Thanks to Mint.com Blog
My notes:
Thanks to Bucksome Boomer for kicking my ass into gear to write this:
I am not surprised by the numbers, although there are factors that contribute to this:
1. Women’s work is not LESS valued, they’re just cheaper, and as a result, in more demand than we think, just based on cost alone.
Managers are smart, rational people.
If they see a woman at $40,000 a year, and a man asking for $60,000 a year, they won’t just pick on gender alone.
Sometimes it’s just economics and what will save the company money, considering that women can and will do the same job as a men.
2. Women don’t tend to enter fields that pay more money — they shy away from IT, math, sciences, engineering, finance… all things that are typically considered “male” occupations.
They’re encouraged to become teachers, designers, nurses, go into marketing, etc. I am not saying those are bad occupations or that they cannot make good money there, it’s just reality.
3. Women aren’t expected to be career women, and/or they’re out of the workforce for quite long and have to start at the bottom rung again.
It’s just that men are expected to work their whole lives and not take time off to care for their kids. I am not saying it’s a bad thing if a man stays at home, or if a woman stays at home, but boys grow up with the expectation of working their whole lives.
4. Along the lines of not being career women, we also don’t put in the hours it takes at a job.
Simply put, we don’t want to and would value our time more than money, and it isn’t our priority.
5. We don’t know how to negotiate or fight.
I had to learn all of that very quickly in the past 5 years on how to ask for more money, be more assertive, confident and to feel valued — because I am. That is not something that is taught to girls at a young age, because you always hear something like: “And what man will want you for a wife if you are going to act like that?”
Along the same lines, we aren’t expected to negotiate or fight.
I always get guff from brokers (mostly men, actually) who feel that I should just be happy getting what I get per hour, even if it’s $20/hour less than what a man would charge.
Not only because I’m a woman, but because I am young.
I don’t buy or subscribe to that stereotypical BS, and I stay firm on what I expect as a rate.
If they want me, they’ll take me, and most of the time when I’ve asked for what I wanted and was not persuaded or swayed to take less money, I’ve gotten it.
So to be honest, we kind of get what we deserve.
If we don’t ask for anything, we won’t be given raises.
If we don’t want to put in the hours to make it at that job, then we don’t deserve the salary that goes with it.
(It can be a choice too, because when I worked for a company, I CHOSE not to be a manager whose work consumes her life. I specifically did not want to rise in the ranks.)
If we decide to stay at home, we cannot expect to pop back into the workforce after 15 years at the same salary and value. We start at the bottom, just like any PERSON would, being out of the workforce for so long.
If we decide to work and try to do the work-life balance thing, we cannot expect to earn more money if we don’t ask our husbands and partners don’t help out as well, to balance the workload, or if we simply feel like we should be able to do it all.
That being said, I know women do get paid $0.75 on the $1.00, but it makes me wonder if any of the above factors don’t help contribute significantly to WHY we get paid less.
I also don’t believe in getting the job just because of race/ethnicity and gender, to fulfill some silly diversity quota.
As a manager, I’d want the person who is the best for the job, and if a man has been working his whole life, putting in the hours (and perhaps neglecting his family), asking for raises, and doing what it takes, I am going to pick his resume and his skills over a woman who hasn’t done the same thing.
It may not seem fair at first glance, but take out the gender-specific pronouns or swap them, and see if you feel differently about the above situation.
Even just looking at the graph, you can see the salary differences between races of a single gender, so gender isn’t the biggest factor in why we get paid less.
A very interesting topic indeed.
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
Now I am self-employed, and you can read more about 
I am also interested in the differences in income/networth/retirement as they are related to gender/race.
If you are interested I believe Charles Schwab does an annual report comparing black and white investors.
I want to read up more about it.
But not just black/white. I’d like to see East Asian in there, and other races.
Hey FB 🙂
This one line got to me a bit: "I also don’t believe in getting the job just because of race/ethnicity and gender, to fulfill some SILLY diversity quota." (emphasis mine)
I'll assume you don't think diversity in and of itself is silly (?) just requiring certain numbers is.
Still, I don't think people should ignore the factors that lead to certain people being more qualified or having more access to certain jobs. The easiest way, I think, to explain this is the concept of legacy admission. If your mom/grandma/dad/grandpa went to a certain college (or worked at a certain company) then it's easier for you to get in to the school (or get the job).
But it wasn't that long ago that people of certain races and genders weren't allowed into certain companies/schools so they don't have that extra benefit. Without accounting for that, or keeping that in mind, certain people are always at a disadvantage.
No, you hit it on the head — I don’t think that diversity itself is silly, but I don’t believe in women or men being hired of any ethnicity or race JUST BECAUSE they don’t have someone on staff of that background.
That’s all I meant. 🙂
I think those are the reasons why women get paid less. However, the problem is that people make certain assumptions based on the stereotype of a female worker the moment they see a woman's name on the resume. Employers often assume that a young woman will spend less time on the job and quit after a few years when she has kids. That may be the case for many, but there are also many women out there (self-included) who have no intention of having children and there are certainly more than a few single or otherwise more involved dads out there.
Also, it really bugs me how women have been pushed into certain careers. I remember when I was young and I wanted to be a lawyer as I love debating and logic and even seeing how contracts can be read different ways. I'd probably make a great contract lawyer. But whenever I said anything about wanting to be a lawyer people said stuff like, "Now, good little girls like you shouldn't say such things! You don't want to be a lawyer!" No joke! And if I wanted to work on computers I couldn't because the guys were always hogging them and they or someone else would tell me that was more a guy thing and not something I'd be interested.
Instead I was told that I should be a teacher. Everyone wanted me to become a teacher even though the pay sucks here (last time I checked it starts at under $30k a year and doesn't go up much more than that). Everyone told me how great a job it was for women because "You get summers off with your kids!" It didn't matter that I didn't want kids, either. Everyone kept telling me that would change (it hasn't and didn't for my older sister, either). I even started going on the assumption that it would and probably would have had children just because it was expected had I not gotten out of that place.
As for teacher pay, in a class I took on the history of U.S. education, we discussed how teaching became a female field. Men were originally teachers and they were better educated at the time and could teach professionally for many years. Women, on the other hand, could only work a few years before they got married (and were very much chaperoned until then). They were young, inexperienced, and not highly educated. So how did teaching become a woman's job? The primary sources are very enlightening. It is pretty clear that communities pushed for female teachers for one reason, principally: they were much, much cheaper. And they didn't feel bad about that because they knew it was just a short-term job for extra cash before a woman settled down.
Unfortunately, that attitude still persists today. I remember back home when people would bring up the issue of teacher pay in our community. It seemed like there was always someone who'd chime in, "Well, that's what they have husbands for!" Never mind that that shouldn't even matter or that not all teachers were married and that many were struggling to provide for families after losing a husband! And of those who didn't bring up the husband argument, most would bring up children and say how good it is for the women to have a similar schedule to their children.
Anyhow, looking back I realize just how strong the social forces were on me back home. And it was hard to see and argue with. I was just a kid at the time and I didn't know any better. It's hard to see things are wrong when everyone around you says the same thing, even your family. But now I wish that I had spent more time studying other things. I'm trying to now, but it's hard to catch up.
Everyone wanted me to become a teacher.
I didn’t know what I wanted, so that was my career for a long time in my head until I realized I had other choices.
No one wants a girl to be fussing with chemicals or hard stuff.. and it’s just SILLY to misdirect so much potential from both sides.
Men aren’t pushed into being anything, but if they wanted to be fashion designers and were straight, it’s a looked down upon profession for them as well.
Well, this is really a case of the chicken or the egg, right?
So women take time off for their kids and don't negotiate, but the societal expectations are such that she is labeled a bad mother or a bitch if she strays from those norms. What's more telling, I think, is that women of child-bearing age are automatically paid less because of an expectation that she will be taking time off for kids. This isn't an issue of a woman's choice – we are pushed toward certain choices and are penalized for those things whether we do them or not.
In my experience, though, this isn't always a problem. I'm in a male-dominated field, and I'm paid the same as a man would be paid. I negotiated, and my boss specifically told me to. That said, I feel an enormous amount of pressure to be great – not just for myself, but because there are only 2 full-time female engineers in my group (of about 14 people) and I feel like I have to be the poster child for females.
Yes. Agreed. I negotiate to get what I want, but many women don’t want to, or don’t know how to.
I also feel like a poster child myself. Or that people are harder on me because I’m a girl, and I’m not supposed to know about computers at all.
Good, realistic commentary in my view, FB.
The only thing I'd disagree a bit with is the 'sad to say' comment…
If a woman is truly as qualified as a man, doing the same job just as well, and isn't being paid the same because of her gender, then that's not just sad – it's a disgrace in 2010.
HOWEVER if *some/many* women are choosing not to make work/careers the focus of their life, and are getting more time at home, or more time with their children, or all kinds of other benefits that don't show up in the income per year measure, then I'd say it's a good think that society now offers this flexibility for people, personally.
Cheers!
Good point. I was too light on the choice of words.
You didn't add any commentary so what are your thoughts on the graphic? The difference between racial groups wasn't surprising (although not good). I found it interesting that the figures for Asian Americans only start at 2002.
It was impactful to see the difference between men and women of every race. Is that become more women are out of the work force or because their work is not as valued? I don't have an answer or solution but there's still a problem.
I too, found it interesting that they only started tracking Asians in 2002.
I am not surprised by the numbers, although there are factors that contribute to this:
1. Women’s work is not LESS valued, they’re just cheaper, and as a result, in more demand than we think, just based on cost alone
2. Women don’t tend to enter fields that pay more money — they shy away from IT, math, sciences, engineering, finance… all things that are typically considered “male” occupations. They’re encouraged to become teachers, designers, nurses, go into marketing, etc. I am not saying those are bad occupations or that they cannot make good money there, it’s just reality.
3. Women aren’t expected to be career women, and/or they’re out of the workforce for quite long and have to start at the bottom rung again. It’s just that men are expected to work their whole lives and not take time off to care for their kids. I am not saying it’s a bad thing if a man stays at home, or if a woman stays at home, but boys grow up with the expectation of working their whole lives.
4. Along the lines of not being career women, we also don’t put in the hours it takes at a job. Simply put, we don’t want to and would value our time more than money, and it isn’t our priority.
5. We don’t know how to negotiate or fight. I had to learn all of that very quickly in the past 5 years on how to ask for more money, be more assertive, confident and to feel valued — because I am. That is not something that is taught to girls at a young age, because you always hear something like: “And what man will want you for a wife if you are going to act like that?”
So to be honest, we kind of get what we deserve.
If we don’t ask for anything, we won’t be given raises.
If we don’t want to put in the hours to make it at that job, then we don’t deserve the salary that goes with it. (It can be a choice too, like for me. I CHOOSE not to become a manager whose work consumes her life)
If we decide to stay at home, we cannot expect to pop back into the workforce after 15 years at the same salary and value. We start at the bottom, just like any PERSON would, being out of the workforce for so long.
If we decide to work and try to do the work-life balance thing, we cannot expect to earn more money if we don’t ask our husbands and partners don’t help out as well, to balance the workload, or if we simply feel like we should be able to do it all.
That being said, I know women do get paid $0.75 on the $1.00, but it makes me wonder if any of the above factors don’t help contribute significantly to WHY we get paid less.
Even just looking at the graph, you can see the salary differences between races of a single gender.
A very interesting topic indeed.