Why Women Make Less

Alert: If you are a sensative women on feminist issues you might not want to read this! This will prove much of what you think is true of this country and economy to be wrong! Most everyone in the United States thinks that women make less than men. Those who think that.... are right. But for politicians, intelligentsia members (professors, teachers, college administrators), and the media to blame discrimination is something that must be researched more. Most people believe women are discriminated against in the work place. In fact Presidential candidate Barack Obama has said that he will work to help women get jobs, raise their pay, and help them get more paid leave(maternity leave, etc) as president. Lets evaluate this idea that women are discriminated against in the work place.

Before looking at statistics and the economics of women versus men pay, lets look at a reality question. If you are the CEO of a company and you are trying to make your stockholders happy and trying to make as much money as possible, would you not do anything you could do to keep cost down? So if these companies are so "greedy" and only care about the bottom line, do you not think they would hire a woman if the company could pay her less than a man who did the same thing? It would be the only thing that makes sense. I would think that common sense would say that either women do make the same as men (which is not true), OR there are a good economic reasons for them making less.

Throughout history women's role in society has changed dramatically. For years women's role was to give birth, raise children, help with the harvest, keep the house together, and cook. This was not something that men forced on them. This is what was the norm of society. Today in the United States according to "The Economist" magazine 150 women for every 100 men attend college. But this is a recent transformation and thus would would not have an immediate effect on incomes. So lets agree that things have changed but it does take time for these changes to effect the overall economy.

Child-bearing is a huge physical difference between men and women. With women having babies, and completing other domestic responsibilities, they do not work continuously or full-time for that matter. This especially hurts high levels of achievement in the career. In fact in most high paying areas of work, the mean age at which peak accomplishment occurs and intense effort towards mastering the discipline is the age of 40. This is the years that many women bear children or are raising young children. In fact during the early decades of the 20th century, women did attend higher level occupations and get more postgraduate education. Women's pay was also closer to that of men. The reason for this was that the median age of marriage was later in the beginning of the century and thus women had already started on their career before marriage and child-bearing. As the median age of marriage declined, so did the representation of women in high-level occupations and in postgraduate degree programs.

Other issues include participation in the labor force. In 1950 94 percent of men were in the labor force while only 33 percent of women were. This was due to lower median ages of marriage, higher standards of living with the man's job only, and child-bearing. Remember this was in the later years of the baby boom births. This is a gap of 61 percent which narrowed to 45 percent by 1970 and in fact is now around a 12 percent gap. The trend has changed and it is not due to anti-discriminatory laws or a lowering of discrimination intself, simply changes in behavior of society.

In the next post I will discuss many more reasons for men making more than women. This will include experience, types of jobs, what kind of education do women get in college compared to men? We will also discuss the hours worked a week by men and women and how these hours change in opposite directions after marriage. We will also discuss the ideas of Barack Obama and how is goal to get government involved with raising women's pay and paid leave will in fact hurt women's chances of getting a job to begin with. Women beware! Sadly enough the majority of women, out of ignorance of economics (men are also ignorant of economics), will vote for the man that will drive their pay and work opportunities down.