Sunday, February 2, 2014
On the Gender Wage-Gap
It is total BS. As numerous economists have pointed out, when you control for key factors such as occupation, education, hours worked, and years of continuous service, women make just as much as men and sometimes more. The bottom-line here is that women just make different choices than men and it is this fact and NOT discrimination which explains the wage disparity.....................................................................................One of the better volumes on the topic was written by activist Warren Farrell. It's called, "Why Men Earn More", and in it he points out that men are more likely to a) major in technology and the hard sciences, b) work in a field that is hazardous to your health, c) work in a field in which you are exposed to the elements, d) work in a field in which you cannot "check out" at the end of the day, e) work in a field that is less fulfilling, f) work in a field that requires financial and emotional risk, g) work the lousiest hours and shifts, h) work in a field that requires constant "updating", i) work more than 40 hours a week, j) work more than 60 hours a week, k) have more than 20 years experience in their present occupation, l) have more than 10 years continuous experience with the same employer, m) take less vacation time, n) be absent less, o) be willing to commute longer distances, p) live in a city that they'd prefer not to live in, q) travel on the job, r) be willing to work on commission, s) be willing to accept a bottom-line position which contributes to a companies profits and losses, and t) accept a position with nation-wide responsibilities.......................................................................................Now, to be fair here, one could conceivably argue that there are more subtle discriminatory variables at work and that they would of course center around marriage, education, etc.. But wouldn't it be far more productive to address those specifically and not take a meat cleaver approach to the market place and in a manner that would probably do more harm than good (yeah, I'm referring to all of those nasty unintended consequences of government meddling)?
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6 comments:
The wage gap problem is women earning less than men for doing the same job. Your list of items does not address that problem.
I believe that it does, Jerry. When you compare never-married women and never-married men and control for the variables, women make just as much or more than men. The key here is uninterrupted years of service.
Jerry: There are already laws against gender discrimination in the workplace. These address actual discrimination, not imagined discrimination.
Why aren't these existing laws sufficient?
Why do we need new laws to punish and reward people for wrongs without proving they are occurring?
Farrell is no gadfly; he researches and thinks in depth. His work is probably best summarized by his quote,
"men's weakness is their facade of strength; women's strength is their facade of weakness". The whole pay issue, gender or not, is
IMO a complex one. After 40 years in the private sector, I have seen both sexes underpaid and overpaid (compared to their worth and job title) and yes,
women who work factory jobs are
paid the same as men doing those jobs..although, I still haven't figured out the male hairdresser thing. :)
He was a former member of NOW, actually.............And he also said that 75% of the "wage gap" can easily be explained by the fact that men work on average 3 hours a week more than women.
And let me repeat what I said before. Never-married women (as opposed to divorced women who are reentering the labor force after raising children) with as many continuous years of service as men make JUST AS MUCH IF NOT MORE SO than never-married men when you control for key variables such as age, education, hours worked, etc.. There is no wholesale discrimination against women. It is merely another attempt by the politicians to intervene.
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