Sara Mead demonstrates that the gendered pay gap among the college educated is still there when you control for field of study.
« Signing Statements | Main | Tuesday MANPAD Blogging »
More Pay Gap
19 Jun 2007 10:24 am
Comments (12)
Agree with crack. There is tremendous variation in pay within the groupings listed. "Business/Management" presumably includes $75K starting jobs in investment banking in NYC that require 80 hours of work per week and $30K starting jobs in HR in Milwaukee that require 40 hours of work per week.
The smallest gap on the list is in "Education" where presumably most of the jobs are teaching jobs that have relatively standardized work requirements and pay scales - though even this does not control for the difference between K-6 and secondary ed, the premia sometimes paid to math/science teachers, the extra salary earned by teachers who coach sports teams after school - especially higher profile boy's basketball and football teams, etc.
Has Sara Mead read William Farrell's book "Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap "– and What Women Can Do About It."? I saw this guy on CSPAN or somewhere once, and he made a lot of sense.
This CNN article summarizes some of Farrell's points. One of his points is that women tend to work fewer hours than men, on average, for lifestyle reasons. One anecdotal example: my sister's dermatologist is a woman married to a surgeon. The dermatologist only works three days per week while her husband full time. I don't know how many similar physician couples there are, but it's conceivable that women like my sister's dermatologist are contributing to a pay gap if there are enough of them not working full time in their professions.
Other causes of the pay gap:
Farrell found, for instance, that men are more likely to opt for doing that which can lead to a higher paycheck, including:* Relocate or travel extensively for work
* Take on more hazardous assignments
* Work in the hard sciences
* Take jobs requiring greater financial risk
* Work in unpleasant environments (e.g. prisons or coal mines)
And here is a list of jobs where women make more than men.
Why control for field of study?
Wouldn’t it be better to control for field of employment (i.e. what job they do)?
crack is right that the Engineering, Mathematics and Sciences catagory in particular is probably a bit overly broad. There is a lot of variation within that category. A biologist getting a first job would probably make about half what an engineer getting a first job would make.(based upon what my wife(engineer) and I(biologist) made at our first jobs) This could tend to skew that data a lot, especially since the proportion of biologists that are female is much larger than the proportion of female engineers.
"This could tend to skew that data a lot, especially since the proportion of biologists that are female is much larger than the proportion of female engineers."
This relates to another point Farrell makes: although there are proportionately fewer female engineers, female engineers often get higher starting salaries than their male counterparts -- precisely because there are fewer of them, so less supply/higher demand. Also, check out the huge gap in salaries between male and female sales engineers here. That suggests that the demand for women is even higher in engineering positions with heavy client/prospect contact.
Woman make more than men in prostitution.
Further comment: I generally think the gendered pay gap is bunk. Its incredibly hard to control for all of the relevant variables, but those who do the most thorough job of trying to do so tend to find the smallest gap. "Equal pay for equal work" is fine and dandy as a slogan, but I've seen very little evidence that society frequently falls short of this ideal - once "equal work" is defined carefully and dispassionately.
The far more relevant gender-related work issue is the fact that in a large number of fields - including almost all highly paid professional fields that require a lot of education, there is an expectation that people spend roughly the time from age 25 to age 35 working their ass off. This expectation hurts women a lot more than men - as most people want to have kids and right or wrong the burden of having kids fall disproportionally on women.
And it cuts across fields - from nasty icky "conservative" fields like business and corporate law (pushing to make junior execuitve by 35, pushing to make Partner by 35) to warm n' fuzzy "liberal" fields like academia and the arts (pushing to finish the dissertation and get tenure by 35, pushing to make it big by 35 when you're still young and hot).
If you want to help women advance in the workplace it would be far better to stop the specious wailing about how The Man (tm) pays women $.75 for every $1.00 he pays men, and start working to change the structural rigidity of most fields that leads to a forced separation of the high earning track and the low earning track during peak childbearing years.
C'mon, Matt, you know better than this. Even the boys in the commenting treehouse can't take this seriously.
Steve Sailer,
In case you don't know, Sara Mead is Matt's girlfriend.
Matt,
Have you read Warren Farrell?
Have you read Kevin Drum?
Have you considered the three step plan to brazilians I posted about earlier? This pay gap is an obvious and egregious violation of the 1963 Equal Pay Act. When you publish your results, and win the class action lawsuit you will be rich, rich, rich!
Good luck! The entire Patriarchy is counting on you to fail!!!!
Anyway, how are the cocktail wienies?
"In case you don't know, Sara Mead is Matt's girlfriend."
That doesn't matter. Even the posts that don't involve his girlfriend are biased and factually suspect.
Sk
Comments closed July 03, 2007.
| 
Heads in the Sand
That list doesn't really control for field. Lumping all science and engineering together seems to be a reach. This category "Health, vocational/technical, and other technical/professional fields" covers a lot of ground. I can see the logic behind the groupings, but i think they make comparisons odd. If men and women are doing different jobs in those categories then the comparisons get more complicated.
Not that the problem doesn't exist, just this list is a little amorphous in its groupings.
Posted by crack | June 19, 2007 10:45 AM