Study: Women Are Better Educated, But Poorer, Than Men

[herding cats]

Some commentators argue that with more women earning college degrees than men, and with more value being placed on “soft skills,” it’s just a matter of time before men start losing out to women in the workplace. A new report shows just how far the United States is from that reality.

The report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) on women’s poverty and opportunity finds that despite significant gains in educational achievement, women earn less and have higher poverty levels than men in all 50 states.

IWPR found that more women than men have a bachelor’s degree or higher in 29 states, and the share of women with that level of education has increased in every state and the District of Columbia since 2000. Women made up 57 percent of college students from 2012 to 2013.

At the same time as more women have earned a degree, however, more women have slipped into poverty: The percentage of women living above the poverty line declined from 87.9 in 2002 to 85.4 in 2013.

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/04/09/study-women-better-educated-poorer-men/

[madville]

1. I've never worked around many women

In any field I have been in. I worked in printing in the 1990's, maybe 10% female workers at the most.

Worked home construction, zero women.

Worked at a Coca-Cola warehouse, zero women except for one in the office.

Joined the military, maybe 10% women in the service but units I was stationed at were less than 5% female.

Out of the military worked in a technical field, zero female technicians, usually a couple of women in the front office though doing HR tasks and accounts.

Did a bunch of contract work with police and fire agencies, they were maybe 10% female.

Federal civilian employee now in a electronics/IT related field, zero women out of our office of 25. Federal places we visit these days doing our jobs, I would say 20% female.

My point is, women are still very underrepresented in manual labor/blue collar/technical fields. Many of those fields pay decent wages, as a technician at one place I was making 50k a year, the female office staff probably made 25k.

There is a big disparity in some industries, the big question is why do women not want to work in many of those fields such as construction, law enforcement or electronics for example?

[bettyellen]

2. They are strongly discouraged to work in those fields...,

And less likely to be hired when they apply and paid less when they get the job. There was a study in it for either state or federal employees, and they did monitoring and rectified the situation, but found the moment they stopped monitoring, the discrimination returned. It's going to take a few generations