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A Study in "Equal Pay for Equal Work"
Apr. 9th, 2013 06:04 pmA group of professionals decide to start a business. There are three partners, three skilled assistants, and three low-skilled staff members. Being a group of progressives, the partners decide that all pay will be based on position in those three categories with no individual pay negotiations or bonuses. For the sake of easy math, let's say the partners get $20/hr, assistants get $10/hr, and staff gets $5/hour. No sexism there, right?
Well, two of the three partners are male. The same is true with the assistants. For the staff, all three are female. Well, since all positions are paid the same no matter the sex of the employee, that's equal pay, right?
However, if you take all the men and their pay and compare it to the women, the math goes like this:
Two male partners and two male assistants equals $60/hr going to men. One female partner, one female assistant, and the three staff only get $45/hr. Then, let's break it down a bit more and the 4 men earning $60/hr averages at the men in the company earning $15/hour. And that $45/hr divided by the five women equals $9/hr. But I thought the men were being paid the same amount as the women?
Sadly, the statistic about women in America making about 77-80 cents for each dollar men make is based on this last kind of math - adding up all the pay, adding up all the males/females, and making a sex-based average (the low end is when you put the entire population into the math and the higher end is when the numbers are broken down into general industries - software, manufacturing, law). But when studies put forth the effort to get statistics on men and women in the same jobs (not merely the same industry or career field) with the same level of education and experience, the gender pay gap is actually closer to women earning 88-96 cents for the male dollar.
At this time, men dominate the CEO and other C-level positions in America while women are the majority of the "low-skill" or entry-level workforce. That is why I made my example business set up with men dominating the top of the pay bracket and women filling the lower range.
So, while things aren't as bad as the 77 cent situation, obviously there is still more room for improvement when looking at the apples-to-apples comparisons. Essentially, much of the discrimination is on the jobs men and women go into (can get a job in) and not quite so much how much the employer pays the males vs. females. My hope is that we are in the midst of change. Women now outnumber men in colleges. It is only a matter of time for more of these college-educated women to stay in their careers and ascend the corporate ladder. As they ascend, the sexists shaving benefits and being more firm in negotiations with women will decrease. Also, more women are choosing child-free lives and more "high-risk" jobs (such as frontline soldiers getting combat pay, truck drivers, and oil riggers) that pay much more are opening up for women.
These factors should lead to Equal Pay Day moving earlier in the year.
Some resources:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/ComparableWorth.html
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jun/21/barack-obama/barack-obama-ad-says-women-are-paid-77-cents-dolla/
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/09/are_young_women_earning_more_than_their_boyfriends.html
http://www.payscale.com/gender-lifetime-earnings-gap
Well, two of the three partners are male. The same is true with the assistants. For the staff, all three are female. Well, since all positions are paid the same no matter the sex of the employee, that's equal pay, right?
However, if you take all the men and their pay and compare it to the women, the math goes like this:
Two male partners and two male assistants equals $60/hr going to men. One female partner, one female assistant, and the three staff only get $45/hr. Then, let's break it down a bit more and the 4 men earning $60/hr averages at the men in the company earning $15/hour. And that $45/hr divided by the five women equals $9/hr. But I thought the men were being paid the same amount as the women?
Sadly, the statistic about women in America making about 77-80 cents for each dollar men make is based on this last kind of math - adding up all the pay, adding up all the males/females, and making a sex-based average (the low end is when you put the entire population into the math and the higher end is when the numbers are broken down into general industries - software, manufacturing, law). But when studies put forth the effort to get statistics on men and women in the same jobs (not merely the same industry or career field) with the same level of education and experience, the gender pay gap is actually closer to women earning 88-96 cents for the male dollar.
At this time, men dominate the CEO and other C-level positions in America while women are the majority of the "low-skill" or entry-level workforce. That is why I made my example business set up with men dominating the top of the pay bracket and women filling the lower range.
So, while things aren't as bad as the 77 cent situation, obviously there is still more room for improvement when looking at the apples-to-apples comparisons. Essentially, much of the discrimination is on the jobs men and women go into (can get a job in) and not quite so much how much the employer pays the males vs. females. My hope is that we are in the midst of change. Women now outnumber men in colleges. It is only a matter of time for more of these college-educated women to stay in their careers and ascend the corporate ladder. As they ascend, the sexists shaving benefits and being more firm in negotiations with women will decrease. Also, more women are choosing child-free lives and more "high-risk" jobs (such as frontline soldiers getting combat pay, truck drivers, and oil riggers) that pay much more are opening up for women.
These factors should lead to Equal Pay Day moving earlier in the year.
Some resources:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/ComparableWorth.html
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jun/21/barack-obama/barack-obama-ad-says-women-are-paid-77-cents-dolla/
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/09/are_young_women_earning_more_than_their_boyfriends.html
http://www.payscale.com/gender-lifetime-earnings-gap
