Is there a Gender Pay Gap issue in the West?

a reply to: SlapMonkey

"Then you are citing individualized anecdotal evidence, not a blanket problem that encompasses all women in the U.S.--dare I say, not even a majority of women in the U.S., if I'm arguing my point that it's not the it's-only-because-I'm-a-woman "logic." "

Logic says only women get pregnant.

a reply to: MOMof3

Oh, I'm sorry--I forgot that this thread is only about maternity and pregnancy issues.

But since it's not, what's your point?

a reply to: SlapMonkey

The second post is how pregnancy attributes to the pay gap and should. Illness, accidents, aging, other life events happens to all. If a man gets ill temporarily, does he lose his experience and pay?

or a better question,
if a man had a skiing accident four years ago and ended up taking time off work because of it, will the employer notice this fact and give him a lower pay rate thinking that this event will cause him to lose time now?
because this appears to be happening to mothers. they seem to see that she is a mother and just take it for granted that it will make her less dependable of an employer, regardless of weather she has taken six months off work to have the child, or nine years as a stay at home mom.

some asked back a few pages what women could do to avoid the wage gap, maybe not offering much details of family make up would help?

a reply to: MOMof3

Depends on the illness, length of time, employer, field of his career, etc.

My point remains--there are MANY relevant variables that determine this, not just pregnancy or gender.

a reply to: dawnstar

Again, it depends on a few variables, to include the type of job the man is doing, how much that amount of time off affects efficiency and knowledge, how long they were out of the work force altogether, etc.

These hypothetical what-ifs are not provable either way. I do, however, have an example that is somewhat similar to what you asked--one of my good friends while I served in the military had put his career (in which he was apparently very good and making much more than when he became an officer in the Army) on hold and served for (I think) six years. Upon leaving the military, he opted to change careers because employers in his field of work prior to military were unwilling to hire him on for much more than a starting wage--his service caused him to be unable to keep up with the ever-changing technology and versions of software that the industry used, and therefore he became much less efficient of an employee.

Hell, even my wife tried to get back into the work force (instead of being self-employed) after taking 5 years off from working, and it was nearly impossible to get past that first interview--she had just too much of a gap in working and it is understandably a red flag from a potential employer.

So, what is the point of asking hypothetical what-ifs?

originally posted by: DeadFoot
a reply to: Annee

Working link

Did everyone miss this? Its interesting that men actually work more hours than women. Could this be part of the issue?

They earn the same for the same job. This shouldn't even be relevant

They simply average less overall because more men have jobs than women have jobs or either the average amount that men "collectively" earn is higher than that of the average that women "collectively" earn.

There isn't a pay gap, there's a gap somewhere in the averages

www.asanet.org...

this study seems to be suggesting that there is still a motherhood penalty after you adjust for work experience and the other reasons many seem to want to attribute the different to though...

Motherhood is associated with lower hourly pay, but the causes of this are not well
understood. Mothers may earn less than other women because having children
causes them to (1) lose job experience, (2) be less productive at work, (3) trade off
higher wages for mother-friendly jobs, or (4) be discriminated against by employers.
Or the relationship may be spurious rather than causal—women with lower earning
potential may have children at relatively higher rates. The authors use data from the
1982–1993 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth with fixed-effects models to exam-
ine the wage penalty for motherhood. Results show a wage penalty of 7 percent per
child. Penalties are larger for married women than for unmarried women. Women
with (more) children have fewer years of job experience, and after controlling for
experience a penalty of 5 percent per child remains. “Mother-friendly” characteris-
tics of the jobs held by mothers explain little of the penalty beyond the tendency of
more mothers than non-mothers to work part-time. The portion of the motherhood
penalty unexplained probably results from the effect of motherhood on productivity
and/or from discrimination by employers against mothers. While the benefits of
mothering diffuse widely—to the employers, neighbors, friends, spouses, and chil-
dren of the adults who received the mothering—the costs of child rearing are borne
disproportionately by mothers.

www.asanet.org...

an interesting thought in this study.... just wanted to quote it...

Work that produces a physical
product or a business service often has few
beneficiaries beyond those who buy the
product and thus indirectly pay the worker.
In contrast, “caring” labor also benefits
those who make no payments to the worker.
Good parenting, for example, increases the
likelihood that a child will grow up to be a
caring, well-behaved, and productive adult.
This lowers crime rates, increases the level
of care for the next generation, and contrib-
utes to economic productivity. Most of those
who benefit—the future employers, neigh-
bors, spouses, friends, and children of the
person who has been well reared—pay noth-
ing to the parent. Thus, mothers pay a price
in lowered wages for doing child rearing,
while most of the rest of us are “free riders”
on their labor.
www.asanet.org...

for those of you who like to portray single mothers as leeches attached to your wallets...

If a pay gap doesn't exist, why do so many men (and the GOP) fight so hard against equal pay legislation? If we're getting paid the same amount, then such should become evident once equal pay is mandatory and enforceable.

a reply to: ReprobateRaccoon
Is anyone trying to repeal the Equal Pay Act of 1963?

I think people are just saying that there are far too many variables for the pay disparity to be proof of anything.

It seems that nobody is complaining about the racial wage gap which I think is far more obvious considering you can avoid pregnancy as a factor with man to man comparisons.

a reply to: ReprobateRaccoon

So the woman working in the Apple Store gets paid less than the guy?