures of gender equality — has barely budged since 1990."

[mntleo2]

4. Women don't view Pay As "Top Priority"? Hogwash!

This is about discrimination. Period. After working for over 35 years in McJobs I can tell you for a fact that men get paid better and have more opportunity for advancement. Yes women are the ones expected to take unpaid time out for family affairs, and yes that unpaid job is not even on the radar as far as being considered as contributing to our society.

Lots of people say about parenting, "If you can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em" and I will agree when they refuse to let other people's children pay their own social security benefits, they can just take care of themselves! They already supported their own parents through their social security contributions so with their own thinking, since they did not "contribute" by being parents themselves, why should my kids pay their retirement or Medicare? Let what was set aside for childless people come back to parents, not to them, because we sacrificed our lives and our potential pay to raise children, they did not.

In other words business should support working parents because it IS another full time job and should be considered as an important contribution in the Benefit World. But it isn't and until the rest of America sees parenting as actually being a job that is creating the continuation of this society by having children, then we will be dealing with this discrimination crap until the end of days.

My 2 cents
Cat In Seattle

[Nikia]

7. I think that gender prejudice is very strong

And it ends up affecting pay because people make a lot of assumptions about people based on their gender.