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Women aren't actually flat out paid less than men are for the same work. What happens is the combination of a few things:
1.) Men are a lot more likely to work overtime in excess of 41 hours a week compared to women. This is especially true when you look at union, skilled trade, and law enforcement occupations where women aren't that common.
Quote:
26% of men working full-time worked 41 or more hours per week in 2014, compared to only 14.8% of women who worked those hours, meaning that men working full-time last year were almost twice as likely as women to work 41 hours per work or more. Further, men working full-time were also 2.5 times more likely than women to work 60+ hour weeks
control for hours worked, and the pay gap goes from 17% or so down to about 10%.
As for the rest of it?
2.) It's mostly a marriage/childcare penalty.
Highly paid professions are less prone to having flexible schedules, or may incur a career penalty (missing out on promotions, etc) for pregnancy and maternity leaves. Finance in particular is notorious for requiring new employees to put in 80+ hour work weeks and sacrifice anything resembling a social life until you're well established.
If you look at BLS data and compare the wages for only full time single workers with no children under the age of 18, women earn 94% of what men in this category earn- and this is without controlling for hours as seen in point 1, or differing career choices between men and women (women crowd into low paying social work and childcare professions, men crowd the skilled trades, engineering, and law enforcement).
It's only when looking at women who are married, with children under 18, or already have a working spouse in the home that the gap appears.
As most people interpret it, the gender pay gap is largely fictional, and not something that can be fixed with anti discrimination legislation. Ironically the best way to even out the gap would be to encourage more men to stay home and take paternity leave (which isn't commonly offered) and other childcare absences.
At least in my old hometown, the women generally out earn the men, usually working in healthcare. The jobs that men traditionally did in my hometown (construction, factory work, other labor gigs) are long gone with not much else to replace them other than low wage Walmart or fast food.
Part of the reason that the supposed pay gap exists is that many women are not going into high paying fields. Admittedly, it's been ten years since I went to college, however, my campus was full of women who were just looking for their Mrs. Degree. They went into teaching or art and hung around the engineering building trying to shack up with an engineer so they didn't have to work. And I heard many say this. Recently when I was doing the online dating thing I found plenty of women who had low paying jobs and seemed to have little ambition to improve their situation. As has been stated many times in this forum, many times women are too timid at negotiations. Bottom line, the women who are making as much or more than men are doing it for the same reason men are making good money. They worked for it. Period.
They did a study that consisted of 12 states and public sector employees, and came to the conclusion women are paid less?
"Pay power is almost entirely informed by a doctor’s age, specialty, years of experience, count of published papers, Medicare reimbursement amount and status as a leader of a clinical trial and a recipient of a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Jena says."
"Almost", so, what are the other factors then? Years of experience - what kind of experience? Hours worked at all included? Time in position?
This study is ridiculous.
If there is pay discrimination, then they are free to file a complaint with the gov.
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