Is There Really A Wage Gap?

Exclaimer: when writing this, I plan to be forthright and honest about this topic, and I am not here to provoke people who disagree with me but I want to give facts and my opinion on the subject matter. We all have biases and look at life from an individualized perspective. Euphemisms will be avoided in this discussion so don't be a snowflake and hear me out!

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I know the question that is circulating through your mind right now and that is, "Does this guy believe men and women are equal in worth"? The answer to this question is a simple YES! Men and women are different and were put on this earth to be productive and contribute to society the best they can. I love everyone and want both sexes to succeed in life to the best of their abilities! Men and women will always be different, but as a workforce, we can come together and make obtaining and keeping a job as equitable as possible!

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82 CENT/1$ MYTH

Jordan Peterson, a very notable clinical psychologist had this to say about the wage gap: "Multi varied analysis of the pay gap, indicate it doesn't exist....the claim that the wage gap between men and women is only due to sex is wrong". Cognitively, women and men are identical and have identical scores in STEM fields(this was a study done on 475,000 teenagers across 67 different regions). Typically the highest paying college degrees are in STEM fields. First, let me ask this simple question: If there is this massive wage gap of 82 cents to the dollar, then why aren't companies hiring all these women to exploit them for a profit? I can tell you the answer, it's called the Equal Pay Act of 1963. This act is strict on abolishing discrimination based on sex. If a company is caught, a lawsuit could ensue, making a companies reputation swirl down the drain. Also, if a company is proven guilty of pay discrimination, people can lose their job and the company will be required to fix this practice and capitulate to the EEOC. This statistic of 82 cents to a dollar is calculated as follows: WOMEN'S MEDIAN EARNINGS(45,097)/ MEN'S MEDIAN EARNINGS(55,219)= 0.82. This simple statistic leaves out so many variables, and that is why it is misleading to many people who truly believe that women are so discriminated against.

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WORK FATALITY

Where is the talk about men's discrimination? Did you know that 93% of workplace deaths are men? In 2017 5,147 people died on the job and 93% of these individuals were plighted due to the fact they were men. Talk about toxic work environments towards men. I am being comical right now, I truly know the reason why more men die than women in the workplace, it's called work choice. The more risk you take, the more money you make. Now, that saying isn't towards life or death necessarily, but the top 20 most fatal jobs to have in the U.S. are toiled by predominantly men. This isn't discrimination towards men, this is a simple fact that men typically choose jobs that are more fatal than women have the proclivity to choose.

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JOB CHOICE

In today's society, college has become a customary phenomenon that lots of kids follow through with getting jobs in the future. In 2017 women earned 57% of all bachelor's degrees and men earned the other 43%. Specifically, in the fields that are picked by both sexes, men often turn to the more lucrative options. This being said, let me explain by a study that was enacted by Georgetown University. This study shows the top 10 dominated majors by both sexes. Men on average made up 91% of the top 10 majors, in majors such as engineering and technology. The average pay for these majors is around 74,500$. This is due to the fact that men tend to lean towards STEM(engineering) based jobs. Women, on the other hand, made up 92.7% of the top 10 majors in majors such as education, services, and nursing to name a few. The average income for these women dominated majors are around 47,000$. Women tend to make these choices based on convenience, historical perspectives and the lack of seeing the helpfulness in STEM concentrated jobs according to the study. Let's back up even more of what I am saying by a study done in the Scandinavian countries(which allows women to pick any major or field they want without discrimination). In the Nordic countries, males make up around 5-7% of the nursing workforce and in STEM programs, and women make up around 16-25% of the STEM workforce. The BLS shows that the field with the highest amount of women working in it is child daycare services(94%). The average median income for this field is 23,760$. The lowest share of women working is in the logging(2.9%) logging industry and the average income for that occupation is 42,310$.

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HOURS WORKED/COMPETITION

Hours worked: According to the BLS, there are 6.5 million more men in the workforce than women. There are around 79 million women working compared to about 85.5 million men working in 2018. Around 85% of men work full-time and around 73% of women work full-time. Men work more hours on average: an average day of work for men was 7.88 hours compared to women's 7.31 hours, the average weekday for men worked was 8.27 hours compared to women's 7.66 hours, and the average weekend/holiday for men was 5.49 hours for men and 4.99 hours for women. The average of all of these is around 8% less work time for women than men. This could easily explain why there is a "wage gap" of 92% and that's just 1 metric being analyzed at the moment. Maternity leave could play a role in why women work fewer hours as well. In a study conducted by Harvard that involved a transit station who employed both men and women found that there was a "wage gap" of 0.89/1.00 women to men. This is a unionized workplace meant to prevent discrimination in any way. The study found that women on average worked 1.5 fewer hours of overtime and 1.3 more hours of unpaid time-off per week than there male counterparts. The conclusion: "Female operators, especially those who have dependents, pursue schedule conventionality, predictability, and controllability more than male operators. Analyzing two policy changes, we demonstrate that while reducing schedule controllability can reduce the earnings gap, it can also make workers—particularly female workers—worse off." That's intriguing isnt it?

Competition: Women seem to be rising up to the occasion as time persists. 40% of all households are run by breadwinning mothers or women. A lot of this is due to single motherhood, but regardless these women are primarily providing for their families. Women are being empowered by society more than EVER before. In a study conducted by James Chung in 2008 shows that single, childless, women in their 20's working in urban areas make 8% more money than their male counterparts. The main reason this is the case is that more women are graduating with college degrees and are taking up more of the entry-level jobs from college than men are. I don't view this as a gap for men, I view this as empowerment for women and the competition is becoming more fierce as time moves on. What if I told you that men and women have different outlooks on competition? As crazy as this sounds there are many studies showing that men have a higher level of competitiveness than women. Men are also more willing to forcefully push their way through the ranks to get to the top than the majority of women are. A Pittsburgh University study took 40 males and 40 females, testing these groups in some "simple addition exercise, under a non-competitive piece-rate compensation scheme and then under a competitive tournament incentive scheme. Participants were then asked whether they wanted to apply the piece-rate scheme or the competitive tournament compensation scheme to their next task." The results in a synopsis were this: There were NO gender differences in the probability of winning or cognitive ability, men were 2x more likely to compete in the tournament, but the catch here is that even low ability men were entering into this tournament when the women who should've competed with men failed to do so. Male overconfidence was overly represented in this study. Now that I have talked about competitiveness and women wanting to take more time off than men do, here is my conclusion. There are many studies suggesting that nurture and nature play a specific role in competitiveness. Men tend to be less agreeable when negotiating wages, but women who are less agreeable also tend to be paid more than their male counterparts. When men and women possess these characteristics of competitiveness and being less agreeable, pay ALWAYS goes up and the opportunities are limitless.

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BIBLES TAKE: Men and women are completely equal in God's eyes making a major impact in the same or different ways. Men are more aggressive, committing more crimes(93% of prison inmates are male) and going through with suicide more often even though women are 3x more likely to attempt suicide. Data was collected by a group called Promise Keepers and Baptist Press: "If a father does not go to church, even if his wife does, only 1 child in 50 will become a regular worshiper. If a father does go regularly, regardless of what the mother does, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will attend church as adults. If a father attends church irregularly, between half and two-thirds of their kids will attend church with some regularity as adults". This statistic is so telling of what having a father figure in the household and being the spiritual leader of that household does for a child. This proliferation can be backed up by Ephesians 5:22-26. Men are supposed to sacrifice for their wives and children to encourage them and help build the confidence in them needed so that women can rise above and beyond in their work(whatever they decide to do). Women are STRONG and God created women to help raise children, accompany men in marriage and labor hard in the workplace and be rewarded EQUALLY for the quality of the job they do! Men need to step up and be the father and husband that God created them to be, not some worthless evader who crumbles under some pressure out of selfish ambition. Men and women complement each other in many ways, and if we empower each other to rise up and be responsible like God intended us to do, then this problem would seise to exist!

Thank you reading my blog on the wage gap and how choices and responsible play the biggest "role" in deciding our future! There are way more details on this subject so do your own research!