Uh, because we still live under Patriarchy? Just a hunch.

As a government employee in a union job, I do not get paid less than my male counterparts. Pay is based on job class and, mostly, time in class. While sometimes someone may come in from the outside at a higher place than someone else, mostly it takes away the gender differences. Also, takes away difference due to race, disability, sexual orientation and religion.

In my experience this hasn’t been the case. I’m a guy, so maybe that dilutes my perspective, but in the companies I’ve been a part of I’ve definitely seen parity in pay. Maybe it’s an industry- or company-specific thing?

I wonder if the time many women are taking off to be at home with their kids (or even cutting back to part time) impacts this metric. My wife quit her job when we had our twins a year ago and probably won’t go back to work for at least another year. I’m sure that will set her back compared with those who’ve been in the workforce over the same amount of time.

Always a troll, especially on a topic like this!

I would assume that part of it stems from the fact that women are more likely to take time off for the birth of children or cut back hours to raise children. This affects their ability to gain experience and move up the “corporate ladder.”

It could also come from the fact that a woman with a stable partner (like a husband) might stop working full-time and take a lesser paying postion, so she can continue to gainer a wage/income but not need to pay the expensive of daycare.

Two problems. First, we don’t always know we’re getting paid less, since you’re rarely ever sitting around with co-workers saying “hey…let’s all talk about how much we’re getting paid here.” This happened to me right out of college – two college grads w-similar experience and yet the guy they hired at the same time as me was making a lot more. Once I found out, I took it up with my boss and negotiated for more. And second, we don’t ask for it. I’m sure that other college grad was getting paid more because he asked for more and I didn’t. And I think there’s sometimes a wee bit of passive sexism at work with this issues. Rather than “right the wrong” and say, “hey we should pay these two employees the same for doing the same work,” I think some hiring managers are still inclined to think, “sweet. I just came in under budget. It’s not my problem that she asked for so little.”

Beats me. I see no reason why a woman should get paid less than a man for the same work. I also see no reason why Republicans would question that, or work to overturn a common sense law. Keep it up, GOP. The Dems will be back in no time, at the rate you are going.

Oh, and Tom P., I hope your boss is a woman, and reads your comment here. Good luck with that next raise….

I am not really sure if Women get less then Men when it comes to the same type of job…. I do know that the kinds of jobs women can get without a degree pay less then the kinds of jobs men can get without a degree…. Example with a family I know…. the husband works as a pipe fitter and never had any experience before he had got the position that he is in…. But the wife could not walk in and get the same type of position with no experience…. she would have to go to college… and prove herself first…. For a uneducated woman the job potential in the same pay scale as men is a lot less….

My husband and I graduated from the same program at the same time and are in the same field. Today, I make half the amount he does. Why? I’ve moved to follow his career, so I haven’t had the opportunities for advancement like he has…..and I’ve taken time off to have kids.

Having the same job doesn’t mean you should be paid the same. You have to factor in education, experience, tenure, etc. That said, all things equal, people should obviously be paid based on the quality of work they provide. Laying out a statistic like this with no backing information on how it was gathered isn’t a good idea.

In my experience, it seems that it might have to do with how women negotiate for themselves (or in many cases don’t negotiate) when they first receive a job offer, how they present themselves at annual reviews etc… I see many women around me who do not fight for what they believe they deserve. My male counterparts are much more likely to share and show their worth openly while women tend to say things like “oh, it was a team effort” or “it was nothing” when in fact, they deserve recognition. I think this does affect the perception of the woman in the workplace. Confidence is key.

pay disparity is a fact, even when all other aspects of a job are weighed equally (job type, hours, etc)

http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-rights/blog/women-doctors-make-less-than-men-doctors/

Women often choose indoor M-F 9 to 5 jobs, over labor intensive or dirty jobs, overtime and shift work.

Sometimes cubical jobs pay less because they have so many women applying for them.

If anything, my experience points in just the opposite direction. When I graduated from college (early 90′s), it was pretty well known and statistically proven that new women graduates in my field (engineering) could get, on average, a significantly HIGHER starting salary than men. The most-frequently stated reason? Businesses were wanting to have an appearance of being gender-neutral in hiring practices in positions which are typically thought of as “male”, and were willing to pay a premium to attract women to reinforce that appearance. Not sure if that’s still the case, but it does make sense. Women in technical fields remain a scarce commodity, and supply-and-demand creates premium pricing.

As far as some of the studies indicating that men still get paid more than women for the “same work”–I haven’t looked at all the studies, but I do remember looking at some of them a few years ago, and their definitions of “same work” left a lot to be desired. Some of them said that all jobs which required a four-year college degree are equivalent and “same work”–when we all know that that’s not true. People with Engineering and Business degrees tend to make more than Arts and Humanities degrees–and men, for whatever reason, tend to gravitate to the higher-paying degrees more than women. If you look at pay job-by-job, experience-level-by-experience-level, etc., you’ll find far more equity than those reports state.

Lastly, there’s still a perception among many people of men being the “primary” bread winners, while women’s income is secondary/supplemental. As such, when it comes time to determine which partner in a family is going to put in extra hours at work, or make the extra effort to earn a raise, it still tends to be the man who does this more often than not. And in that situation, it only makes sense that those who put forth those efforts are typically higher rewarded by employers.

Want a great book to reference on the subject for your story? Check out “The Myth of Male Power”, by Dr. Warren Farrell. He’s respected enough on the subject to be one of the few males to ever be elected to the Board of Directors of the National Organization for Women. Check it out!!!

Majority of executive-level positions, board positions are still held by men, they set compensation levels and are in positions of authority to grant raises. Even if a woman is in that position they can’t appear to give favoritism so often seem more harsh on fellow female employees to avoid appearance of impropriety. There remains institutional sexism.

OK, one other point–

Take a look at any list of the worst jobs in America. Concentrate on those which take into account not only pay, but hours, opportunity for advancement, career longevity, chance of incurring job-related injury, chance of job-related death, exposure to weather/elements, job-related stress, etc. On most, you’ll find jobs like dairy farmer, fisherman, miner, pro athlete (yes, the money is good–but the career longevity and chance of injury are horrendous), garbage collector, lumberjack, roofer, sailor, EMT, etc. What do all these have in common? They’re all 95%+ male. Society still protects women from having to take these jobs.

The point? The so-called ‘glass ceiling’ is, for the most part, gone. But the ‘glass floor’ remains. If women, as a whole, want a greater portion of the top-of-the-line jobs, they need to realize that they also need to take a greater portion of the bottom-of-the-barrel roles too.

Taking the bad with the good–now THAT would be equality!

Jason, I think you need to understand how statistics are easily twisted. If you can deny the facts based upon the 15 years of research in this article than I would say go ahead with your argument. Otherwise, you don’t have a leg to stand on. http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/the_wage_gap_myth.html

AndyG, sure, ‘American Thinker’ doesn’t have an agenda.

Just like the site Robin is using to refute it, ‘care2.com’, is also agenda free…

Part of it in the secrecy surrounding salaries in the private sector. In the public sector (as well as many unionized jobs), there is a transparency – everyone knows what the rate of pay for a journeyman is going to be. In a non-unionized private employment setting, salaries are secret and everyone is kept in the dark. I suspect we’d see a move toward more pay equity if women knew what the men around them were earning. It’s one thing to know that men earn a certain percentage more in the workforce as a whole; it’s something entirely different to know that the equally qualified – but annoyingly lazy – goof-off in the next office is earning more than the women in the office.

Male doctors are more willing to work overtime, shift work, over night and ER positions.

Female Doctors tend to work in clinics with business hours. One reason being they are taking care of their own children.

Women are more likely to be awarded custody of children in among divorced doctors.

Even Jason’s linked report was by the “Women’s Foundation of Minnesota & the University of MN Humphrey Institute’s Center on Women & Public Policy”.

Yeah, no agenda or bias there….

The smartest thing the women of America ever did was get the ERA defeated in the early 70s. If it had passed, they’d have had to accept equality–both the good side and the bad. Now, they can strive for equality in situations where that’s a legitimate improvement over the status quo, but in cases where things are discriminatory in their favor, they can claim victim status to assure the continuation of the status quo. They get their cake and can eat it too.

John Stossel tackled this question on 20/20 a few years back, and interviewed a founder of the National Organization for Women.

It’s too easy to over-simplify statistics to push a political agenda.

So i read a little more into the Womens Foundation and their Mission and Goals. Never here them stand up for the likes of women like Sarah Palin, Condi Rice, Michelle Bachmann, etc. Its not a unified women’s movement, it’s all politics. If they really cared about women’s rights they would be more concerned with the way some of the women in this country were treated as compared to others, say, the former Speaker of the House.

Here Jason, you’ve got a few more hours to prepare for a fair journalistic review, rather than an activist approach. Another source for you:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2008/07/Paycheck-Fairness-Act-Unfairly-Burdens-Employees-and-Employers

Quote: In the United States, men earn more, on average, than women. The median man working full time in the United States earns $741 a week, compared to $600 a week for the median woman.[1]

This gender gap is not the result of rampant discrimination. Rather, it exists because men and women often work in different jobs and have different qualifications. When work experience, education, and occupation are taken into account, the average woman makes 98 cents for every dollar earned by a man.