In her blog post, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, who holds a PhD. in economics and is an economics professor at UC Berkeley, examines trends in the labor market in relation to education and women.
She first starts by relating women and education; since 1970, the percentage of women in the workforce who have college degrees increased almost threefold from 22 percent to 67 percent. The percentage of women with less than a high school degree dropped from 32 percent to 7 percent in the same period. In essence, women now are generally more educated than they were in 1970.
She then relates this to wages and employment:
"The dramatic increase in college education among women is one major reason that the earnings of female workers have increased, that the gap between male and female earnings has fallen and that, in recent recessions, the unemployment rate for women has been lower than the rate for men."
She notes that between 1979 and 2009, median real weekly earnings of women increased from 62 percent of the median real weekly earnings of men to about 80 percent.
However, this closing of the gap has stalled in recent years, and a sizable gap still remains between the wages of men and women. Tyson asserts that "[t]he remaining gap cannot be explained by economic variables like education, experience, race, industry or unionization and is a subject of intense debate."
In essence, she is asserting that three of the four factors of differing wages we discussed in class (human capital, working conditions, discrimination, and government actions—these are in section 9.1) are constant for women and men. If you most industries, and compare women and men with the similar experience and education (human capital), you will find that women, on average, make less. The working conditions will be the same, and government action applies equally to the males and females (same minimum wage, legal protections, etc.). Since their wages are different, though, discrimination must be the key, she asserts.
"There is little doubt, however, that discrimination and implicit biases against women, even in jobs requiring college or postgraduate education, continue to play a role, nearly 50 years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963."
She concludes by urging people to get a college degree, ruminating the possibility that we make some college education mandatory.
(I strongly suggest you read the article. It's detailed, concise, and fascinating.)
The labor market of today is constantly changing. Do you have any thoughts on workplace discrimination, wage differences, education, or labor market trends? Responses to this article?
6 comments:
Personally, I feel it is pretty unfair towards women to recieve discrimination on gender. Although there may be more men in the work force, there are plenty who are just as qualified as men who do the same work. And yet they are paid less? Why should people be paid less for the same hard work and time put into as others? America has always been slow to change its many problems dealing with equality, especially in the past. I hope that one day, women too will have equal pay because they do deserve it and for working just as hard as men.
My thoughts about the article: tell us something we don't know. Is anyone SURPRISED that women are discriminated against, since they only started entering the workforce beginning in the 70's? I think what might have been a more valuable and useful article is discussion specific ways discrimination manifests itself, and specific measures that HR people can take to ensure that there is not discrimination without going to the extreme of affirmative action for women.
Impressions make a large impact on peoples' decisions about others, and that can add a level of unintentional discrimination even on top of intentional discrimination.
Consider the riddle that goes: "A man and his son were in a car accident. The man died on the way to the hospital, but the boy was rushed into surgery. The surgeon said “I can't operate on him, he my son!” How is this possible?" (the surgeon is his mother; people who are puzzled by this aren't used to the idea of female doctors).
This can affect sex, race, class, even health or appearance. You can try to correct attitudes; it's even harder to correct impressions.
As more women consistently receive higher education and enter male-donimated fields, this may begin to fix itself as the perception of women changes. I don't really see a more effective way to get people to really change their discriminatory attitudes than this. Raising awareness? Increasing restrictions? Maybe. But workplace discrimination is hard to prove.
At the risk of sounding sexist, some of the theories behind why the glass ceiling exists have some weight:
It comes down to devotion. Men are more likely to devote their lives to their work rather than their family (compared to women). The opposite is true of females, and this makes sense--we all know that children have a stronger bond with their mothers, as evidenced by the Oedipus complex and other things. Men are also naturally more aggressive (a mixed blessing), which makes them more competitive and more willing to put more energy into their work. From a purely biological standpoint, these things are by and large true.
I agree with Anthony, this type of discrimination is difficult to prove. I think it's much less likely that the glass ceiling exists because women are "incapable" or mentally inferior--which of course they aren't, and much more because of fundamental tendencies, at least as far as the glass ceiling is concerned. Education and time will solve discrimination, as Anthony has already stated.
Sex based discrimination in the workforce has been around for forever and i think that the stall in reaching equlibrium is still due the cultural stereotypes.
I know for instance, in business, higher position jobs are by far more dominated by males becausee woumen are still considered weaker. Even though the gap had closed, you cant prevent people from associating certain traits to certain groups.
I think the many specific jobs are what stands in the way from women and men being treated equally.
and not surprisingly, atleast not to me, its still very acceptable in many areas of the country where are obvioulsy driscriminated against and even the women accept and believe the sterotypes to be true.
Men and women are different. Men succeed in certain areas where women don't and vice versa. Women are more caring, men are more competitive. It's like how good looking people make on average more money than ugly people.
I'm just twiddling my thumbs until women realize that they hold the majority and can do something with that.
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