Women's Earning Power

Hube is discussing a recent News Journal article on the income gap between men and women. Writer Kathleen Jacobs once again parrots the statistic that "women earned 77 cents for each dollar comparable to what a male worker earned across all occupational paths."

The problem is that "all occupational paths" makes for a poor comparison. All you learn is that the apples make more than the oranges. When you compare salaries and wages for men and women doing the same jobs for the same amount of time, the disparity drops to 92 cents on the dollar. 8 cents isn't very much, but it is still likely to be a statistically significant disparity.

So where does that 8 cents come from? I'm guessing it is from differences between the two in the workplace that have very little to do with direct discrimination. After one coworker had her first child two years ago, she didn't return to full time work for over a year. Even then it killed her to come back. Now a second female coworker is expecting this summer. She is planning to take off for an indefinite period. Most of the women I work with have similar stories to tell. Taking a year off from your career or choosing career paths that allow you to spend more time with your children will have an effect on your earning potential. Where I work women are far more likely to do these things because, oddly enough, it is the women who want to mother their children not the men.

Is this fair? Beats me. But at some point, especially when you are talking about fundamental anatomical differences between the sexes like bearing children, a line has to be drawn. Guess what, the two sexes are different in some places and the answer is not to ignore it an pretend they aren't. The answer is to make things as fair as you can within those limits.