Will the gender wage gap ever close? [View all]

[davidn3600]

In the ultra progressive Nordic countries that have done the most to enforce gender equality, a gap stubbornly persists in the workplace. Can America really succeed where Sweden failed?

The gender gap debate has taken some surprising turns in recent days. Conservative critics have argued for years that the reason women make only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men is that they work fewer work hours and in lower paid occupations, not because of rampant sexism at the office or factory. Once it came to light that President Obama and several Democratic senators presided over sizable gaps in their own offices, this criticism of the 77 cent meme gained some new followers, including reliably left-leaning Ruth Marcus who went so far as to accuse the administration of “demagoguery.”

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Like Americans, Swedish women work substantially fewer hours than men; they are 2 times as likely to be part timers. They are the vast majority of social workers, teachers, and child care workers and a small minority of scientists (PDF) and CEO’s (PDF). In fact, Sweden’s labor market is among the most sex segregated (PDF) in the world and their wage gap shows it. Mothers take in only about 20% as men, much the same as in the United States.

The results in other countries committed to gender role busting are much the same. Iceland has been crowned the most gender equal country in the world by the World Economic Forum (PDF) every year since 2009. They provide many of the same supports as Sweden. So does Norway, third on the WEF list and famous as the first country to institute a 40% female quota in corporate boardrooms. Women in both countries are well represented in parliament—about 40%. Yet the ladies still work fewer hours than their male counterparts and they are two times as likely to be part timers. They remain segregated in more traditionally “female” occupations. Their mommy wage gap? About the same as Sweden and the U.S.

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Perhaps the predominance of single mothers as opposed to single fathers is also a result of social expectations. But with over 40% of American children born to unmarried mothers, the vision of half of all homes run by men and half of all institutions by women will remain a Nordic fairy tale for a very long time to come.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/22/can-the-gender-gap-be-solved.html

So in Sweden, women make up 45% of the legislature and in Norway women make up 40% of company boardrooms. But the gender wage gap is still no different than what we have in America?

Interesting...