Weddings and Wages

The Wage Gap

It is well documented that there is a wage gap between what men and women earn. It is closing, but it still exists. According to the National Committee on Wage Equity, in 1963 full-time female workers earned $0.59 for every $1.00 that full-time male workers earned. In 2009, women earned $0.77 for every $1 men earned.

Why is there a gap?

Now, these are comparisons between total dollars earned during a year by male and female workers, not comparisons between male and female workers with similar jobs. A large part of the wage gap does come from inequities between pay for the same jobs, and there are political groups fighting to correct this. However, some of this gap could be explained by women choosing to work in lower paying jobs.

But why would women choose lower-paying jobs?

Women want to drive nice cars and have beach houses just as much as men do, right? So why would women choose lower-paying careers? That doesn't seem very financially savvy. Why would women create a wage gap for themselves?

Some arguments I have heard is that women prefer careers that involve helping people, and that some related careers, such as social work and teaching, just don't pay so well. Other arguments I've heard is that women generally aren't raised to be as competitive as men, so if this is true, I guess it could translate into women not being as concerned about switching jobs for potentially higher-paying opportunities.

But wait! There's a twist!

Here's another statistical nugget to analyze - Lesbians make more money than straight women! When you control for significant factors like education level and race, lesbians still make about 6% more than straight women, on average. This article argues that this is because straight women tend to assume that eventually they will get married to a man who will earn more money than them, whereas lesbians don't make this assumption. If a woman assumes she will end up staying home and raising children for a large chunk of her career, she does not have the same incentive to invest in entering a high-paying career.

To be honest, I know several men who decided to change their majors mid-university from something they loved (say, music) to something more practical, because they wanted to be able to provide for a family later on. I (so far) haven't met a girl who wanted to a high-paying career so that her husband wouldn't have to work!

Are we selling ourselves short?

Maybe if women thought that their future career would have to provide for a whole family, they would choose a higher-paying career? Or maybe they would be more aggressive about pay raises or finding better job opportunities if they felt like their family's financial well-being rested solely o their shoulders? (I wonder where single moms would fall out in this theory.)

I'm not sure whether I support these arguments, although I do think that the statistic that lesbian women make more money than straight women is a surprising and thought-provoking fact. I do think that this is a very complex issue with many factors contributing to it!

What do you think?

Image source: Fakhar on SXC.hu

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