Thursday, November 18, 2004

The Capital Times - Gender pay gap in state 'appalling'

And indeed, it is appalling, if it accounts for variables like job experience and job type. This study doesn't do that. Here's the link. All they did was average everybody's salaries, then average men's and women's separately (then they separated out some minority groups to look at those).

I remember reading that far more men than women major in things like engineering, computer science, and finance, while women are far more likely to major in liberal arts. If true, it illustrates a major flaw in this "study."

A 26-year-old woman who majored in english and took a year off to have a baby doesn't make the same money as a 45-year-old man with 22 years experience as a civil engineer. This study does not appear to take that difference into account.

Anybody got any links to more info? I'm too busy to look it up myself.

2 comments:

The probligo said...

NZ has had equal pay legislation in place for the past 25 - 30 years.

Statistics put out by professional organistions such as Accountants and Lawyers record up to 15% margin between male and female practitioners in the general market place.

In other instances, there is complete parity, usually achieved by reducing the "male" rate to that of the lower rates...example nursing.

It is a long time since I heard the term "glass ceiling" being used here.

Steve Burri said...

Thomas Sowell has done quite abit of work in that area. Variables and commons sense don't seem to apply or be important in alot of this clap. (It also seems to be resistant to penicillin.) In the health care field we call it LRRD (Logic Resistant Rhetorical Dung).