Quote from: E̲n̲ga̲ge̲d̲T̲u̲r̲k̲e̲y on October 26, 2014, 04:37:49 PM

Quote

>Women are paid 20% less than men on average

[Citation needed]

Are you trying to debate about it or have you seriously never heard about that before?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/08/opinion/harris-equal-pay/

The first step in understanding the composition of the gender wage gap is to see if the correct measure of wages is being used. Because the average woman works fewer hours per week than the average man, defining the gap in terms of weekly earnings, as the Department of Labor usually does, inflates the wage gap artificially.1 Shifting the focus to hourly wages alone eliminates almost one-third of the gap: In 1999, women's median hourly earnings were 83.8 percent of men's, leaving a 16.2 cent gap in hourly earnings.

Defining the gender wage gap in terms of hourly earnings not only makes more sense statistically, but also illuminates the labor market gains made by women. As the accompanying chart shows, during the last two decades the gender gap in hourly earnings has fallen faster than the gap in weekly earnings. This has occurred as more women entered the labor force, including much larger proportions of women with children.2 Because the average woman with children works fewer hours per week, this trend has tended to increase the difference between the two measures of the gender wage gap.

In 1999, women's median weekly earnings were 76.5 percent of men's, implying a gender wage gap of 23.5 cents for every dollar earned by the median man. The gap has fallen by 13 cents during the last two decades, but has actually risen since 1993. A better measure, the gap in hourly earnings, has fallen faster and more continually during the period, standing at 16.2 cents in 1999.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Labor

Still, the gender wage gap of 16.2 cents that remains after correcting for the number of hours worked per week is rather substantial. The next question to examine is how much of the gap is due to human capital variables—such as education and experience—and other variables—such as industry, occupation and union status—that make wages differ between any two groups of workers. A 1997 study by Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn is representative of the research done on this question. This study was relied upon in a recent analysis of the gender wage gap by the President's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), which was subsequently cited by Director Garza in her statement to Congress.3

The Blau and Kahn study attributes 62 percent of the gap in hourly wages to such differences—one-third to differences in human capital variables, and 29 percent to differences in industry, occupation and union status. After applying these numbers to the 16.2 cent gap in hourly earnings, 6.2 cents of the gender wage gap remains unexplained.