The Wages of the Sexes
A recent study of business school graduates from the University of Chicago found that in the early years after graduating, men and women had “nearly identical labor incomes and weekly hours worked.” Men and women also paid a similar career price for taking off or working part time. Women, however, were vastly more likely to do so.
As a result, 15 years after graduation, the men were making about 75 percent more than the women… One subgroup of women [had] careers [that] resembled those of men: women who had no children and never took time off.
See the full article on women and wages.
I believe this has always been true. People have been too prone to attribute to “discrimination” what is really the result of lifestyle choices.
I agree with Joe. I think salary differences between men and women mainly reflect lifestyle choices.
I think that single men and single women who follow similar career paths earn about the same. The big problem for women is that they usually don’t have a wife — which helps boost the earnings of most men. I believe that married men earn more than single men and the difference is not trivial and it’s statistically significant.
It is a shame that men do not take as much time off. This implies that most men miss out on the activities with children etc because of work.
I read an interesting article in Slate about how the tenure system for academics hurts women’s careers. Once you finish your PhD and a couple of post-docs fellowships, you have about six years to receive tenure or you’re out the door. Women who want to have kids find this difficult to achieve this before their childbearing years are past, forcing many to choose between academic advancement and raising a family. To the casual observer, women that receive tenure at rates lower than men may look like outright discrimination rather than a rigid system that don’t meet the needs of modern families.
Gosh, who knew that raising children and building a career requires both time and energy? Or that time and energy are scarce and, like all scarce resources, must be allocated between child rearing and building a career?