(c) 2001 by Deborah Teramis Christian

A woman on a discussion list commented that women still make less money than men for equal work. Someone rushed to refute that, offering various cultural reasons why women make less money over time, compared to men.

This argument fell short of the mark, of course, for the issue when discussing wage equity is not annual incomes (which vary for many reasons) but the hourly wage, which is the basic unit of analysis for determining what measure of worth is accorded a particular task, done by people with equal qualifications. By shrinking the focus down to this smallest unit, variables that affect the number of hours worked are controlled for. What is left is the very basic question of “what value do we give to your labor for one hour for this specific task?”

This issue does not seem to be well understood by people not used to dealing with statistics, equity or labor valuation issues. Hence the following essay in response to the specious arguments of someone I have re-dubbed Mr. Analysis. I do not quote him directly but the essence of his comments has been paraphrased in order to keep my own words in context.

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Mr. Analysis has thrown some chum upon the water. Now perhaps that was simply disingenous troll bait. On that basis I am willing to ignore it.

On the other hand, the little list of fractured half-truths and red herrings in his writing reflects precisely the misconceptions and fuzzy logic that women frequently deal with in the workplace – and most pointedly on the part of hiring managers who make initial wage offers to women that are 72% of what they offer men.

People who have these attitudes, in my experience, are generally ignorant of sociology, economics, relevant chunks of 20th century social history, and statistics produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Census Bureau (not to mention some fair measure of basic humanist social perspective). Not that any but the most masochistic of perverts would necessarily want to be conversant with statistics or social science tomes, of course , but my point is that there exists a large body of data out there addressing exactly this topic. Strangely enough it casts rather more illumination on the issue than Mr. Analysis’ apparently flawed grasp of contemporary issues would indicate.

Since I have been studying such things of late, I happen to have a factoid or two to toss at the troll, or the ignorance factor, whichever you prefer, with a little logic chopping thrown in for good measure.

But let me start at the start.

- The claim that men make more money than women is a myth. Sure, statistics show that men earn more…

Which is it? Myth, or statistical fact? Pick one, for it cannot be both.

If this assertion that men make more money is demonstrable with impartial wage surveys (as it is, and has been for all the decades our government has kept such statistics) then it is not a myth.

- but we might ask why that is?

Ah. Now we get to the real point. You are not arguing that men do not make more money, but rather are attempting to explore *why* they make more money. OK. That is, of course, a different point than was first made, that women earn less for the same job. But let’s see what proofs you offer for the why of this.

- Men are much more motivated to have power and make money. Women generally find power and financial security attractive in a mate.

You are saying men have more motive to earn big bucks/power, and women like men with big bucks/power. Yet is motivation alone sufficient to account for significant earning capacity and the power perqs that come with it? I think not. There are many women hugely motivated to earn big bucks and even (hey let’s go for broke here) – power. Unfortunately, motivation alone is not a guarantee of income, no matter what your gender.

- Women are motivated to use their beauty and sexuality to attract a mate.

You seem to be inferring that women are more motivated to preen to attract a mate, than to labor for a big paycheck.

Besides the fact that this assumes an either/or choice, and precludes a woman being able to do both at once, it also manages to overlook the eternally invisible 10% of the population that is lesbian. Well, guess what? We’re not preening to attract a man to take care of us. And guess what else? We’re still not seeing a difference in income, even though we have all that man-less time on our hands in which to work long hours and show our big-bucks & power-mongering motivation at the office.

Oddly enough this dilemma is shared by all the other (usually straight) women who by their own admission are not looking for male-gendered mates: the widowed, divorced, the woman deferring marriage until after her career is on track, the intentionaly celibate, the retiree starting second career, and those already married or cohabiting who have that mate thing taken care of and out of the way already.

- Many women’s salaries are the second income in the family

For over 60% of married women as of 1993, actually[1]. *Most* married women are part of a two-income household, although “second income” implies “secondary” and in most cases that is not true. It might surprise you to learn that among 9 million people in two-income families in 1993, in 33% of those families the woman’s income on an occupational wage scale was larger than the man’s. Those percentages have grown since then[2].

- it is not a priority for them to make “more”.

Demonstrably untrue. It is a common observation both by wage earners in two-income families and in sociological studies that most women work not because they can take it or leave it, or consider their earnings pin-money – rather, they labor because the family needs the money to make ends meet. Especially in lower middle class and working class families, where many people live pay check to pay check and debt burden is high, “making more” is very much a priority. Something as simple as a brief illness can devastate a family’s finances, much less something as traumatic as one of the bread-winners being laid off. Most working families in America need two incomes to maintain their standard of living.

Sociologist Lillian Rubin writes about working class families that she interviewed about work and lifestyles in the 70s and again in the 90s. She remarks, “[In the 1970s] both husband and wife claimed that her income was discretionary, just so they could buy some luxury they couldn’t otherwise afford…Sometimes it was true. More often it was a myth constructed to protect the husband from the knowledge that he didn’t earn enough to meet the family’s needs. But such fictions no longer work [in the 1990s]. Now everyone agrees that a woman must work if a family is to maintain its life-style.”[3]

- Women who raise children often work fewer hours.

Quantify “women” and “often”. While it is true that some women work fewer hours in order to raise children, this accounts for a minority of women in the workforce. Of all women in America, over 60% are employed, and 1/3 of those have children at home. Of the 20% of the female workforce with children under 18, a minority works part-time, or misses significant days due to child care issues. [2]

(As a data point, 75% of men are in the labor force. Nearly as many women are employed as men, and most of them are full time wage earners.)

It sounds like you are confusing some basic statistics, here. To say that “some women work fewer hours” has no bearing on the question of why women make a lower wage PER HOUR, as compared to men. For the issue is not that Suzy Q who works a 20 hour week is going to earn less than Joe Blow who works 40. To compare equity of wage you must start with equity of hours. If Suzy and Joe *both* work only 20 hours doing identical jobs, and they are statistical norms in terms of weekly wage, then Joe is going home with a dollar in his pocket for every 72 cents that Suzy sees. [4]

- A salary can be kept lower by child-rearing which creates breaks in a career.

Again – this issue does not hinge upon annual salaries, but upon the basic unit of remuneration that is set for one’s labor (the hourly wage figure, or the equivalent of an annual salary divided by annual work hours).

Re “raising children creates breaks in a career” – you really need to read about the quitting behaviors of women and men, a topic that has been studied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in considerable detail. One report notes that there are no significant differences between young workers of either gender in the percentage chance that they will quit their job. Of the women who do, they do so mainly for reasons of health/family, or job dissatisfaction, while men quit for reasons of job dissatisfaction or better employment. [5] American women today tend to defer marriage and child-rearing until late 20s or early 30s, with the result that their careers are already established and on track by time childbirth occurs. For most women this is a short interruption only – the vast majority return to work after a brief break, rather than “interrupting their career to raise children”.

It’s not 1956 anymore. What a surprise.

- Statistics show two things happen as women make more money and become more financially secure. First, they continue to mate with men that make more money than they do.

Across the board women tend to marry men who make a certain percentage more income than they do. There is also a growing cohort of “non-traditional couples” accounting for roughly 25% of all married couples, in which the woman makes more money than the man[2].

- Second, the divorce rate has increased.

The fact that women earn more and become more financially secure is only one of many factors that have a bearing on the increased rate of divorce. On the whole, divorce rates have grown steadily throughout the 20th century and escalated sharply in the 1970s on the heels of several events. This included the fact that women were making more money – hence were no longer financially dependent on a husband, and thus could strike out on their own if they wanted. These changes were also affected by such things as the burgeoning of no-fault divorce laws (which made divorces much easier to get), the relaxing of societal attitudes and the de-stigmatization of divorce, the increase in cohabitation in the ’60s and the impact that had on marriage patterns, and several other items[6].

This book that I reference is by the well-known demographer Andrew Cherlin and is an interesting (if scholarly) read on the topic of marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

And fascinating though this digression may be, incidents of marriage, divorce, and general income level speak at best to women’s generalized earning capacity. This nevertheless leaves unaddressed the question of WHY a woman makes less money than a man for one hour of equivalent labor with equal qualifications.

- Society’s problems are cultural in nature and have little to do with discrimination per se.

Society faces many problems, and while many of those stem from cultural (or rather I think the word you really seek here is “sociological”) roots, discrimination is certainly of that class, and does in fact account for a number of the issues we deal with in contemporary society.

Economist Francine Blau of Cornell University is a highly-respected labor researcher and analyst. I think her remarks on this topic are worth noting (paraphrased from a web radio interview)[4]:

“For many years, in the 50s, 60s, 70s, the average woman earned 60% of what men earned. In the late 70s and dramatically during the 1980s there was a great deal of progress. Currently women make 72% of what men earn. By another measure, the weekly earnings of full-time workers – they make 77%.

“When we look at the standard explanations for this, they fall into two camps. On the one hand, we look at the qualifications that women bring to jobs, their education, the employment decisions they make compared to men regarding their occupations. Many women expect to spend less time in the labor market and so got less job-oriented training. They are on the market a shorter period of time with less experience and hence have less earnings. They are also often channeled into traditional female jobs that paid less. This accounts for disparity across career or occupational earnings.

“On the other hand, when we do statistical analysis, we control for things we can. We adjust for differences in education, and experience, but when we adjust for these things, we find that women still earn less. This suggests that labor market discrimination plays a role. For women who are equally qualified as men, doing the same job, they still earn less. When we add controls for occupations, industries and whether or not a union exists – the pay ratio changes to 88% in the best of all circumstances. But there is still a 12% disparity that reflects job discrimination factors.”

In short: discrimination most assuredly *does* play a role, and a significant one at that: it is what is left when all else is made equal, and a disparity still exists. You can see this pretty blatantly on some statistics recorded by the National Compensation Survey (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics), where you will find, for instance, that the average female administrative assistant in the US earns $10/hr, while her male counterpart doing the same job earns $13/hr. This is for people of comparable age and education.

There are reams written based on studies of the discriminatory factors at play here – from old social notions of a woman’s place being in the home, to faulty assumptions that a working woman doesn’t need the money as much as a man does (even if he is single, and she is single head of household with dependent children), to the assumption that women are less qualified, less reliable, less able than their male counterparts. One interesting and irritating study I have seen reviewed job hires made by hiring managers in entry-level clerical positions. Out of a given starting pay range that averaged $12-$17/hr, the average woman was offered a starting pay of $13/hr, while the average man was offered $16. The only difference in qualifications was gender.

And that, really, is the crux of this issue.

For folks with an interest in this topic I recommend Francine D. Blau and Marianne A. Ferber, The Economics of Women, Men, and Work (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1986), and Dr. Blau’s radio interview referenced in these footnotes[4] for a Cliff Notes version of this stuff.

- Feminism has given women a choice. It’s too bad that men don’t have the same choices in life.

Personally, I view feminism as advocating equal opportunity for *human beings*, and in that sense I am as engaged in equal opportunity for men – in all regards – as for women. This is a process we are all engaged in, not an endpoint.

-Teramis

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[1]. Hayghe, Howard V. “Developments in Women’s Labor Force Participation.” Monthly Labor Review, Sept 1997.

[2]. Winkler, Anne E. “Earnings of husbands and wives in dual- earner families.” Monthly Labor Review, April 1998.
http://stats.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1998/04/art4full.pdf

[3]. Rubin, Lillian B. Families on the Fault Line. Harper Collins 1994.

[4]. Blau, Francince, Dr. Radio Interview: Women in work.
http://www.etsu.edu/phios/radio/women.in.work.htm

[5]. Audrey Light, Manuelita Ureta. “Gender Differences in the Quit Behavior of Young Workers”. Report NLS 92-7, National Longitudinal Surveys, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 1990.
http://stats.bls.gov/orenl/nl900020.htm

[6.] Cherlin, Andrew. Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage. Harvard University Press 1992.