Women earning 49 cents on the dollar

“Women May Earn Just 49 Cents on the Dollar: A new study suggests that the gender wage gap is much wider than previously thought” (Atlantic) is kind of interesting.

Note that it is a “gender wage gap” when someone who identifies as Gender A chooses not to go to work at all and then earns less than a person who identifies as Gender B who does go to work.

The article betrays cisgender-normative prejudice:

According to Rose, these facts suggest that the most accurate way to compare women’s and men’s earnings is to take the career-long view. “When you look at all women versus all men over time, the gap is 51 cents,” he said, referring to the 15-year figure.

If gender is normally fluid, why is it reasonable to assume that a typical person identifies with the same gender for 15 years?

As I noted in “Gender equity should be measured by consumption, not income?” it seems a little odd to say that someone who can get a satisfactory spending power without working is disadvantaged compared to someone who needs to work 80 hours per week in order to obtain sufficient spending power. By this standard, some of the most disadvantaged people on Planet Earth are in royal families, are the children of billionaires, etc.

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8 thoughts on “Women earning 49 cents on the dollar

  1. Women “earn just 49 cents to the typical men’s dollar” So how much would men have to earn more than women for doing exactly the same job exactly the same way, before all men would be unemployed and all women employed? 52 cents?

  2. Have you seen this study?

    https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bolotnyy/files/be_gendergap.pdf

    Abstract:

    “Even in a unionized environment where work tasks are similar, hourly wages are identical, and tenure dictates promotions, female workers earn $0.89 on the male-worker dollar (weekly earnings). We use confidential administrative data on bus and train operators from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) to show that the weekly earnings gap can be explained by the workplace choices that women and men make. Women value time away from work and flexibility more than men, taking more unpaid time off using the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and working fewer overtime hours than men. When overtime hours are scheduled three months in advance, men and women work a similar number of hours; but when those hours are offered at the last minute, men work nearly twice as many. When selecting work schedules, women try to avoid weekend, holiday, and split shifts more than men. To avoid unfavorable work times, women prioritize their sched- ules over route safety and select routes with a higher probability of accidents. Women are less likely than men to game the scheduling system by trading off work hours at regular wages for overtime hours at premium wages. These results suggest that some policies that increase workplace flexibility, like shift swapping and expanded cover lists, can reduce the gender earnings gap and disproportionately increase the well-being of female workers.”

  3. it seems a little odd to say that someone who can get a satisfactory spending power without working is disadvantaged compared to someone who needs to work 80 hours per week in order to obtain sufficient spending power

    Please supply the names of people making such statements.

  4. In pornography, and presumably prostitution, women earn more than men even allowing for hours worked.

    This disparity in earning potential idrives many male prostitutes and pornigraphic actors to assume a feminine gender appearance and persona, to the point of radical cosmetic surgeries and hormone regimens.

  5. Occam: Sex outside of marriage yields roughly 30 percent of a defendant’s after-tax income, not 49 percent. See http://www.realworlddivorce.com/NewYork and http://www.realworlddivorce.com/Wisconsin for example states that use a simple formula (17 percent of pre-tax income, so approaching 1/3rd for defendants in high tax brackets). See also http://www.realworlddivorce.com/Massachusetts for a judge’s reasoning in granting nearly $100,000/year in child support profits:

    “Now, the 20 percent [of defendant’s income] is probably along the lines of what I would be looking for in terms of, you know, when I set a percentage. Based on the bonus, when I look at how the current guidelines play out against most parties’ income it comes around between 20 and 25 percent, sometimes it’s a little higher. If there’s a big disparity it’s closer to 28 percent. Does that mean it makes sense is that what to assess up to a certain amount on his income. Maybe there is no limit right now…”

    So, in Massachusetts it would be 20-28 percent of pre-tax. Given that child support is tax-free and the tax rates that prevail here, that’s still capturing a little less than 49 percent of the spending power.

    (But the process can be repeated with additional defendants until a number exceeding 100 percent is reached! See http://www.realworlddivorce.com/ChildSupportLitigationWithoutMarriage )

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