PSA: The wage gap isn’t real
So fun fact! Depending on your sources, the wage gap varies, but it really isn’t the fundamental issue when we are looking at pay inequality in the US.
There are many other factors that come into play when talking about PAY GAPS: Women have less success in gaining promotions than their male counter parts (and other Glass Ceiling effects), women are dissuaded from higher paying fields (such as STEM fields) through institutional hostility, women are expected to take unpaid maternity leave for child care when men are not (regardless of whether or not they will), women are less successful at salary negotiations and are sometimes even penalized by employers for trying at MUCH higher rates than men, work that is traditionally female dominated being undervalued on a cultural level (women might be cooks, but not chefs; nurses, not doctors; etc.), when women begin to work in traditionally male fields in higher numbers the pay for those fields drop, and men in traditionally female fields tend to be promoted more quickly and get paid more, and a myriad of others.
We know, for example Women need an additional degree in order to make as much as men with a lower degree over the course of a lifetime.A woman would need a doctoral degree, for instance, to earn the same as a man with a bachelor’s degree, and a man with a high school education would earn approximately the same amount as a woman with a bachelor’s degree.
The fact is that women, on average, DO make less than men, and the issue isn’t always direct illegal wage imbalance. The issues are often far more wide reaching and speak to a cultural misogyny that has to be confronted beyond just legislation.
I mentioned maternity leave earlier. (Did you know that the US is one of the only “industrialized countries” in the world to NOT have guaranteed paid parental leave? yeah. That’s fucked up.) The entire notion that women, more so than men, are expected to take off time from work for family is one of those cultural aspects of inequality that I mentioned.
And all this discussion fails to take into account things like disability, trans people, sexuality, and race, which makes all of these issues even more extreme and complicated.
This is a really good article to read for more information:
Explaining the Wage Gap
This is my shit!
fandomsandfeminism talked about several of the major contributors to the wage gap, including:
1. Discrimination in promotions
Women are typically overqualified compared to their male counterparts, are promoted less frequently, and are passed over for promotions when they have the same experiences and qualifications as men. For example, white male professors who do the least service and mentoring get promoted the fastest. Female managers are also held to stricter standards for promotion than men. Women with more than a high school education do not leave jobs more frequently than men, and female managers even have slightly lower turnover than male managers.
2. Dissuasion from higher paying fields
Millennial men are less open to accepting women engineers than older men are. Only 41% of millennial men are comfortable with women engineers, compared to 65% of men 65 or older. Women get burned out working in the tech industry because they are underpaid, undervalued, and underappreciated in their Millennial male-dominated fields.
3. Structural disadvantage
Paid family leave is not mandated in the US, but women are more likely to return to work after having a baby when they have paid family leave, and men who take paternity leave spend more time on child care later.
Investing in a universal, free childcare system, in which workers are paid a decent wage, would create 1.65 million jobs and reduce the gender pay gap. Most of the investment would be recouped through increased tax revenues and lower welfare spending. In Canada, women’s participation in the workforce increased substantially above trend levels when marginal taxes and the net costs of child care were reduced.
4. Penalties for negotiating
Both men and women are more likely to rate women as “less nice” and are less interested in working with them if they ask for more money. Women are aware of how they’ll be viewed if they ask for more money, and therefore don’t ask. Women ask for much more money if they’re negotiating for someone else because they don’t have to fear appearing selfish and greedy. Employers outright lie to women more often during negotiations. Furthermore, a recent study in Australia found women ask for pay raises at the same rate as men but receive them less. 19% of women vs. 33% of men got raises when they asked.
5. The devaluing of work associated with women
People view men’s and women’s work differently. There is a tipping point at which men flee an occupation, and in the absence of perfect information, workers take the percentage of female employees as a proxy for an occupation’s prestige. When teaching in the US became female-dominated, the pay decreased. When programming in the US became male-dominated, the pay increased. Doctors save lives and go to school for many years no matter where you are in the world. But in Russia, where doctors are mostly women, they are paid the same wages as secretaries, making about 12,000 US dollars a year. A study of Census data from 1950 to 2000 found that when women enter an occupation in large numbers, that job begins to pay less, even after controlling for a range of factors like skill, race, geography, and occupational crowding.
Men’s low-wage jobs demand far less in terms of skill, education, and certifications than women’s low-wage jobs, yet the male-dominated ones usually have higher hourly pay. Janitors, who are mostly men, make 22 percent more money than maids and housecleaners, who are mostly women, despite the jobs requiring identical skills.
6. Special treatment for men in female-dominated fields
Even in job fields where women dominate, men are paid more for the same roles. Men in nursing outearn women by nearly $7,700 per year in outpatient settings and nearly $3,900 in hospitals in the US after controlling for a large number of variables. Men in female-dominated fields aren’t marginalized at all; they get special treatment, are fast-tracked to the top, and receive preferential hiring (often by other men who were also fast-tracked to the top).
7. Disabled people, trans people, gay people, and people of color also see wage gaps with their more privileged counterparts
There are many other important reasons for the wage gap, including:
8. Pay secrecy
You can’t demand higher pay if you don’t know you’re being underpaid. In the 11 US states where pay secrecy is unlawful, the gender wage gap is smaller. In government jobs, where pay transparency is required, the gender pay gap has shrunk to just 11-13 percent. Unionized workers, who also require pay transparency, have a wage gap of 9 percent.
9. Women’s unpaid labor
Women tend to put in fewer hours of paid work than men, but when unpaid work is added to the equation, women all over the world tend to work slightly more hours per day, per week, and per year than men. Women in the US proportionately still perform much more housework and childcare, such as managing children’s schedules and activities, taking care of sick children, and doing chores, than men. Men still perform only half the housework and childcare that women do. This doesn’t look like it will change soon: Fewer than half of Millennial women believed they’ll handle most of the child care, but two-thirds of their male peers believe their wives will do so. When the time women spend on unpaid work shrinks to three hours a day from five hours, their labor force participation increases 20 percent.
10. Long hours != greater contribution to company
The worth of work should be evaluated by productivity rather than time. Long hours backfire for people and companies. Managers can’t tell the difference between those who worked an 80-hour week and those who pretend to. Pharmacists have one of the smallest wage gaps because the pay is measured by productivity rather than time.
Even in workplaces that offer flexibility, however, women have reported penalties for taking advantage of flexible work options, such as loss of responsibility or longer hours than promised. Flexible work hours will work only if that attitude changes.
The point that “men earn more because they put in more hours at the company” is untrue anyway. The wage gap between women and men remains steady whether we compare employees working 40 hours a week, 41-44 hours a week, 45-49 hours a week, or 50+ hours a week.
11. Motherhood penalty
Women earn 10% less for each child they have, while men earn 6% more for each child they have. Mothers face a lot of stereotypes at work: they get competency ratings 10% lower than other women, and they’re also called back half as often as fathers for jobs. To the contrary, studies have found that moms are more productive workers. The thought-leadership industrial complex has even called having kids a “productivity hack.”
12. Implicit bias
Even after controlling for all variables known to affect earnings, there is still a wage gap of about 6.6% in the US. Accounting for these variables explains only about 60% of the wage gap in the US. In Australia, these factors only account for about 40% of the gap.
There are almost innumerable examples demonstrating implicit gender bias. Resumes with women’s names are given 12% lower starting salaries than the exact same resumes with men’s names. Employers are more likely to hire a male job applicant than a female job applicant with an identical record. Employers reported that the male job applicant had done adequate teaching, research, and service experience compared to the female job applicant with an identical record. If there is only one woman in a pool of candidates, her chances of being hired are statistically zero. Mentoring does not provide the same career benefits to women as men and that women are “championed” less often by senior management for promotions and raises.
Luckily, people can overcome their unconscious biases. Employers for university STEM faculty were 6.3 times more likely to make an offer to a woman candidate when the employers had been presented with an intervention, including discussion of implicit bias. Sadly, women who bring up concerns about diversity in the workplace receive worse evaluations from their bosses than men who bring up the same concerns.
13. Just blatant sexism
Married men with stay-at-home wives are significantly more likely to view women in their workplace unfavorably, are much less likely to take jobs at companies with female board members, and pass over female co-workers for promotions.
Three-quarters of Millennial women anticipate that their careers will be at least as important as their partners, while half the men in their generation expect that their own careers will take priority.
Women are not as respected as men in leadership roles, especially by the men over whom they have a leadership role. Women in leadership positions receive less favorable evaluations because they are perceived to be violating gender norms. Male students systematically overestimate the knowledge of the men in their classes in comparison with the women despite clear evidence of women’s superior class performance.
Millennial men are less open to accepting women leaders than older men are. Only 41% of millennial men are comfortable with women engineers, compared to 65% of men 65 or older. Likewise, only 43% of millennial men are comfortable with women being U.S. senators, compared to 64% of Americans overall. The numbers were 39% versus 61% for women being CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and 35% versus 57% for president of the United States.
There are many proven ways to reduce the gender wage gap, including:
Mandate paid family leave.
Invest in universal, free childcare, or at least invest in reducing marginal taxes and the net cost of childcare.
Confront implicit bias through training and intervention.
Raise the minimum wage.
Mandate pay transparency.
Prohibit employers from inquiring into prospective employees’ wage histories.
Create more flexibility for jobs by valuing productivity over contact hours.
Remind workers of their rights.
Perform your fair share of unpaid labor.
Change cultural norms so it is more acceptable for moms to work and dads to take care of children.
Support women’s ideas in your workplace. When a female colleague’s point is ignored, pile on and emphasize the point, making sure you acknowledge that it was her idea. When a qualified female colleague is consistently passed over for a promotion, ask your boss to promote her.
But we can’t get any of these done because these people are out here plugging their ears and saying “the wage gap isn’t real.” If you need more convincing of why you should help the gender pay gap, please read this post.
The pay gap exists because statistically speaking, on average women choose lower paying jobs.
Technically, yes, but it goes further. It’s not because the job is less valuable, it’s because women are doing it. So yes, women are in lower paying jobs on average, but they’re lower paying jobs because women are doing them. This happened with mathematics and computer science and any other profession that started out as women dominated.
This absolute Mensa candidate really saw a long, well-sourced post explaining the wage gap, and still hit us with their hot take about women choosing lower paying jobs. Unbelievable lol
When men with a gender identity starts being included in “women” in these statistics even though they are most likely to be in STEM fields and just as likely to be hired as other men (or even more because trans is trendy and they’re not going to have a maternity leave even though they count as “we hired a woman”), these statistics will be meaningless and the wage gap will miraculously close, giving us even less ways to point out sexism and discrimination. Meanwhile women will still be paid less and overlooked for promotions, now in favor of men and “transwomen”.
