The gender pay gap. If you believe the biased media, you probably think that women earn eighty cents on every dollar that men do, and you would be correct if you don't allow yourself the opportunity to dig a little deeper into the statistics.
Read the Department of Labor's wage gap report if you can suffer through it. The equation is rather simple. Total salaries for all men working full time jobs in the United States are added up and compared equitably to the same for women. And therein lies the rub...
Side-by-side comparisons of men and women's salaries have not been calculated. "So what?" you may ask. The what lies in roles many women choose in their careers versus those of their male counterparts. Additionally, studies have been conducted that demonstrate women, as a whole, do not negotiate salaries as well as men when offered employment. But I digress....
When comparing salaries between the sexes, it is vitally important to understand several dynamics. Men tend to work in manufacturing at a significantly higher rate than women (roughly twenty-seven percent of women work in manufacturing facilities). Obviously, skilled and general labor in this environment pays considerably higher wages than many of the traditional career paths women have chosen in previous generations. That said, it is reasonable to surmise that women entering manufacturing jobs are on equal par, insofar as pay is concerned, as their male counterparts. Why is that? Typically manufacturers have a set pay scale for hourly and salaried employees, although salaried employees often fall into an upper and lower wage scale.
Service and government employers also have pre-set wage scales. Where, then, is the wage disparity? As stated above, men and women still tend to work in traditional gender based jobs. Therefore, the Department of Labor's statistics is misleading and not all a fair comparison of salaries of men and women in similar roles.
Works cited:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/04/16/its-time-that-we-end-the-equal-pay-myth/#4b73420a4c52
http://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/Initiatives/Women-in-Manufacturing/~/media/9E6ED78EACB84084BD7A7C98B52B0E5C.ashx
In the next installment, Part four--The liberal un-agenda
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