The US has been pursuing gender equality for years and the whole nation has reached the agreement that the gender pay gap should be eliminated. However, after efforts from all parties, pay disparities still exist for workers across the country. A survey of the salaries of college graduates who receive U.S. federal funding found that a gender pay gap emerged soon after these graduates entered the labor market, even though they graduated from the same university with the same degree.
The data, from a survey of 1.7 million graduates in 11,300 undergraduate and master’s disciplines at about 2,000 universities, showed that about 75 percent of male graduates in those disciplines earned more than their female counterparts at the median of three years after graduation.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of the earnings of 2015 and 2016 graduates showed that the median earnings of male graduates were 10 percent or higher than those of women in roughly half of the disciplines compared to the median earnings of female graduates. Another research from CouponBirds showed that such pay disparities widen as female and male employees age.
Economists studying the gender pay gap refer to the so-called “motherhood penalty” – the perception that mothers are less committed to their jobs than men – which affects women’s employment, promotion, and pay.
The reasons for the early emergence of the earnings gap are not simple, here are five perceptions.
Gender discrimination. In the United States, although there is the Fair Labor Standards Act and related laws and regulations to protect women’s legal rights in equal pay for equal work, there are still many shackles in practice. When negotiating salaries, women are in a disadvantageous position compared with men, and some women cannot take the initiative to fight for a higher salary from employers to avoid being labeled as “difficult to deal with” or “playing a big game”.
Career choice. An expert pointed out that women tend to choose psychology, education and nursing, and other relatively low-paying professions; in contrast, men tend to choose computers, medicine, business, law, and other relatively high-paying professional fields. Thus, it is not difficult to explain the gender pay gap among graduates from top universities famous for science and technology, including Carnegie Mellon University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Working hours. Some experts believe that the real reason for the gender pay gap is the difference in the number of hours men and women work. Time is one of the reasons why women usually work fewer hours than men, they often have to go to take care of children or other family members, and therefore are not able to work overtime as often as men.
Career strategy. When choosing a career, women tend to choose more stable careers and are less sensitive to salary fluctuations than men, while men are more adventurous and tend to choose careers with more room for upward mobility. More importantly, men are more willing to jump from job to job for higher pay, while women tend to adapt to working in the same place for a long time.
COVID-19. The COVID-19 epidemic started at the beginning of 2020 has exacerbated this inequality and women’s working conditions have become even tougher. Richard Peter, a professor at the University of Ulm, Germany, said that the pandemic has exacerbated a gross widening gap in wages in gender. There are multiple reasons behind the phenomena – women need to take care of family members following the policies of “Work & Study From Home”; women are physically weaker and would be influenced more by COVID-19; the incomes of the companies fall so that they need to cut down the wages for women, etc.
These are just the inequalities in full-time jobs. Ever since the breakout of Covid 19, the trend is that more people choose to work in side hustles after COVID-19 explodes. However, a survey shows that the gender pay gap is also a common issue among side hustles – 46% of employed males are having a second job while for female employees the number is just 35%.
There are approaches to fighting against pay inequality. First and foremost, equal pay for equal work should be more than a slogan in the news or television shows. Discriminating employers will be at a disadvantage when compared to equal ones. When discrimination has a cost that will lead to lower profits, companies will know the proper way of equal pay.
Besides, companies could help eliminate pay disparities caused by occupational segregation by providing educational and financial support to female employees. Some countries have introduced plans to increase women workers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) labor forces. For example, the Australian government launched the Women in STEM Decadal Plan and the UK government established the Women in STEM Action Plan.
Gender pay gaps are discouraging women workers and holding the economy back. It requires the whole society to resolve the issue and build a more equal and productive labor market. There is data showing that such pay differences manifest rather early among employees. Reasons behind this are discrimination, career choice, working hours, career strategy and the pandemic. Pay disparities exist among full-time and part-time jobs alike. Measures to take against the problem include putting discriminating companies at a disadvantage by letting them pay the price for sexism and helping more women into industries that used to be occupied by men, such as the STEM markets.
