What about the single mother earning a living to take care of her family. When a single mother goes to a business they do not discount the product cost because she does nit earn the rate as men.

Themselves.

Something that bugs me is that commenters always seem to accept "occupation" as an entirely "non discriminatory" factor accounting for part of the wage gap. But if women are clustered in certain jobs, why is this true? Yes, some of the reason is pure choice, but some is also that women are discouraged from entering many of the higher paying, more prestigious occupations, if not downright discriminated against when they attempt to do so.

promoting young guys for years. Manager was a woman who had at least two known affairs with the young guys she promoted. It's difficult to get ahead when women feel the need to discriminate against other women for whatever reason.

the earning potential for women and the fact that they are taking care of the children, it should come as no surprise that one forth of children in America grow up in poverty. And when you compound it with the fact that economically disadvantaged children face greater educational challenges, you get a better picture of the problems affecting children in America today.

I know for a fact that as a single mom for many years, I earned $15-$30,000 a year less working as a school nurse rather than in a hospital but I would have had to shell out at least $15,000 per year for adequate care for her while I was working. The fact that I had her same schedule allowed me to be active in her education. I took extra shifts when ever I could to make up the earnings difference. I basically worked 1&1/2 jobs until her junior year of high school.

I will be retiring from public school Nursing at the end of next month. I am young enough to work 5 more years and will be returning to hospital Nursing. The money earned during that time will go toward my retirement and help my daughter pay off her college loan so she can have a better start in life. I know I had it better than most single moms.

I am so pissed that we waste money on two useless wars and now want to cut programs that benefit the most vulnerable in our society. What is the point of being an American if all it means is freedom to be hungry, freedom to be afraid, freedom to worship as long as it is fundamental Christianity, and freedom to keep your mouth shut.

Recently a post of what would you do to Jesus has given a different prospective. The religious right clowns in on cutting these programs but I really wonder if they would be so loud if the program was for Jesus. I started working in the "traditional woman's job", though we was busier than the "traditional men's jobs" we was paid much less. I was able to acquire one of the traditional men's jobs later so I know the work was easier. They also discovered the women going into the traditional mens jobs was more accurate.

in the scriptures he was credited with was to charge us with helping widows and orphans. And what are single mothers and their children but widows and orphans.

My previous job was Payroll Coordinator for a school district. Was a union position equal to school secretaries and other "office support" positions, although I had a huge amount of responsibility (the job was upgraded after I left, natch). And the custodians earned more per hour than I did. Because our hourly rates were always based on previous years' rates, and at one time in the distant past the custodians job was considered "men's work" so they were paid more than the "women's work" in the office. Look at any low-wage job, like bank tellers, it's a traditional "women's work" job. Back in the 70s there was this horribly depressing book "Pink Collar Workers" which described how employers took advantage of bright, capable women. Some things have changed but not enough.

(not for long) where the janitor made more than me...the school Nurse. When the construction worker fell 16 feet from the roof...I helped stabilize him until EMS got there (30+minutes), the janitor moped up the blood. Our priorities are so fucked up.

BTW the construction worker survived.

starting salary for a school custodian in the district is greater than for a sub, and greater, in fact than that of an instructional aide or an office clerical worker. Pay based on gender discrimination is alive and well.

At least according to my State Senator (and US House candidate) Glenn Grothman ...

This is according to an article I read many years ago (pre-internet), so I don't have a source. As I recall, it stated that in the US, doctors are primarily male, the profession is considered high status, and it is well compensated. But in Russia (I think it was), a majority of doctors were women and the profession was much lower-status and lower-paid than in the US.

So the fact that women cluster in certain occupations can't be written off as irrelevant to the pay differentials. The very fact of clustering may keep pay lower in those fields. And there may also be feedback mechanisms, so that as women enter a certain field, it becomes socially downgraded, men become reluctant to enter it, and that downgrades it further.

This, I suspect, is the real reason why policemen and firemen (yes, men and men) are keeping their pension in places where teachers aren't.

people do not like pushy women. so women cannot succeed using the same strategies as men.

It turned out that there was a catch -22 for women. Women didn't ask for raises and higher bonuses as often as men did (so they didn't get the raise) AND it was viewed very differently when they did (exactly as you stated, she was viewed as pushy, overbearing .... and did not get the raise much of the time).

Sadly, my negotiating tool for raises has been to accept a new position for significantly more money

that the reason women earn less than men is that they are in lower paid occupations and move in and out of the workforce because they have children.

And just about that same span of my adult life, every time someone corrects for occupation and time off, women STILL earn significantly less. A woman in the exact same job with the same level of education and time on the job will almost always earn less. The very rare exceptions are the ones where the pay is pre-determined, like for judges or airline pilots.

Heck, just take another look at the shoe Mad Men. Peggy Olson, despite being a pretty talented copy writer, was originally expected to do that in her spare time during her secretarial job, and I bet if we could see her paycheck and the paychecks of the men around her, the newest men in her department will be making every bit as much money as she does. And it hasn't changed at all in the fifty years since.

Companies are very clever at labelling jobs so that the ones the women have pay less than the ones the men have, regardless of anything else.

And, aside from the fact that not all women have children, it bothers me enormously that the notion that a good career job should be all consuming, that there's no time for a personal life. The world of work has been largely designed by men for men who have wives. There are a lot of assumptions here that need to be questioned.

It depends on what you mean by significantly less.

The question is how much of that is due to discrimination. It's misleading information like this which makes it difficult to have an informed and substantive conversation on the gender pay gap. Misleading people about this issue is also effectively harmful to women, because it has people chasing discrimination boogeymen instead of focusing on the real issues that have a much greater impact on the raw gender pay gap, like childcare.

The Institute for Women's Policy Research has some very interesting information, broken down by occupation. it is well worth downloading the PDF and looking at the comparisons.

The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation and by Race and Ethnicity, 2013
by Ariane Hegewisch, Stephanie Keller Hudiburg (April 2014)

Women’s median earnings are lower than men’s in nearly all occupations, whether they work in occupations predominantly done by women, occupations predominantly done by men, or occupations with a more even mix of men and women. Data for both women’s and men’s median weekly earnings for full-time work are available for 112 occupations ; there are only three occupations in which women have higher median weekly earnings than men. In 101 of the 112 occupations, the gender earnings ratio of women’s median weekly earnings to men’s is 0.95 or lower (that is, a wage gap of at least 5 cents per dollar earned by men); in 17 of these occupations the gender earnings ratio is lower than 0.75 (that is, a wage gap of more than 25 cents per dollar earned by men).

Various studies disagree on the actual number depending on the variables they are looking at but no one really denies a gap exist.

But closing it is going to be problematic because its based on various cultural and social factors.

It's not simple to close this. Maybe a week ago I read a study that suggest the gap is GROWING in Canada. And that country has stricter anti-discrimination laws on this than we do.

A few reasons might be:
1. A simple reality is that most Americans expect men to be the financial safety net. It's one of the patriarchal gender roles that the man's ultimate job is to provide. So there is going to be pressure to give men more of a nudge and nod. Institutional sexism is involved here.
2. Enforcement of discrimination laws is difficult. Companies will typically take disciplinary action against workers who share their salary information with other workers. So many times workers dont even realize if discrimination is occurring. Companies also consider their payroll to be proprietary information and will fight tooth and nail in court to prevent any outside agency or organization from looking at it. It's also very easy for a company to justify why one employee makes more than another.
3. Data suggests women will take more time off compared to men. Women are not as willing to work overtime. And women are not as willing to work more difficult hours (such as "graveyard" shifts). It is possible that supervisors and employers take note (perhaps even unconsciously) of these things during performance reviews. And so that gives men a bit of a leg-up.
4. Men also typically pick majors in college that leads to higher salary careers. These careers are not closed to women. It's just women don't seem to pick them for one reason or another.

I think feminists tend to think there is some evil male conspiracy at the top of every corporation to pay women less money than men. There isn't. The sexism/discrimination is more institutionalized through all levels of corporate America....and even parts of the public sector. We are a still very much a society that thinks men should be making the real money. We haven't gotten passed that yet.

The situation by mockingly referring to it as no "evil conspiracy" when in fact it was standard practice is just rude- as well as completely ignorant of history.

Have you seen this?

If a couple has dated a certain amount of time or he's paid for X.
It's time to stop supporting this idiocy by proclaiming it "inevitable" and educate the public.
We have laws about equal pay- and it's our governments fault they are not enforceable laws. Hence the fight goes on. You can sit resigned on the sidelines more easily than any woman can afford to. And probably that's your preference.