(This is one of a series of posts on the wage gap.)
First of all, let’s dispel one common misunderstanding: the pay gap between women and men is not primarily caused by unequal pay for identical jobs. This does occasionally happen, but equal pay laws have by and large eliminated this form of obvious wage discrimination.
So what does cause the pay gap? There’s no simple answer to that question, because all sorts of factors go into creating the pay gap – and, making things more confusing, the different factors inter-relate. Let’s look at what some of those factors are.
Occupational Segregation
First, occupational segregation, in which women and men, due to social structures and also hiring discrimination, are “steered” into certain jobs. This causes some jobs (like child care worker) to be female-dominated, while other jobs (like truck driver) are male-dominated.
For example: In Philadelphia, social scientists sent fictional, equally-qualified resumes to different restaurants. The only important difference between the resumes they sent out was if the name at the top was a woman’s or a man’s. They found that snootier, higher-paying restaurants preferred to hire men, while low-paying places (diners and the like) preferred women. In this way, women were steered into a lower-paying job category: that’s job segregation.
Why does “occupational segregation” matter? It matters because workers in “women’s jobs” are paid less than workers in “men’s jobs.” As journalist Naomi Barko put it, “the biggest reason for the pay gap is not discrimination against individual women but rather discrimination against women’s occupations.” The more women work in a job, the lower the pay in that job is likely to be. (Paradoxically, this means that some men – men in female-dominated workplaces or job positions – are in effect paid less because of discrimination against jobs done by women!)
How much lower is the pay in “women’s jobs”? Different economists have calculated it different ways. The economist Paula England looked at data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (a U.S. government study that measures changes in people’s lives over time), and found that if a white woman in an all-male workplace moved to an all-female workplace, she’d lose 7% of her wages. If a black woman did the same thing, she’s lose 19% of her wages. The economists Deborah Figart and June Lapidus found that if female-dominated jobs had no wage penalty, women’s median hourly pay nationwide would go up 13.2% (men’s pay would go up 1.1%, due to raises for men working in “women’s jobs”).
Different Choices
As anti-feminists often point out, women and men often make different choices: in college major, in hours and years worked, and in what jobs to take. It’s not true that these “free choice” factors account for all of the wage gap, but they certainly account for some of it.
It’s often claimed that these “free choice” factors have nothing to do with sexism (usually this claim is made by people who want you to believe that the wage gap is nothing to be concerned about), because the choices are made by women, not by women’s employers. The reality isn’t so clear-cut, because the choices women and men in our society make aren’t made free of sexism.
For example, full-time year-round women workers work fewer hours than their male counterparts. In 1995, among workers who usually work full-time, men worked 44.5 hours per week on average while women worked 40.8 hours a week on average. Put another way, women worked 92% as many hours as men. (Source: Rones et al).
Anti-feminists claim that this shows that women make less money than men because they choose to work less. This is partly true, but it’s not the whole story. In reality, employers have at least as much to do with how many hours a particular full-time employee works as the employee’s choices. It is employers who decide who is and who is not offered overtime, for example. So while critics of feminism assume that how many hours one works is entirely the employee’s choice, actually we have no way of knowing how much of women’s fewer hours is due to women’s choices, and how much is due to discrimination in who is offered hours of work.
Another example is caretaking. Women are expected to be caretakers – both of children and of any other relatives in need of aid (elderly relatives, for example) – and to do the majority of the housework. This isn’t an example of employers discriminating against women, but it is a society-wide sexism that contributes to the wage gap. The person doing the lioness’ share of the unpaid caretaking work has far less time available for paid work; if men and women divided unpaid caretaking work equally, the paid work would be a lot more equal too. (Like many instances of sexism, this arguably harms both sexes: men are harmed by this same sexist belief because they are expected to work more and robbed of equal contact with their family.)
Nonetheless, even single women without children earn less than similar men, on average. (See, for example, Wood et al’s study of similar male and female lawyers).
Men Get More Credit for Their Work
Men’s work tends to be evaluated as higher-quality than equally-good or better women’s work. This can impact who is offered mentoring, who is assigned a job assignment, who is offered a promotion, and so on – and all of these factors in turn have an effect on the pay gap.
For example, one study of credit in the sciences, published in Nature, looked at productivity (measured in terms of publications in scientific journals, how many times a person was a “lead author” of an article, and how often the articles were cited in scientific journals) and sex. These factors were then compared to how an actual scientific review panel measured scientific competence when deciding on research grants. The results? Female scientists needed to be at least twice as accomplished as their male counterparts to be given equal credit.
Other studies have found similar results (see the bottom of this post for some citations). Men are simply given more credit for their work than women are.
Feedback Effects
To whatever extent some women freely choose to stay out of the labor market, the choice isn’t made in a void. The fact that women – even non-mothers – get rewarded less for wage-work than men means that women give less up if they choose to trade off paid work for motherhood. Women’s lower pay means women have less reason to stay in the paid work market.
This manifests itself every time a married couple, for whatever reason, has to decide to prioritize one spouse’s pay (and career path) above the other’s. If a couple has to choose whether or not to move to further one spouse’s career, all else being equal they will make whichever choice favors the higher-earning spouse. Similarly, if one person needs to take time off from work to take care of parents, grandparents or children, it makes sense for it to be the lower-paid person. But in most cases, the person with lower pay will turn out to be the woman.
Furthermore, the effect is additive – if a woman makes a sacrifice even once in her career for the couple’s best interests (say, giving up a good entry-level job because he’s been offered a good job in another state), then that’ll lower her pay for the rest of her work life – meaning that the next time such a decision has to be made (and the next, and the next…), her lower salery will seem even more expendable.
Economists call this a “feedback effect”; it’s likely that women earn less because they work less. But it’s also likely that women work less because they earn less.
Cumulative Causation
In 1944, inspired by race riots in Detroit, the influential economist Gunner Myrdal published An American Dilemma, which introduced the concept of “cumulative causation” in discrimination. Although Myrdal was discussing race, the same basic insight can be applied to the wage gap between men and women.
So what does “cumulative causation” mean, in this context? Among other things, it means that the effects of discrimination add up slowly over a lifetime. So, for example, losing a single job offer or promotion probably won’t make a big difference in the short run; but dozens of such small losses over the course of women’s careers eventually add up to a big pay gap.
The economists Robert Wood, Mary Corcoran and Paul Courant examined this question in detail, by looking at the work history of male and female lawyers over time. What they found is that at the start of their careers, women lawyers earned 93% of their male counterparts; but after fifteen years, the women were only earning 61% of what the men made. Even after accounting for hours worked, motherhood, education, and many more factors, women were still being paid only 82% of what similar men took home. (Trish Wilson recently posted more information on this).
Tomorrow I’ll post more on the wage gap, concentrating on refuting some particular anti-feminist arguments. Click on the link below to see the list of references for this post.
References
Barko, Naomi (2000). “The Other Gender Gap.” The American Prospect, June 19 2000, pages 61-63.
England, Paula, Lori L. Reid and Barbara S. Kilbourne (1996). “The Effect of the Sex Composition of Jobs on Starting Wages in an Organization: Findings from the NLSY.” Demography, volume 33 (4), November 1996, pages 511-521.
Figart, Deborah and June Lapidus (1996). “The Impact of Comparable Worth on Earnings Inequality.” Work and Occupations volume 23 (3) pages 297-318.
Neumark, David (1996). “Sex Discrimination in Restaurant Hiring: An Audit Study.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 1996, pages 915-941.
Rones, Phillip, Randy Ilg and Jennifer Gardner (1997). “Trends in Hours of Work Since the Mid-1970s.” Monthly Labor Review, April 1997, pages 3-14.
Wenneras, Christine and Agnes Wold (1997). “Nepotism and Sexism in Peer-Review.” Nature volume 387, May 22 1997, pages 341-343.
Wood, Robert, Mary Corcoran, and Paul Courant (1993). “Pay Differences Among the Highly Paid: the male-female earnings gap in lawyers’ salaries.” Journal of Labor Economics, volume 11 (3), pages 417-441.
“Other studies have found similar results.” Wenneras and Wold, for example, cite similar results found by Goldberg (1968), Trans-Action, volume 5 pages 28-30; Nieva and Gutek (1980), Acad. Manag. Rev, volume 5 pages 267-276; and O’Leary and Wallston, Review of Personal Social Psychology volume 2 pages 9-43. Also, see Johnson, Dan (1997). “Getting Noticed in Economics: the determinants of academic citations.” The American Economist, volume 41 (1), Spring 1997, pages 43-52. Also, see Goldin and Rouse (1997), “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of ‘Blind’ Auditions on Female Musicians,” NBER working paper No W5903.
I’d just like to thank you, Amp, for doing this series of posts. I know they’re repeats, but they’re, as usual, well-written and well-thought-out as well as being, I’m embrassed to admit, news to me in a lot of ways. The wage gap just isn’t something that I know a lot about, making it hard to argue with anti-feminists, but I’m learning. So, thanks.
At last we’re getting somewhere. Unlike the truly appaulingly bad statistics, in the sense the’re badly designed, in part one, this is much more interesting.
The comment on lots of small discriminations adding up over time, matters. 1% here, 1% there and soon you end up with large differences.
I also wonder if people are making other judgements and decisions. For example, remuneration is not all about pay. Flexible working hours, hours worked etc as you point out all come into the equation.
There are other ‘human nature’ factors. For example, its well known that immigrants into a country tend to converge on the same areas to live and work, at least for a couple of generations. Its a simple example of a social network. Social networks operate in the jobmarket. Its one cause of firms hiring lots of men or women. I would suspect that networking perpetuates inequalities.
At last we’re getting somewhere. Unlike the truly appaulingly bad statistics, in the sense the’re badly designed, in part one, this is much more interesting.
The comment on lots of small discriminations adding up over time, matters. 1% here, 1% there and soon you end up with large differences.
I also wonder if people are making other judgements and decisions. For example, remuneration is not all about pay. Flexible working hours, hours worked etc as you point out all come into the equation.
There are other ‘human nature’ factors. For example, its well known that immigrants into a country tend to converge on the same areas to live and work, at least for a couple of generations. Its a simple example of a social network. Social networks operate in the jobmarket. Its one cause of firms hiring lots of men or women. I would suspect that networking perpetuates inequalities.
Excellent statistics and info thanks. One point in particular interested me: To whatever extent some women freely choose to stay out of the labor market, the choice isn’t made in a void. The fact that women – even non-mothers – get rewarded less for wage-work than men means that women give less up if they choose to trade off paid work for motherhood. Women’s lower pay means women have less reason to stay in the paid work market.
I wonder if reducing the wage gap would lower the birth rate. That would be a fascinating and wonderful side-effect of this change. There is even a way to check this.
Do you know if the wage gap is lower in the various Scandanavian countries? Their birth rate is well below that in the US and I’m wondering if this might be related to a lower wage gap. It would be nice to think that population reduction and increased equality could both be accomplished simultaneously.
Birth rates are higher than in italy.
Mostly down to good child support services.If you have good child support, you can go out and work.
Nick
First of all, let’s dispel one common misunderstanding: the pay gap between women and men is not primarily caused by unequal pay for identical jobs.
Well, let me just say that as recently as ten years ago, while I was a graduate student at a university with a large and well-respected biomedical portion, a study was done of the salaries on campus (which were otherwise confidential). Even after controlling for years holding the position, and to general degrees of seniority, the women (internationally known Ph.D.s) made on average 65% the salaries of the men. The best reason that anybody could come up with was that the men tended to “game the system” more — going to other universities to get job offers, and then using those to wrangle improved deals back home — while the women tended to just admit when they were generally satisfied, and sort of wait to be rewarded at a steady pace.
But we were all appalled.
Whether it’s because of overt sexism or subtler factors such as the behavioral ones mentioned above, this is a serious issue that hasn’t yet gone away! Universities aren’t the only places where there is discretion in the assignment of pay…
first, i’ll just add my THANKS for this faboo post–well thought & written.
second, i’d like to add that the pay gap also has serious consequences for families headed by single women and lesbian-headed families, compared to families headed by gay men and straight couples. i’m active in queer political movement(s), and it’s amazing to me how little attention is given to the difference between incomes of lesbian, bi, and trans women (and, i would add, trans men and folks who don’t identify with either gender) versus those of gay and bi men. it’s visible to me (and i admit that my evidence is rather un-scientific, based primarily in my daily observations within these movements) in the differences between LBTQ women and LBTQ men when they: a)donate money and other resources to LGBTQ organizations, b)choose and furnish a permanent living space, c)select a job, even d)go on vacation. for example, vacation spots often designated as queer-friendly–Provincetown, Ogunquit, Montreal–seem to me to be largely targeted toward gay men, who are more likely than LBTQ women to have more disposable income. again, this assertion is based on my observations alone, and income differentials within queer communities are similarly complex… but i just wanted to throw in my two… er, one and a half… cents.
perhaps the pay gap is one issue that crosses feminist, queer, and “minority” communities… yet the response to this issue must be as complex as the issue itself. i agree that it’s not just a straight-up unequal pay for equal jobs issue… but how to respond?
anyone? anyone? bueller?
acm – a similar thing happened at the university I attended for undergrad. In the Anthro department, 4 profs were hired at the same time — since it was a State school, the saleries were not confidential, and, in fact, could be found by anyone in the library. Anyway, of the 4 people who were hired, two were women, two were men. Both women were full Ph.D.s with previous teaching experience. The two men were both ABD’s (All But Dissertation), with very little teaching experience (only TA’ing experience).
Despite this, both men were given higher starting saleries. After much debate, discussion, and argument, the department finally increased the female profs’ saleries — but they raised it to be equal to the mens’ (still ABD’s). After the men completed their dissertations, they were given a raise, thus making their saleries, once again, higher than the womens’. This time the department refused to budge and raise the womens’ saleries.
And, ftr, this all occurred within the last 10 years.
One of the woman professors at my school actually had to sue for tenure! I couldn’t believe it.
It’s a good point about inter
versus intra job wage differences,
a point I had not given very much
thought.
But as long as that’s the subject,
don’t forget hazard pay.
There is very good research
describing pay differences based
on how likely the employee will
be injured or killed on the job.
Call it the sexism of society,
chauvanism if you like, but men
tend to be steered towards those
jobs more than women (firmen,
construction workers are just two
examples that spring to mind).
These are excellent articles about the wage gap. In Wyoming we are wrestling with the widest gap in the nation, varying between 63 cents to 67 cents on the dollar. Some of the cause of this is that women in Wyoming are paid less on average than women in other states and men in Wyoming often are paid more than average nationally because of their minerals industry employment.
Eli Lilly has been cited for its best practices for gender fair compensation and mentoring of women. Information about it is on their website. Blue Cross is another corporation cited for best practices in reducing the wage gap.
I am interested in hearing what state legislatures have done to reduce the wage gap in their states.
“I am interested in hearing what state legislatures have done to reduce the wage gap in their states.” – probably nothing Marianne.
So lets get started. Just lobby the states or Congress to pass a law that forces men to work less until the gap goes away and we can all move on to other matters. Has that even been considered? You all know that would work.
Who needs a law when it already happens on its own?
While you raise some good points, I do have to raise a critique of your Nature citation in regards to women being rewarded less for equal work. The paper uses 6 criteria to judge the scientific output of the fellowship applicants:
1 – total number of papers
2 – total number of first author publications
3 – total impact = additive impact value of all publications
4 – first author impact = additive impact value of all first author publications
5 – citations index = number of times all papers by scientist were cited during course of one year (1994 in this case)
and finally.
6 – first author citations index = number of times all first author papers by scientist were cited during 1994
As all scientists know, only first or shared authorship papers *really* count, all “middle” authorships (senior authors are the principle investigator where the grad student or postdoctoral fellow applying for these grants would be working…science is a bit of an indentured servitude system, but that’s another issue) are good for is breaking ties. AS such, only measure 4 and 6 would be actually looked at by grant committees to any real extent.
Unfortunately, however, the authors of this study base their conclusions on measure 3 (see Figure 1). No data for the other measures is presented. This method gives equal weight to papers where the scientist steered and completed the majority of the research as to studies where the scientist contributed a single day’ work at the PCR machine, hardly a strong statement.
This is not to say that the women in this study did not get an equal number of first author publications as the men. The problem is that we simply do not know, as the authors do not present this data, greatly weakening their argument. Frankly, I don’t know how the authors got away with describing 5 other measures and then only presenting only one of them. They fail to even discuss if this measure is representative of the other mentioned measure.
As such, I don’t think this paper makes a strong case for your point, and I remain unconvinced. You do however mention other sources, which I will follow up on.
Thanks for a thought-provoking post.
Ooops my mistake.
On further and closer reading of the paper , I found the data for first author impact and first author citations in Table 1 where they used multiple regression analysis to analyze factors affecting performance review. These factors had similar values as observed for total impact.
My mistake, sorry.
I should note however, that a study of MRC grants in England found no bias (Nature 380(6659):438-438 Dec4, 1997), and that the Swedish MRC (on which the original study is based) has since mended its ways (Nature 390, Nov 13 1997, 204 (1997)).
Hopefully this has been a wakeup call to the scientific community, of which both I and my female SO are part.
The only ways to achieve absolute wage parity are to force men to work less and women more, or in some other way economically handicap men, as for example by paying men a lower differential than women for overtime, or by imposing a higher income tax rate on men.
Have any any of the above or any variations ever been considered? and if not, why not?
As far as I know, no one’s seriously attempted that. I think that people who think the wage gap is a problem, by and large, don’t agree with you that “economically handicap[ping] men” is the only possible route.
Also, a higher income tax on men would be unconstitutional.
I know this posting is old, and don’t know if anyone will see this comment, but I’m catching up with this series and think it’s a fabulous resource.
Two minor quibbles:
First, I don’t think the women being steered to the lower-paying restaurants is really “occupational segregation” — I think that one is classic discrimination.
Second, you make a blanket statement about hetersexual couples consistently prioritizing the higher-paying job. I’m not sure this is true — especially when the woman earns more than the man (which is now the case for about 30% of married couples).
Elizabeth, I would love to see where you got your figure of “woman making more than man for 30% of married couples”… since out of about 50 couples I keep in close contact with, that is true of *2* of them:
One the husband is unemployed currently, having moved to the US to marry his wife and is waiting on his papers to search for work.
The second I’m sort of stretching on.. she’s a medical clerk/resident, she WILL (in about 5 years) be making more than her husband, so I’ll be generous and count her in.
Nope, out of absolutely everyone I can think of, where 95% of them are University educated (thereby eliminating that being a possible wage gap factor) and many of the ladies are working in the same fields as the guys (a lot of computer people in my pool of aquaintences), unless their husband is currently unemployed, the men make more. Way more.
Oh, and these are all couples between 25-32.
As of 1991, according to the US Census, in about 14% of married couples the wives earn more than the husbands. This percent increases to 24% if you only consider married couples in which both spouses are wage-earners.
So, if that’s accurate, Wookie is right to say that Elizabeth is exaggerating; but wives earning more is still more common than Wookie realizes.
For what it’s worth, I can think of a couple of couples among my friends and acquaintences (sp?) in which the wife earns more. In one case, the hubby is a stay-at-home-dad; in the other, the hubby is a writer.
* * *
Elizabeth, thanks for your comments. But although I try to be willing to admit to my mistake, in this case I think your quibbles may be mistaken.
Regarding your first quibble, I don’t know why you think that “classic discrimination” and “occupational segregation” are mutually exclusive categories.
Regarding your second quibble, I said “all else being equal they will make whichever choice favors the higher-earning spouse…. But in most cases, the person with lower pay will turn out to be the woman.”
It’s true that, in real life, “all else” is often not “being equal.” Certainly there will be cases where, due to sexism, a husband’s lower-paying job might be given priority. I should have made that clearer, so you’re right about that.
Still, if you’ll permit me a minor quibble with your minor quibble :-P , saying “all else being equal” is not the same thing as making a “blanket statement.” I didn’t mean to say – and don’t think I said – that in 100% of cases, couples faced with such a decision favor the higher-earning job.
Hey, I just came across this; it’s from a book review of Competing Devotions by Mary Blair-Loy. The review is written by Ruth Milkman, and comes from the current (and, alas, final) issue of the Women’s Review of Books.
Kinda proves Elizabeth’s point, doesn’t it?
I so totally think that discrimination is totally BOGUS!! Everybody should be treated equally. I don’t think men know how hard it is to be a female in the music business with three kids. It is so frustrating, and the men wouldn’t be here if their mother’s didn’t give birth to them!! c’mon males think about it!!
I so totally think that discrimination is totally BOGUS!! Everybody should be treated equally. I don’t think men know how hard it is to be a female in the music business with three kids. It is so frustrating, and the men wouldn’t be here if their mother’s didn’t give birth to them!! c’mon males think about it!!