There’s More to the ‘Women Earn 77% of What Men Earn’ Story, and New Details Might Debunk Old Ideas BY MICHAEL HAUSAM (18 HOURS AGO) | NATION, POLITICS The ‘women earn 77% of what men earn’ narrative, or some version of it, is one of the most common Democratic talking points. The idea that Republicans oppose the idea that women should earn the same as men goes hand in hand with it. From the White House website pages devoted exclusively to the concept of equal pay: “On average, full-time working women earn just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. This significant gap is more than a statistic — it has real life consequences.” Harry Reid has echoed this on the Senate floor: “A woman who performs the same work as a man should be paid the same as a man. Senate Republicans simply cannot accept that notion. They believe it is fair for men to be paid more than women for doing the exact same thing.” The National Committee on Pay Equity explains the issue this way: “The wage gap exists, in part, because many women and people of color are still segregated into a few low-paying occupations. Part of the wage gap results from differences in education, experience or time in the workforce. But a significant portion cannot be explained by any of those factors; it is attributable to discrimination. In other words, certain jobs pay less because they are held by women and people of color.” But according to a recent study from conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, the data does not support the assertions. To be fair, the claims as described are true, but they only tell part of the story. When the data is further sorted based on real world applications, the gaps are substantially lessened. AEI points out: Men are far more likely to work longer hours then women. When an adjustment is made for hours worked, controlling only this one variable, 50% of the pay gap disappears. (This doesn’t address the issue of why women work shorter hours, which often has to do with childcare and household responsibilities — both of which still largely fall on women’s shoulders, even if both spouses work full time.) Because of the disparity mentioned above, marital status also makes a big difference. When comparing men and women who’ve never been married, 75% of the pay gap disappears. Age makes a difference. By comparing similarly aged workers, 50% of the pay gap disappears. And, of course, having children makes a difference. Women with children earn significantly less than those without children. In other words, saying “women earn less than men” is different than saying “women earn less than similarly-situated men when they work identical hours in identical jobs.” Happily, the second of these phrases is untrue, which shows progress from previous decades and is an important point to remember. To ignore the various conditions that impact earnings, such as education, experience, age, hours worked, marital status, and parenthood, and ascribe income differences to discrimination is to acknowledge only a portion of the picture. If women truly earned less for identical jobs under identical circumstances, wouldn’t a business intentionally hire only women as a way to drive their labor costs down to compete against other businesses? But this isn’t the case.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 14:25:21 +0000
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