Female grads earn $8,000 less than men

[jym626]

This still fries my cookies. Women earn $8,000 less than men after graduation - Oct. 23, 2012

Why the gap? Men typically choose majors that result in more lucrative careers post-graduation, like engineering. Even if men and women major in the same subject, men tend to end up in higher-paying jobs. Men also work more hours, according to AAUW.
But even when controlling for these factors -- by looking at men and women with the same majors, jobs and hours -- women were still paid 7% less than men.

There is simply no excuse for this.

[hudsonvalley51]

Where is this happening? It doesn't happen in the public sector -- at least the public sector I am familiar with -- so is inequitable pay a widespread vice in the private sector or only in certain industries or geographic regions. Or are there still state and local governments in the US that think it's still 1948?

[alh]

Part of the reason women typically earn less can be explained by the subjects they studied in college. "Men are more likely than women to major in fields like engineering and computer science, which typically lead to higher-paying jobs," the report stated. Women are more likely than men to major in fields like education and the social sciences, which usually come with lower salaries.

But that doesn't account for everything. Among business majors, "women earned just over $38,000, while men earned just over $45,000" on average in the first year after college. When researchers controlled for factors such as hours worked and type of occupation, they still found an unexplained discrimination. Among teachers, for example, women earned 89 percent of what men earned. In sales occupations, women earned just 77 percent of what their male peers earned. When the hours worked per week went up, the wage gap between men and women increased.

Women's Pay Gap Starts Right After College, Exacerbates Student Debt: Study

If you want to read the report:
http://www.aauw.org/graduatetoapaygap/

[jym626]

Good question. Here is a study of theirs from 2007 http://www.aauw.org/learn/research/u...hindpaygap.pdf

[intparent]

10 char

[Erin's Dad]

Among business majors, "women earned just over $38,000, while men earned just over $45,000" on average in the first year after college.

This hits home because I often hire business majors fresh out of college. This is unconscionable and I would be fired if I did it.

[GolfFather]

women were still paid 7% less than men

The article in the Wash Post said 6.6 percent, but anyway ...

The lead paragraph started with the big misleading figure that women earn 82% of what males earn.
Then they said, oh yeah, more women enter lower paying fields (teaching, nursing) than majority males fields (computer science, engineering).
OK, then they said the 6 or 7 percent.

Here is my guess:

1. Ask any male what he earns and he will lie and over-state the true figure by a factor of "x."

2. Whatever the true number is between males and females is statistically insignificant and within a “margin of error.”

[sacchi]

As a woman engineer, this is a topic I have mixed feelings about. I absolute believe that women should be paid equal amounts for equal work. But not all work is equal. It does make sense to me that a new engineering grad should earn more than a new sociology grad, for example.

Business majors are a very diverse lot. I'll bet those with concentrations in finance and accounting earn more than those with concentrations in marketing and human resources. And I would guess that the first two have relatively more men than women and vice versa for the last two.

Teachers are also diverse. I would guess that the science & math secondary teachers earn more than the primary teachers, and that the differences in subjects accounts for a lot of the gender based pay discrepancies.

I would guess that a lot of that remaining 7% gap would be further reduced if the study accounted for the type of differences I list above.

[jym626]

Another possible explanation for the unexplained
portion of the pay gap is a gender difference
in willingness and ability to negotiate
salary. Negotiating a salary can make a difference
in earnings, and men are more likely than
women to negotiate their salaries. In part, this
difference may reflect women’s awareness that
employers are likely to view negotiations by men
more favorably than negotiations by women.

From the report linked by alh. This is wrong on so many levels!!

[alh]

#7

You discount the report? You believe there is pay equality between men and women?

Will everyone who doesn't believe pay inequality between men and women is real, please raise your hand?

[jym626]

Golffather,
The AAUW is a very well respected association. I would put plenty of stock in their findings.

[sylvan8798]

If this is the case for otherwise equal positions (by which I mean the same job, as I take "unexplained differences" to mean), then the unemployment rate for newly graduated women should be less than it is for newly graduated men. Is there any evidence that such is the case?

[cptofthehouse]

I don't see why this is still happening once adjustments are made for the high pay professions that the males tend to enter where females are the minority. Unless there are other issues not being taken into account, such as more males willing to work away from parent's home or other base, more males in teaching ,say, who are math/science majors. If this is happening purely on a level where women are being offered less for the same POSITION as a man, it is a crime. I know when DH hires, the pay for the job has nothing to do with the gender of the person.

Am wondering also if it is because women do not negotiate as much as men? Say a job has a salary range, and the employer gives a low ball salary but will likely go up if the employee negotiates it and females just don't tend to do that, or do the employers just low ball the females more? That is really a question to be investigated.

[sylvan8798]

^I was working at an engineering consulting firm in the early 90's. There was a downturn and I went to a second firm at the same salary at which I had already been working for a year. While at the second firm, after I didn't get any calls from the boss to discuss a raise, I asked my manager about it. He said that if there was money, "Joe" would likely make an offer, but things were tight, yada, yada.

So I didn't go and ask "Joe" for a raise. I worked there two years at the same salary (so three years total at $X). Some time after I got laid off, "Joe" remarked to my old manager that he had just noticed they'd never given me a raise while I was there. The manager felt rather badly for having discouraged me from bringing it up.

I tend to think a man would have been a lot more likely to march in and ask.

[momreads]

My husband is a statistician. He insists the only fair way to judge the discrepancy is to do a paired sample T test matching people with common degrees from common universities (e.g. a female accounting major from XYZ university with a male accounting major from XYZ university). It will eliminate possible sources of bias. As this was done, the methodology is flawed.