Can we please put this myth to bed now?

brbr
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
74% my ass. I am all for eradicating any true inequity that may still exist but playing with statistics to attempt to mislead people into believing inequity exists where it doesn't is not a tactic that gives them credibility or sympathy.



And for those of you who don't want to read the whole thing...here's the important part:



The average wage gap is not proof of widespread discrimination, but of women making choices about their educational and professional careers in a society where the law has granted them equality of opportunity to do so. Comparable worth promotes a dependence for women, and a reliance on government for protection. Given women's achievements, such dependence is unnecessary. American women enjoy historically unparalleled success and freedom, and the progress they have made in the past half century will continue.







The Myth of the Wage Gap.





Civil Rights Journal, Fall, 1999, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth















April 8, 1999, was dubbed Equal Pay Day by the National Committee on Pay Equity, which joined the National Organization for Women and the AFL-CIO to try to persuade the nation that women are paid only 74 cents on a man's dollar. Their organizational literature proposed stunts such as selling hamburgers for $1 to men but for 75 cents to women; selling cookies with one quarter removed; distributing dollar bills with holes in them to reflect the gaps in women's pay; and organizing a New Year's party on April 8 to recognize that women have begun a new year after catching up to men's earnings from 1998. Such claims draw media attention, but do not accurately describe women's compensation in the American workplace.







At about the same time, the AFL-CIO and the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) released Equal Pay for Working Families: National and State Data on the Pay Gap and Its Costs. This report again propounded the fiction that women are paid only 74 cents on a man's dollar in the United States as a whole, and presented data for women's earnings in individual States. In Louisiana, women's earnings are supposedly 67 percent of men's, whereas in the District of Columbia women earn 97 percent of men's wages. In addition, the report looked at the percent of men and women working in different industries, and concluded that "America's working families lose a staggering $200 billion annually to the wage gap."







If these groups are to be believed, then American women are still second-class citizens, as they were before they had the right to vote. But before declaring another crisis, it is worth looking at how these numbers were put together and some of the reasons behind the differences.







During the nineteenth century, employers usually operated on the assumption that women in the labor force earned wages that were merely supplemental to household income. This assumption was reflected in women's average earnings, which, according to most historians, were approximately one-third of men's in 1820, rising to approximately 54 percent of men's by the end of the nineteenth century. Women's average wages continued to rise relative to men's wages during the twentieth century, reaching 74 percent of men's in 1998.







The 74 percent figure is derived by comparing the average median wage of all full-time working men and women. To obtain figures for individual states, average wages of men and women within that state are compared. So older workers are compared to younger, social workers to police officers, and, since full-time means any number of hours above 35 a week (and sometimes fewer), those working 60-hour weeks are compared with those working 35-hour weeks. These estimates fail to consider key factors in determining wages, including education, age, experience, and, perhaps most importantly, consecutive years in the workforce. That is why in States such as Louisiana, where it is less common for women to work, and where they have less education and work experience, the wage gap is wider. In areas where it is more usual for women to work, such as the District of Columbia, the gap is smaller. But this average wage gap, as it is known, says nothing about whether individuals with the same qualifications who are in the same jobs are discriminated against.













When discrimination occurs, and, as readers know all too well, it does occur, our nation has laws to deal with it. We need to focus on individuals rather than averages, and apply the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Pay Act to eradicate cases of discrimination as they occur.







How much less do equally-qualified women make? Surprisingly, given all the misused statistics to the contrary, they make about the same. Economists have long known that the adjusted wage gap between men and women--the difference in wages adjusted for occupation, age, experience, education, and time in the workforce--is far smaller than the average wage gap. Even just adjusting for age removes a lot of the gap: in 1998, according to data published in Employment and Earnings by the Department of Labor, women aged 16 to 24 made 91 percent of what men made.







The wage gap shrinks dramatically when multiple factors are considered. Women with similar levels of education and experience earn as much as their male counterparts. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, economics professor June O'Neill found that, among people ages twenty-seven to thirty-three who have never had a child, women's earnings are close to 98 percent of men's. Professor O'Neill notes that "when earnings comparisons are restricted to men and women more similar in their experience and life situations, the measured earnings differentials are typically quite small."







What about the remaining gap, often referred to as the unexplained statistical residual? Economists Solomon Polachek and Claudia Goldin suggest that different expectations of future employment, or human capital investment, may explain the residual. In other words, since 80 percent of women have children, they may plan their careers accordingly, often seeking employment in fields where job flexibility is high and where job skills will deteriorate at a slower rate. This allows them to move in and out of the workforce with greater ease, or to shift from full-time to part-time work, if they so choose. But job flexibility frequently comes at the cost of lower wages in these fields.







Tenure and experience are two of the most important factors in explaining the wage gap. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, women on average spend a far higher percentage of their working years out of the workforce than men. As demonstrated by economists such as Francine Blau, Andrea Beller, David Macpherson and Barry Hirsch, this means that upon returning to the workplace, women will not earn as much as their male or female counterparts who have more uninterrupted experience.







There are reasonable explanations for the differences in average wages between men and women. First, in the 1960s and 1970s women received fewer undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees than men. It was only in 1982 that women began to earn more than half of B.A. and M.A. degrees, as they continue to do today. In 1970 women earned about 5 percent of all law and business degrees awarded, compared with about 40 percent today. These 1970 graduates are now highly paid professionals at the peak of their earning potential, and many more of them are men than women.













Second, many women still choose to major in specialties which pay less. Women get more degrees in public administration and communications and fewer degrees in math and engineering.







Third, many women choose jobs that enable them to better combine work and family, and these pay less than those with rigid or extensive hours. Even in higher-paying professions such as medicine, many women choose to go into pediatrics, psychiatry, and family practice, all lower-paying fields than surgery, which is more demanding in terms of hours.







Many studies link increased numbers of children with decreased earnings. Professor Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University compared the gap in wages between men and women with the same education for two groups, mothers and women without children. She found that in 1991, women without children made 95 percent of men's wages, but mothers made 75 percent of men's wages. The difference can be explained by choices of occupations and hours worked, two variables which were not included in her study.







Naturally, there are different explanations for these data. One is that children take time away from women's careers, both in terms of time out of the workforce to bear the children and in terms of time put into work effort afterwards.







A second explanation is that women who qualify for high-paying jobs--who major in business or math, or who go to the trouble of getting professional training, for example--quite naturally choose to work more. With a high-paying career, it is more tempting to delay having children, or have fewer of them, or none at all.







Of course, many people would say that there is a third explanation: employers discriminate against married women. So wives are paid less for the same work or are forced into positions of low pay. But data show that employers do not pay unmarried women less: why should the employer care if a woman is married? If employers were against marriage, they would pay married men less. But data show that married men are paid more than unmarried men.







If women were systematically discriminated against, as some assert, then some entrepreneur would be able to step forward and take advantage of this. We would see that firms hiring only mothers would make larger profits than others. In the same way, if women were truly paid only 74 cents on a man's dollar, then a firm could fire all its men, replace them with women, and have a cost advantage over rivals. We do not observe this happening.







Since average wage gaps occur naturally in labor markets for reasons described above, the only way to get rid of such gaps is to require not equal pay for equal work, but equal pay for different jobs. That is called "comparable worth," and it aims to eradicate differences in pay across male-and female-dominated occupations. In 1999 comparable worth has been proposed by President Clinton in his Equal Pay Initiative, by Senator Harkin in his Fair Pay Act, and by Senator Daschle and Representative DeLauro in their Paycheck Fairness Act.













Under comparable worth plans, a job's worth would be measured by having officials examine working conditions and the knowledge or skill required to perform a task. These officials would then set "wage guidelines" for male- and female-dominated jobs. These criteria not only favor traditionally female occupations over male ones, but favor education and white-collar jobs over manual, blue-collar work. Neither experience nor risk, two factors which increase men's average wages relative to those of women, are included as job-related criteria. And men's jobs are more dangerous--ninety-two percent of workplace deaths are male.







The AFL-CIO/IWPR study calculated the cost of alleged "pay inequity" caused by the predominance of women and men in different occupational categories. The study compared the wages of workers in female-dominated occupations with those in non-female-dominated occupations. The workers had the same sex, age, race, educational level, marital and parental status, and urban/rural status; they lived in the same part of the country and worked the same number of hours; and they worked in firms of the same size in the same industry. The study concluded that women were underpaid by $89 billion per year because of occupational segregation. Without sex, race, marital and parental status, and firm and industry variables, this figure rose to $200 billion per year.







The study boasts an impressive list of variables, but it leaves out two major factors. First, it omits the type of job, saying in a footnote that "no data on the content of the jobs (the skill, effort, and responsibility required by workers who hold them nor the working conditions in which they work) are available" in the data set used. Second, it leaves out the field of education. It is meaningless to say that the earnings of a man or a woman with a B.A. in English should be the same as the earnings of a man or a woman with a B.A. in math. So the study compares workers without regard to education or type of work: secretaries are being compared with loggers, bookkeepers with oil drillers. Such numbers do not present an accurate estimate of wage gaps, and illustrate the difficulties of implementing the comparable worth proposals suggested by legislators.







Advocates of comparable worth deny that they support a centrally-planned economy, and say that all they want to do is stop discrimination against women. But a preference for more time at home with less pay and less job advancement over more time at work with more pay and advancement is a legitimate individual choice for women. Similarly, the choice of some men to retire early and forego additional earnings, a continuing trend, does not prove inequality between young and old. Neither of these phenomena is a policy crisis calling for government interference.







One of the greatest harms that feminists have inflicted on American women is to send the message that women are only fulfilled if their salaries are equal to men's, and that a preference for more time at home is somehow flawed. Neither men's nor women's education and job choices prove social inequality.













The main question in the wage gap debate is whether individuals or employers will bear the costs of women's personal choices, such as majoring in subjects which command lower salaries, and taking time off to raise children. The practical consequences of forcing employers to bear these costs include less hiring--fewer jobs and more machines. In an international economy that means more jobs abroad instead of at home. Women's wages made the biggest strides in the 1980s, a time of strong economic growth but one in which the minimum wage shrank in real terms and affirmative action enforcement was not a priority. There are also issues of fairness. Artificial increases in working women's wages at the cost of lower salaries for men, or higher prices in stores, hurt non-working women who rely on men's incomes. And why stop at comparable worth for men's and women's jobs? Why not have it for jobs between blacks and whites, or the disabled and the healthy, or tall and short people?







The average wage gap is not proof of widespread discrimination, but of women making choices about their educational and professional careers in a society where the law has granted them equality of opportunity to do so. Comparable worth promotes a dependence for women, and a reliance on government for protection. Given women's achievements, such dependence is unnecessary. American women enjoy historically unparalleled success and freedom, and the progress they have made in the past half century will continue.







Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author, with Christine Stolba, of Women's Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America (AEI Press and Independent Women's Forum, 1999).
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 155
    aquafireaquafire Posts: 2,758member
    Be real BR.



    Don't you appreciate the political " clout " that these women would be giving up if all of a sudden they admitted equality had arrived.
  • Reply 2 of 155
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    People who are taller get more money. That's been proven. So while the 74% figure might be wrong, the gap does exist. And that gap isn't caused by women making choices, but by men and women when hiring.
  • Reply 3 of 155
    brbr Posts: 8,395member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bunge

    People who are taller get more money. That's been proven. So while the 74% figure might be wrong, the gap does exist. And that gap isn't caused by women making choices, but by men and women when hiring.



    Again you don't read.





    The average wage gap is not proof of widespread discrimination, but of women making choices about their educational and professional careers in a society where the law has granted them equality of opportunity to do so.
  • Reply 4 of 155
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    good god trumptman, how many......



    oh, hey BR.



    uh, carry on then.
  • Reply 5 of 155
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by BR

    Again you don't read. [/B]



    BR, you don't comprehend.



    I disagree that the gap is solely because women make certain choices. There's proof that the gap exists for other reasons.
  • Reply 6 of 155
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    Aquafire: don't muddle the argument. BR is spot on and his point and the point of the article (written by a professional woman) was this: the purported 20+% difference in men's and women's wages in this country is *wildly* exaggerated. And it is so, because of the misuse of statistics.



    It can be demonstrated that when you compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges as far as men and women's wages, that they are within 5-10% of one another. In some places, women may even earn a higher average wage than a man of equal qualification, but we'll never hear about that will we? Wouldn't be consistent with "the cause". We may yet have work to do to get rid of that 5% wage difference (5% is 5%), but that's a hell of a lot different than 25%... ISN'T IT? Sort of deflates the ultra-feminist argument in this area I'd say.



    Much harder to scream bloody murder when there's no body / no proof anyone was done ill.



    Your argument is about political clout, his is about salaries and statistical validities. Let's not derail the thread, shall we? No one is saying that these statistics prove all women receive the same behavioral treatment as men in the workplace, only that their pay is a lot more in line than the femi-nazis would have you believe.



    That's it. So the conclusion a logical person would reach is "We're almost there with regard to ensuring equal pay, now we have to ascertain how to achieve equal social treatment where it's needed."



    Deal with it.
  • Reply 7 of 155
    brbr Posts: 8,395member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bunge

    BR, you don't comprehend.



    I disagree that the gap is solely because women make certain choices. There's proof that the gap exists for other reasons.




    I am strictly speaking about this ridiculous 74% figure. You believe this figure is credible?
  • Reply 8 of 155
    shawnjshawnj Posts: 6,656member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquafire

    Be real BR.



    Don't you appreciate the political " clout " that these women would be giving up if all of a sudden they admitted equality had arrived.




    Nice misogynistic attitude.
  • Reply 9 of 155
    brbr Posts: 8,395member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ShawnJ

    Nice misogynistic attitude.



    That isn't misogyny. That is being jaded and cynical. There is a difference. He isn't hating women there. He is hating what SOME women do to manipulate statistics to garner UNDESERVING sympathy and making the situation seem worse than it is.
  • Reply 10 of 155
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    If the myth is a pretty woman, i am ok to put it in bed
  • Reply 11 of 155
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bunge

    So while the 74% figure might be wrong, the gap does exist.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by BR

    Again you don't read.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by bunge

    BR, you don't comprehend.



    I disagree that the gap is solely because women make certain choices. There's proof that the gap exists for other reasons.




    Quote:

    Originally posted by BR

    I am strictly speaking about this ridiculous 74% figure. You believe this figure is credible?



    Quote:

    Originally posted by bunge

    So while the 74% figure might be wrong, the gap does exist.







    It cracks me up that your first comment was telling me that I don't read.



  • Reply 12 of 155
    brbr Posts: 8,395member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bunge





    It cracks me up that your first comment was telling me that I don't read.







    Yes. that is pretty funny. Way to derail the thread. Sorry I've been up all night working on a term paper. Excuse me if I forgot for a moment what you had posted earlier. Bite me.
  • Reply 13 of 155
    Quote:

    So while the 74% figure might be wrong



    actually, what you wrote didn't answer whether or not you believed the number was credible.



    he was looking for a yes or no.



    not maybe.
  • Reply 14 of 155
    brbr Posts: 8,395member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by alcimedes

    actually, what you wrote didn't answer whether or not you believed the number was credible.



    he was looking for a yes or no.



    not maybe.




    yeah, that too
  • Reply 15 of 155
    A couple of points:



    1. It is silly to try to force someone into a "you have to say yes or no" position in an argument - while this is often an effective debating technique, it ignores the fact that the real world is usually far grayer than that.



    2. Interesting article BR - of course, one would have to see what (if any) rebuttal the 74 percenters present before you can make a summary judgment, I would say (I have seen many arguments before where one can look at only one side's statistics and say "well, that settles it", only to find the opposing side has some compelling numbers of their own). Still, interesting (and I think optimistic) report.





    Fish
  • Reply 16 of 155
    shawnjshawnj Posts: 6,656member
    A couple of things:



    This is a well-written article that articulates the conservative, pro-business view of the wage-gap.



    However, a couple of other glaring omissions we should know about:
    • BR found it under the VIEWPOINT section of Civil Rights Journal Fall 1999.

    • The author, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, is a supply-side economist who works at the pro-business American Enterprise Institute.

    • Civil Rights Journal is reputable- that's given. However, a rebuttal piece by feminist economist Heidi Hartmann exists IN THE SAME ISSUE. (I believe it is also in the viewpoint section)

    Women are Paid Less--They and Their Families Deserve Pay Parity.(Statistical Data Included)

    Civil Rights Journal, Fall 1999, by Heidi Hartmann



    Equal pay is a bread-and-butter issue for America's working families. Two-earner families are the norm among today's married couples, and a growing number of single women provide all or most of the support for themselves and their children. Yet women today earn on average only 74 percent of what men earn.



    A recent report, Equal Pay for Working Families, researched by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), shows that America's families lose a staggering $200 billion of income annually to the wage gap. Each family with a working woman loses an average of more than $4,000 every year because women suffer from low pay. And, for women of color who experience a pay gap of 63 percent (African Americans) and 54 percent (Latinas) compared with white Anglo men (for full-time, year-round work), the dollar cost of inequality is even larger, approximately $5,000 for African American women and $6,000 for Latina women and their families.



    Given this family budget gap caused by pay inequity, it is particularly stinging to working women when the wage gap is discounted as non-important or even non-existent. In their recent book, Women's Figures, co-authors Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba tell American women that the pinch they feel in their pocketbooks doesn't really exist. They say there are plenty of good reasons for women to earn less than men, such as their own preferences, and they dismiss the findings of many economists (including myself) that women still face substantial wage discrimination in the labor market.



    The 74 percent figure, which Furchgott-Roth and Stolba dismiss as misleadingly large, comes from using government data (the Current Population Survey) to compare all men and women who work full-time year-round, regardless of which jobs they work in or the attributes they bring to the labor market. We all know that, despite considerable progress in integrating many occupations, women and men still tend to work disproportionately in different jobs--male truck drivers and female secretaries, for example. Men still bring (on average) more (and different) education into the labor market and have accumulated more years of experience, all factors which affect productivity on the job and therefore, legitimately affect wages.



    But is a wage gap figure that reflects all this misleading? No. The wage gap is a valid indicator of economic inequality between women and men. It accurately reflects men's and women's different life probabilities of having equal access to earnings from employment. It is a number that is used routinely not only by the US government but by governments around the world. In fact, since the usual wage gap figure excludes women and men who work part-time (and more women work part-time than men do), it understates gender-based economic inequality. The Canadian government includes part-timers and calculates a wage ratio of 65 percent; in the US a similar calculation results in a wage ratio of 62 percent rather than the 74 percent commonly used.



    The common use of the wage gap as a measure of inequality reflects an understanding that, in a perfect world, where all children could get as much education as they wanted in an environment free from stereotyping and where women had as much freedom as men to choose occupations regardless of family responsibilities (because men did an equal share of child care and because subsidized high-quality child care and paid family leave were available to all), women and men would pursue more similar educational tracks and make more similar choices about how much time to spend in and out of the labor market. In other words in a more perfect world, men's and women's choices and opportunities would be more equal and their wages would also be more equal. In fact, a 100 percent wage ratio between women and men is a reasonable goal to work toward. As a society, beginning with a wage ratio of 57 percent in 1959, we are nearly two-fifths of the way toward achieving this goal (since the wage ratio now stands at 74 percent, and 74 percent is about two-fifths of the way from 57 percent to 100 percent).



    Studies that do investigate some of the factors that cause the gender wage gap and try to isolate the effects of productivity-related factors, such as education and time spent in and out of the labor market, repeatedly show that one-quarter to one-half of the overall gender pay gap cannot be explained by such legitimate factors. Many economists conclude that labor market discrimination accounts for much of the unexplained portion. Thus, of the 26 percent average remaining pay gap, perhaps about 9 to 13 percentage points are unexplained by anything else and are likely to be due to continuing discrimination.



    A 1998 report by the President's Council of Economic Advisers, Explaining Trends in the Gender Wage Gap, estimates that as of the late 1980s, when the most recent comprehensive study was done, the unexplained portion of the wage gap stood at 12 percentage points, having fallen from as much as 22 percentage points in earlier years when the overall wage gap was much larger. Progress has clearly been made in reducing discrimination against women in the labor market, but few economists believe discrimination has been entirely eliminated.



    The figures from IWPR's report Equal Pay for Working Families given at the outset take into account differences in years of education, age, and hours worked between women and men and thus control for some of the productivity-related differences between women and men in the labor market. Therefore, much of the approximately $4,000 loss per woman due to unequal pay estimated in this study probably stems from discrimination, either in wage rates or in hiring, job placement, or promotion.



    And what of Women's Figures' 98 percent figure -- the much ballyhooed claim that young women earn only 2 percent less than young men? This figure is misleading at best. It is based on a comparison of women and men age 27-33 who have never had a child, from unpublished research by economist June O'Neill--a summary of which appeared in an opinion piece she wrote for the Wall Street Journal five years ago. In her unpublished paper, O'Neill claims that these groups of young men and women who never had a child are similar in unmeasurable qualities related to their productivity, such as commitment to their job and work intensity. But are they? Women who have never had a child by that age are likely to be especially committed to work and career since the median age for a first childbirth is 23.9 years in the United States. Men without children by that age may be more likely than the women to be drop-outs, low rather than high achieving males, since for men, having a family and children is a mark of their economic success. So this figure probably does not compare equals at all, but rather highly committed and work-oriented women to much less committed men. Perhaps, in the absence of discrimination these women should be earning more than the men to which they are inappropriately compared!



    But the most telling aspect of the Women's Figures' claim is that it seems to imply that such a small proportion of the labor force should be the norm. When the vast majority of women and men marry and have children, why imply that to have wage equality with men, women must forego marriage and childbearing? The reality today is that the vast majority of women and men are combining work and family and do not wish to give up either. Surely that should not be required. Perhaps because they have implemented pay equity policies and provide much better supports for working families, such as more and better child care and paid and extended family leaves, many other countries are enabling women to achieve greater equality with men in earnings. The United States can and should do better.



    Despite the fact that women are increasingly working outside the home and increasingly choosing similar careers to men's (women are earning almost 40 percent of the MBA's and more than 40 percent of law and medical degrees, for example), evidence of discrimination in the U.S. labor market is still ample. Recent case studies of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lawyers who are members of the New Hampshire bar found pay differences that could not be explained by differences in qualifications, age, or experience. In New Hampshire, more than $17,000 in average annual pay differences between full-time male and female lawyers remained unexplained. At MIT, the president of the university said, "I have always believed that contemporary gender discrimination within universities is part reality and part perception. True, but now I understand that reality is by far the greater part of the balance." MIT has taken corrective measures.



    Several new studies of the entire labor force, referenced in the Council report, also document substantial unexplained differences in pay. Workers in the 1990 Census were matched to data about their employers; fully one quarter of the wage gap was found to be the result of pay differences between women and men working in similar jobs and establishments. Using a similarly large matched data set, a National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper reports that women were 85 to 96 percent as productive as men but were paid only 66 to 68 percent as much as men.



    Virtually no one claims that the entire pay gap between women and men is due to discrimination, and virtually no serious scholar claims that none of it is. The evidence is simply too overwhelming that discrimination continues to play a significant part in the labor market, to the detriment of women and their families.



    The real story of the gender gap is that most of the progress that was made in narrowing the gap occurred in the 1980s. Progress has been much slower in the 1990s. Government action--stronger enforcement of our equal pay and equal opportunity laws and new laws to ensure equal pay for jobs of equal value--is very much needed to get the wage gap closing again. Perhaps that's why some try to convince women there is no problem. No problem means no intervention, and businesses, schools, and the traditional division of labor in the family can all continue unmolested, perpetuating the status quo forever.



    With stronger government action, girls can continue to gain access to math and science classes, to competitive athletic scholarships, to training programs in skilled crafts, and to business and professional schools, and women can continue to gain access to better paying jobs and promotional opportunities and receive fair pay for the work they do. Today women have virtually the same legal rights as men and are increasingly exercising their political power, yet their economic rights lag behind. It is past time for women to attain full equality. Our society, economy, communities, and families will all benefit.



    Heidi Hartmann, Ph.D., is the president and director of the Institute for Women's Policy Research and a 1994 MacArthur Fellowship winner for her "pioneering work in the field of women and economics."

    COPYRIGHT 1999 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

    COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
  • Reply 17 of 155
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by BR

    Yes. that is pretty funny. Way to derail the thread. Sorry I've been up all night working on a term paper. Excuse me if I forgot for a moment what you had posted earlier. Bite me.



    No problem. You're usually more on top of things than this, but you're also usually very zealous about attacking people so I thought your attack warranted a smart ass response.
  • Reply 18 of 155
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by alcimedes

    actually, what you wrote didn't answer whether or not you believed the number was credible.



    he was looking for a yes or no.



    not maybe.




    No one knows what the figure is. I don't expect 74% is correct, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were 10% higher or lower.
  • Reply 19 of 155
    rageousrageous Posts: 2,170member
    Good thread. Nice to see a good debate using facts and not insults. Excellent articles posted too.
  • Reply 20 of 155
    Quote:

    Studies that do investigate some of the factors that cause the gender wage gap and try to isolate the effects of productivity-related factors, such as education and time spent in and out of the labor market, repeatedly show that one-quarter to one-half of the overall gender pay gap cannot be explained by such legitimate factors. Many economists conclude that labor market discrimination accounts for much of the unexplained portion. Thus, of the 26 percent average remaining pay gap, perhaps about 9 to 13 percentage points are unexplained by anything else and are likely to be due to continuing discrimination.



    so the "counter" argument to this flat-out says that the real wage difference is somewhere between 9% and 13%, not 26%.



    that's exactly the kind of crap that people complain about. they know that the real wage difference is only 9 to 13 percent, yet don't use that number in their pamphlets do they?



    of course, OVER HALF of the wage difference is accounted for because women DON'T STAY AT THEIR JOBS and are LESS EDUCATED.



    that doesn't even account for the difference in hours worked. (35 hours vs. 60 hours)



    lame article.
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