To put some numbers to it, one study showed the 18% gap in college graduate pay dropped to 6.6% after controlling for major and occupation. In their conclusion they emphasize (among other things) that women should seek union work which has been able to narrow the wage gap, as I showed before. But we are left with a problem of, why are women making these choices? Is there anything we can do to maximize free choice?
I found the perfect example of wage-defending conservative thinkers in the Wall Street Journal article, “The '77 Cents on the Dollar' Myth About Women's Pay.” So, let’s take some time to respond directly to the authors:
1. Child care takes mothers out of the labor market, so when they return they have less work experience than similarly-aged males. Many working mothers seek jobs that provide greater flexibility, such as telecommuting or flexible hours. Not all jobs can be flexible, and all other things being equal, those which are will pay less than those that do not.
This is a true statement. There is no problem in showing this is an explainable piece of the wage gap. The problem is that they don’t imagine about a way to account for this in family policy. They simply want to show that the gap is a myth so we can all forget about it.
Women are disproportionately taking care of children, elderly, disabled family members and the chronically sick without pay. This strain on their economic, physical, emotional, and mental resources has left them incapable of reaching similar economic heights that men have. This is a social expectation to take the caring role that has been developed throughout our western history. This expectation is so strong that Pew Research shows 25% of all college graduate women become stay-at-home moms. Alongside this is the fact that “stay-at-home mothers living in poverty has more than doubled since 1970.”
What does this suggest to me? Well first, part of this may be attributed to college major choice (more on that below). But, once that’s accounted for, we can’t expect women to make choices like men have been able to when they still carry the weight of expected care work. Even when they are faced with increased poverty, there is no escape for the duties of women to be the caregivers. Especially for young mothers, their life is made up at the start of pregnancy (for those who choose to follow the course), while many young men find their way out. So, it may be time to contemplate a universal care work system (for children, elderly, sick/disabled, etc.). This conclusion is probably why conservative don't contemplate past the basic statistical results. The system can work in a few ways:
a. Government-subsidized private system
b. Private system with subsidy classes and a government choice
c. Complete government system of care laborers and institutions
You may see how similar this is to the health care system choices we had (realizing the complete free market was morally unsatisfactory). The debate should be turned towards researching how long parents should have leave from work and when to begin integrating the system in the family’s life, without extreme economic consequence to women. This will allow women to make their own economic aspirations without the control of care labor expectations.
2. Even within groups with the same educational attainment, women often choose fields of study, such as sociology, liberal arts or psychology, that pay less in the labor market. Men are more likely to major in finance, accounting or engineering.
This, once again, is not something to argue with. Women are choosing majors that make less money, period. Though, it isn’t hard to see that the differences in the degree of mathematics these areas are perceived to have. Perception, studies find, has a much stronger impact on young girls’ choices and performance then many realize. Cycles of perceptions of young girls’ (and womens’) inability to perform in highly-quantitative fields has had a damaging effect on the pay gap that we see today.
Once again, we can just state the difference, or we can understand it and move to change. Finding ways to ensure young girls feel as capable of mathematics as boys, and encouraging them to select male-dominated fields will be a slow, successful move towards pay equality. This should be perfectly fine with the conservatives, as there is no government intervention.
3. Yet the choice of college major is quite free, and many colleges recruit women into high-paying science or math majors. Likewise, many women prefer to stay home with their children. If doing so allows their husbands to maximize their own earnings, it's not clear that the families are worse off.
So the first part of this is tainted by my explanation in number 2. I don’t believe many choices are free (completely anyway), and when stereotypes and expectations are engrained from a young age, the freedom seems to be less and less realistic. The fact that women are recruited into colleges for math and science doesn’t say anything, but then the next two sentences on children are telling. There are probably plenty of women who love to stay home with their children. There are probably some women who would rather do that than ever find other work to occupy their time. But, to say "many women" prefer this is a problem. They may be economically incentivized (without a universal care system) to do this, but that is not a preference. Unless women have similar economic impacts from children as men, there is no certainty in determining preference. Maximizing the husband’s earnings may make the family more financially stable now, but with a better designed society, we wouldn’t have to sacrifice one sex for the economic autonomy of another.
So, when you see numbers like the 77 cent story, first you should see why that number is what it is. Then, you should ask what we can do about it. Until then, we will be stuck in the current game of catch phrases and crappy Wall Street Journal articles.