Back when I started college in 1999, I repeatedly heard the statistic that women earned $0.75 for every $1.00 men earned.
The articles I read seemed to suggest that the mere act of being born with a vagina entitled employers to a 25% discount for my services.
Why should I get paid less money than a man with the same level of experience and the same job duties? It just didn’t make sense. There had to be another explanation.
As a black woman, there are several cards I can play when I suspect I’m being treated unfairly. The two most obvious ones are:
- You’re-Just-Treating-Me-This-Way-Because-I’m-Black! Card
- You’d-Never-Treat-Me-This-Way-If-I-Were-A-Guy! Card
I try to save my Black Card and Woman Card for times when they’re really worth playing. By doing so, I focus on the “shortcomings” that I control.
After all, there’s nothing I want to change or feasibly can change about my race or my sex.
Although the gender pay gap is closing, it’s still unsettling that women earn considerably less money than their male counterparts.
So, what are the real reasons men are paid higher wages than women?
By taking a close look at the answer to this question, perhaps we can discover how to increase our incomes by doing what the boys do.
Here are five reasons why men out earn women.
Good Ol’ Fashioned Sexism
Let’s get this out of the way first so that we can move on to the fun stuff.
There are some people who believe, consciously or subconsciously, that men are more adept. And as a result, these people conclude men deserve more money. I know, it’s frustrating.
It’s also frustrating that unattractive people, short people, and overweight people receive salaries lower than those who are the opposite of all those things. Such is life.
To the extent you have the desire to fight these injustices at the macro level, you should.
Side Note: Ever wonder how all of this gender pay discrimination can take place when the human resource profession is dominated by women? I’m just saying – it’s peculiar, is all.
Women Tend to Shy Away from Higher Paying Professions
Women typically gravitate towards fields that don’t pay well, e.g., social work, child care, administrative, and primary and secondary education.
If earning a relatively substantial income is important to you, you have to follow the money.
For a while, the money has been in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) related occupations.
Females comprise only about 12% of all engineers, yet it’s one of the best-paying and fastest-growing fields. Only 6.3% of engineering managers are women, and they make a median of $1,752 each week, or about $91,000 per year. From aerospace and chemical engineers to computer software and civil engineers, women are in the minority. – Forbes.com
Of course you could theorize that salaries would take a nosedive if significantly more women targeted STEM careers.
In which case, we’d have to ask “why?” And the question may not be easily answered with “sexism.”
A better question is, why do women allow themselves to get paid less than they’re worth? Which brings us to my next point.
Women Don’t Negotiate
Our fear of haggling impairs both our current and future earnings.
It’s important to negotiate as high a salary as possible at the beginning of your career because it follows you throughout your profession.
Have you ever noticed that when you’re applying for a new job, your prospective employer asks how much you were paid at your previous employer(s)?
It may seem irrelevant, but I actually think the question is fair. If your last employer thought you were worth only $40K a year, then why on earth should I pay you $80K?
Women also don’t ask for salary increases nearly as often as men. According to CareerBuilder.com, “men ask for raises 85 percent more often than women do.”
Ye have not, because ye ask not.
Women Work Fewer Hours
I don’t know which sex is more productive at work, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s assume men and women spend an equal percentage of their work day on Facebook.
Okay, this factoid might sting a little bit, but here goes: Men spend more hours at work than women.
Full-time working men of my northern North American neighbor spend 3.7 hours more per week than the ladies. (Thanks for pointing this out, Canada.)
That means you may not even be able to fairly compare the salaries of men and women who are doing the same job.
For instance, if a woman works 45 hours a week and her salary is $50K a year, while a man, with the same job title, works 49 hours a week and gets paid $55K a year, the disparity in pay isn’t as large as it would be if they were working the same number of hours.
Plus, politicking plays a role in your compensation and upward career mobility.
If your colleague comes in earlier than you and leaves later, unless he’s picking his toenails in the morning and his nose in the evening, he’ll likely give the impression that he’s more dedicated to the company’s success than you.
Appearances matter.
Women Spend Less Time in the Work Force
Women are far more likely than men to leave the workforce to take care of children or ailing loved ones. These are noble and often necessary causes to put your career on hold.
Unfortunately, doing so will cost you more than the pay you forego while you’re not working. When you’re on a career hiatus, you’re generally not securing promotions, getting raises, developing new skills, or doing other activities that increase your marketability.
Since women remain largely responsible for the burden/joy of caring for others who can’t care for themselves, we have to plan.
One solution is to seek out working arrangements that allow us to earn a good living and work from home.
While attending a DC Tech Meetup last week, I met Ryan Seashore, founder of CodeNow. CodeNow is a non-profit organization that helps underrepresented youth – many of them girls – learn computer programming.
Mr. Seashore believes computer programming is one such skill that women can use to generate income from home as their families grow.
I think it’s awesome that more opportunities are opening up for women (and men) to fulfill their longing to financially support their families without having to spend as much time away from them.
Even though sexism is the cause for a portion of the wage gap between the sexes, it certainly isn’t the only cause.
What else can women do to earn their worth in the workplace?
Shawanda Greene is a free thinking, frugal gal whose only vices are boxed wine, lip balm and money grubbing. You can find more of Shawanda's musings at 
I sure am real. Shall I tell you all about Betty Goldstein/Friedan’s Communist background, too?
Please don’t.
WHY MEN SHOULD HAVE
THE JOBS
Everyone these days
accepts the idea that women should have equal job rights with men.
But this view is entirely fallacious. There are sound reasons why men
should be given preference over women in the job market. A man cannot
attract a woman as a mate unless he has a job to provide for her and
her children. But a woman can attract a man by offering her sexual
services and her reproductive capacity. He must have the job to get
married; she can get married without the job. A man’s money
strengthens the marriage and the family; the woman’s money weakens
it. When a man is supporting a family, the child grows up with two
parents. The male children have a role model to aspire to. The woman,
being dependent on her husband’s pay check, has an incentive to
stay married and function as a home maker. When the woman has the job
and the money, she can reproduce on her own with the father absent.
The social consequences are disastrous. Single mothers generate male
criminals by the bushel. Even when the woman does marry, her economic
independence enables her to file for divorce without fear of the
consequences. Thus, marriage exists at the woman’s whim. It ceases
to be the bedrock of society.
There are additional
problems caused by giving women the jobs. Women like to marry up;
women like to marry down. Marriages where the wife out earns the
husband have a considerably higher divorce rate than marriages where
the husband out earns the wife. When women must marry down, the usual
consequence is an increased divorce rate with increased chances of
spousal abuse. Women pursuing careers tend to suppress their
reproduction to climb the corporate ladder. Despite maternity leave,
women know that corporations do not like maternity disruptions. The
old “family wage” system of paying a man enough to support a
family encouraged reproduction. The woman could raise the children
without the extra burden of working at an office.
In short, giving
women job equality is theoretically wrong and has proved disastrous
in practice. Few realize that driving women out of the home and into
the job market under the pretense of “liberation” has always been
basic Marxism. When the industrial revolution began women demanded
that employers pay their husbands sufficient wages to allow women to
stay home and raise the children. It was Marx and Engel’s and their
disciples who wished to destroy the system to make women members of
the working class. Today, the old Marxist ideal has been achieved by
the capitalist wage-slave system. Both husband and wife must work to
afford what they used to have on one pay check. Women have achieved
proletarian equality by enraging their men folk. The family has been
destroyed and sex roles have faded into oblivion. Neither men nor
women have benefited from this process. But one red-haired Khazar who
writes of “The End of Men” in the Atlantic Monthly, knows
precisely who has really won.
Are you real?
You deserve less money because you don’t have to pay child support or alimony to an automatic custody father or give away everything you own in men take all divorce court. You can have the equal pay when you want the equal expenses. End of issue.
You left out the part where employers ASSUME that you will take off time for childcare, no matter how many times you insist that your husband already plans to do that.
I agree about asking for a raise, definitely!
In the two years I’ve been working, I’ve asked for a raise twice, and gotten it twice. Even though I work for my family, I still had to prove I was worth it- I work twice as hard as anyone else just to validate being in my position. The first year I didn’t get what I wanted, but what I did get was still considerable. In December of last year I asked for an amount I thought I was worth, and that’s what they gave me, no questions asked. Since I’m adding more value now and am taking on bigger duties this year (HR and quality control on top of accounting), I’ll be asking for an even higher raise this year, and have already been told that if my work stays at the same quality, I will be paid more in 2013.
If you don’t ask, your employer won’t know you want a raise- but conversely, if you aren’t adding value to the employer and taking on more responsibility or meeting/exceeding your objectives, they will see no reason to pay you more and may very well laugh you out of their office.