National Bureau of Economic Research
M. Lafontaine
A summary of a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Let's start with the widely believed mis-information that women are
discriminated against in wages. Goldin's study showed less than a sixth of
women who finished college between 1966 and 1972 have both a successful
career and children. Nearly half of the women who had a successful career did
not have children. But, it's interesting to note how Goldin defines ''success.''
Women have to earn more than the bottom quartile of male college grads for
two to three consecutive years.
That raises the question of a gender gap in pay. As Goldin notes, women get
as many college degrees as men, and they are getting record numbers of
advanced degrees. But what do they study?
A recent report from the Pacific Research Institute by Michael Lynch and
Katherine Post shows that women study subjects that pay less. Women have
81% of all degrees (bachelor's and higher) in nursing and pharmacy health
technologies. They have nearly three-fourths of all degrees in education, and
almost two-thirds of all degrees in liberal arts. Those with a B.A. in these
subjects - including men - stand to earn average pay of just over $2,000 a
month.
By contrast, men hold 91% of degrees in engineering, three-fourths of degrees
in physical sciences, and over two-thirds of degrees in business. Wages are
50% higher for people with a B.A. in those fields. No one forces men and
women to study different subjects. Feminists, of course, like to blame society
rather than individual choice for the fact that the market sets a higher wage
for "men's" work than "women's."
That induces women to stay home for lack of real career opportunity, they
say. But, Goldin's NBER study makes a different point. Many women make
career choices knowing they will take time off. And some careers are simply
more flexible. Someone with a career in such male-dominated fields as science
and computers will fall behind quickly if he or she takes time off. That isn't
true for teaching. This is why a gender gap in pay exists. Among men and
women around the age of 30 with no children, there is no pay gap.
Women spend nearly 15% of their working years away from the workplace,
eight times as much as men. And workers with ten years' seniority get paid
25% more, another study found. Moreover, lack of seniority has made it
hard to move up the corporate ladder. Women make up only between 5%
and 10% of senior management at big firms, although that represents a
three-fold jump in the past decade, Post and Lynch say. And women made up
46% of the country's labor force in 1993. That year, they held 42% of all
management jobs. It would seem that women ARE climbing up that ladder.
Nearly eight million have bypassed it completely, setting up their own firms.
That figure has jumped more than 40% in the past eight years.
Women-owned firms now employ 35% more people than the Fortune 500
firms do worldwide.
Excerpts from: Investor's Business Daily - Perspective (02/07/96)
Nearly 10 years ago, Dr. Warren Farrell blew the whistle on the feminist myth
of a gender pay gap. Some of the stats are out of date, but the argument and
logic is still valid. The research quoted above is not new.
In 1986 Dr. Farrell wrote the following
With Permission of the Publishers
Myth: Women Earn 59 Cents to the dollar for the Same Work as Men
Warren Farrell, Ph.D.
Item: Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Geraldine Ferraro and Walter Mondale
agreed on but one statistic during the 1984 election: that full time working
women earn "59 cents to men's dollar." The importance of this statistic?
Millions of couples, planning children, focus on the man's career due in part
to the greater ease it is assumed that man has producing income. And for
many women, the belief that women still get paid but 59 cents to men's
dollar... " encourages women to "marry up" for economic security. He feels
pressure to be the "up."
She perceives a "great American man shortage" because she overlooks
millions of creative, intelligent, sensitive, single male artists, actors, writers,
photographers, and musicians unless they have the "potential" for earning
more than enough to support themselves. If they fail, they become ineligible,
or rather, invisible. Fearing invisibility to women, men learn success is the
best preventive medicine to avoid the cancer of female rejection. The statistic,
then, helps the women's movement recruit. It does not encourage women to
pursue careers. Nor men to pursue careers they enjoy more if they earn less.
After a full year of researching pay equity for "Why Men Are The Way They
Are," I discovered 13 variables that make the "59 cents" comparison a myth.
Here are a few of the more startling.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (USBLS) reports men who work full time
average eight hours more per week than women who work full time. Their
equal qualifications -- "full time" -- make them appear equal. But the eight
hours difference makes "full time" unequal.
Men are much more likely to hold two workplace jobs. But statistically he is
considered one full time worker. So we are often comparing his two jobs to
her one job. This does not mean women work less than men. Full time
working women put in more work time at home. But they put in less at work
for which they are paid and this is what the statistic compares.
Let's look more closely.
When the USBLS says "full time" they mean as little as 35 hours per week, as
few as 26 weeks per year. Women are much more likely to work 35 hours per
week; men much more likely to work 40-60 hours per week. Women are much
more likely to work 26 weeks per year; men 52 weeks per year. Equal is not
equal.
None of this is women's fault. Women are still forty-three times more likely
than men to leave the workplace for six months or longer (for family
reasons). A couple decision. But if she returns to work her income is
impacted. Even professional women have ten fewer years in the workplace by
the time they reach their forties than professional men.
All of this helps us understand why women who have never married earn 93%
of what never married men earn: they are more involved in the workplace.
And why black mothers with young children earn one dollar for each 50 cents
white mothers with young children earn: they are more involved in the
workplace. (No one dares assume it is because black mothers benefit from
discrimination.)
If women really earned 59 cents to the dollar for the same work as men what
business could compete effectively by hiring men. At any level?
One of the most important reasons women's and men's full time pay differs is
because of their different career choices. Both sexes have equal knowledge
that engineers will average a higher income than a French Literature or Art
History major. Yet even in 1986, more than 90 percent of engineer majors are
male and more than 90 percent of the French Literature and Art History
majors are female. As for secretaries, 99 percent are female? Why? If a man
is a secretary, he knows a female secretary will look right past him to a male
executive. He knows the male physician will marry the female nurse, but the
female physician will not marry the male nurse.
Men, then, narrow their career options to jobs everyone knows pay more
whether or not they enjoy the work. Including jobs that involve a 600 percent
higher incidence of work-related accidents (over 2 million disabling injuries
and 14,000 deaths each year).
The myth that women earn 59 cents to the dollar for the same work as men
reinforces traditional roles. It does not encourage women to control their own
lives. It does encourage women to find male "success objects." In brief, the
myth may be good for the women's movement; it is not good for women.
Warren Farrell, Ph.D.