Everyone disagrees on the ‘right numbers’ for the gender pay gap. But do we even know what causes it?
Eurostat defines the unadjusted gender pay gap as “the difference between the average gross hourly earnings of men and women expressed as a percentage of the average gross hourly earnings of men”. Adopting a similar definition, the U.S. Census Bureau came up with a value of 23% for the year 2010. Since then the slogan “women earn 77 cents on the dollar” has emerged into public conversation. The slogan is however a simplification from the entire truth, as the report on which this ratio is based on is outdated and the unadjusted gender pay gap has decreased since then. But maybe more importantly as the term “unadjusted” suggests, the ratio doesn’t account for a variety of factors like for example occupation, position, education and hours worked per week. A study by the feminist organisation American Association of University Women (AAUW) calculated that the gender pay gap would decrease to 6.6% if one accounted for all of the ‘choices’ women made.
In order to grasp the issue better, it is probably advisable to look at the adjusted gender pay gap instead. Some would put forward a value close to 80%, whilst others would say that the wage gap doesn’t exist at all. This is however naturally problematic as one must agree which factors should be adjusted for, thus finding an exact value to represent the ‘injustice between men and women in the workplace’ seems problematic. Consequently, now I would not like to shed light on what an appropriate value for the adjusted gender pay gap could be but instead discuss what causes the unadjusted gender pay gap to be so high in the first place.
When researching this issue, I found that the largest contributing factor for the unadjusted gender pay gap with 38% in the UK are differences in career choices. This makes a lot of sense when you look at a study by researchers in the Georgetown University who found that 4 out of 5 of the best paying university majors in the US are male dominant, whilst 4 out of 5 of the worst paying university majors are female dominant. In other words, more women go into occupations that on average earn less money, thus it is natural that when comparing the average earnings of all men compared to all women, the latter is going to be to some extent lower.
Following this, many will argue since many women ‘choose’ careers with less pay, the main cause for the gender pay gap is resolved, the world is immaculate, and we can carry on with life. However, as someone who adores discussing determinism and may sometimes question the existence of free will, I’d like to look question why low paying university majors like “Counselling and psychology” and “Early childhood education” consist of 74% and 97% females respectively.
To do that, I’d like to bring up two terms: ‘gender roles’ and ‘gender identity’. When such terms arise in a ‘typical male’ environment, frowns are not uncommon. Change the setting to a pub and the frowns extend into laughing and one or two prejudiced jokes. Maybe not all those joking are sexist, but maybe it’s ‘just’ more socially appropriate to joke about gender identity and gender roles than to show respect. Terms such as gender roles and gender identity are often put on a level with ‘alternative medicine’ and ‘astrology’; concepts which every pragmatic male or generally conservative person denies existence of and justifies its apparent success rate to the placebo effect. The concept of discussing gender identity is often related to confronting one’s feelings, and as we all know, men prefer to base their discussion ‘on facts’.
Well, the gender pay gap is a fact. Modern gender roles may not be coherent to prehistoric evolutionary arguments for the role of men and women, but how you identify will inevitably shape what kind of career you may pursue and consequently how much money you’ll earn. If boys are from a young age encouraged to be competitive and girls are expected to be empathetic, it is no wonder that boys will identify as an competitive, uncaring male and seek a career in investing or engineering, whilst girls will feel the need to behave ‘lady-like’ and if they are encouraged to pursue a career at all, there’s a good chance they will go into education or nursing.
When people talk about the gender pay gap, the conversation is often directed toward the extreme examples of sexist CEOs discriminating against women on job promotions. The discussion is focused on the ‘glass-ceiling’ many already very successful women experience but I wish people would stop only looking at the ceiling of a crooked building but see the ‘building-stones’ that make up the whole house. There is still plenty of discrimination at the workplace, but the underlying problem starts at home. Most girls won’t become the CEO of a big corporation because they have been discriminated by a metaphorical glass ceiling but because they were never encouraged to start climbing the ladder in the first place.
If we want to eradicate the gender pay gap, which is a fact, we have to stop thinking about terms as gender roles and gender identity as ‘voodoo science’ and appreciate their imminent role in shaping the ‘choices’ we make from a young age. To repeat, the AAUW calculated that the gender pay gap would decrease to 6.6% if one accounted for all of the ‘choices’ women made. But maybe it’s time to take seriously the factors that cause those ‘choices’ to be made.
Cover created with Adobe Photoshop.
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