49 Years After Kennedy Signed The Equal Pay Act, Women Still Earn 77 Cents To A Man’s Dollar

[lumberjack_jeff]

12. Since discrimination is illegal, where is the disparity coming from?

The average female full time worker works 7.75 hours on the average day. The average male full time worker works an average of 8.17 hours on the average day. Thus, full-time women work 95% of the hours that men do. Given that this differential is entirely overtime hours, in a fair world, one would expect to see the average man paid 7.5% more from this factor alone, even if they produced qualitatively the same work, with the same experience in the same jobs.

But men don't take the same jobs. Men represent 92% of workplace fatalities because they take the riskier, higher paying jobs.

And they don't have the same level of experience, men spend fewer years out of the workforce.

The amount of time spent in the labor force also differs by sex, with women at every educational level
and at every age spending fewer weeks in the labor force than men. Men with less than a high school
diploma spent 77 percent of weeks employed from age 18 to age 40. These men also spent 9 percent of
weeks unemployed. By comparison, women with less than a high school diploma spent just 48 percent of
weeks employed and 6 percent of weeks unemployed from age 18 to age 40. Women without a high school
diploma spent nearly as much time out of the labor force (46 percent of weeks) as they did employed (48
percent of weeks). The differences between men and women in labor force attachment were much smaller
among those with a bachelor’s degree or more education, but men still spent a larger proportion of weeks
employed than did women (85 versus 78 percent).
Labor force attachment is related to age for both men and women, with the percent of weeks employed
increasing and the percent of weeks unemployed or not in the labor force falling as individuals grow older.
From ages 18 to 21, men spent 22 percent of weeks out of the labor force and women spent 34 percent of
weeks out of the labor force. This age range is a period when large proportions of men and women attend
college or receive vocational training and, as a result, they spend less time in the labor force than they eventually
will. Indeed, from ages 36 to 40, these men spent only 6 percent of weeks out of the labor force and
women spent 21 percent of weeks out of the labor force. (See table 4.)
Like men, women were more likely to participate in the labor force as they aged, but the reduction in
the percent of weeks spent out of the labor force was much smaller among women than among men. After
age 21, women spent, on average, two and a half to four times as many weeks out of the labor force as men
of their same generation. Women in the age groups 22 to 25 and 26 to 30 each spent 26 percent of weeks
out of the labor force. Women ages 31 to 35 spent 24 percent of weeks out of the labor force and women
ages 36 to 40 spent 21 percent of weeks out of the labor force.

By the time a man and a woman reach age 40, the man has 21% more experience in the job. It seems apparent that the individual with more experience is, other things being equal, the preferred choice for greater responsibility.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t04.htm
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/nlsoy_08252006.pdf

The disparity is a reflection of people's choices. Either we believe in choice or we do not.

In my opinion, this is an issue that alienates married women and men from our party. Married women vote more like men than single women because their families are primarily dependent on his wages and are repelled by rhetoric that threatens it.