For every dollar a man makes, women earn 78 cents, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This fact usually prompts the following argument about the gender pay gap.
Left: It’s ridiculous women make 78 cents for every dollar a man makes.
Right: That number is misleading because it doesn’t take into account the sort of job one has, how many hours one works and other factors unrelated to gender. We find women make closer to 93 cents for every dollar a man makes once we control for those factors.
Left: Those factors are related to gender because our society funnels women into lower paying careers. Controlling for things like occupation and hours worked loses key reasons why women make less money than men.
Right: We need to treat people like individuals. It’s on individual women to choose higher paying careers if they want to make as much as men.
Danny Bugingo | Argonaut
Some of the disagreement and a lot of the confusion surrounding the pay gap stems from the fact that feminists refer to two distinct pay gaps as “the pay gap.”
The first pay gap comes from the fact that women make less money than men for doing the same work.
The second pay gap comes from women being discouraged from pursuing high paying careers, resulting in less money. As Matt Breunig argues in “Jacobin,” even if women receive equal pay for equal work, “a labor market that sorts men into higher-paying jobs and women into lower-paying jobs is still sexist, just in a different way.”
The 78 cents for every dollar number is inaccurate for both pay gaps.
When we calculate the first pay gap, we need to see how much money women make for doing the same work as men. In doing this, we should control for various factors to make sure we’re making an apples-to-apples comparison.
According to Politifact, after controlling for factors like college major, occupation, age, geographical region and hours worked, women earn 7 percent less than men — a gap smaller than the 22 percent suggested by the 78 cents for every dollar statistic.
Regardless, this 7 percent gap is still appalling. Over a 40-year career, it means a man making the median salary makes over $140,000 more than a woman, according to Business Insider. We need to close this gap and give women equal pay for equal work.
As for the second pay gap, the 78 cents for every dollar number is flawed because it only takes into account full-time workers. If we’re concerned with highlighting how women are sorted into less lucrative careers, Breunig claims it makes more sense to consider part-time workers and the unemployed as well.
Taking this approach, he finds that women make 61 cents for every dollar made by men.
Though the second pay gap is much larger than the first one, it concerns me less.
Looking at how much more the average man makes than the average woman, without controlling for factors other than gender, tells us nothing about the reasons behind the discrepancy. The former is abhorrent, while the latter is a legitimate, individual decision that feminists should support. Because it lacks insight into why women end up in less lucrative careers, the second pay gap isn’t a very useful statistic.
Ultimately, everyone deserves the same pay for the same work, and the same opportunities to find a fulfilling career and lifestyle. Closing the first pay gap, and finding the reasons behind the second pay gap are crucial steps toward this end.
We can’t make change unless we throw out the 78 cents for every dollar number, and distinguish between the two pay gaps.
Danny Bugingo can be reached at [email protected]
Robert Myers
"The second pay gap comes from women being discouraged from pursuing high paying careers, resulting in less money. As Matt Breunig argues in “Jacobin,” even if women receive equal pay for equal work, “a labor market that sorts men into higher-paying jobs and women into lower-paying jobs is still sexist, just in a different way.”" Proof? What "sorting" is occurring? Does our author imagine the sorting hat from Harry Potter is making women teachers and nurses while making men doctors and engineers? So women need to be encouraged to take higher paying jobs? Men should be discouraged from choosing types of work that pay more and is more dangerous (seeing as men make up 95% of all workplace deaths so that more women can do those jobs? The problem here is that a fiction has been put forward that "society" or the "patriarchy" is making women choose the jobs they like to choose. Or that it's making them choose more part-time work so they can care for their families. Because women are naturally drawn towards those types of roles, but admitting the obvious makes one a heretic these days. No one is saying a woman can't be an executive or doctor, most just don't want to do it on the same levels as men, and that's entirely ok. The entire crux of this piece rests on a severely flawed premise unsupported by evidence.