1- The reasons of this pay gap.
Many causes can explain the pay gap existing in United Kingdom; recent researchers
have pursued a number of hypotheses, sometimes exploiting unique features of specific
data sets, in attempts to answer this question. The trade Union Congress (TUC) in its
report of 2008 explained the UK actual pay gap in terms of 4 explanations. 36% of the
pay gap could be explained by differences in lifetimes working patterns, 18 % is caused
by labour market rigidities, 38% is caused by direct discrimination and individuals
careers preferences, and 8% is caused by the fact that older women had power
educational attainment.
Discrimination is the most current argument used to explain the gender pay gap.
Evidences from a range of sources indicate that recruitment and selection processes,
and a substantial degree of job stereotyping, perpetuate an industry profile in which the
men dominate the high-earning jobs and women the low-earning jobs.
As point the Telegraph magazine the 5 September 2007, the Chartered Management
Institute (CMI) published a survey founding that mal managers were paid 12.2% more
than females in 2007. It shows that with the same job, females are still pay much less
than males. Another study published by the UK government called National Equality
Panel, states that Women under the age of 44 are better qualified than their male
counterparts but receive 21% lower wages.
Another idea largely sustained by the professor J. Shackleton of the University of East
London. He argue that the differences came down to individual lifestyle preferences
(dailymail.co.uk, 2008) « female graduates tend to choose subjects such as psychology
or education, which lead to lower-earning careers, while few opt for maths or
engineering, which are more likely to result in lucrative jobs …» . This idea is supported
by a survey of 2007 stating the women’s top ten occupations (Table 1)
The pay gap between men and women in the U.S. — the 80-ish cents on the dollar that
the average woman earns for every dollar the average man does — has narrowed at
such a slow pace that it would be unfair to glaciers to call it glacial.
When people talk about the pay gap, what this phrase typically means is that a woman
is being paid less than a man for doing the same work. A well-known example is Lilly
Ledbetter, who had worked in a tire factory for almost 20 years when a colleague left
her an anonymous note revealing she’d been earning thousands of dollars less than
men in the same position.
But these kinds of pay gaps — same role, same experience, same firm — account for
only a portion of the 20% pay gap between men and women, a gap that’s much worse
for women of color. Large chunks of the gap can be accounted for by differences like
industry and role. And at the root of these differences, according to a new research
report by Glassdoor, could be college majors.
Examining 46,934 resumes shared on Glassdoor by people who graduated between
2010 and 2017, the researchers looked at each person’s college major and their postcollege jobs in the five years after graduation. They then estimated the median pay for
each of those jobs (also using Glassdoor data) for employees with five years of
experience or less. Their key finding: “Many college majors that lead to high-paying
roles in tech and engineering are male dominated, while majors that lead to lowerpaying roles in social sciences and liberal arts tend to be female dominated, placing
men in higher-paying career pathways, on average.”
When I spoke with Andrew Chamberlain, Glassdoor’s chief economist, he explained that
one of his hopes with this research was to give all college students more insight into
which majors pay the most, so that they can make informed decisions about which
major they choose. He’s also hoping that “by showing young women the facts about
what they could potentially earn, more of them might choose a physics or engineering
major,” and that more of them will persist in those majors even if they’re the only
woman in some of their courses.
That is a noble goal, but it’s one that I was skeptical would work. In our society,
maleness and prestige often go together.
Jobs that are unconsciously coded male have more prestige and pay than jobs that are
coded female. This is why a custodian or a janitor (usually a man) gets paid more than a
maid or a “cleaning lady” (categorically female — have you ever heard of a “cleaning
gentleman”?). And it’s one of many reasons that male factory workers who get laid off
don’t rush into “pink-collar” jobs — not only do these jobs pay less, but they also are
inescapably lower prestige. Corporate America is not immune to these trends: HR, once
considered the most glamorous department to work in, has since become highly
feminized, and must now fight for respect at the C-suite table.
A series of studies have shown just how tightly gender, prestige, and pay are tangled.
Researchers have found that the pay gap is not as simple as women being pushed into
lower-paying jobs. In effect, it is the other way around: Certain jobs pay less because
women take them. Wages in biology and design were higher when the fields were
predominantly male; as more women became biologists and designers, pay dropped.
The opposite happened in computing, where early programmers were female. Today,
that field is one of the most predominantly male — and one of the highest paying. The
wage gap remains the widest at the top of the income ladder, where jobs tend to be
male dominated.
I suspect that our assumptions about what type of work is skilled or specialized is also
subtly gendered, although I’m not aware of any research examining this specific
question. But why do we assume that STEM subjects are “harder” than subjects that are
more person- or language-oriented? Aren’t human beings just as complex as code?
When I posed my hypothesis to Chamberlain, he was skeptical. He pointed out that if
you write bad code, the program probably just won’t work. Human beings are less rigid,
or just have lower standards. When it comes to writing, for example, “many people are
willing to accept mediocre work.” (Sigh.) There’s also the pesky issue of market forces
and the skills that society values. Music may be a highly technical field, but it’s a lowpaying one.
Nonetheless, the Glassdoor data does show that even when women and men study the
same subject, women sort into lower-paying jobs when they get out of school. For
example, among female biology majors, the top post-college jobs are lab technician,
pharmacy technician, and sales associate. Among the male graduates, the most
common jobs are lab tech, data analyst, and manager. Since the latter jobs are higher
paying, the pay gap persists even among people who majored in biology. The data
shows similar gaps for mathematics majors: Among both genders, data analyst and
generic analyst roles were popular. But men were much more likely to be found in sexy
data scientist roles, and so the average male math major earns $60,000 a year in his first
five years out of school, while the average female math major earns only $49,182. Other
research has shown that more of the gender wage gap comes from within-industry gaps
than between-industry gaps.
When I asked Chamberlain why women aren’t getting those higher-paying industry jobs,
despite their qualifications, he said his data didn’t indicate a reason. It could be driven
by the behavior of the job seeker. Perhaps men feel pressured to find and take the
highest-paying job they can get, while women think holistically about work-life balance
and flexibility. Perhaps companies are fast-tracking men into prestigious, higher-paying
roles. Or perhaps companies are being too narrow in what they’re looking for. For
instance, if you’re trying to hire a data scientist and you tell your recruiter to look only at
statistics majors, you’ve immediately narrowed your pool of applicants to mostly men. If
companies looked at skills rather than credentials, they might find that there are women
trained in sociology, biology, or anthropology who are just as handy with a spreadsheet.
One curious wrinkle in the data is in the areas where people aren’t doing anything with
their major. Many of these people seem to be earning less than the people who are
making use of their degree. Take kinesiology majors. Despite these students studying a
somewhat scientific topic (the movement of the human body), which ought to lead to
remunerative work in the booming health care industry, what Glassdoor’s data shows is
that a significant proportion of them aren’t going on to become physical therapists.
They’re becoming low-paid personal trainers, coaches, or waiters. This leads to a small
reverse pay gap: Women who major in kinesiology make, on average, $2,000 more a
year than men do, because they are more likely to take the physical therapy jobs that
make use of the skills they learned in school.
Music majors show a similar pattern. “Most women go into music in some way — the
most common job was audio engineer and music teacher,” said Chamberlain. “[But] the
men who majored in music often did nothing related to music. They worked as low-paid
landscapers, or sales associates.” Why would these men opt to not use their degree?
Perhaps because “music teacher” has a stereotype of being female, Chamberlain
speculated. Male music majors earn less than their female counterparts, in large part
because they’re not using their knowledge. (Depressingly, one reason the gap has
narrowed or reversed at the low end of the income spectrum is not only that some
women are earning more than their mothers did; it’s also that men are earning less, on
average, than their fathers did.)
It’s nice to think that some young woman out there will seize on these findings and
decide to persist in her dream of majoring in physics, math, or engineering. But I am
pessimistic about that. I suspect that if we suddenly found ourselves in a world where
90% of mechanical engineers were female, that work would then be looked down on as
low creativity and low prestige, much as software engineering was perceived when it
was heavily female.
While I find research about the wage gap endlessly fascinating, I also find it frustrating.
So much of the debate has descended into a muddle of details: It’s really a motherhood
penalty. It’s driven by women working fewer hours. It’s the result of personal choices. It’s
because women don’t negotiate. I don’t mean to sound dismissive; the details do
matter. But focusing on them is like focusing on the swarm of gnats in front of your face
and missing the huge, ugly alligator lurking just beyond. The nasty truth that underlies
all these details is very simple: We just don’t value women as much as we value men.
And until that changes, women will never get paid equally for their work.
Summary.
The pay gap between men and women in the U.S — the 80-ish cents on the dollar that
the average woman earns for every dollar earned by the average man — has narrowed
at such a slow pace that it would be unfair to glaciers to call it glacial. Large chunks of
the gap can be accounted for by differences like industry and role. And at the root of
these differences, according to a new research report by Glassdoor, could be college
major. Examining 46,934 resumes shared on Glassdoor.com by people who graduated
between 2010 and 2017, the researchers looked at each person’s college major and their
post-college jobs in the five years after graduation. They then estimated the median pay
for each of those jobs (also using Glassdoor data) for employees with five years or less
of experience. Their key finding: “Many college majors that lead to high-paying roles in
tech and engineering are male dominated, while majors that lead to lower-paying roles
in social sciences and liberal arts tend to be female-dominated, placing men in higherpaying career pathways, on average.” But other research shows that pay declines when
women move into a field (like biology), and compensation rises as men take a field over
(like computer programming). So even if more women move into high-paying college
majors, the result may not be equal pay
Refrence
Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap… Dr Warren Farrell
The Gender Pay Gap: Equal Work, Unequal Pay
Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap--and what Women Can Do
about it