Today's Time hauled out the old misleading statistic that women earn less than men, this time saying that even when "a number of factors" are considered, women still only earn 91% on the dollar compared with men.Could it be that the 9% differential are the result of the many factors not considered, for example, these from the book, Why Men Earn More:
- Women who work "full time" work fewer hours than do men.
- When women make the choice to have children are more likely to spend it with their kids than, for example, flying across the country for a conference, let alone a promotion. Indeed, salary studies of the unmarried find that women, for the same work, earn more than men.
- Even within the same job title, the person with more technical skills is more likely to be given a higher salary, since technical skills are more rarely held. Men are more likely to develop technical expertise.
2 comments:
Marty, I am at a loss for words. Ask your average male employer if he would hire a man for doing exactly the same job that he could get a similarly qualified woman to do for 9 percent less. Even a chauvinist wouldn't have to think about that one: if employers could always hire a similarly qualified woman to do exactly the same job a man does at a 9 percent discount, every man in America would be unemployed.
From what I can tell, this puts Time to the left of hard-core leftists. In May of 2008, Clinton Labor Secretary and Obama economic advisor Robert Reich (who landed himself in hot water last year with his comment about how all stimulus money should not go to white male construction workers), told the NY Times the following: "About 50 percent of the [gender wage] differential has to do with different career choices made by women and men. Twenty-five percent involves greater time women spend on care-taking of children and elderly relatives. The other 25 percent is due to bias and prejudice in the labor market."
So of the 23 cent wage gap, even Robert Reich said less than six percent was due to discrimination. Which puts Time to THE LEFT of Robert Reich!
We have vigorous laws to combat instances of discrimination. That is how the pockets of wage discimination must be battled.
In my experience, women often do more than half the daily home and child-related chores. Men seem to be comfortable with a greater amount of messiness. If a woman has been raised to value a clean home and her mate doesn't see it as his job to help in that area, she can either give up on "clean" and feel nagging guilt, or keep the home clean while using up energy that could have gone toward outside work. It's a woman's choice, just not always an easy one.
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