Equal Pay Day & the Elusive “Pay Gap”

[dgs49]

[Largely plagiarized from an article by Carrie Lukas in today’s WSJ] Tuesday is Equal Pay Day, a “feminist” “holiday” that pays implicit homage to the eminently questionable “Pay Gap” between men and women in the American workplace. As we all know, it is an article of faith among so-called, “feminists,” that women make only 77% of what men earn for equal work.

Well...

The Department of Labor's Time Use survey shows that full-time working women spend an average of 8.01 hours per day on the job, compared to 8.75 hours for full-time working men – about a nine percent difference.

Choice of occupation also plays an important role in earnings. Women gravitate toward jobs with fewer risks, more comfortable working conditions, regular hours, less overnight travel, more personal fulfillment and greater flexibility (e.g., education, banking, health care, insurance, and government employment). Simply put, many women—not all, but enough to have a big impact on the statistics—are willing to trade the prospect of higher pay for other desirable job characteristics. Large numbers of women with school-age children (or elderly, infirm parents) require a position that is amenable to frequent short term absences without advance notice, and abnormally high use of personal and “sick” days. (But of course, no employer may consider this when hiring, for example, a single mother with three school-age children).

Men, by contrast, often take on jobs that involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions (which is also why men suffer the overwhelming majority of injuries and deaths at the workplace). [Dare I point out that there not many women wearing the white suits doing cleanup work at Daiichi these days?] At the professional level, men do not shy away from positions that involve extensive or even long-term assignments away from home, or may regularly require 50+ hours per week at the office. They put up with these unpleasant factors so that they can at least potentially earn more in both the short and the long term.

“Recent studies have shown that the wage gap shrinks—or even reverses—when relevant factors are taken into account and comparisons are made between men and women in similar circumstances. In a 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30, the research firm Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8% more than their male counterparts.”

The article also gives statistics showing that men have been hit harder by the Great Recession, as they are more predominant in construction, transportation, and manufacturing, where the effects have been most acute. In the White Collar environment, layoffs invariably strike men under 40 years of age hardest. Layoffs of women – particularly if they are on an individual basis – must be extensively justified, while men are both legally and in fact, “employees at will,” as they are not members of any “protected class.”

In Medicine and Law, the numbers of women professionals are surging, with most medical and law schools currently having at least as many women as men. Furthermore, women outnumber men on most college campuses and in most college graduating classes.

This wrong-headed “feminist” campaign to claim victimhood where none exists does nothing to improve women’s status in the workplace or in the overall society. The bogus class-action suit against WalMart seeks to profit lawyers and undeserving women by punishing an economic dynamo that has provided millions of valuable, desirable jobs to women with school age children – women who are looking for nothing more than a paycheck and flexible work hours – by falsely claiming that they were vying for management positions in the WalMart stores. Really. Married women with children desiring to get into the grind (50 hrs/wk minimum) of retail management with WalMart.

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen…

DGS49 – Now more than ever, the provider of his household’s “second income.”

[MajGenl.Meade]

Men, by contrast, often take on jobs that involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions (which is also why men suffer the overwhelming majority of injuries and deaths at the workplace). [Dare I point out that there not many women wearing the white suits doing cleanup work at Daiichi these days?]

The above quote ties into the earlier para about women "choosing" lower risk jobs. Comparing to Daiichi is a post hoc fallacy. The lack of women at Daiichi may result from any number of causes other than a decision to avoid risk by not "taking it on". For example, being banned from taking such jobs in nuclear facilities; societal norms; discrimination in hiring across the board; lack of educational opportunity and so on.

e.g., education, banking, health care, insurance, and government employment).

And those fields are lower in pay than...............? I happen to know two women (but know no men who are) in very very lucrative banking jobs and I can attest that my wife's income far exceeded my own in the insurance field.

Were there not similar arguments put forward to refuse to hire women during the run-up to WW2 that Eleanor was instrumental in refuting - pls in the run-down at the end of the war the same arguments were used to lay-off female workers - "they" didn't really want to work was the story I believe

Meade

[Grim Reaper]

So we compare apples to oranges to claim that women are getting paid better than men?

In the jobs that women do take, how do they fare in comparison to men in those same fields? That's what you have to consider, not how they stack up to jobs in unrelated areas. I don't think anybody is seriously saying that how much a man makes as a construction worker should have any bearing on how much a woman makes as a bank teller.

[dgs49]

Point taken.

There are two issues here, that are often mixed. One is that the average compensation of men is greater than women. To a large extent, that has to do with career choices, as I wrote and quoted above. The second issue is women and men working "side-by-side" so to speak, where there is a significant compensation discrepancy that cannot be explained by experience, education, and other tangible factors.

Not many people would prefer a situation where one gender gets more or less than the other, simply on the basis of gender.

What is noteworthy is the often-repeated 77% figure (or whatever it happens to be this week), which has not been statistically valid or demonstrated for many years, yet it clings to the Feminist consciousness like a booger.

It is like the bogus 10% figure that the GLB... community often likes to cite. Who cares if it was never true to begin with and overstates the case by a factor of four or five. Clearly, Kinsey was an idiot.

[rubato]

As of 1996 (it may have been a year or two before then) pay parity for physicians was essentially 1:1 between men and women when they were of comparable years of experience, area of specialty, and hours worked. But it is true that fewer women worked long hours like many men did and far fewer women went into the highest-paid specialties like neurosurgery and cardiac surgery.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

"...

Men, by contrast, often take on jobs that involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions (which is also why men suffer the overwhelming majority of injuries and deaths at the workplace). [Dare I point out that there not many women wearing the white suits doing cleanup work at Daiichi these days?] At the professional level, men do not shy away from positions that involve extensive or even long-term assignments away from home, or may regularly require 50+ hours per week at the office. They put up with these unpleasant factors so that they can at least potentially earn more in both the short and the long term.... "

Physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions are almost always very low-paid work.


yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

Feminism provided an obstacle to social mobility for working-class men, Cabinet minister David Willetts has controversially argued. But is he right?

They were meant to welcome a new era of fairness and opportunity for all. Instead, a minister's remarks have prompted debate over the effect of women's entry into higher education and the professions.

In a briefing to journalists ahead of the government's social mobility strategy, David Willetts, the universities minister, appeared to suggest that feminism had made it harder for working-class men to get ahead in life.

Asked what was to blame for a lack of social mobility, the Daily Telegraph quoted him saying: "The feminist revolution in its first-round effects was probably the key factor.

"Feminism trumped egalitarianism. It is not that I am against feminism, it's just that is probably the single biggest factor."

His remarks sparked a wave of criticism, and Mr Willetts made it clear that he supported the move of women into the workplace and higher education. But to some the notion that more jobs for females equals fewer opportunities for males will be a convincing one.

"The expansion of university education was faster among women - they went from being a minority of students to a majority.

"But it's not true that if one group takes something, there's automatically less for the other.

"The deterioration in employment opportunities among young men was primarily the consequence of the decline in manufacturing.

"It's not the case that all these apprenticeships were suddenly taken by lots of young women. It's that the manufacturing jobs just weren't there anymore."
Certainly, there is no question that the number of female workers in the UK has increased significantly over the past four decades.

Labour Force Survey estimates suggest that the employment rate for women aged 16 to 59 rose from 56% in 1971 to 73% in 2004.

Whereas in 1971 there were nine million women over the age of 16 in work, by 2004 that figure stood at 13 million.

At the same time, social mobility for men appears to have fallen back over the same period.

Article continues here...

[loCAtek]

"...

Men, by contrast, often take on jobs that involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions (which is also why men suffer the overwhelming majority of injuries and deaths at the workplace). [Dare I point out that there not many women wearing the white suits doing cleanup work at Daiichi these days?] At the professional level, men do not shy away from positions that involve extensive or even long-term assignments away from home, or may regularly require 50+ hours per week at the office. They put up with these unpleasant factors so that they can at least potentially earn more in both the short and the long term.... "

Physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions are almost always very low-paid work.


yrs,
rubato

? No, quite the opposite, that's why I do it.

[dgs49]

I think rube's observation about manual labor, etc was perhaps colored by where he lives. In parts of the country that do not have a large Mexican population, construction labor (and trades) pay pretty well, outside residential construction.

On Gob's article, I would say that in the early years of "affirmative action for women," there were a lot of cases where marginally-qualified women were put into positions of supervision and power, ahead of more qualified men. Often, they shat the bed.

Some of it still goes on, but it is not as obvious (to me, anyway), and I think most people have concluded that, as with men, some managers suck and some are competent, regardless of gender.

[loCAtek]

No, not that either; I of course, often work along-side Mexicans, being a Mexican myself. If your citizenship is questionable, you probably won't be paid as well as a union worker, but having a trade skill can get you income better than average wages in sales and/or retail. This I know from having done both as well.

For as long as we were married, (which we're not any more) I earned more as a welder, than he did as a computer engineer. In order to get people to do dirty/hazardous work, it has to be more worth while or else it won't get done. Ex Ex got to sit in an air-conditioned cubicle all day; I had to be smoky and sweaty through the summer and winter, where I could burned or electrocuted.

Did I tell you about the time I set myself on fire?

[Jarlaxle]

Hasn't every welder done that at lest once?

[quaddriver]

I think rube's observation about manual labor, etc was perhaps colored by where he lives. In parts of the country that do not have a large Mexican population, construction labor (and trades) pay pretty well, outside residential construction.

.

actually, rube was a 'migrant farm worker' when he emigrated here from ethiopia. or so he says.