Women have broken barriers to entry into so many more competitive and high-paying fields. A good case can be made that women have not gone into these lower-paying, dirty trades by choice, rather than due to discrimination. This story would not be complete without some mention of the role of childbearing. Census data show that approximately 80 percent of women bear children at some point in their lives. With this expectation, many choose fields of study and then jobs that enable them to better combine work and family, thereby sacrificing higher wages.
Many studies document the link between increased numbers of children and decreased earnings.
Professor Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University, in a study published last year, compared the gap in wages between men and women with the same experience and education for mothers and women without children. She found that in 1991 women without children made 95 percent of men's wages, all other factors accounted for, but mothers made 75 percent of men's wages. This finding appears again and again in economic studies. Naturally, there are different explanations for these data. One is that children take time away from women's careers, both in terms of time out of the workforce to bear the children and in terms of time put into work effort afterwards.