As the profoundly misleading slogan implies, people
performing equal work should receive equal pay. In truth, there is no such
thing as equal work, and besides, when you apply this formulation to men and
women, you find out that in most cases they do not do anything resembling equal work.
As we read the usual round of whining about why there are
not enough women at all levels of all corporate hierarchies we must remark that
a considerable part of the problem is that many women simply do not want to do
what it takes to become a lead corporate honcho. Ought we not to respect their
free choices?
Of course, we are always looking for ways to quantify the
difference, to demonstrate that the pay gap is merely a reflection of hours
worked… and that what appears to be equal work is often not equal work. Two
workers may have the same title and the same position, but that does not mean
that they perform equal work.
Now, the Newswars site reports on a paper by Harvard
economists, Valentin Bolotnyy and Natalia Emanuel. It is entitled “Why Do Women Earn
Less Than Men? Evidence from Bus and Train Operators.”
Newswars quotes the authors view
that the gender pay gap:
… can be explained entirely by the fact that,
while having the same choice sets in the workplace, women and men make
different choices. Women use the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to take more
unpaid timeoff than men and they work fewer overtime hours at 1.5 times the
wage rate. At the root of these different choices is the fact that women value
time and flexibility more than men. Men and women choose to work similar hours
of overtime when it is scheduled a quarter in advance,but men work nearly twice
as many overtime hours than women when they are scheduled theday before. Using
W-4 filings to ascertain marital status and the presence of dependents, we show
that women with dependents – especially single women – value time away from
work more than men with dependents.
Different choices suggests that
women exercise their freedom to choose… and choose to spend more time with
their children.
The numbers tell the story:
… the earnings gap can be explained in our
setting by the fact that men take48% fewer unpaid hours off and work 83% more
overtime hours per year than women. Thereason for these differences is not that
men and women face different choice sets in this job.Rather, it is that women
have greater demand for workplace flexibility and lower demand for overtime work
hours than men. These gender differences are consistent with women taking on
more of the household and childcare duties than men, limiting their work
availability in the process. … When overtime hours are scheduled three months
in advance, men sign up for about 7%more of them than women. When overtime is
scheduled the day before or the day of the necessary shift, men work almost
twice as many of those hours as women.
Women with dependents – single women in
particular – are considerably less likely than men with dependents to accept an
overtime opportunity. This is especially the case during weekends and after
regular work hours, times when there are fewer childcare options available.
Besides, the authors continue, what we gingerly call equal
work is not really equal work:
They
also help to highlight the fact that even when men and women have the same job
title and the same job description, the work they do is not homogenous. A
worker who works at odd hours (and thus makes more overtime pay because of it)
simply isn’t doing the same work as
a person who requires extremely regular hours. Similarly, a worker who requires
sizable chunks of time off every several years (for maternity leave or
childcare needs) is also not doing the same work as a worker who rarely takes
time off.
The conclusion: men and women are treated fairly in the
workplace, according to their contributions.
Men and women make different choices? That's SEXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXIST!!!!11111!!!
ReplyDeleteWe all KNOW that MEN are REPRESSING WOMEN!!!1111!!!! That's NOT "free choice"!!!111!!!
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What more can I say, except "The HORROR!! The horror..."
Men and women make diffferent choices? Wow, I haven’t heard wisdom like that at Harvard since Harvey Mansfield was still teaching.
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