From: J056600@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM
Subject: Re: Women's Wages (Re: That Responsibility Thing, Take 2)
Organization: Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, Inc.
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 92 18:32:55 GMT

In <wepOTGW00Uzx41zHU5@andrew.cmu.edu>, Andrea B. Gansley-Ortiz writes:

>From the article  <1992Oct8.145920.25349@pwcs.stpaul.gov> :

>>you will continue to hear about women's rights until women get paid
>>a whole dollar for a dollar's work; until men stop using women for target
>>practice; until women can plan their lives, including whether or not to have
>>children and when, with the same degree of certainty as men can; and until a
>>few other minor issues are ironed out.  If you are sick and tired of hearing

>The last statistic (not that I relie on them greatly) that I heard about
>a dollar's work, went something like this:

>Married men   $1.34
>Single women  $1.05
>Single men    $1.02
>Married women $ .64

There are many, many variables which influence these numbers.  I'm not going
to attempt to deny that women are sometimes underpaid.  However, in most of the
times I see attempts to prove this, many factors are not taken into account.

First, married women tend to work part-time or in non-career-oriented fields,
at least compared the other three groups which have been mentioned above.
Often studies of "equal work" compare secretaries to carpenters or teachers to
construction workers.  Married men, on the other hand, are usually in a
career-oriented field with high wages.  Also, most unionized jobs (which pay
more highly) tend to be concentrated in the blue-collar areas which are still
predominantly male.

Also, the average man has more experience than the average woman.  Though the
number of men who have worked, say, 5 years may be comparable to the number of
women with similar experience, that doesn't hold true at 30 years.  Few women
entered the workforce in 1962; hence there are fewer women who have reached
the peak of their earnings.  This certainly biases the numbers in favor of
men.

I'm not at all surprised at the numbers you site for single people.  Singles
are generally younger and better educated.  In fact, among college graduates
since 1980, I saw a study indicating that women earn $1.03 for every dollar
that a man earns.  Single people who work are also more often in career-
oriented fields than married women.  That holds true for both sexes, so I would
expect a much smaller gap--in fact, the difference between men and women ($1.02
versus $1.05) is rather insignificant.

Despite the changing attitudes of today, many women--even those with college
degrees--choose to work part time or stay home.  That certainly would make
comparisons like apples and oranges.  I'd like to see statistics for men and
women in the same jobs with the same amount of experience.  I'd think that a
gap *may* still exist, but would be much smaller.  In fact, my wife will soon
be returning to college and earn her degree, but she intends to stay home when
we have children (assuming we can afford it, of course).  If we can't afford
it, she will probably work part-time when she gets her degree.  That means that
she will be a choosing a "mommy track"-type job that pays (perhaps) $15,000 per
year.  Even if she makes close to what I do *per hour*, she will make far less
in number of dollars.  Also, part-time jobs tend to pay lower than full-time
jobs, regardless of the gender of the employed.  Since far more women choose to
be employed this way than do men, this adds another dimension which drags down
the women's salary by comparison.  A full-time carpenter makes far more than a
part-time librarian, as it should (even though the carpenter has less education
in general).  The carpenter work many more hours.

In short, I don't deny that *some* discrepancy exists, but the current apples-
to-oranges methods of comparison greatly exaggerate it.


Tim Irvin   j056600@lmsc5.is.lmsc.lockheed.com
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