Gender gaps in paychecks

Of course this is bound to exist becuase women do most of the extra work at home, care taking of children and others, family chores which the men willingly pass on to them. The situation is worse in lesser developed countries.In fact another factor is at play here. A woman who takes care of home and family is perceived to be more ‘feminine’ by the men. So in a normal workday, a woman spends lesser hours doing economically productive work than her male counterpart. Apart from the gender biases that women cannot perform higher paying typically male dominated tasks well enough keep her centred aound ’softer’ jobs. Unless men take equal responsibility to run the household and family, women will continue to suffer.Think, is this right?

Chaitalie Shukla, at 5:10 am EDT on April 7, 2008

Explaining the Gender Gap in Pay

I read this article with interest, but I would like to know if there is a gap in salary developing in foreign languages and literatures (namely Spanish) where women and minorities form a significant proportion of the faculty. Is less attention being given to this area in regard to tenure-track positions and salaries? It certainly appears so at my institution, where a significant proportion of faculty who teach at the major level are now at the lecturers and, despite the fact that the number of majors we teach has grown from about 50 to 400+ and the number of language students has gone through the roof, the tenure-track faculty has not grown or is shrinking. Is this a national trend?

Frank Dominguez, Dr. at UNC-Chapel Hill, at 9:05 am EDT on April 13, 2006

women in disciplines

Smith I don’t believe that the author’s statement and your restatement ("there are lots of women in disciplines with lots of women") are the same thing. Some fields — art history, foriegn languages — tend to attract more women to the field. Others — physics, history — tend have more men in the field. I believe the study author’s comments suggest that women join fields where there are already a disproportionate number of women already present (women following women). An interesting study would be to study how are men and women treated — differently, more similarly — within disciplines where women predominate.

I think the study author’s last question is crucial — is the reward system male? How does this relate to issues like the tenure track and time off (or not) for pregnancy?

gigi, at 11:00 am EDT on April 13, 2006

relative to what, is the question

befuddled...not to demean the walmart employee, but the wage scale there is irrelevant to how much you’d pay a professor. there’s a bit more training and apprencticeship involved in being a college professor. the construction worker analogy might be closer, depending on the skill involved.

moreover, people who enter education are underpaid generally relative to skill and ability than are people who enter the private sector. a trained social scientist can make 3x and more a prof’s salary if s/he joins mckinsey or another consultancy.

the real issue is not to worry (out of some misplaced jealousy or whatever) about how much others make, but to figure out how to get people to take education seriously, how to improve education and also how to get walmart to not pay slave wages.

befuddled by befuddled, at 11:40 am EDT on April 13, 2006

mean v. median

Of the two measures of central tendency used to describe complex ratio data like salary figures, the mean is more sensitive to highs and lows. The effect, for example, of male endowed chairholders on salary distributions might cause the mean to rise. Similarly, low-paid females might have the reverse effect. Salary data cannot be comprehended fully without knowing the median, which represents the actual mid-point in a distribution and which is not sensitive to out-liers.

Molly, at 12:55 pm EDT on April 13, 2006

gender gap in pay

From what I hear, women may be less likely than men to negotiate starting salaries in academia and elsewhere. Rather than settling for what is first offered, women should play the negotiation game once the job offer is in hand. There’s nothing to lose.

Karen, Dartmouth, at 1:05 pm EDT on April 13, 2006

I repeat it’s relative

I agree on the value of learning, but not education — these are two distinctly different things. We don’t value either in America. If we did, K-12 teaching would be a higher paying profession.

As for Comm Prof’s comments, if you’re so talented (as you listed your job skills) then why exactly are you ONLY making $53K. By your logic I should be able to make $1 million easily — I mean, I can list a page full of things I’m capable of doing.

I repeat my earlier point..... it’s all reltive. The VP making $100K thinks he’s underpaid too. Who’s right?

Befuddled, at 5:50 pm EDT on April 13, 2006

to the befuddleds

It’s not that I feel I am overpaid, since as someone with upmteen years of education and 7 years of work experience I still cannot make ends meet for my family (and we do not live luxuriously). But in comparing our pay scales with those of both Walmart employees and lawyers I do think that we should take into accound the miseries of their jobs and the pleasures and relative autonomy of ours.OK, now I am going into hiding...

Sarah Schneewind, Assistant Professor at UCSD, at 9:30 pm EDT on April 13, 2006

Bias?

Why is bias defined as whatever difference is left after everything else has been accounted for? Part of that is going to be other sex-related sources of variance, not necessarily attributable to bias — just unidentifiable. There should be ways to measure bias more directly, perhaps something involving manipulation. Oh wait! Such studies have already been done and clearly demonstrate that bias exists. Why is there any doubt that women are being treated with bias in real life when it can be so clearly demonstrated in experiments?

Nancy, at 5:15 am EDT on April 17, 2006

Flawed reasoning

In the actual study, which I just read, the author claims that the residual 6.8% difference in pay is due to discrimination — although such claims are not explicitly stated as such, the terminology is always in terms of “penalties” to women.

The assumption that the residual is “unexplained” is, politely, BS. The author’s best attempt, for example, to “control for other human capital characteristics,” includes variables: “funded,” “articles,” “chapters,” “doctorate,” “MA", etc.

Does it not occur to the author that perhaps the missing granularity of these gross categories *might* be an explanation for a 7% difference in salary (about $5,000, according to the author). For example, are all “articles” the same? If some are in crappy journals, and some in “A” journals, do they count the same in the real world? — no, but they do in his model. What about “doctorate” — does it matter where it’s from? Does it merely matter whether one is “funded,” or does it matter how much funding you have, or how much funding relative to your peers?

All of these are unknowns, and all of them have plenty of variance associated with them to drive a 7% salary difference to 0.

E

Eric, Assistant Prof @ NE School, at 1:35 pm EDT on April 18, 2006

Still another twist

Having read through the comments, I see still another twist to the explanation: it is common practice at Community Colleges to have one set starting pay for Arts and Sciences teachers and another one for those on the technical side, since the reasoning is that it is so much harder to hire some of those folks.

So, in 1996, I was hired to teach English at the astonishing salary of $28,800; I had a Master’s degree, ten years of experience, and had credentials as a high school teacher. I found out later that someone was hired in the range of $40,000-$45,000 to teach a trade, and he only had the equivalent of an AA. At the two year college level, then, gender may well play a significant role but there are other factors as well. On the other hand, how many female welding instructors are there?

The real inequity to me comes from the increasing exploitation of adjunct instructors (and many of them happen to be women) as well as the tendency of all colleges to cut back on hiring full time teachers, but continue to hire full time “support staff” without ever having to provide a rationale for doing so.

Cherie Dargan, Associate Professor, at 1:40 pm EDT on June 12, 2006