KevinTheOmnivore
May 8th, 2007, 07:13 AM
Just a silly blog, but raises an interesting issue. Any thoughts?
http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/2007/05/myths-on-inequality-on-pay-for-men-and.html
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Myths on inequality on pay for men and women
Recently, there has been a bit of noise over the so-called "Equal Pay Day" to pay attention to the purported "pay gap" between what men and women earn. Both Clinton and Obama have made this mythical gap a focus of their campaigns. Obama has signed on to a bill (http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/2007/05/bad-idea-that-hasnt-gotten-any-better.html)to mandate comparable worth compensation so that somehow men and women should be compensated the same for equivalent jobs. Clinton and Obama simply want to ignore the facts behind the statistics showing that the average woman makes less than the average man. Men and women often make different choices about their work and, surprise of surprises, that affects their compensation. Rich Lowry (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDY1ZTE0NGNiNjU2OGIwZmQ0YzZiOTI1ZTUwMjEyMTE=)wr ites, Different pay for different professions persists, of course. Nurses aides (89 percent female) have more education than truck drivers (97 percent male), but their median earnings are just 57 percent that of truck drivers. This isn’t discrimination, but a reflection that driving cross-country is unpleasant work. Women tend not to want to do it.
That kind of choice is a key factor in the male-female wage differential. Average earnings for male physicians are $170,000, for female physicians $100,000. Bias? No, as Furchtgott-Roth has noted, “many women choose to go into pediatrics, psychiatry, and family practice, all lower-paying fields than surgery, which is more demanding in terms of hours.” Many women choose professions that are compatible with having kids, and when they have children, they tend to take a break from their careers (whereas men actually work more).
“The main source of productivity differences between women and men stems from the lesser amount of time and energy that many women can commit to labor market careers as a result of the division of labor within the family,” O’Neill writes. “Women continue to work part time more than men and to choose work situations such as work in nonprofit institutions and occupations that more easily can be accommodated with home responsibilities.”
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama might wish this fact weren’t so, but there’s no way for them to legislate it out of existence, even with a very bad, dated idea.One college student, Ashley Herzog (http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/AshleyHerzog/2007/05/08/equal_pay_day), writing in Townhall gets the basic economics that explains these statistics; perhaps Clinton and Obama could learn from her. First, the belief that employers get away with paying women 77 percent of what men make can only be explained by a lack of understanding of basic economic principles. If it were true, money-grubbing employers would hire only women, since it would lower costs and increase profits. We know that doesn’t happen, so feminists have invented a preposterous explanation: male businessmen care so much about keeping women “in their place” that they’re willing to lose money by hiring men. Is it just me, or do people like Donald Trump seem slightly more concerned with getting rich than maintaining patriarchy? Already, the pay gap theory has serious flaws.
Second, the 77 cents to the dollar figure is calculated by comparing the average salaries of all men to all women. It does not account for occupation, education, the number of hours worked, or the different roles that jobs play in men’s and women’s lives. The average woman earns less because she’s made different choices in life – a fact that feminists, despite all their caterwauling about the importance of “choice,” refuse to accept.
What women’s studies majors who lament about the pay gap don’t realize is that they’re contributing to it. According to economist June O’Neill, a major reason women make less than men is that they often choose college majors in lower-paying “humanities” fields, such as education, journalism, English and social work, while men are more attracted to high-paying fields like business and engineering. If women’s studies majors are so outraged by the pay gap, maybe they should all drop out and enroll in the College of Engineering. That act alone would do much more to close the pay gap than blaming sexism.
http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/2007/05/myths-on-inequality-on-pay-for-men-and.html
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Myths on inequality on pay for men and women
Recently, there has been a bit of noise over the so-called "Equal Pay Day" to pay attention to the purported "pay gap" between what men and women earn. Both Clinton and Obama have made this mythical gap a focus of their campaigns. Obama has signed on to a bill (http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/2007/05/bad-idea-that-hasnt-gotten-any-better.html)to mandate comparable worth compensation so that somehow men and women should be compensated the same for equivalent jobs. Clinton and Obama simply want to ignore the facts behind the statistics showing that the average woman makes less than the average man. Men and women often make different choices about their work and, surprise of surprises, that affects their compensation. Rich Lowry (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDY1ZTE0NGNiNjU2OGIwZmQ0YzZiOTI1ZTUwMjEyMTE=)wr ites, Different pay for different professions persists, of course. Nurses aides (89 percent female) have more education than truck drivers (97 percent male), but their median earnings are just 57 percent that of truck drivers. This isn’t discrimination, but a reflection that driving cross-country is unpleasant work. Women tend not to want to do it.
That kind of choice is a key factor in the male-female wage differential. Average earnings for male physicians are $170,000, for female physicians $100,000. Bias? No, as Furchtgott-Roth has noted, “many women choose to go into pediatrics, psychiatry, and family practice, all lower-paying fields than surgery, which is more demanding in terms of hours.” Many women choose professions that are compatible with having kids, and when they have children, they tend to take a break from their careers (whereas men actually work more).
“The main source of productivity differences between women and men stems from the lesser amount of time and energy that many women can commit to labor market careers as a result of the division of labor within the family,” O’Neill writes. “Women continue to work part time more than men and to choose work situations such as work in nonprofit institutions and occupations that more easily can be accommodated with home responsibilities.”
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama might wish this fact weren’t so, but there’s no way for them to legislate it out of existence, even with a very bad, dated idea.One college student, Ashley Herzog (http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/AshleyHerzog/2007/05/08/equal_pay_day), writing in Townhall gets the basic economics that explains these statistics; perhaps Clinton and Obama could learn from her. First, the belief that employers get away with paying women 77 percent of what men make can only be explained by a lack of understanding of basic economic principles. If it were true, money-grubbing employers would hire only women, since it would lower costs and increase profits. We know that doesn’t happen, so feminists have invented a preposterous explanation: male businessmen care so much about keeping women “in their place” that they’re willing to lose money by hiring men. Is it just me, or do people like Donald Trump seem slightly more concerned with getting rich than maintaining patriarchy? Already, the pay gap theory has serious flaws.
Second, the 77 cents to the dollar figure is calculated by comparing the average salaries of all men to all women. It does not account for occupation, education, the number of hours worked, or the different roles that jobs play in men’s and women’s lives. The average woman earns less because she’s made different choices in life – a fact that feminists, despite all their caterwauling about the importance of “choice,” refuse to accept.
What women’s studies majors who lament about the pay gap don’t realize is that they’re contributing to it. According to economist June O’Neill, a major reason women make less than men is that they often choose college majors in lower-paying “humanities” fields, such as education, journalism, English and social work, while men are more attracted to high-paying fields like business and engineering. If women’s studies majors are so outraged by the pay gap, maybe they should all drop out and enroll in the College of Engineering. That act alone would do much more to close the pay gap than blaming sexism.