Nasor said:
From your own link:
"Lower wages for females appear to be tied to the types of jobs that they hold. ..snipped some..Also, females are underrepresented in all of the production-related groups where wages tend to be higher."
The questions used in the Iowa survey did not attempt to discover the causes of this. Here is the link to the actual questions asked in their query:
http://www.iowaworkforce.org/lmi/publications/genderwagestudy/genderwagestudy14.htm<P>
The cnn article indicated some potential reasons why females were underrepresented:
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/05/10/gender.bender/
Nasor said:
If by "ways to crunch the numbers" you mean "compare women to men who are doing the same job and have equal experience and education levels" then yes. They question the methodology of comparing men and women of equal experience and pay levels by suggesting that perhaps women can't get hired for the highest-paying jobs, but it would be easy to dredge up education statistics showing that male college students are usually far more likely than women to major in high-paying fields like engineering, finance/investment, and business administration, while women are more likely to major in low-paying fields like education or liberal arts.
<P>From the cnn article linked above:
"We found that if you control for male-female differences in experience and education, women earn 81 percent of what men earn," said Francine Blau of Cornell University. <BR>
I think they are implying that all things being equal, the variable is still 19%.
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Here is where the statistics/method are called "questionable" from the same article:
"If, in addition, you control for occupation and industry, which could be somewhat questionable because employers decide who gets hired into what jobs, the figure rises up to 88 percent," Blau said. <BR>
The cnn article also includes reference to two studies done (see above link) that show there can be discriminatory practice in hiring. <BR>
Could this discrimination on the employer level be based on women have a higher chance of leaving the job to care for children? Maybe. It is at the hiring point that the employer has the most power to be hesitant based on these types of discriminatory practices, with little fear of retribution. Are females underrepresented in these higher paying groups due to their not getting a chance from the start? That would be much harder to prove and adjust statistics for. <BR>
My reason for responding to your original post was to show that its not "This is another often-quoted but very misleading feminist statistic". These are statistics that are pretty common across the board, no matter who does the math. Either adjusted statistic is not "statistically insignificant" The best gender/wage comparison that was adjusted for education/experience was still a 12% disparity. And the other was 19%. How would that affect you, all things being equal, if your co-worker made between 12% and 19% more each paycheck based on no apparent reason in job qualification/education/experience? And these are adjusted statistics. There is no indication as to whether these women who have acheived between a 12% and 19% loss are child free. The reported Average Wage disparity is still much higher from every .gov source I found. It seems to affect millions no matter what way you slice the pie.
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Are things better than they were? Yes they are. Are all things equal? Not yet.
Nasor said:
You have a good point there. If the woman is usually the one who actually stays home and takes care of the kids, it would probably make sense for her to get custody.
Thanks!
