W HAT WOULD you think if someone sold you a cookie with a quarter of it removed? What if someone gave you a dollar bill with holes in it, or organized a New Year's party to take place on April 8? You'd probably wonder what their deal was. The preceding examples are all ways that the National Committee on Pay Equity, the National Organization for Women and the AFL-CIO have illustrated that women are paid only 74 cents on a man's dollar. This "wage gap" between men and women, they claim, is the result of gender discrimination in the workplace.
We can all agree that gender discrimination is a bad thing, and we should work to eradicate it where it exists. It is incorrect, however, to say that the wage gap is due to pervasive discrimination against women by their employers. The wage gap is not due to discrimination but to the personal choice of many women to invest more time and energy in their home lives rather than in the workplace.
The 74 cents statistic is overstating the extent of the wage gap. The statistic is drawn from a simple comparison of the average median wage of all full-time working men and women. That means that older workers are compared to younger workers; aerospace engineers are compared to the guys who sell you Slurpees at the local 7-Eleven. Also, because a "full-time" worker is anyone working above 35 hours a week, someone who works 55 hours a week is compared to someone who's only working 35.
All this means that a slew of relevant factors are ignored, including experience and tenure, consecutive years in the workforce, years and type of education, hours of work, industry and occupation. Men and women differ considerably on many of these factors.
When wage comparisons are made between men and women who are similarly situated, differences between wages are very small. Research conducted by the Employment Policy Foundation found that there is no gender pay gap for full-time workers aged 21 to 35 living alone, and the gap is only 3 percent for workers of the same age who don't have children.
The wage differences that do exist between men and women are the result of many women choosing to put more emphasis on family rather than work priorities. The distribution of men and women into certain occupations - and women's concentration in lower-paying fields - is often cited as evidence of discrimination, but that's not necessarily the case. Because 80 percent of women have children at some point in their lives, many women choose jobs that will pay less but will allow them more flexibility when raising children. Women are more likely to choose jobs that require less extensive hours and will allow them to move in and out of the workforce easily.
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Women's choices to work fewer hours or interrupt their careers to have children also affect their tenure, experience and chances for promotion based on seniority, all of which have consequences for wages. On average, women spend considerably less time in the labor force than men. A report from the Department of Labor analyzing 1984 Census data said that "while only 1.6 percent of a man's work years were spent away from work, 14.7 percent of a women's work years were spent away from work - an eight-fold difference." Evidence shows that, even as women have been participating in the labor force in greater numbers, men consistently work more hours than women. It's not unreasonable to expect that people who work more will earn more, no matter what their gender.
These differences contribute to the earnings gap between women and men, especially because earnings potential depreciates by 5 percent for each year out of the labor force. Department of Labor data also show that women have less job tenure than men in every age group, particularly in the 25 to 35 and 35 to 45 age groups where these differences can have a real impact on earnings, as these are peak earning years.
The wage gap has been decreasing partly because women are gaining more education and work experience and entering higher-paying, traditionally male-dominated jobs. However, it is still less common for women than for men to work continuously after school and to see market work as the major focus of their energies, and that may or may not change in the future.
Is it the fault of socialization or biology that many women place greater emphasis on family than men do? Who knows. Either way, people should not buy into claims that the wage gap is due to systemic gender discrimination on the part of employers.
(Laura Sahramaa is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. She can be reached at lsahramaa@cavalierdaily.com.)