Imagine the following scenario:

One hundered individuals of group A earn 100 dollars each. Of group B, 99 individuals earn 50 dollars each, but one person earns 10000 dollars.

Group A has an average income of 100 dolars. Group B has an average income of 149,5 dollars.

By using the average one would conclude that group B is generally better off, which would be a wrong conclusion.

Men tend to work more hours, and there are a lot of male dominated jobs, and a lot of female dominated jobs. I'm ok with engineering paying more than a school teacher. Engineering should be open to all qualified women, and school teachers should be open to all qualified men.

What I am more interested in is does it exist among men and women in the same profession, working the same hours, with the same experience.

That's been shown repeatedly. There's a small difference once you account for job choice, experience, and things like perceived commitment (i.e., do you put in extra time for that promotion or take time off to be with the sick kid?).

It's like a lot of other such studies. You need the right answer, so you use the right protocol.

Young, unmarried urban women are more likely to be college grads than young men in the same urban area and young, married urban women don't see this wage benefit.

valuable and worthy occupation?

and, WHY do you suppose it is that men work more hours (stats, please)? perhaps because they set up a damned patriarchal system, and women have all the work to do at home, in addition to their paying jobs? or perhaps because the patriarchal, insane, capitalist system has no value for home and personal life?

do you believe that there is no such thing as institutionalized sexism?

Perhaps it has to do with demand for the job. Engineering school tends to be more selective and tougher. I dont think teaching isnt worthy, Ill be the the first to admit I couldnt handle it. I think if twice many people graduated engineering school, pay would go down.

paid less? why women teachers are paid less? why women in almost each and every field are paid LESS??? doing the same jobs, with the same education? are you really okay with the institutionalized sexism of our entire economic system?

Honestly I don't know, because this study and other studies often look at the overall salaries, and don't break it down by trade.

and moved away from the home, they were deemed "less safe" for women to do (because a woman outside the house is in danger- from other men!!!). When the jobs moved away from being a home based one, pay soared. Ain't that a funny coincidence!

So men basically created a job market for themselves, and promoted societal conditions that shut women out of it.

I'm not sure what exactly you are getting at? If a woman is a really good cook, she should consider doing it professionally and make money at it. She can even open her own restaurant. Is someone stopping her from doing that today? Heck, many banks even have special loan programs for female entrepreneurs.

If the home environment doesn't support it, then women need to be smarter concerning who they are dating and who they say "yes" to. If a man you are dating is of the traditional type or seems obsessed with his own career and doesn't seem like the type that would help out at home with kids or support you having your own business, maybe you need to back away. There are a lot of guys out there who wouldn't be afraid of their wife being a success. But there are also a lot that would be afraid. No one is forcing you to marry the controlling creeps that demand a housewife.

But like it or not, we live in a capitalist system of economics. Are men more successful with this system? Probably. Men have been doing it longer. And men may be a bit better at this because men have more pressure to succeed and provide. Men find it easier to fit into roles and expectations while women have the pressure to break barriers. That's all true. But men also take more risks. Men are willing to throw millions of dollars at an idea that may incredibly fail. Men take more dangerous jobs. Men take jobs that focus on innovation and searching for market niches.

Meanwhile, look at the majors in college that women flood into... education, social work, nursing, etc.. These are good jobs and important jobs, but they are very, very stable jobs with very low risk. The salary is many times paid by the government. And they don't have the potential for market booms. Men on the other hand flood into STEM, business management, finance. These are riskier jobs that may have booms or busts in the market. But they provide opportunity for innovation. And they promote entrepreneurship. They are largely private sector jobs as well where salaries are not as written in stone.

And it was 90% of society about 50-60 years ago. It seems like you don't seem to have a good grasp on culture or it's impacts.

Honestly, half of that sounds like it was written by Ayn Rand. Howard Rourke laughed because he's so gutsy and talented. HA.

Maybe in rural Oklahoma or Alabama it's the norm, but for most of the country it isn't. Most men don't try to control their wives and would support their wives in anything they wanted to do.

Sure it was the norm 60 years ago. But it's not 1960 anymore. Are you suggesting that 90% of men are demanding their wives to be a housewife today?

Young, single, educated, child-less women are making more money than their male peers. The gender gap vanishes completely with that demographic. Now when she gets married and has children, things change quite a lot. Her male peers then zoom ahead. But a lot of that has to do with cultural/societal issues.

I worked in human resources for a while for a large company. I saw the payroll myself with my own eyes because I put in the wages. I went over the evaluations. Did I see any corporate bias against women? No. I didn't. Men and women started at the company at the same wages. Neither seemed to get the upper hand in evaluations. HOWEVER, what I did see is that when a female employee went on maternity leave, she never recovered. While she was out on leave, men were promoted past her. When she came back to work, she usually had less availability and ended up many times taking a pass on advancement opportunities. This wasn't uncommon.
Men on the other hand who were new fathers practically never took time off work. Maybe a day or two.

Lilly Ledbetter Act was passed in 2009. Has it dented the wage gap? Nope. The OP's post proves that fact that it didn't fix the problem. And I told everyone back in 2009 that it won't dent it. It doesn't fix the problems at all that lead to pay inequality. Pay inequality is the result of 1) Career-family decisions made by women, 2) Gender roles of our society. 3) The failure of our government to institute mandatory paid leave for BOTH parents.

Barack Obama and the Democrat Congress in 2009 should have used their capital to pass paid parental leave for both parents. That would have made FAR, FAR more progress than Lilly Ledbetter.

That is fucking ridiculous, and you are making excuses for it.
Also, Ledbetter is all but impossible to enforce, which is why it hasn't made a dent.

When you look at the stats, women who are single and childless maintain almost equal pace to men in the corporate world...many times even making more than men.

The way our society is set up in the traditional sense is that when a family has a child, the woman is expected to be the one that should make the career sacrifices, when necessary, and make the child the priority. There is no law mandating that, of course, and there is always exceptions. But that's part of our social programming and what we were raised to believe. And let me be clear, I don't like that, and I don't think it's fair to women nor men. But there is a lot of social pressure there. The country is still very conservative in that regard.

Why do you think several countries in Europe have made paid parental leave for both men and women? Sweden even has a program that highly encourages men to take the leave too. In fact, with the culture there it is becoming increasingly frowned upon for men to not take the leave. In encourages father-child bonding. And it kills the institutional bias against young women of child-bearing age. This type of thing though isn't even talked about among Democrats. It's too liberal for most American minds to grasp.

Last edited Sun Oct 11, 2015, 11:11 PM - Edit history (1)

pretty much the controlling creeps that you deny are the norm.
LOL. You go around in circles to try and pretend men didn't basically set up this system in their own favor. But the evidence is they did.
And laughably you suggest maternity leave for men- when women don't have it and when they do, are punished for taking it. I think it would be awesome, but first things first!

looking out for other men who are abusive. Why doesn't matter- that crap like this is pervasive on campuses does matter greatly.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetstemwedel/2015/10/09/astronomy-community-mounts-stronger-response-in-sexual-harassment-case-than-uc-berkeley/2/

From the report discussed in the OP article: http://www.nationalpartnership.org/research-library/workplace-fairness/fair-pay/an-unlevel-playing-field-americas-gender-based-wage-gap-binds-of-discrimination-and-a-path-forward.pdf at The National Partnership for Women and Families website: http://www.nationalpartnership.org

[div class = "excerpt"]The National Partnership for Women & Families is a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group dedicated to promoting fairness in the workplace, access to quality health care and policies that help women and men meet the dual demands of work and family. More information is available at www.NationalPartnership.org.

to convince Travis_0004?

Good article, bettyellen.

KNOW how it happened--MEN set it up that way. institutionalized sexism that is so pervasive, so ingrained, that many are willingly, totally, clueless.