April 25, 2016
Robert Samuelson had what he thinks is good news, the pay gap in hourly wages between men and women is just 8.0 percent once we control for occupations and experience, not the more widely cited 21 percent. Samuelson tells us that it is a mistake to throw around this 21 percent figure since it doesn’t include proper adjustments. While Samuelson is correct that the 21 percent figure does not include all the controls that we would like to see, it is wrong to claim, as Samuelson is implicitly claiming, that the choice of occupation is not in part the result of discrimination.
In almost all occupations, there is a clear pattern where the most highly paid sub-sections are predominantly male, while the lower paid ones are predominantly females. This is clearest in the case of medicine. Highly paid specialists like neurosurgeons and cardiologists continue to be disproportionately male. Family practitioners and pediatricians are disproportionately women.
One can believe that women just don’t like to do things like learn about hearts, or one can believe that women face obstacles advancing in residency programs dominated by men. Samuelson seems to think the former. While it is probably not the case that women are ever formally blocked from entering higher paying areas of medicine or other occupations, there are many subtle ways in which the men already in these fields can make woman entrants feel uncomfortable. If these are not tackled then we are likely to end up with a situation where women’s pay remains well below the pay of men, even if it is comparable when we adjust for occupation and experience.
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