Parsing the Gender Pay Gap A new study suggests choices, not sexism, explain wage disparities.

As other studies have shown, the so-called pay gap is mostly a function of life's choices not sexism or misogyny. Women make different choices than men and that includes sing'er mothers and single fathers so it is not just a matter of family. And as with other wage and hour regulations government tries to put in place to "help the middle and lower income workers", they usually have untended and harmful consequences. Better if the government minds it's own business and takes care of it's own business and let the markets work.

To keep within fair use standards, the study here is looking at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority because of the very strict adherence to equal work standards and union rules saying even the most sexist boss would find it difficult to impossible to use sexist policies and give men preferential treatment.

Parsing the Gender Pay Gap
A new study suggests choices, not sexism, explain wage disparities.

Yet even at the Transportation Authority, female train and bus operators earned less than men. To explain why, Harvard economists Valentin Bolotnyy and Natalia Emanuel looked at time cards and scheduling from 2011 to 2017, also factoring in sex, age, date of hire, tenure, and whether an employee was married or had dependents.

The guy workers worked 83% more overtime and twice as likely to accept short notice OT hours.

The guy workers took 48% fewer unpaid hours under family medical leave act regulatins.

The female workers were more likely to take less desirable routes if in meant less hours and fewer nights and weekends.

Parenting amplified the difference in priorities for male and female employees. More than childless colleagues, fathers wanted the extra cash from overtime, and mothers more time off. These choices were more pronounced among single parents. Unmarried mothers took 59% fewer last-minute overtime hours than did unmarried fathers......

.....
The study also looked at two policy changes that unintentionally narrowed the pay gap—and found they made life tougher for female employees. In 2016 the Transportation Authority made it more difficult to take unpaid time off under the Family Medical Leave Act. The next year it redefined overtime from “any time in excess of 8 hours worked in a day” to “any time worked in excess of 40 hours in a week,” which made it harder for workers to game the system by working fewer hours but making the pay up with overtime.

As women took less unpaid time off and men earned less overtime, the pay gap narrowed from 89 cents on the dollar in 2015 to 92 cents in 2017. But all employees had less flexibility over work schedules. Even as their relative pay rose, some women began taking unexcused time off instead, which put them at risk of suspension or even termination....

https://www.wsj.com/articles/parsing-the-gender-pay-gap-1542917969

 

Pay is decided by professions...and is it just a coincidence that women dominated professions are paid less? Isn’t that women choose to be paid less it’s that people can pay them

 

Interesting topic.

Several valid points in the OP.

 

Well in most cases it has to do with relative levels of skill required and relative danger. For instance one of the larger gaps is between child care workers and Machinist. Child care workers are generally get paid minimum wage, part of that is that is the skill set is extremely common and another part of that is that government rules and regulations make it extremely labor intensive, and because of that if they paid much more than minimum wage no one could afford child care. Meanwhile Machinist are 95% male, and make twice minimum wage or more depending on specialty. Part of that is because it is a fairly demanding skill set, another part of it is too damn many people today are afraid to get their hands dirty. And while it is far safer today than it was just thirty years ago when a prospective employer told me I couldn't possibly be a machinist because I still had all my fingers, it is still far more dangerous than child care worker.

 

This entire "equal pay for equal work" thing is crap.

Suppose you have two middle school math teachers. One is male and has been teaching for 32 years. The other is female and has been teaching for a year and a half. They are doing the exact same job, and both get excellent reviews. Are they supposed to be paid equally? According to the left, any pay gap here is due to gender bias.

 

Some good points.

 

Yeah, women choose jobs that pay less. Why is this so difficult to understand?

 

If you pay attention to the whole study it said there's no gender pay gap. But if you focus only on 72% of it, there clearly is.

 

Rather than "equal pay" I support "pay commensurate with performance" regardless of sex, age, color, race, religion, physical handicaps, height, or weight. Let the businesses decide what they will pay. Let the worker decide what company they want to work for.

 

And their outfits and makeup cost more..

 

That is called self employment..

 

This still doesn't explain why a woman who works all requested overtime, has the same experience, and seniority, and work record, and same education, is still most likely going to be paid 30% less. Hell, there are many companies who pay men more even if they have less experience and education.

 

Sorry that situation does not exist anywhere in the country. It is illegal.

 

my wife puts in unpaid overtime everyday at her Uni job, has similar number of years experience in as her male counterpart in the exact same position and gets paid $40K less per year...illegal or not that's the reality

 

University? They have the same title?

 

same title, same duties, same faculty (different but equal departments), they consult and advise each other, and they're friends (it's not his fault) ...she's become quite stressed by it all, her performance reviews are excellent but HR won't approve a raise even when her immediate boss requested it.

the real irony here the Uni is very much promoting equality for women in the upper ranks but it appears that only applies to the academics.

 

The gender pay gap is a myth. A virulently persistent one too. Paying men and women different hourly rates purely because of their gender is illegal, and you can sue for millions in damages.

The gender earnings gap is innocuous and related to choices as the article suggests.

The entire issue is a farce.

 

I get paid pretty well in the sewer. I've not seen any women sewer workers. Pretty sure its not a result of discrimination....

 

No it's not. There is no law which states that all employees have to be paid the same wages and statistics show that women with the same skills, education, seniority, and work record get paid 30% less on average than men.

 

Sorry that's been debunked by everyone from heritage to brookiings to the BLS itself. And yes there is. It was passed several decades ago.

 

Oddly enough, they'd be making close to the same because the new hires are paid at current rates while the older hire started at a much lesser rate-but current for it's time-and worked their way up but are not paid much more than new hires..

 

So why does the Uni pay the guy $40,000 more per year? And is a salaried or wage job?

 

salary, she puts in a lot of overtime the union employees are long gone when she leaves for the day...why $40K more, well that's the question isn't it. They both applied for that position and reached the interview process of the three final candidates. She was unsuccessful that time but landed the identical position less than a year later at the sister institute.

 

I've been salary since 1981 and haven't gotten OT since then. Salary and commission the last 30 years, and prefer over wage/OT.

So they don't work at the same place just under the same Uni. Why hasn't she file a complaint, from what you are saying there are legal issues involved. Surely she has asked for it to be justified.

 

Only the more abject morons of the left still holler the wage disparity lie narrative. Like "the patriarchy" it is a narrative so thoroughly debunked now that the LW with triple digit IQs have almost all abandoned it. Am sure it still gets traction with young, self-absorbed female junk degree students who have never worked, and brain-dead celebrities, not much of anyone else.

Paying women less than men for the same work has been illegal since the 60s in the U.S. The end.