Is there a pay gap between men and women for the same work?

[Adaeva]

For every dollar men earn, women earn 77 cents.

Do you believe businesses are so stupid that they will hire men when they could hire women at lower wages for the same work and have greater profit? If businesses are not stupid, how do you explain the wage gap?

[abc3643]

The wage gap has to do with statistical averages of wages between the sexes.
According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, for 2021 (the most recent year that numbers can be processed from income tax forms), median earnings for women in 2021 were 83.1 percent of the median for men.

SUGGESTED CITATION
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U. S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, Median earnings for women in 2021 were 83.1 percent of the median for men at www.bls.gov/.../...rcent-of-the-median-for-men.htm (visited January 15, 2023).

Since you are 14, you may not know what "median" means. In statistics, the median means 50% of people will be below the median and 50% of the people will be above it.

Let's try to put in some numbers to help explain this.
Suppose the median earnings for men was $50,000/year.
That means 50% of men earn less than $50,000/year and 50% of men earn more than $50,000/year.
But, for women, their median earnings are 83.1% of the men's median.
So, 83.1% of $50,000 = 0.831 * $50,000 = $41, 550.
That means 50% of women earn less than $41,550/year and 50% of women earn more than $41,550/year.
But, more importantly, significantly over half of women earn less than what half of men earn.

Something you may not be aware of is that wages aren't transparent. Many companies have nondisclosure agreements about salary. (This may soon become unlawful.) Companies want this because for 2 reasons:
1. If two employees do the same job but get paid differently, that will cause strife in the workplace.
2. By keeping pay private, companies can fuck employees over and they don't know any better.

It's that second part that partly explains the wage gap.
Since men have usually gotten more pay, they will expect more pay. Since women have usually gotten less pay but don't know what the men were getting, companies didn't need to pay more, so why should they.
But now, pay secrecy may go away and the statistics are part of the public record, so women are now aware that they've gotten fucked.

That said, PART of the problem is simply job choice. Many women often choose jobs that pay less than the jobs men do. Thus, statistically, there would be a earnings gap.

[Adaeva]

Thank you for your splendid explanation.

[Adaeva]

It may cause strife, but if they are paid what they agreed to work for, do they have a right to complain? Different pay for the same reminds me of the following same pay for different hours:
1 For the kingdom of heaven of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 And after agreeing with the workers for the standard wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 When it was about nine o’clock in the morning, he went out again and saw others standing around in the market place without work. 4 And he said to them, “You go into the vineyard too and I will give you whatever is right.” 5 So they went. When he went out again about noon and three o’clock that afternoon, he did the same thing. 6 And about five o’clock that afternoon he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, “Why are you standing here all day without work?” 7 They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You go and work in the vineyard too.”

8 When it was evening, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the workers and give the pay starting with the last hired until the first.” 9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each received a full day’s pay. 10 And when those hired first came, they though they would receive more. But each one also received the standard wage. 11 When they received it, they began to complain against the landowner, 12 saying, “These last fellows worked one hour, and you have made them equal to us who bore the hardship and burning heat of the day.

13 And the landowner replied to one of them, “Friend, I am not treating you unfairly. Didn’t you agree with me to work for the standard wage? 14 Take what is yours and go. I want to give this last man the same as I gave to you. 15 Am I not permitted to do what I want with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous? 16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

[Anonymous]

If you are working at mcdonalds your wages are fixed and non negotiable but for many or most professional positions your salary is negotiated.

I strongly suspect that SOME men are simply better at negotiating their wage than others and that the imbalance is not between men and women but between better wage negotiators who happen to be mostly men and worse who are mostly but not exclusively women.

Equal pay for equal work is correct but gender is nothing to do with it.

The problem of course then becomes how to you determine whether someone is producing an equal quantity and or quality of work to someone else? Currently the system is based on haggling and while that might sound archaic its actually not a bad way to determine value under certain conditions, i. e. when both parties are able to negotiate and where both have a reasonable understanding of their value and those conditions are NEVER going to apply fairly to everyone, some people on both either side of it won't be good at negotiating so there are employers out there overpaying for labour unfairly and unlike an employer and employee doesn't have a stack of job applications detailing exactly what their options are.

It is highly likely that this imbalance between employer and employee would need to be solved before it would be even remotely possible to have fair wages in the work place.

[Cassie88]

There is no "wage gap". The reasons for the discrepancy between the salaries of women and men on average, are due to a number of important factors, one of those factors being choice in career (ex. men gravitate towards fixing things, thus becoming engineers, women tend to gravitate to those careers that focus on people).

[SlothySlob]

Technically there's a wage gap even between men. On the same position some people have better pay, purely because they have the balls to ask for a raise where others don't.

[OddBeMe]

Yes. But it’s because men are much more likely to be employers and thus give other men higher paying jobs. It’s really just a systemic issue of women not being in the workplace as long and it’s fixing itself really.


So it is a non-issue. But still real. It’s not fake.

[BJP21]

The wage still exists in some job sectors. Corporate regimes are the prime examples of where it happens the most. Not only just wage gap of the sexes with but sustainable living wages for any given employee.

[robocop666]

I think it's a myth.

[dolemite89]

no that’s illegal

[NachtjaegerSS]

Laughable.

[BarryLiverstone]

Yea pay gaps exist

[fknsht]

In the us def.

[CAPTAIN-OBVIOUS]

Are you sure?

[fknsht]

Yeah I live in the us. It's well known that even a woman does a better job their her male peers with the same job she'll get paid less

[CAPTAIN-OBVIOUS]

If we were to compare the salaries of men and women in onlyfans, porn sites, waitress jobs like hooters and so on, what would the results show and why are these jobs left out when comparing?

[fknsht]

Because women are subjectified more on looks then men. The jobs where we use more of our brain men get paid more. It hurts their fragile ego that women and be smarter. Men are dumb and more willing to pay for shit based on superficial nonsense like titles at hooters

[CAPTAIN-OBVIOUS]

Why do you think men are not fighting for equal pay among fields like waitresses, onlyfans, etc?

[Guardian45]

Yes, there is.