Gender Wage Gap Much Larger Than Commonly Believed: Study

[DonViejo]

Source: The Daily Beast



A study released Wednesday found that women workers in the United States earned less than half of what men did over the last 15 years. The study, conducted by economists at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, analyzed the incomes of men and women who worked for at least one year between 2000 and 2015. Over those 15 years, researchers found, the women workers earned just 49 percent of what the men did—much less than the commonly cited 80 percent figure. “The most commonly cited measure of the wage gap compares earnings of women and men who work full-time, year-round in that year,” IWPR President Heidi Hartmann explained in a statement. “What we found is that women face a much wider wage gap that is commonly cited, earning just half of what men earn over 15 years.”

—Emily Shugerman

READ IT AT INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN’S POLICY RESEARCH

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Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/mexicans-express-fury-after-president-gives-jared-kushner-highest-national-honor

[CrispyQ]

1. 49%!!

Progress has slowed in the last 15 years relative to the preceding 30 years in the study.

The penalties of taking time out of the labor force are high—and increasing. For those who took just one year off from work, women’s annual earnings were 39 percent lower than women who worked all 15 years between 2001 and 2015, a much higher cost than women faced in the time period beginning in 1968, when one year out of work resulted in a 12 percent cut in earnings.

It won't get any better while the GOP controls the government. It's not a long article & worth the click.

Kick.

[sfwriter]

3. Not surprising given wage stagnation and the gap between highly paid male dominated fields.

CEOs and Wall Street bankers come to mind. Add in growing income inequality, and the higher demands on women as caregivers in an aging society, and I can totally see this.

Historically, women have stayed out of the labor force when pay was generally low. For more, see Claudia Golden:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51dIlciF0vL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Gender-Gap-Long-Term-Development/dp/0195072707/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1543427668&sr=8-2&keywords=claudia+goldin

Sorry, I can't seem to remember how to insert an image.

[Igel]

4. Look at the details.

It makes it hard to know what to think except "outrage." And that's not something you think.

So if a woman takes off a year after the birth of her child and then goes back to work part time, over 15 years that's a large percentage difference. The difference isn't because of discrimination, unless we say, "Ah, men and women respond and are responded to differently in a way that reduces the woman's income. That, by definition, is discrimination--even if it's the woman who decided to go back to work part-time."

This isn't "equal pay for equal work," or even "equal pay for equal time spent at work," it's "equal pay for a 15-year period, regardless of how much each worked."

Notice how this works. I get paid more than my wife. We both teach high school. I get a stipend, but she has more education and experience so her pay is substantially higher. However, I put in time working and extra four weeks over the summer and during the school year--four hours two weeks, 3 this week, 4 next week. That $80-100/week extra adds up over 30 weeks so that, with the summer pay, I make more than she does in a given year. Therefore she's discriminated against even though I make less per hour than she does, and the extra hours dilute my average pay a bit further. She *could* apply to work extra hours, but choses not to. It's not worth her time, she says. I have specific things I want to spend money on that don't benefit my family in any real sense, so I put in extra time so that my typical pay goes for family needs.

The response is to say, "Your wife must be given motivation to put in even *more* time and be more tightly attached to the labor market." She doesn't see her primary role in life as making money. That's not her end-all for existence, the race for $. She places other things above that, and nearly took a pay cut last year to be in a job she'd prefer. (She's (R), by the way.) But all that *really* matters is money, apparently.

Similarly, my mother, the last couple of years my parents worked, made more per year than my father. She'd come off a sex-discrimination suit because for years she'd made less, and the court's remedy was to make up only partly for the shortfall caused by discrimination. Much of the effects of overt sex discrimination remained. Moreover, for 15 years she was held back by a lack of high school diploma, so much of the reason she had lower pay wasn't related to discrimination. She made significantly less per hour than my father. But she put in brutal amounts of overtime, therefore made more than my father.

The response must be, "Your mother made more than your father over that 15-year period. She was not the subject of discrimination."

In other words, it overstates, understates, and misstates things. It's an interesting way of capturing something, but I'm not sure that unless we say the only reason somebody doesn't work 60 hours a week is discrimination it meets their claims.

[TexasBushwhacker]

2. It's very hard to compare apples to apples

Women are more likely to take time away from their careers to care for children or family members. That being said, I don't think comparing a one worker's salary, when they've been working 15 years straight, to someone who took off 5 years to be a fair comparison. It would make more sense to compare the worker-caregiver to someone who worked 10 years, not 15.

I was a caregiver, on and off, for 10 years. It cost me dearly. While I worked full time for 9 of those years, it affected the kind of jobs I could take. I couldn't climb the career ladder. I had to work at jobs that gave me the flexibility to take my mom to frequent medical appointments. To this day, I still don't make what I made in 2003. I haven't been able to save for retirement as I would have wished. I'm glad I was able to care for my mom, but you can multiply my experience by several million for all the women who juggled career and family and are paying a hefty financial price.