Warren Farrell on the Pay Gap: 'If It's About Discrimination, Why Are Young Urban Women Earning More?'
August 5th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
Background: The best recent work on the alleged wage gap was done by Warren Farrell in his book Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap And What Women Can Do About It. Below Warren discusses a recent New York Times article on the subject. To learn more about Warren's analysis of the wage gap, see Warren Farrell on the ’Wage Gap’.
The Pay Gap: 'If It's About Discrimination, Why Are Young Urban Women Earning More?'
The New York Times front page headline recently tells us that "For Young Earners in Big City, Gap Shifts in Women's Favor." The big surprise? New York City women between 21 and 30 working full-time made 117% of men's wages. Everyone is wondering why. Here's why, for starters...
When I did the research for Why Men Earn More in 2005, I discovered that nationwide never-married women who had never had children earned 117% of the wages of never married men who had never had children. Manhattan women in their twenties are less likely to have married or had children than women in their twenties who live in suburban and rural areas. The overall pay gap with men earning more is not about discrimination; it is mostly about the division of labor once children arrive.
The usual men-earn-more pay gap is also about trade-offs. The road to high pay is a toll road. On average, men are more willing to pay the tolls of the more hazardous jobs (accounting for 94% of workplace deaths), to work on commissions, relocate overseas, travel overnight and travel weekends (approximately 90% of the most frequent flyers are men), work late nights and night shifts, work weekends, intensify their work commitment during child-raising years, work in engineering, computer sciences, technology and the hard sciences where the supply doesn't match the demand, and do all of the twenty-five most important trade-offs that on average lead to men earning more.
The good news is that any woman can learn to out earn men should she be willing to make more of the twenty-five trade-offs than the average man makes.
"));
19 queries. 0.330 seconds.
August 5th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I love how politians talk about the wage gap like it's discrimination when they know full well that such discrimination is totally illegal and would be obliterated instantly by the market or the law. Again, it's all about playing the female victim card.
August 5th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Woman work for 59 cents on the dollar, but Kids work for pennies on the dollar and we all use the products. Money changes everything.
August 5th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
What do you mean 59 cents on the dollar? Women get paid just as much as men. The only difference is that women work a lot less than men do due to childcare, among other things.
Are you talking about child labour?
August 5th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
The so-called gender wage gap was, and is, a myth. It has more to do with women's lifestyle choices than any discrimination in the workplace. If it were possible for a company to reduce its payroll, and maximize profits, by hiring only women, then why would they ever hire men? What I find incredulous is that the feminists continue to push this wage gap agenda. Of course, with help from their friends in the media who accept anything the feminists say without question and report it as fact. Finally a story like this comes along that shows the fallacy of the feminists argument.
August 5th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
I'm a woman, and I work long hours (writing) seven days a week, with little interruption, as I don't have children, nor do I intend to have them. The same goes for my gay best friend. Neither one of us has taken off years from the workplace for any reason, as our careers are primary to us. Why should somebody who invests a good deal of their time in their family and takes time off (for hours, days, or years) ever expect to make as much as we do?
August 5th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Woman work less due to childcare? Childcare is FUN. Woman just work less.
August 5th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Amy: that's a fine question, but it's one that the current Democratic presidential candidates will never answer.
August 5th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
I heard Mrs Clinton selling the 77 cents on the dollar myth to some reporter just the other day.
August 5th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
I find it extremely ironic that the source for this article comes from the "home state" of a senator/presidential candidate who claims that there is wide spread wage discrimination against women and that we need more legislation to eliminate this discrimination.
So... since shared parenting/joint physical custody would actually allow women more time to devote to a career, thereby increasing their ability to earn higher wages... could someone remind me again, how is this a bad thing for women???
August 5th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
"I'm a woman, and I work long hours (writing) seven days a week, with little interruption, as I don't have children, nor do I intend to have them. The same goes for my gay best friend. Neither one of us has taken off years from the workplace for any reason, as our careers are primary to us. Why should somebody who invests a good deal of their time in their family and takes time off (for hours, days, or years) ever expect to make as much as we do?"
I've read your stuff. You can make a living with what you write? Just goes to show that affirmative action is alive and well. Of course the marketplace has plenty of idiots, otherwise there would be no market for news about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, so maybe it's not AA.....I thought you wrote for a hobby. America must be a great place that even you can make a living writing.
August 6th, 2007 at 12:10 am
Hey! Quit knocking Amy Alkon! She's actually pretty good when it comes to the advice genre -- better than many who get more ink. And my job is somewhat in the same vein and I managed to do quite well, thank you. Plus, Glenn cites her on this blog a lot,. and she seems unpredictable and well-read, so I don't know how you got what you got from her woek.
August 6th, 2007 at 3:36 am
There are many angry people within this topic and I suppose that is natural enough, annoying, but natural.
I'm disabled and get less on one of my pensions than a woman with an identical history. So, of course, the whole topic is of great interest to me. Not that I expect anyone to actually DO anything when it is men getting less money: That would involve seeing males as human beings which is close to forbidden these days.
The evidence supporting the "choices as cause" way of seeing things grows every year and should be accepted by all except politicians and news-editors fairly soon. Getting them on-board will take longer, sad to say.
Frankly, I very much doubt if we can fix the core problems as that would involve seeing the sexes as equal, something few people are willing to do. What we can do is stop wasting money on discrimination against women plans which do not and cannot work. From there we should be able to stop the most egregious paying-the-sexes-differently problems: Although I must admit that since there are VERY few willing to allow males to be paid the same as females in the areas where males are paid less: Sexism still reigns supreme in that area of society.
August 6th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Hillary is going to Blog and make a huge pitch for the homosexual female vote, the most virulent anti-male sector by a wide margin.
Hillary, I have a question I would like you to respond to:
The male-female “wage gap” is largely a fictitious condition supported by contrived comparisons to serve as evidence “patriarchy” victimizes women. While the real reason for the “gap” is women’s employment flexibility, the Main Stream Media is lothe to print this fact. (Men, on the other hand, must never accept lower wages, regardless of the health, family, and quality-of-life considerations that he must sacrifice.)
As President of the United States of America, would you seek an end to such fraudulently-created statistics or would you seek to achieve a more equitable number for the headlines by forcing women from part-time work into full employment, into more dangerous occupations were 94% of the work-related deaths are currently male, and into swing and graveyard shifts from day shifts, all of which shove women into higher-paying jobs and reduce employment options but combat the contrived "gap" numbers?
I await your answer.
DanH
August 6th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
And did you have Foster killed?
August 7th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Feminists are already spinning this the other way - how The Market Hates Moms.