I'm afraid a course in Economics 101 won't help much in understanding the
pay differential between men and women. An advanced Economics course would
help a bit, but one in US social history (or women's studies emphasizing econo
mic history) would help more.
First, a confession.... I haven't emersed myself in this stuff since I
finished editing the fifth (and last) edition of my textbook WOMEN: A FEMINIST
PERSPECTIVE in 1993, but I doubt these generalizations have changed much since
then, though the details might have.
The much tossed around figure that women only earn X % of what men earn
is misleading. The number computed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics says
that the median annual income of full time working women is X % of the median
annual income of full time working men. (X has varied over time.) This doesn't
say much about what and why women are paid compared to men, but it does tell
us a lot about the economic resources of women, as a group, compared to men,
as a group.
It tells us nothing about the comparative wages of women who truly have
equal work with that of men. Comparing "equal pay" for "equal work" is very
hard since for the most part women do not have the same jobs as men. There
have been a lot of studies in the last 30 years which hve tried to focus in
on real comparative wages by micro studies which control as much as possible
for industry, region, job level, experience, education, and anything else
which can be quantified and might effect wage level. To generalize, one can
account for about half of the wage disparity between men and women by elimina
ting other possible factors. That leaves about half which can't be accounted
for (again, I'm generalizing; the actual numbers vary). Most economists see
this portion as due to discrimination.
This is where one needs a course in social history. Prior to the emergence
of the new feminist movement in the late 1960s, paying women less than men
was socially acceptable, even though it was also illegal in those fields
covered by state and federal equal pay laws. The assumption that men supp
orted families and women worked for pin money was pervasive. Where it was
not prohibited by law, union contracts often required different pay rates,
or had different job lines with the male jobs slightly different than those
in the female line so that the men could be paid more. In the traditioanl
female professions, (teaching, social work etc.) men were recruited for the
specific purpose of raising the overall pay rate. The historical legacy
and the social assumptions about women and their proper roles created a
pattern whose effects are still with us.
Nonetheless, the problem is not equal pay for equal work. The problem is
equal access to jobs that pay more. We also need to pay more to jobs which
require high levels of skill, but which have traditionally been underpaid
because they were mostly done by women.
Solving these is not easy, because we still expect women to shoulder the
primary burden of family care, with its resultant demands on time and availabi
lity. The achivement of the feminist movement is that we now recognize this
as a problem whereas before it was what God and nature ordained.
Jo Freeman, author of A ROOM AT A TIME: HOW WOMEN ENTERED PARTY POLITICS
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), and the forthcoming EDUCATION AT BERKELEY: A
HISTORY AND MEMOIR OF A FEMALE UNDERGRAD (1961-1965)
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