found in feminist

[novapsyche]

Study: Academic gains for women, stagnation for men

Women now earn the majority of diplomas in fields men used to dominate -- from biology to business -- and have caught up in pursuit of law, medicine and other advanced degrees.

Even with such enormous gains over the past 25 years, women are paid less than men in comparable jobs and lag in landing top positions on college campuses.

[...] The U.S. population is 51 percent female, the same as it was three decade ago. Yet legal and cultural barriers have fallen during that time, creating opportunities for women, experts say.

Women also have become savvy about boosting their income for themselves and their families by recognizing the value of advanced degrees, [Avis] Jones-DeWeever[, overseer of education policy for the Institute of Women's Policy Research,] said.

Women who work full time earn about 76 percent as much as men, according to the Institute of Women's Policy Research. Women are underrepresented in full-time faculty jobs, particularly in fields such as physical sciences, engineering and math.

Comments

[ex-druid210.livejournal.com]

I would think the key to breaking that "barrier" would be to get women into the top management positions. Also, some women should be buying up the stock in large corporations in order to become the major stockholders, who have the capacity to influence corporate decisions. As long as men are the stockholders, and on the board of directors, you are going to have things done the traditional way.
Women should also run for all the political positions. Theoretically, women should be better salespeople than men and so should be able to do well as politicians. The old "business as usual" in the political sector is getting old.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Is that 76% representative of what women make in the same job with the same education and experience? Because I always have Rush Limbaugh/Bill O'Reilly fans shouting out that those are false stats. I'd like to be able to shut them up.

Because I'm always hearing "Then, why would anyone hire a man when they could pay a woman 76% to do the same job?"

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

My last reading on this suggested that much of the disparity is due to the different ways that men and women, on average, tend to plan their career paths.

It suggested that the disparity shrinks to less than 2% when one corrects for education and experience.

I can't claim to be an authority on the issue, though.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I would like to read what you have read.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

I just found a study that showed that after adjusting for speciality and number of hours worked, young female and male physicians (going into practice after about 1990) make almost exactly the same amount of money, though disparities in pay are still there among older doctors.

[atdt1991.livejournal.com]

Thought you'd like to see this, in your unceasing search for knowledge:

http://flinx.livejournal.com/87491.html

[cabell.livejournal.com]

One thing that happens when a particular profession becomes more "feminine" is that the pay goes down; professions that are (and remain) male-dominated have higher pay, and obviously there are structural issues that make engineering, for instance, continue to be male-dominated even as women make up a larger percentage of total college graduates and start to "take over" "soft sciences" like biology. Also, of course, women tend to plan career paths differently because it tends to be assumed that if anyone is going to take one for the team when it comes to child-rearing, it will be the woman. So you can control for education and experience and eliminate much of the difference in pay, but I would argue that this does NOT mean that the disparities are not, ultimately, gender-based.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

you can control for education and experience and eliminate much of the difference in pay, but I would argue that this does NOT mean that the disparities are not, ultimately, gender-based

Can you explain this some more?

[cabell.livejournal.com]

Sure. Women are now getting more bachelors degrees, but they're not necessarily getting them in high-paying fields--"hard" sciences like physics and engineering remain male-dominated. So for instance, a female engineer may make about the same as her male counterparts, but why are there so few female engineers to begin with? It looks like girls are run out of the sciences around the 6th-8th grades (although I think a downward trend in female science performance continues through high school); in early elementary school, girls outperform boys in science, and then they drift away from it, I would argue largely because of local and broad cultural messages that science and math are for men.

The percentage of women getting degrees also drops as you go into the postgraduate, although some fields are still female-dominated. In 1998, women received about 42% of the total doctorates awarded by US universities, but again, very few of those degrees were in, say, engineering or economics (the latter of which pays way more than sociology, a field in which women may actually be starting to dominate). Considering professional training, as doctor-doctors, women still tend to go into general practice rather than higher paying specialties. Comparing within professions doesn't capture the effects of women still being streamed into professions that are lower-paying overall--a quality that may be more or less directly associated with female dominance of the field. Men in highly female-dominated professions get paid MORE: for instance, male elementary school teachers.

As for experience, it's mostly a child-rearing issue. Among most couples in the U.S., if one parent is going to take time off for children, it's the woman; this does set her back on a career path and mean she has less experience in the field if she returns later, but you have to look at this as a systematic issue rather than "well, yeah, you took time off so you're behind." Why is it almost always the woman taking the time off? Why don't we have more accomdating maternal and parental leave policies in this country? Compare to some of the Scandinavian countries, where they allow a year or more of parental leave that must be evenly split between parents or half of it disappears, encouraging new fathers to also take some time off to spend with children.

In some countries, such as Japan, companies are able to be quite explicit about career tracking and keeping women off of advancement tracks because it's assumed that they're going to run off and have babies. Those practices may be less explicit here, where they're illegal, but that doesn't mean that women in the workplace don't have to deal with assumptions that they are babymakers first and workers second.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

We agree that parental care accomodations constitute a malignant systematic problem.

I'm not so sure I'm willing to regard women tending towards family practise as constituting inadvertent streaming; that seems like an unwarranted assumption to me- and one that veers uncomfortably close to disrespecting the choice of the women involved.

But then, I'm biased. I personally happen to feel that the lower-paying medical specialties, overall, offer better quality of life than the higher-paying ones, and feel that women making that choice should be applauded for their sensible decision, instead of being regarded as having been disadvantaged by bigoted streaming.

It could be argued that women are victim to streaming that denies them higher salaries; it could also be argued that men are victim to streaming that denies them health and time with their families. It often assumes that women are babymakers first and workers second; it assumes that men are disposable tools whose family life can be ignored entirely.

In the end, the system is not a pleasant one. My suspicion is that it is an equal-opportunity predator.

[cabell.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to come across as unilaterally privileging high-paying jobs, so thanks for pointing that. I agree that the current system is harmful to men and I think it's sad that men's time with their families is considered less important by the mainstream culture. However, I think the disadvantages women suffer from the system when, for instance, they get divorced, are more immediately threatening. And I think that the system makes it difficult for women who WANT to choose male-dominated areas, or not to stay home with the kids, etc.--just as it makes it difficult for men who want to make "feminine" choices. I am definitely in favor of choice for everyone.

I also think that, say, streaming women out of science through secondary school is largely a separate, though still gender-based issue; science ends up being higher paid and male-dominated, but not in quite the same way as surgery or some other medical specialization. Women are knocked out of the running much earlier, and I feel like choices are foreclosed there.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

My impression of women disadvantaged in divorce is that the disadvantage is generally a result of financial ignorance, poor financial planning, malignant relationships, or some combination of the above. The idea that being a homemaker has to leave one financially vulnerable is an unfortunate stereotype, and one that I hope we can all leave behind eventually.

It is more a result of the idea that money is dirty and not to be handled by madonna-pure womanhood than anything else.

Although I guess roots can be traced to a Puritan-literalistic idea that the work-earn-spend cycle is inviolate, with no leeway to plan for illness, voluntary idleness, or unexpected disruption.

The same factors that leave women vulnerable in case of divorce also leave them vulnerable in case of bereavement. I've had to advise various women on that score; trust, habit, and superficial, youthful child-centredness leads many to disregard financial literacy and contingency planning, and I've had to ask them: what happens to your children if he dies? If you both die? What if he gets fired? What assets are in your name? What income accrues to you in his absence?

Working motherhood helps, but seldom really constitutes an answer to that prolem, as some discover too late. Working newly-single mothers- whether post-divorce or widows- (even those with fairly good jobs!) generally end up in the terrible bind of too little money and no time at all.

Divorce contingency issues are only one facet of a much larger problem.

[simianpower.livejournal.com]

I wonder if any of these statistics take into account career paths. For example, 30 years ago Bob joined Company X, and has been rising within that company the whole time. Back then, the company was mostly men. Now, though, there are a whole lot of women in the company, but since Bob has the experience he's at the top of the food chain. So, sure, Susan is making a lot less than Bob, but she's also got 20 years less experience.

Since the numbers of women getting degrees and jobs is steadily rising, I suspect that if we wait for 10-20 more years the numbers saying that women are making less will change, since at that point some of the women who got into the companies early will have the experience and (hopefully) the top jobs. It's still an old white male's game, but they're old, so they should be retiring soon!