Wage Gender Gap

[gilbertrollins]

*tumbleweed rolls across the forum*

 

So let's have a chat.  The St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank notes that the wage gender gap has been in significant decline for thirty years.  http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/es/11/ES1125.pdf

 

Discuss.

[mbrown0315]

When I visited UChicago I was told that all but one of the female tenured faculty members are childless. I can't confirm this independently and I don't know how much UChicago soc faculty are earning, but it does seem to conform to Kay Hymowitz's somewhat recent piece "The Plight of the Alpha Female." The gender gap (when properly assessed) may be shrinking quickly, but it won't be disappearing as long as the motherhood gap is part of it.

[amlobo]

Interesting articles, both.  Mbrown's brings up the point that I always notice when assessing the "gender gap" in my current profession - men and women start out "equal", but as you go up the ranks, the gap emerges and widens.  I have been an attorney for 4 years, and I think the law is a particularly odd profession in regards to the gender gap.  More than half of law students are female, and I think at my law school, it was bordering on 60% female by the time I graduated.  I would say that half of incoming associates at big firms are female.  But, exactly as the article points out, as the associates climb the ranks, the women drop out.  So, by the time you get up to the equity partners, women are scarce.  And, this isn't a phenomenon related to the qualifications of women but rather the result of conscious choices of the women themselves - though, granted, choices imposed upon them due to the working conditions of their chosen fields.  

 

One of the most intelligent, accomplished, and driven women I knew in law school left her job at a big firm to be a stay-at-home mom.  She could have easily excelled in her career but chose her family over work since her husband was also an attorney at a big firm and could support the family on his salary alone.  Another woman I know was already planning her future career based on which firms offered part-time positions, so she could have children.  And, countless others went to smaller firms or government jobs because of the benefits and family leave they offered.  I also was in law school with a woman who was going back to brush up on the law because she was returning to practice after 18 years at home with her children.  It's a well-known "practice" in the law for women to work at big firms for a few years, then "transition" to much lower-paying jobs as in-house counsel or in the government because the hours are better.

 

So, I see the motherhood aspect as the major factor preventing women from rising in these fields - not because women are being slighted in some way, but because women want to have children and will often sacrifice their career goals to be what they see as a "better" mother.  I think it's unfortunate that higher earning careers are often the more demanding ones, and women who want children feel forced into making a decision between their careers and their children.  

 

But, how to address that particular gap is an interesting query.  Do we change the career culture?  Or perhaps societal expectations that women are the parent who should stay home?  I'm genuinely interested to hear what people think

[gilbertrollins]

Apparently there is evidence that men who try to do early-childhood staying at home or flex time take a hit in salary disproportionate to the actual time they took off. 

To the degree that making any choice incurs costs, all choices by amlobo's language "force" people.  What's particularly interesting about career choices and motherhood, is that we might be tempted to see mothering as a duty, right, or social obligation for which women should be duly compensated for.  This logic would deny, though, that on the other hand the choice not to become pregnant, that is the choice to abort a pregnancy, is fiercly defended by advocates of choice.  There seems to be a contradiction in this logic, where we view a planned and wanted baby as a duty, burden, or obligation, and an unplanned and unwanted baby as a fluid choice of a free agent. 

 

It would be interesting to see if we could come up with an observational or experimental criterion to measure whether women self-select out of time-abolishing career paths into top-tier administration because of the time constraints, or to what degree they are deliberately selected against by boards of directors.  I suspect that raw, macro-level descriptive statistics about the number of women in these roles do not tell a complete story. 

 

Overall I find that the degree to which significant portions of academics violently argue that there exists massive discrimination against women in the labor market is unsupported by the data.

Edited April 16, 2013 by econosocio

[AaronM]

We're in luck! While experimental studies are rare in sociology, there is indeed a study that uses experimental methods to test women's career aspirations and expectations. 

 

http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1224%28200402%2969%3A1%3C93%3ACIPGSA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O&

 

Under the belief that men are better at certain tasks, women tend to perform worse than their male counterparts. However, under the belief that both genders perform equally, there are no sex differences in performance. So women might be sorting out of male dominated occupations because they believe that men are better at them, leading them to perform worse on average. I'm not sure if they've done this, but it would be interesting to see perceived sex differences in performance between women in male-dominated occupations and female-dominated occupations. I would expect that the belief that men are "better" at their job is more prevalent in male-dominated occupations than female-dominated occupations, and given that male-dominated occupations pay better, this might be an important mechanism explaining the gender gap.

[gilbertrollins]

Women and men definitely sort into different careers based on gender identity.  I believe gender scholars are calling this job segregation -- a term which is I think extroardinarily innapropriate considering actual segregation was a state policy enforced violently against American Blacks.  People sort into myriad bins socially, in terms of the organizations they join and identities they adopt thus.  On the definition of "job segregation" we can start to define just about any social sorting as discriminatory segretation. 

 

There is quite a bit of contention, as I understand it, in behavioral economics and social psychology about the degree to which cuing people in terms of their gender or racial identity can influence their performance on standardized tests and things.  One related, and often-repeated result, from an experiment where subjects were cued to think about "old things," and then reportedly walked down the hallyway away from the experiment on average more slowly than those who had not -- has been shown to be wrong.  The magnitude of difference was vanishingly small and could have happened at random. 

 

I haven't read the paper Aaron linked, but the points that he, amblobo, and mbrown made seem to be the last remaining explanations for the aggregate wage gender gap -- women have children; and women choose different jobs than men.  I think this is compelling evidence that the era of deliberate discrimination against women in the labor market is largely over -- I could be persuaded otherwise on more argument. 

Edited April 16, 2013 by econosocio

[ohgoodness]

I haven't read the paper Aaron linked, but the points that he and mbrown made seem to be the last remaining explanations for the aggregate wage gender gap -- women have children; and women choose different jobs than men.  I think this is compelling evidence that the era of deliberate discrimination against women in the labor market is largely over -- I could be persuaded otherwise on more argument.

 

Reading is good for you.  There is compelling evidence that the era of deliberate discrimination against women is as commonplace today as 20 years ago.  Statistical discrimination is to me 100% deliberate. 

 

Mandel, H., and Semyonov, M. Family policy, wage structures, and gender gaps: Sources of earnings inequality in 20 countries. Am. Sociol. Rev. 70:949–967, 2005.

 

Datta Gupta, N., and Smith, N. Children and Career Interruptions: The Family Gap in Denmark. Discussion Papers 263. Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, 2001.

 

Mandel, H., and Semyonov, M. A welfare state paradox: State interventions and women’s employment opportunities in 22 countries. Am. J. Sociol. 111(6):1910–1949, 2006.

 

Misra, J., Budig, M. J., and Moller, S. Work-family policies and poverty for partnered and single women in Europe and North America. Gend. Soc. 21(6):804–827, 2007

 

Aisenbrey, Silke, Marie Evertsson and Daniela Grunow. 2009. ”Is there a Career Penalty for Mothers’ Time Out? A Comparison of Germany, Sweden and the United States.” Social Forces 88: 573-606. (34 p.)

 

or this one, which is a classic in my world, No Exit, No Voice: Women's Economic Dependency and the Welfare State

 

or just this simple ppt: http://db.tt/cl0GDaDz

 

Edited April 16, 2013 by ohgoodness

[Palito]

Aside from the Motherhood penalty, one might look at stagnation in US wages over the past 30 - 40 years as it coincides with the reconstitution of the American labor force. In other words, how much of this the wage reduction is the result of downward pressure on men's wages? What are the most common jobs for women and what does pay look like for all in that occupational market?

 

Also, in Liquidation: an Ethnography of Wall Street, Karen Ho shows  that women and people of color working in Wall Street are differently sorted into less prestigious and less high paying "front office" jobs because the culture of performing task successfully in these positions grants preference to white males with a specific kind of cultural capital (pp.107-121). Ho goes on to show that there is a substantive gap in pay for women and people of color on Wall Street. So at least in that specific field of investment banking, we have data that provokes us to consider that gender discrimination can be revealed through means other than looking at aggregate data on wages. 

 

On the apparent contradiction of choice: the "choice" to carry a baby to term and commit oneself to raising that baby is considerably different than the "choice" to pursue a career, or to work generally. In the first place, nobody is a fluid free agent making a simple rational decision about things. It's just more complex than that. The "choice" to carry a fetus to term and raise a child results from a biological precondition; the "choice" of being in the workforce stems from social preconditions. Many women don't have the choice to not work. They might be single, they might have partners who cannot earn as much money as they can and have little other choice to become the breadwinner. A woman might choose to work even though she has a child, as my sister has done, or she may have to work out of concern for providing for her family, as my partner did for the first year of our sons lives, or she may abstain from motherhood because she feels she must make a choice between a career or a child. Part of the issue here is that the culture of work in the US promotes long hours, which conflicts with living a full family life. Child-rearing is a serious and worthy endeavor that has a significant impact on the character of future citizens and laborers. Other informal tasks and roles have been subsumed into the economic order. Why not compensate motherhood for its economic contributions?

[mbrown0315]

I have not yet breached the JSTOR paywall, but it looks like the study AaronM cited deals with stereotype threat. My understanding is that the jury is still out on how much stereotype threat can explain various achievement gaps.

 

 

Reading is good for you.  There is compelling evidence that the era of deliberate discrimination against women is as commonplace today as 20 years ago.  Statistical discrimination is to me 100% deliberate. 

 

Mandel, H., and Semyonov, M. Family policy, wage structures, and gender gaps: Sources of earnings inequality in 20 countries. Am. Sociol. Rev. 70:949–967, 2005.

 

Datta Gupta, N., and Smith, N. Children and Career Interruptions: The Family Gap in Denmark. Discussion Papers 263. Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, 2001.

 

Mandel, H., and Semyonov, M. A welfare state paradox: State interventions and women’s employment opportunities in 22 countries. Am. J. Sociol. 111(6):1910–1949, 2006.

 

Misra, J., Budig, M. J., and Moller, S. Work-family policies and poverty for partnered and single women in Europe and North America. Gend. Soc. 21(6):804–827, 2007

 

Aisenbrey, Silke, Marie Evertsson and Daniela Grunow. 2009. ”Is there a Career Penalty for Mothers’ Time Out? A Comparison of Germany, Sweden and the United States.” Social Forces 88: 573-606. (34 p.)

 

or this one, which is a classic in my world, No Exit, No Voice: Women's Economic Dependency and the Welfare State

 

or just this simple ppt: http://db.tt/cl0GDaDz

 

 

Key line from the second Mandel study you cited (which is very similar to the first): "Although we cannot empirically separate employer discrimination from women’s employment preferences, we have suggested that the two are interrelated and jointly have detrimental consequences for women’s occupational achievements."

 

I think it's a bit awkward to claim that a woman's "employment preferences" could be "detrimental" to her "occupational achievements," but I guess you could claim that these employment preferences are driven in part by beliefs about employer discrimination (if I believe there's a glass ceiling, I'm going to prefer a more modest career path) and are, therefore, not true preferences. I think the Mandel studies deal quite a lot with "statistical discrimination" and how it relates to family-friendly policies that are uniquely intended for women (if I'm an employer and believe women are going to take more time off than men are after having children, I'll be more inclined to hire men). Personally, I find this to be a difficult subject.

 

On the one hand, it's tragic when a woman is not hired just because there is some suspicion that her having a child will lead to her taking paid time off. On the other hand, that might be a reasonable suspicion, and if I'm a small business owner, I might think it's my prerogative to use that information when considering whom to hire. It's easy to talk about family-friendly policies at Fortune 500 companies, but if we're talking about businesses in general, then it's important to acknowledge that owners of smaller-scale enterprises may have legitimate concerns about hiring women that are not rooted in misogyny per se.

 

Regarding the Gupta study, doesn't it acknowledge that childbirth leads to "loss of human capital accumulation"? How does this relate to deliberate discrimination? Again, I can't access it, so I apologize if I'm misrepresenting it. I'm just going on the abstract.

 

Regarding the Aisenbrey study, can this be called deliberate discrimination? I get that it's unpleasant, but is there no basis whatsoever to issuing a "career penalty" to someone (man or woman) who takes a long break from the job? Again, I understand that it's unfortunate, but if it's an economic liability, it's useful information. All of the childless alpha females I've ever met have understood this perfectly well. They passed on children because they seemed to understand that having children is going to take you away from the job and raising them is going to keep you away unless you find a man who's willing to spend more time at home or find a nice daycare that will raise the kids for you.

[mbrown0315]

Why not compensate motherhood for its economic contributions?

 

Who would be doing the compensating?

[Palito]

Who compensates parents in Germany?

[mbrown0315]

How does it work in Germany? You get financial assistance for kids regardless of how wealthy you are?

[ohgoodness]

 All of the childless alpha females I've ever met have understood this perfectly well. They passed on children because they seemed to understand that having children is going to take you away from the job and raising them is going to keep you away unless you find a man who's willing to spend more time at home or find a nice daycare that will raise the kids for you.

 

Thus in logic you state that men are able to become parents without incurring any form of penalty,  actually becoming a parent tends to be correlated with increased occupational attainment for various reasons, whereas women are stuck between a rock and a hard place.  One of the aspects of discrimination (one of many) is that there is virtually zero support within most companies and workplaces, along with zero institutional support for  that enable men to see and take the decision to stay at home.  The motherhood penalty is not a question of individual agency but the result and artefact of socio-cultural and structural factors. 

 

Who compensates parents in Germany?

 

 

14 weeks (100%) 6 before birth, 12/14 months (65%, but not more than 1.800 Euro/month) (14 only for single mothers)^{[citation needed]} 84% 12/14 months (65%, but not more than 1.800 Euro/month) (14 only for single mothers/fathers or if both mothers and fathers take parental leave, so called "partner months") Until child turns 3 Until child turns 3 Must have public health insurance for part of paid leave, rest of paid leave paid by employer

Edited April 16, 2013 by ohgoodness

[Eigen]

Part of the difficulty in assessing the difference between child-raising as the determining factor, irrespective of gender, and it being a distinctly gender-biased phenomenon is that there is a much smaller sample size of dedicated stay at home fathers who have left high paying jobs. 

 

With a smaller sample size, it's harder to compare the effects. 

 

That said, I'd say (empirically) that there's even more of a societal pressure against giving up a "good" job as a man for a more family-friendly one than there is for a woman. Take paternity leave vs maternity leave- very few countries or institutions balance these two. 

 

So then the question, at least to me, becomes "Is it all about financial compensation?"

 

In other words, obviously a choice is being made to take a job that is less financially rewarding, but is at the same time less demanding, perhaps less stressful, and more flexible. 

 

I would say a parallel could be drawn between, say, an academic position (which pays less but has less defined hours and more flexibility) and an industry position (higher pay, but more stress and less flexibility), irrespective of gender.

[ohgoodness]

Part of the difficulty in assessing the difference between child-raising as the determining factor, irrespective of gender, and it being a distinctly gender-biased phenomenon is that there is a much smaller sample size of dedicated stay at home fathers who have left high paying jobs. 

 

With a smaller sample size, it's harder to compare the effects. 

 

This is true for the issue of income progression effect (the gender wage gap question) but not true for the idea of "I think this is compelling evidence that the era of deliberate discrimination against women in the labor market is largely over -- I could be persuaded otherwise on more argument. "

[gilbertrollins]

MOOOAAARRR!!!!!

[gilbertrollins]

On the one hand, it's tragic when a woman is not hired just because there is some suspicion that her having a child will lead to her taking paid time off. On the other hand, that might be a reasonable suspicion, and if I'm a small business owner, I might think it's my prerogative to use that information when considering whom to hire. It's easy to talk about family-friendly policies at Fortune 500 companies, but if we're talking about businesses in general, then it's important to acknowledge that owners of smaller-scale enterprises may have legitimate concerns about hiring women that are not rooted in misogyny per se.

 

Regarding the Gupta study, doesn't it acknowledge that childbirth leads to "loss of human capital accumulation"? How does this relate to deliberate discrimination? Again, I can't access it, so I apologize if I'm misrepresenting it. I'm just going on the abstract.

 

Regarding the Aisenbrey study, can this be called deliberate discrimination? I get that it's unpleasant, but is there no basis whatsoever to issuing a "career penalty" to someone (man or woman) who takes a long break from the job? Again, I understand that it's unfortunate, but if it's an economic liability, it's useful information. All of the childless alpha females I've ever met have understood this perfectly well. They passed on children because they seemed to understand that having children is going to take you away from the job and raising them is going to keep you away unless you find a man who's willing to spend more time at home or find a nice daycare that will raise the kids for you.

 

So none of this undermine's ohgoodness' claim that statistical discrimination is exactly the same thing as deliberate (unfair?) discrimination.  You're talking about an employer correctly assessing the probability that a woman (or man) who takes substantial time away from the job will depreciate in terms of productivity and skills.  I don't disagree, but think we should confront the issue of whether or not statistical discrimination is unfair.  Personally, the first time I heard about the distinction between statistical discrimination and "real" discrimination I thought it was bunk.  But we have to think in terms of general behavior -- not just particular cases of politically-weighted things like racial and gender discrimination.  And in general terms, it would appear people make discriminating choices on who to associate and group with -- constantly -- inside and outside the market. 

 

To your second point about their being a difference between Fortune 500 companies and small businesses -- there is no prima facie reason to suspect that competition among Fortune 500 companies is insufficient to drive price down to marginal cost, and that they thus have boatloads of cash to play with in the back.  Note that corporate profits are a teeny tiny fractional of gross national product.  There is thus no reason to suspect larger firms of discriminating unfairly against women than smaller.  

[mbrown0315]

Thus in logic you state that men are able to become parents without incurring any form of penalty,  actually becoming a parent tends to be correlated with increased occupational attainment for various reasons, whereas women are stuck between a rock and a hard place.  One of the aspects of discrimination (one of many) is that there is virtually zero support within most companies and workplaces, along with zero institutional support for  that enable men to see and take the decision to stay at home.  The motherhood penalty is not a question of individual agency but the result and artefact of socio-cultural and structural factors. 

 

14 weeks (100%) 6 before birth, 12/14 months (65%, but not more than 1.800 Euro/month) (14 only for single mothers)^{[citation needed]} 84% 12/14 months (65%, but not more than 1.800 Euro/month) (14 only for single mothers/fathers or if both mothers and fathers take parental leave, so called "partner months") Until child turns 3 Until child turns 3 Must have public health insurance for part of paid leave, rest of paid leave paid by employer

 

Re: Germany--- wow, that's generous. Good for them

 

What about biology? Do any of you think that women on average are just more interested than men are in being involved on a more constant basis with their children? Are any of these social structures built on genetic foundations?

[gilbertrollins]

There is compelling evidence that the era of deliberate discrimination against women is as commonplace today as 20 years ago.  

 

No, the gender wage gap, according to the BLS data cited in the chart on the first page of the report I posted, has decreased by over 50% since 1979.  And that's before controlling for the important factors here discussed like occupation and whether or not the individual has children, after controlling for which the gap nearly disappears.

[ohgoodness]

Re: Germany--- wow, that's generous. Good for them

 

What about biology? Do any of you think that women on average are just more interested than men are in being involved on a more constant basis with their children? Are any of these social structures built on genetic foundations?

 

One of my major flaws when discussing anything is that I do not believe anything we do in the 21th century to be biological or god-given. I'm sorta down the road where our societies are strong enough to polish away what could be essential differences thus all of our choices are conditioned through social forces.   That does not answer your question, however, -   for various reasons I could see a strong force being the rewards associated to the female-homemaker and male-breadwinner typology  that pushes women on average to feel more strongly to be involved with their children.   This is not a biological construct however. 

 

To your second point about their being a difference between Fortune 500 companies and small businesses -- there is no prima facie reason to suspect that competition among Fortune 500 companies is insufficient to drive price down to marginal cost, and that they thus have boatloads of cash to play with in the back.  Note that corporate profits are a teeny tiny fractional of gross national product.  There is thus no reason to suspect larger firms of discriminating unfairly against women than smaller.  

 

I think one of the major points of this was the it would make more sense for a smaller company to actually use the gender information when hiring since it will be  significantly harder to move around employees to cover for the person missing time within the choirs of parenthood.   Small companies could see a hiring as the penultimate investment that has to pay off 100% whereas larger companies are able to rotate people thus maximising their utility of each employee, despite some missing time here and there. 

[amlobo]

We're in luck! While experimental studies are rare in sociology, there is indeed a study that uses experimental methods to test women's career aspirations and expectations. 

 

http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1224%28200402%2969%3A1%3C93%3ACIPGSA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O&

 

Under the belief that men are better at certain tasks, women tend to perform worse than their male counterparts. However, under the belief that both genders perform equally, there are no sex differences in performance. So women might be sorting out of male dominated occupations because they believe that men are better at them, leading them to perform worse on average. I'm not sure if they've done this, but it would be interesting to see perceived sex differences in performance between women in male-dominated occupations and female-dominated occupations. I would expect that the belief that men are "better" at their job is more prevalent in male-dominated occupations than female-dominated occupations, and given that male-dominated occupations pay better, this might be an important mechanism explaining the gender gap.

 

I always hesitate to go to "this place", but in my geographical region and occupation, I see a lot of "boys' club" mentality.  I am told it's not as prevalent in the legal world in NYC, DC, etc.  But, here in St. Louis, I can walk into a courtroom, and I might be the ONLY woman out of 30 attorneys.  Basically, female attorneys are not taking on trial roles as much as men.  Most female attorneys I know in the area do transactional work or leave the court appearances "up to the men."  It happens in my firm, as well.  We have 3 men and 2 women... and the women largely do the research and writing tasks, while the men attend depositions, trials, hearings, etc.  

 

I assume this assortative behavior is two-fold, in that women to some extent feel they are not as good at the more forceful roles as men are (or, for some reason, genuinely do not enjoy this type of work), and upper-level attorneys grooming employees in this way - steering men to more confrontational roles and women to more "academic" roles.

 

RE: deliberate discrimination and my aforementioned "boys' club" - I absolutely feel deliberately discriminated against as a woman in the law.  I have had attorneys AND clients treat me differently because I'm a woman.  You get called "little lady" or "miss" by male attorneys, which is incredibly demeaning.  I have had clients tell me they'd be more comfortable with a male attorney handling their case because men are "junkyard dog" attorneys.  My male coworker (who only has 1 year of seniority on me) has a lot more leeway in the office than I do and much less oversight/micromanagement by the partners.  I might get paid the same as my male counterpart, but I am definitely not treated the same.

Edited April 16, 2013 by amlobo

[gilbertrollins]

One of the aspects of discrimination (one of many) is that there is virtually zero support within most companies and workplaces, along with zero institutional support for  that enable men to see and take the decision to stay at home. 

 

As more workers demand these amenities as part of their compensation in the labor market, they will appear.  Given that wages rise along with economic growth and labor-saving technology, we should expect to see more of these amenities.

[gilbertrollins]

I think one of the major points of this was the it would make more sense for a smaller company to actually use the gender information when hiring since it will be  significantly harder to move around employees to cover for the person missing time within the choirs of parenthood.   Small companies could see a hiring as the penultimate investment that has to pay off 100% whereas larger companies are able to rotate people thus maximising their utility of each employee, despite some missing time here and there. 

 

Why are employees more substitutable in larger firms?  Retraining employees for positions is costly no matter how many there are, and in fact as the firm gets larger, so too does the division of labor and particularity of the native skill set any one worker will acquire within the firm.

[mbrown0315]

Why are employees more substitutable in larger firms?  Retraining employees for positions is costly no matter how many there are, and in fact as the firm gets larger, so too does the division of labor and particularity of the native skill set any one worker will acquire within the firm.

 

Consultants?

 

Anyway, I wasn't suggesting that large companies don't take a hit from employees leaving. I was only suggesting that people usually frame the debate in terms of large corporations versus little workers. You get this with the minimum wage, as well. People who are more skeptical of the minimum wage often bring up the point that big business loves the minimum wage because they can stomach the labor costs while smaller (and potentially competitive) businesses can't deal with it. I'm not saying I agree or disagree. I'm just talking about perceptions.

[gilbertrollins]

Aside from the Motherhood penalty, one might look at stagnation in US wages over the past 30 - 40 years as it coincides with the reconstitution of the American labor force. In other words, how much of this the wage reduction is the result of downward pressure on men's wages? What are the most common jobs for women and what does pay look like for all in that occupational market?

 

On the left axis of the chart on the first page of the document I cited are the median dollar wages of men and women, represented per year by the blue bars in the graph.  They have risen steadily.