Adelaide
04-02-2019, 11:11 PM
The pay gap doesn’t account for women’s job choice.
Bennett: While it’s true that women are more likely to work in lower-paying fields like education and health care, the pay gap also persists within those fields. As our colleague Claire Cain-Miller has written (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/the-pay-gap-is-because-of-gender-not-jobs.html?module=inline), female food preparers earn 87 percent (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/upshot/how-a-part-time-pay-penalty-hits-working-mothers.html?module=inline) of what male food preparers earn, according to data from Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist. (Female surgeons earn 71 percent of what male surgeons earn in the same specialties, Professor Goldin found.)
The gap persists because women take time off to have children.
Bennett: Women’s compensation does often suffer when they return to work (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap-is-largely-because-of-motherhood.html?module=inline) after having children. But even in their first year out of college, childless womenearn 93 percent of what their male peers do (https://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/graduating-to-a-pay-gap-the-earnings-of-women-and-men-one-year-after-college-graduation.pdf), even if they had a similar G.P.A. and were working in the same fields.
Women get paid less because they have less education.
Bennett: Actually, more women than men have earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees since the 1980s. And for the past 10 or so years, they have also earned more doctoral degrees (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/chart-of-the-day-more-women-than-men-earned-phds-in-the-us-last-year/).
Women don’t get paid well because they don’t negotiate well.
Bennett: That has long been a factor in the pay gap. But a 2018 study, published in the Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2018/06/research-women-ask-for-raises-as-often-as-men-but-are-less-likely-to-get-them) found that — perhaps as a result of all that talk about women not negotiating — women are asking for raises as often as men (https://womenintheworkplace.com/), though they are less likely to get them. Maybe in part because when women ask, they can be perceived as “demanding (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/women-work-and-the-art-of-gender-judo/2014/01/24/29e209b2-82b2-11e3-8099-9181471f7aaf_story.html).” (Remember that essay that Jennifer Lawrence wrote, about not getting paid as much as her male co-stars? (http://www.lennyletter.com/work/a147/jennifer-lawrence-why-do-i-make-less-than-my-male-costars/) She said she “didn’t want to seem ‘difficult’ or ‘spoiled.’”)
Womansplaining the pay gap - NY Times (www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/business/equal-pay-day.html?action=click&module=Editors Picks&pgtype=Homepage)
This is interesting to me, as someone who has always sat on the fence of "there is a gap, but there also seem to be confounding variables." It seems as though there may be legitimate reasons for a pay gap to exist, but there are also seem to be legitimate reasons that it shouldn't. It feels a bit "wine causes cancer/wine prevents cancer" argument; who can be trusted, and what information can be trusted?
Do you think the gender pay gap is a real thing? If you do, do you think it exists for real reasons that legitimize it?
Bennett: While it’s true that women are more likely to work in lower-paying fields like education and health care, the pay gap also persists within those fields. As our colleague Claire Cain-Miller has written (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/the-pay-gap-is-because-of-gender-not-jobs.html?module=inline), female food preparers earn 87 percent (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/upshot/how-a-part-time-pay-penalty-hits-working-mothers.html?module=inline) of what male food preparers earn, according to data from Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist. (Female surgeons earn 71 percent of what male surgeons earn in the same specialties, Professor Goldin found.)
The gap persists because women take time off to have children.
Bennett: Women’s compensation does often suffer when they return to work (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap-is-largely-because-of-motherhood.html?module=inline) after having children. But even in their first year out of college, childless womenearn 93 percent of what their male peers do (https://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/graduating-to-a-pay-gap-the-earnings-of-women-and-men-one-year-after-college-graduation.pdf), even if they had a similar G.P.A. and were working in the same fields.
Women get paid less because they have less education.
Bennett: Actually, more women than men have earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees since the 1980s. And for the past 10 or so years, they have also earned more doctoral degrees (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/chart-of-the-day-more-women-than-men-earned-phds-in-the-us-last-year/).
Women don’t get paid well because they don’t negotiate well.
Bennett: That has long been a factor in the pay gap. But a 2018 study, published in the Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2018/06/research-women-ask-for-raises-as-often-as-men-but-are-less-likely-to-get-them) found that — perhaps as a result of all that talk about women not negotiating — women are asking for raises as often as men (https://womenintheworkplace.com/), though they are less likely to get them. Maybe in part because when women ask, they can be perceived as “demanding (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/women-work-and-the-art-of-gender-judo/2014/01/24/29e209b2-82b2-11e3-8099-9181471f7aaf_story.html).” (Remember that essay that Jennifer Lawrence wrote, about not getting paid as much as her male co-stars? (http://www.lennyletter.com/work/a147/jennifer-lawrence-why-do-i-make-less-than-my-male-costars/) She said she “didn’t want to seem ‘difficult’ or ‘spoiled.’”)
Womansplaining the pay gap - NY Times (www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/business/equal-pay-day.html?action=click&module=Editors Picks&pgtype=Homepage)
This is interesting to me, as someone who has always sat on the fence of "there is a gap, but there also seem to be confounding variables." It seems as though there may be legitimate reasons for a pay gap to exist, but there are also seem to be legitimate reasons that it shouldn't. It feels a bit "wine causes cancer/wine prevents cancer" argument; who can be trusted, and what information can be trusted?
Do you think the gender pay gap is a real thing? If you do, do you think it exists for real reasons that legitimize it?