Recently in my mail box I received a political mailing from gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont on which he cited a statistic which I knew to be technically true, but functionally false. His ad claims that women earn 77% that of men and he pledged to end the disparity. The unfortunate thing about statistics is legitimate statistics can be easily used to mislead by just overlooking a point or two (I urge the reader to overlook the irony as I cite multiple statistics). So while technically a statistic can be true, in light of the full scope of evidence the conclusion is skewed. This number, 77% jumped right out at me since not long ago I had read on this issue and found my self surprised by the number, but after being exposed to the rest of the story I was able to understand there were reasons for the apparent disparity and low and behold it was not due to the kinds discrimination Mr. Lamont alluded to. I understand this topic can create controversy, but I see no reason why it must create controversy. With an open mind and careful thought a reasonable conclusion can be reached with a little effort and understanding.
In fact there are evenhanded reasons as to why the disparity is what it is. What Mr. Lamont fails to reveal, women do not tend to seek vocations which tend to pay the highest wages, and when they do the women in those positions are in far less proportion, which in itself will bring down averages. According to the U.S. Census bureau women make up 74% of “clerical and kindred” occupations while only 5% of “transport equipment operatives”, put another way they are more likely to be working at a desk than behind the wheel. It has been long the way of the work force that physical work demands higher pay than does the average office job. This fact also has its part in lowering averages. Women comprise less than 4% of construction extraction maintenance, less than 3 % construction workers or loggers, less than 2% roofers and masons, and less than 1% of mechanics and technicians who service heavy vehicles and mobile equipment(1).
While it is true that men make up 54% of the overall workforce, they account for 92% of job related death(2). Men tend to work at more dangerous jobs than do women, and as a result those high risk jobs are compensated higher than average. Women generally speaking avoid the high risk, highly physical occupations, which tend to be the highest paying. The trend the statistics bear out is women plan and prepare for motherhood when choosing careers, they purposely (subconsciously or intentionally) choose those jobs that are less physical.
Even taking into consideration the less physical jobs and comparing men and women on a more equal comparison, motherhood is a factor. When women take time off from work to care for their children before they reach school age, that leave comes with (for lack of a better term) consequences. In many jobs seniority accrual is halted, along with pay raises. The more children a woman has the fewer years of job experience she has at her particular vocation. Tax accountants and computer programmers and technicians to name a few are jobs where there is constant updates in technologies, and it really could be left unsaid, but the vast changes to tax laws which go into effect every year is insane. To miss time for raising children in these occupations would set one back far behind one’s colleagues. For example, a physicist would lose one half their value of knowledge in 4 years; it would take an English teacher 25 years to lose half the value. This would explain why women tend to work in fields with low obsolescence. In fact in 2005, women accounted for 60% of the doctoral degrees in education while only 20% of engineering(3).
Whether you would agree that women should take the time off rather than men is irrelevant to what does happen. Women generally speaking, plan to take time off from work to care for children, while men plan to work more hours to take more money home to make up for lost income when the mother is caring for his children. So when women do work in the same fields as men, attorneys for example, they tend to do so in different capacities. The propensity for women to be attorneys at law firms which handle large work loads which demand long hours working on cases, or clients that require spontaneous attention is low. But civil law and working for governments and other companies where 9-5 hours are all that is necessary, the propensity is higher. So even while working in the same field, the pay, when simply looking at the bottom figure, is going to show men more often at the highest earnings. A survey of people whose earnings were in the top 6% showed that 63% of those worked more than 50 hours per week, and 35% worked more than 60. Those numbers are hard to put up when caring for children. In fact of the jobs classified as extreme hours and stress, women make up less than one fifth of those employed in those positions(4). A follow up study of mathematically gifted young students who are now in their thirties, showed that higher proportion of women than men working less than 40 hours per week, and a higher proportion of men than women working more than 50 hours per week(5). The long hour high stress careers do not seem to be as attractive to women as they are to men.
It’s simply not accurate to cite a bottom line figure as it can be highly misleading. In fact college educated, never married, with no children, ages 40-64 men's salary average is $40,000 while their women counterparts average $47,000(6). A 2001 survey of Harvard Business School graduates discovered among the women from classes 1981, 1985, and 1991, 31% currently at the time of the study, worked part time and another 31% did not work at all(7). A study of graduates from the University of Michigan Law School found a similar pattern to the hours worked and overall income:
“the gap in pay between men and women was relatively small at the outset of their careers, but 15 years later, women graduates only earned 60% as much as men. Some of this difference reflected choices which workers had made, including the propensity of women lawyers to work shorter hours.” (8)
Another study discovered that the gender gap in pay is 5% for part time workers age 21-35 without children, 3% at full time without children, and there is no gap for full time workers with no children who live alone(9).
Part time jobs produce less total income for obvious reasons, less hours equals less pay. But part time jobs also have much less chances for promotions and advancement. Part time workers generally speaking are there to work a job for extra money, not to build a career. While there are exceptions to every rule, such as intentions of making full time hours. The norm is part time work is just that, and there has always been more women than men in part time work(10). The New England Journal of medicine found:
“In 1990, young male physicians earned 41% more per year than young female physicians….However, after adjusting for differences in specialty, practice setting, and other characteristics, no earnings difference was found”(11).
The young male physicians in this particular study had worked more than 500 hours a year more than did the female physicians(12). This trend of more hours worked by men is consistent throughout the work force. The per hour pay difference when comparing same occupation and industry is 6.2 cents(13).
Children and families result in fewer hours worked for women and the exact opposite for men. A 2001 study by the American Economic Review discovered at ages 25-44, which are the prime ages for career development and advancement, 34% of women with children under the age of 6 were not currently working. 30% of women who were employed were so part time compared with 11% of women with no children. Conversely among men, the presence of children was associated with an increase of work involvement. Only 4% of men with children under the age of 6 were out of work, and among those men working only 2% were so in a part time capacity(14).
We all know a politician’s chief job is to get themselves elected, which is only due to their second most important job of getting re-elected. Lamont misused a well known and much misrepresented statistic to make a promise to right a non-existent wrong. I think this tactic is common place among opportunistic politicians of either party, and all too often people will not fact check information. They neither have the desire nor the time it might take to do so. All this being said, to be charitable to Mr. Lamont, it is entirely possible that he is mistaken and has been taken in by a number he thought was an accurate representation of the pay gap between genders. So while I personally believe Mr. Lamont knows the misrepresentation, I am willing to grant him a misunderstanding, since the information above is readily available to anyone who wants to investigate for the sake of truth, but is a common fallacy and one most people do not fully understand.
1) U.S Bureau of the Census, Evidence from Census 2000 About Earnings for Men and Women. Census 2000 Special Reports, May 2004, p. 10; U.S Bureau of the Census, We the People: Women and Men in the United States, Census 2000 Special Reports, January 2005, p. 11.
2) Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba, Women’s Figures, 1999 edition, p. 33.
3) Thomas B. Hoffer, et al., Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities: Summary Report 2005 (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, Univ. Chicago, 2006), p. 13
4) Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce, “Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70 Hour Workweek,” Harvard Business Review, December 2006, pp. 50, 51, 56, 57.
5) David Lubinski and Camilla Persson Benbow, “Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth After 35 Years,” Perspectives on Psychological Science. December 2006, p. 332
6) Warren Farrell, Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap and What Women Can Do About It (New York: Amacom, 2005), p. xxiii
7) Louise Story, “Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood,” New York Times September 20, 2005 p. A18
8) Francine D. Blau and Lawerence M. Kahn, “Gender Differences in Pay” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Autumn 2000, p. 83
9) Anita Hattiangadi and Amy M. Habib, A Closer Look at Comparable Worth, second edition (Washington: Employment Policy Foundation, 2000), p. 43
10) Donald Williams, “Women’s Part Time Employment: A Gross Flows Analysis” Monthly Labor Review, April 1995, p. 97
11) Laurence C. Baker, “Differences in Earnings Between Male and Female Physicians,” The New England Journal of Medicine, April 11, 1996, p. 960
12) Ibid., p. 962
13) Howard J. Wall, “The Gender Gap and Wage Discrimination” Illusion or Reality?” The Regional Economist, October 2000, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, pp. 10-11
14) June O’Neill, “The Gender Gap in Wages, circa 2000,” American Economic Review, May 2003, p. 310
