Looks like I forgot to mention that yesterday was Equal Pay Day. My bad.
Check out Amy Joyce's Washington Post column, Now It's Time For Women To Get Even for inspiration and to debunk the myth that the pay gap doesn't exist:
So let's just get this straight right now, says [economist Evelyn] Murphy: That 23-cent differential is not because some women take time off to give birth or raise children. The pay-gap figure measures only women and men who work full time, for a full year. It does not include women who took time off during the year or worked part time.But don't women earn less over time because they might more often take time off to give birth or raise a child? According to Murphy, that's an incredibly lame argument. Most women who can take time off and go back to work full-time earn more in the first place. Any drop in salary they might experience would not pull the average down, she argues. (Emphasis mine)
Murphy is the author of of "Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men -- and What to Do About It." Get more information on the pay gap and action you can take at Murphy's website, the WAGE project.
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We have to look at all the factors, to say it is simply discrimination is not true there are many reasons for the pay gap. Discrimination being the least in my opinion.
http://content.salary.monster.com/articles/gender_wages/
http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/28/commentary/everyday/sahadi/index.htm
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2294/is_2002_August/ai_95514607
Nice to see links to both sides of the argument.
I don't think Joyce quite debunks the myth though. She even mentions in the column that "women made up only 31 percent of workers in the highest earnings category". So... hello! How are women supposed to match men $ for $ if women are choosing to work in less lucrative sectors of the economy?!?
Because statistically speaking women do outnumber men in fields like teaching, publishing, social work, etc. (By choice.) All important jobs of course, that come with other rewards than money. But more mundane jobs like accounting, insurance, banking, etc, are going to pay more.
I think the Motherhood argument explains how some men may have more seniority in a particular position, and may be more willing to do overtime work. But I agree that motherhood may be less of a factor than people make it out to be.
Women may also not be as natural salary negotiators. And I do think it's wrong that they employers should penalize them for being less aggressive about raises. That's the type of situation where employers should be obligated to maintain parity.
There's another book called Women Don't Ask that talks a lot about this problem and equally blames men and women - so effectively, blames society and not any particular group - for the wage gap. It basically says this: men don't enable women to ask for the raises they deserve, and women don't ask because the environment isn't condusive to them asking for what they want. Oversimplfying it that way makes it sound dumb and simplistic, but it's actually one of the best books I've read in the past two years. It gives a lot of perspective on this sort of thing and doesn't let anyone off the hook.
If you stop looking at it as a system of oppression, and just say to yourself that men and women are different, then there is no need to blame anyone.
Statistically speaking men are just born more ambitious, competitive and aggressive.
Statistically speaking men are just born more ambitious, competitive and aggressive.
Right, and arguing from the same essentialist language, women are more reflective, cooperative, communicative.
Which of those two sets of traits do you think is more valuable in today's media-driven, image-based business culture? Business hasn't been about the "Lone Industrialist" for about 40 years, now. Networking and collabboration are the key, and those are the areas that you've just made the argument that women would succeed and men would fail.
So why the pay gap, then, if you've just made the argument that women are better suited to business than men?