Opportunity Costs and The “Gender Wage Gap”
Nate Sjoberg
We’ve all heard about it, the gender wage gap, a message that there is inequality in the workforce on the basis that each gender being paid different wages for the same work. We hear that women make seventy-nine, seventy-eight, or even seventy-seven cents for every dollar a man makes. This deceiving rhetoric is simply well out of date, and I’d like to explain why this is not an inequality issue, but rather a difference in opportunity costs between gender.
First let’s talk about how this figure is calculated. In a 2013 Slate article, Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men, for example, wrote: “The official Bureau of Labor Department statistics show that the median earnings of full-time female workers is 77 percent of the median earnings of full-time male workers. But that is very different than ‘77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.’ The latter gives the impression that a man and a woman standing next to each other doing the same job for the same number of hours get paid different salaries. That’s not at all the case. “Full time” officially means 35 hours, but men work more hours than women. That’s the first problem: We could be comparing men working 40 hours to women working 35” (Agness). This statistic of 77 cents per dollar is simply an across the board calculation that doesn’t specify in which jobs the gap truly exists. By using the median income across all fields it must be assumed that women work the same jobs, in the same numbers, as men for the statistic to hold the argument of inequality based on bias. Obviously, we can’t assume men and women work the exact same jobs in the exact same numbers; therefore, this statistic, calculated by earnings not on the actual wages men and women make, can be easily moulded to the message of total inequality, in the workplace, we all hear today.
I’m not going to just deny that a gap exists and say that it’s all completely a myth. It’s been proven, based on studies from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that there is a gap in earnings (not wages), and there are a multitude of logical reasons why that is the case. To begin, women tend to work less hours than men. According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, “Among full-time workers (those usually working 35 hours or more per week), men worked longer than women—8.4 hours compared with 7.8 hours. Here we see that on average men work .6 hours (36 minutes) more than women in a day, and 3 hours more in a 5 day work week (Not to mention men also work more weekend hours on average). That extra time adds up and the marginal cost to male workers, devoting the extra time, pays off in the marginal benefit of a greater chance at a raise or promotion. Women are simply less willing accept the opportunity cost of less free time and happiness for more time and money at work. Also, there is quite a large amount of women that forfeit faster advancement in their careers by taking leave, quitting, or moving to part-time in the interest of starting a family. The opportunity cost? Earnings. There are many more facets to this, along with the argument that the gap is actually flipping. This based on a Cornell University study that found women are being favored 2 to 1 in hiring for jobs in the STEM fields (Rosenberg). I won’t get into that at this time, but it is an interesting statistic for personal research.
All in all, everyone deserves equal opportunity, and for the most part that is true today. Of course there our real incidents of gender inequality in the workplace, but that is very far from the norm and I believe those situations should be resolved on a case by case basis. Economics wise, it is beneficial that we have a large workforce of both men and women. Innovation is often created by the culmination of different points of view, and having men and women in all fields working side by side is both important and necessary for the progression of our country. Though there is in fact a gap in gender earnings, it shouldn’t be looked on as this entirely evil “wage gap”. This debate is still a hot topic today and there is much more information to dig into, so I hope I have opened your eyes to what is really going on.
Works Cited
Agness, Karin. "Don't Buy Into The Gender Pay Gap Myth." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.
Rosenberg, John S. "Minding The Campus." Minding The Campus. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.
Rosin, Hanna. "You Know That “Women Make 77 Cents to Every Man’s Dollar” Line? It’s Not True." Slate Magazine. N.p., 2013. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.
"Time Spent Working by Full- and Part-time Status, Gender, and Location in 2014 : The Economics Daily: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics." U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.
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ReplyDeleteI had never really thought about the wage gap in terms of earning and average work hours. It’s interesting to see that cited statistics aren’t exactly what meets the eye. While I do see the points you make when it comes to women working less and the opportunity cost associated with it, however i’d like to add an outside factor. . Maternity leave. Women do not get paid to take a maternity leave in America. For a long time, it was commonplace for the woman to stay home and take care of the children, whether it was long term maternity leave, or just a sick day. However, the 21st century has seen a shift. Paternity leave is rising in popularity, but is not reflected in statistics yet. In fact, Mr. Douglass here at PHS took a paternity leave last year in order to spend time with his newborn daughter. Gender roles could help explain the difference in work hours, but that’s becoming a more outdated reason. It’ll be interesting to see what statistics for hours worked and earnings look like in ten years.
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ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting topic to write about. It is a fairly controversial topic that spark many different opinions. Before reading this, I thought that the wage gap between men and women was something that needed to be fixed. I personally believed that it should be fair wages no matter what type of gender. After reading, I learned that the wage gap is actually due to how men tend to work a little bit more than women. Previously, I was unaware that women worked an average of 7.8 hours per day while men work 8.4. Due to statistics, this seems to be the case, although many believe that the two work the same amount of hours. I found this very interesting, but not surprising. By men devoting more time to their jobs, it only seems fair that they get paid slightly more. While reading, I also learned that some women forfeit faster advancement due to things such as taking leave, raising a family, or simply not working for a period of time. To me, this seems quite realistic in today's world. Before reading this article, I thought of the wage gap as unfair, but after reading this, I have come to realize that it is not over gender equality, but rather how much time is being dedicated to working. Overall, I have learned a lot from this article and it has changed my views about the gender wage gap.
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ReplyDeleteYou are correct in saying men and women aren’t always doing the same job, but that’s not to say there still isn’t a wage gap. However, that is part of the problem. Women have made great strides in getting into occupations previously done by mostly men, however in some occupations that is not the case. This wouldn’t be an issue if men and women were paid the same for doing comparable jobs, but they are not. For example, in middle-skill occupations, jobs done by mostly women earn 33 percent less than jobs done by mostly men. Research has also shown that when women do enter fields done by mostly men, they still make less. It also shows that when more women entered the field, the pay within that field declines. For example, when women began working in the previously male dominated “parks” hourly wages dropped by 57 points. The gender wage gap is still very real.
DeleteI found it interesting that you decided to take a different point of view on this issue rather than just saying how it is unfair. Before reading your article, I felt that it was a pretty big issue that needed to be fixed, but now I am beginning to question the topic. I never really thought that men worked more than women, but then again, I don’t really know much about work other than my own job, where I often work more hours than some of the guys combined. However, if this is the case for jobs farther in the future, I am sort of curious as to why it is this why. Why do women work less? Is it because they choose these hours or do the companies typically decide this? These are things that I would be interested in hearing more about. Yes, men work more than women, but I am sure there is more that you could elaborate about on that. But overall, I felt that this was very interesting topic to address and it really got me to think about it more than I would have before.
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ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to have another view point on this topic. Everyone has heard the rumor about the gender wage gap, but I'm interested to wonder how it actually effected women going into the workforce today. Like Nate stated in his essay, we need a different "scale" of sorts to appropriately measure if there is a wage gap. However, has this rumor not proved to be an incentive towards women to work harder in their professions? Those coming out of college and high school may be willing to prove this statistic wrong. I'd be interested to see if there actually is an average income gap, but more interested to see how women that are going into the workforce are affected by this statistic.
ReplyDeleteI agree that people are very uninformed about this topic. They see the phrase “unequal pay,” and just automatically assume that it is due to discrimination against women. Statistically, it is true that women value opportunity costs such as starting a family and more free time over the opportunity cost of more earnings. The difference in wage gap does not have sexist roots, and I think your post did an effective job at statistically proving that. However, I would have been interested to see more on what kinds of jobs women work in comparison to men on average. How are they paid for working comparable jobs?
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this Nate I really learned something new about the workplace! Gender equality has always been some aggravating pain in our side throughout history, but the research you did puts an interesting spin on things. Never would I have have thought that Opportunity cost plays a factor in the wage gap. Women have lots of responsibilities that men don't a lot of times therefore they have to give up how much they work in order to care for the family, or just have their general free time which most women enjoy. I was very unaware that women worked on average 7.8 hours a day to men's 8.4. The 36 minute difference adds up throughout the year and could mean a difference in thousands of dollars and that's where we sometimes see this wage gap! Before reading this I had only heard stories about women and men working the same job however with different pay. According to aauw.org in 2015 women make on average 80% of the men's median salary and the gap wont close until 2152. However what I didn't know was that this could be due to opportunity cost!
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ReplyDeleteI really liked how you separated the two, wages and earnings, because I feel that it is misinterpreted a lot of the time which leads people to assume that there is this mass inequality.The reality is that the gap is smaller and usually because of the choice of hours worked on average. I think that it also has to do a lot with the work type of jobs they’re doing. Say that the job has to do with hard labor or construction or anything on the lines of that, you will tend to see more of the male gender working on those jobs than women.Workers with those kinds of jobs often work 40-45 hours while the average woman worker only would work around 35. This can make a huge difference in the earnings and could be something looked easily looked at as a gap or inequality.
ReplyDeleteI've always heard that the wage gap between men and women in the workforce has been a huge problem, but until reading your post I didn't piece together all the factors that could be influencing this wage gap issue. It was very interesting to learn how it's not always gender bias of the employer that leads to wage gap; it's the hours that both men and women work. I think it is important to note that equality in the workforce is essential, and that gender should not cause someone's paycheck to be less than someone else of the opposite gender's, especially if they've both been working equal hours and in equal positions. Looking towards the future, with the rise of women working in the workforce instead of staying at home, I think eventually someday there will no longer be a wage gap because both men and women will work equal hours and receive equal pay. But until that change occurs, I agree that we need to understand all the factors that go into wage gaps between male and female genders and we need to consider all the opportunity costs of both genders as well.
ReplyDeleteI have heard about this issue many times but I have never realized that severity of it. I always heard that women got paid less than men but I didn't know that women would also get less hours compared to men. I find it very interesting that this is a giant issue in 2016. There shouldn't be this huge of difference between men and women. Why can't people get past these petty gender roles? It is 2016 and so many things have advanced why can't we just make men and women equal?
ReplyDeleteFor many years, women had always been treated low in every single aspect but as years passed, situations had changed the status for women. The only problem is the "wage gap", for many years I thought that the society had a mindset of paying women low wages than the men. However the facts in this article made me realize that it is not the society who is deciding the wages for men and women, it's an individual who is responsible to earn his/her money. The article stated that many women are quitting the advancement in their careers due to other responsibilities, well I say women work more hours than men in several fields: educational and health. These two fields contain the majority of women working with their full effort and time. The department of professional employees showed that from December 2014, there has been 93% in increase of women working full-time in the health industry and 75% of women working in education and training. I agree the fact that women are less willing to accept the earnings/opportunity cost of less free time but there are women who are more ready to accept the earnings for less liesures and spend most of their time for their career. Overall, this topic is one of the controversial topics in the world but as it said in the article there are logical reasons why women are payed less than men.
ReplyDeleteThis topic is usually used as evidence that women are at a disadvantage in the workplace, so it is interesting to hear the opposing point of view. I think that you bring up a good point about how the statistics used to compare men and women are not accurately portraying difference in earnings. It would be interesting to conduct a study comparing hourly wages or yearly salaries for men and women in the same fields to see if there is actually a noticeable gap, or if there is a larger gap in certain industries. I agree that overall, using median earnings doesn't yield clear enough data to argue that there is a significant wage gap. However, results from a better study could help us to truly identify whether or not there is a wage gap or hiring bias and help resolve workplace prejudices affecting either men or women.
ReplyDeleteThe statistics you used were spot on for your argument and it was really well done. The idea that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes is something that is hard to prove because there are so many other factors that can contribute to earnings. There should be a study done to accurately show whether there is a serious issue in our workplaces for gender equality.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to see this post, especially since it was from a different point of view than most of today’s society. It was eye-opening to see the facts you brought to the table. However, what in intrigues me the most is that when I was doing my own project on the ‘wage gap’ I found some striking differences in the information you found, even when trying to be unbiased. I enjoyed hearing from both sides, and it was interesting to read the information you found, especially since a lot of the facts and figures are unknown to most people. Overall, I think what would be most interesting would be a study that was as unbiased as possible truly studying men and women working the same hours, jobs, etc. and their pay.
ReplyDeleteThis was definitely an interesting topic to write about and I'm glad you did because this is one of the biggest controversies out there, why are men getting paid more than us (women)? This isn’t fair. With that being said you had very different sources that you had brought up, and that being that on average men work a few more hours than women and work more weekends, which is true; but if we were to put in the same amount of time as men do and work weekends there wouldn't be enough time to make dinner, go grocery shopping and cleaning the house. But overall I do agree with you, and that it is more so an opportunity cost, rather than a wage gap. Before I read this article I did think it was a bigger problem that the United States had to fix, but it’s not. Women are just barely doing less then men. Men are getting paid that dollar more for going the extra mile on working longer shifts and more weekends.
ReplyDeleteI’ll start off with saying that your post was a great read, but now we enter the dragon’s den. Before reading this I was expecting something along the lines of “Men must have less power in their hands” or “The gap is just made up by feminists!” But in reality, I saw a very well researched and executed post showing that the research that has been done to find the gap may be flawed because we do not know a person’s work hours or payment since most of that is confidential. But what we can do is go to maybe one type of store, say a grocery store and ask if there would be people willing to show their hours and wage so we could get a full statistic on what men and women get payed for how much work they get, because you are right about finding a median is not the greatest thing in the world when it comes to finding exacts.
ReplyDeleteReally I do agree it equality, however using evidence from the book "The End of All Men" when she averages the wages for men and women she does it for all jobs. I believe it's unfair to just average anything, because in fields such as construction you do not see a lot of women, mostly men doing hours of manual labor all for a good days pay, while on the other hand you may take a career run by more females than males such as a beauty job, that doesn't require hours of labor, still takes up time and thins like that, but it's not as demanding. I think that study would have bee more effective if you took a male and female in the same positions of employment and compare those salaries. As stated previously I do think the gender gap is wrong but I feel like you should use your evidence in a more specific manner than just comparing every job ever.
ReplyDeleteReading through this, the perspective that Nate has on gender wage gap and women's rights in general are parallel to mine. The statistics that he used prove that women to make less cents on average on every day of the year, including holidays and weekends. That in itself is a huge piece of evidence that proves his and my stance on gender wage gap. There is absolutely no reason why are woman should be making less than a man for doing the exact same task that their male coworkers do. This should be looked at from the base of each company, also. Companies wouldn't hire someone who wouldn't benefit their company or who wouldn't be capable of doing the work that is needed to be done. What's the point of a woman making less if they are picked selectively and deemed fitting to the a job? There are numerous studies that compare the earnings of men doing the same job as women, and they look similar, if not more extreme than Nate's. Changing how these statistics look starts with companies making a change in how they pay women, and the government impeding on companies that are paying their workers unequally. The article states that there is actually an opportunity cost of earnings between the two genders. There is an actual difference in marginal benefits between the two genders that could be fixed and optimize the income for both genders.
ReplyDeleteIt was very interesting to learn more about the statistic that we hear so much about and how it really actually applies to the gender wage gap. I would’ve been more interested to learn about how different educational background correlates to the gap and if that has any effect at all in the statistic. Knowing that men still are more likely to gain higher degrees than women in college and if there that is the preference behind men populating the professional workforce more than women or if it is a gender equality issue. Pointing out and distinguishing what makes this statistic of 77 cents to the dollar and if it is gender preference.
ReplyDeleteYou said that men work more times that women, and thus women are getting lower earnings. But,there are situations where women work same hours as men, but still get paid lower. Women, on average, earn less than men in virtually every single occupation for which there is sufficient earnings data for both men and women. Women also have a higher rate of graduating college as well as have a higher rate of overall college degrees presently. Women who work the same salaried jobs as men and make the same amount of money, actually make a little more that women.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading what others have commented and what Nate said, I really just agree with the fact that there is still not equality between men and women in the workforce. I, unlike James, believe that in some fields of study and careers that averages do show the right statistics because they are gender specific, although there are or may be fewer women OR men in said field. Nevertheless, there is still inequatlity in the work place between wages of men and women and I know for a fact that there is a way to fix that, and we should.
ReplyDeleteWhile the opportunity cost for not working as many hours for both men and women is wages, the opportunity cost for many women to work is greater than many men. While this is not true for every single woman nor every man, many women take care of children which requires them to be out of work. While sometimes men take on this role, in a house where both the man and the woman work, the woman is typically the one who takes care of the children and does other work in the house. This takes them away from work more which is partially why women work less than men on average.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the with you that the wage gender wage gap is a myth. It concerns me that politicians with still cite the 77% statistic to pander to half the population, even though it is not accurate in the context they are speaking in. If women were doing the same exact work and taking in 77% of the pay, companies would only be hiring women.
ReplyDeleteOur country has been slowly working towards equality for a very long time. This includes segregation, gender equality, etc.. It's a very slow process that is sped up when people share their opinion and fight for what they believe. It's nice to see so many people pushing for equality in the work place. In some cases the wage gap is unbelievable. The gap between Us mens soccer team and the womens is mind blowing. Almost all of the time the wage gap is unfair and a change is needed.
ReplyDeleteI have always heard that there is a gender wage gap, and I always have believed it without even seeing evidence. It has always been said so I kind of just believed it. This blog post that Nate wrote, gave me a different perspective with evidence so now I have a different form on opinion on it. I found it interesting that women tend to work less than men, which is why it appears that men are paid more than women. I also found it interesting that the opportunity costs (of earnings) to women is not as important as being home with family, etc. Overall, this read was interesting to me, because I can now understand where people may think there is a gap, however many do not look at all the facts and data behind it, before forming an opinion.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very controversial topic, but it was very interesting to see it written especially from a males point of view. I do think in a way there is a gender wage gap, I think it has come along way in past years. More women are in general are in the work force and often have higher paid jobs than they used too. I won't say it is a myth but I do think it is improving. I also really like the graph and statistics in the post proving your point.
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