Occupational Sexism - Wage Discrimination

Wage Discrimination

Though there is little debate as to whether or not women earn less than men do, the exact amount of women's earnings in comparison to men's is debated. As of 2003, even by doing the same job as men, women in the U.S. make 76 cents for every dollar earned. It is stated that this occurrence is disparate to the relation of race. For example, black women make 67% less than U.S. males. As of 2003, the U.S. Census Bureau sees that women make 75.5% of what male coworkers earn. Howard J. Wall, an economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, states that women make an hourly income that was equal to 83.8 percent of what men make. In the late 1980s, studies saw that about a fair amount of the gender pay gap was due to differences in the skills and experience that women bring to the labor market and about 28 percent was due to differences in industry, occupation, and union status among men and women. Accounting for these differences raised the female/male pay ratio in the late 1980s from about 72% to about 88%, leaving around 12 percent as an "unexplained" difference.