do women get paid less for the same job (in the US)?

Question

I thought it was illegal to give somebody a lower pay because of their sex. Is this actually happening, and wouldn't an employer pay somebody as little as possible (male or female) for obvious economic reasons?

Answer 1

This myth has been so thoroughly debunked, it's embarassing. This is a partial article with references.

The Wage Gap Myth Is Hazardous To Men's Health

by Stephen Jarosek

A study in the May issue of American Economic Review (2003) had found that the wage gap between men and women was the result of lifestyle choices, and not discrimination. It was found that choice, not discrimination, is the determining factor in wage difference 97 percent of the time. The wage gap myth has been debunked numerous times -- for example, by the Independent Women's Forum, and the publication, "Women's Figures", by Furchtgott-Roth and Stolba (1999).

The wage gap fiction was derived from the median wages of all men and all women in the work force, without regard to age, education, occupation, experience or working hours.

It's pretty obvious, isn't it? You'd think that if you had to explain something so self-explanatory, you might as well not bother and go and live in an ashram in India.

We know how it goes…. Women are more likely to work fewer hours so that they can have more time to devote to the caring of children. Men are more likely to value career and therefore, work longer hours per day, devoting many more years to developing their expertise that makes them more valuable. Men are more likely to work in the death careers, such as mining (and therefore get paid more), whereas women are more likely to work in air-conditioned offices, regardless of their skill-level. Women are more likely to pull out of careers in order to raise a family -- the stay-at-home mom is a legitimate, fulfilling option and an ideal escape-hatch. No such fulfilling option is extended to men. The man who chooses the stay-at-home option becomes an invisible drone, of no interest to men or women, employers or government, God or country. And so on.

The various studies that have been coming out have been equalizing the wage-gap disparities, and so feminists no longer have any basis to claim discrimination on the basis of income.

As a further very dramatic example, there was the New York Times article by Lisa Belkin, "The Opt-Out Revolution", published on the 26 th of October, 2003. After arraying a formidable and damning indictment of a revolution choosing to opt out instead of persisting with the good fight, Ms Belkin asks the rhetorical question, "Why don't women run the world?" Her answer is "Maybe it's because they don't want to."

Precisely. The wage gap is not a wage gap at all. It is a choices gap. Put simply, women have more choices than men. In most cases, their additional choices (e.g., stay-at-home-mom) require men to continue providing for them, and this is the reason for the wages gap.


Copyright: Stephen Jarosek (2004)

Answer 2

cleaners, theres a UN video on youtube, where they interview someone in Belgium who said a woman is called a "cleaning lady" a man is called a "surface technition" so they can get different pay, also checkout operators, men get more than women, for no reason. EDIT: Well, the UN vid showed it occurring in Belgium, Ive also heard of it happening in Walmart, (hey, i worked in a supermarket too :P ) But what happens alot is that womens work is undervalued, like, most admin staff are women, and its considered "womens work", ie, not as good as mens work, becasue its "easy" but i know admin workers, and they do a helluva lot of work for a pathetically low pay, and i canthelp but wonder if there was a man in that same job, would he get more pay? it could be an interesting experiment to find out, we should try it sometime.

Answer 3

As far as I know the average woman in America makes about 75 cents to every dollar the average man makes.

Some might justify this by saying that men are capable of more than women are, or men are more useful on the job, but these are all predjudiced generalizations and is unfair to the woman who works twice as hard for the same money. I think pay should be based on output and performance, not time with the company or gender.

Rant time sorry!;
I am working in retail and I have the 3rd or 4th most difficult jobs in the store, I am paid 7.25, only .75 more than all the brand-new employees who barely know what they're doing and stand around 60% or more of the time. Another one of my co-workers just got the promotion that I was hoping to get because she had been there longer and it was "her turn." Now I work my *** off every day and have to watch her slack around and get paid a lot more for it.

Answer 4

Well, it's obvious the question has been answered, and with enough facts and information to substantiate the answers, so there's little to add... but I can’t resist.
If you really want to balance the equation, I'd have to say that if you compared the income off all the call girls to all the gigolos, men are the ones getting the short end of the stick, getting the shaft, and taking it up the rear (no puns intended… well, OK, they are). We men should be marching on Washington and protesting. We can do like the feminists and whine and cry that our rights are being ignored, and demand that there be one male prostitute for every female prostitute standing on the corner.

Answer 5

A friend of mine who used to be a man and had the operation to become a woman told me at the time, "Hey, I really am paid less as a woman!" but later she denied saying it.
There was a study of Fortune 500 top executives, and even at that level the women made less than the men.

Answer 6

If this were actually the case, who would hire men at all?

The claim that women make only 75 cents for every dollar that men make is only true when you add up all women and all men.

More women than men are stay-at-homes, living off their husbands. Men usually choose to work longer hours and more overtime than women choose to do. Women more often than men take off time to have children, and so have fewer years to fight their way up the corporate ladder.

I've seen a study (sorry, I can't remember quite where I've seen it) where they compared men & women's real wages based on the same job title, the same number of hours worked, and the same seniority. Guess what? The woman made $1.04 for every $1.00 the man made. How's that for equality.?

Answer 7

All my bosses are women and I'm the only male caregiver where I work and the admintrater I used to have made $3,500 per month w/an RN liscense and the one under her made $2,500 per month and I got paid $1,100 per month all of it net pay.I don't know how much the one I work for now makes but I'm sure she ain't hurt'n.

Answer 8

Yes, this is actually happening.
An employer does want to pay someone as little as possible, and for places like McDonald's or WalMart, both male and female employees probably make the same amount.
Where it becomes a problem is when they have the ability to make more money and companies have more money to spend on salaries.

Answer 9

I see that several intelligent people have already debunked this incredibly outdated myth, but I wanted to add a bit more to it.

How many women do you see working construction? Or up on the high wires fixing telephone poles? Lumberjacks? Sewage treatment workers? If your answer isn't "zero," you're in the minority. Men not only work more and longer hours, they also work more DANGEROUS jobs. Of the 25 "worst jobs in America" (rated by danger, bad effects on health, etc.), most were staffed almost entirely by MEN. The only one where women were a majority was "dancer." Men also make up 93% of job-related fatalities, but the only time you hear about someone being killed on the job is when it's a woman. They get paid a lot more, but they often pay with their health...or their lives.

Women earn less than men because of their CHOICES. You know, that thing feminism is supposed to be about? If you compare apples to apples (same experience, same job title, same level of proficiency), women often earn MORE than men. And that's a legitimate gap.

Answer 10

No. It is nonsense that there is any pay gap. The "pay gap" is calculated by taking the LIFETIME earnings of the entire female population and comparing it as a proportion of the LIFETIME earnings of the entire male population.

Of COURSE 91 year old Aunt Hetty didn't make as much as her husband. They only NEEDED his income. She stayed home and raised the children with the exception of the short period she was employed in a typing pool during her engagement. So the earnings of elderly women compared to the earnings of young women badly skew this figure.

Once the correct statistical adjustments are made so that there is only comparison between similarly employed and experienced men and women (after all, an engineer earns more than a store clerk and a 20-year veteran golf pro earns more than a junior golf pro), the alleged pay gap disappears. In fact, women earn about 3% MORE compared to men in the same field!

One should also take into account that women are permitted a significant amount of maternity leave that men do NOT receive (that is, men rarely get paid paternity leave) as well as allowances for menstrual leave in some countries. This is a significant benefit to women that men simply do not have.

So NO, if you do the SAME JOB with the same level of experience, you do NOT get lower pay. And yes it IS illegal to discriminate on pay based on sex.

Answer 11

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