Abstract
Women currently earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Explanations abound for why, exactly, this wage gap exists. One of the more potent justifications attributes this pay differential to the unequal effects of marriage on the sexes: the marital asymmetry hypothesis. However, even when marital status is accounted for, a small but significant residual gap remains. This article argues that this is the result of social factors. Entrenched societal sexism causes all of us to harbor unconscious bias about the capabilities and proper gender roles of women. This bias, in turn, leads us to discount work completed by females, especially in professional environments. Employers are not immune from this effect, and the undervaluation of female ability affects hiring practices, leading to the residual wage gap.
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Notes
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 attempts to lessen the extant sex-based wage differential by amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The amendment establishes a new statute of limitations for filing lawsuits regarding pay discrimination, insuring that the 180-day time period to file litigation is reset upon each receipt of an inequitable paycheck. As such, the law served as a response to the 2007 United States Supreme Court holding in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/05-1074.ZO.html). This case declared it illegal for employees to sue employers, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, over race or gender pay discrimination based on decisions made by the employer 180 days ago or more. The Lilly Ledbetter Act liberalizes this statute of limitations, effectively making it simpler to pursue reparations for pay discrimination, particularly in cases where the plaintiff is, for long periods of time, unaware of any pay discrepancy as a result of gender discrimination (Grossman 2009).
In 2006, black women earned 63.6 cents for each dollar earned by all men. For Hispanic women, this amount was a much lower 51.7 cents (The Wage Gap, by Gender and Race 2007).
Note that this statement is not to suggest that males are always and categorically physically stronger than women. While some females are, indubitably, physically stronger than some men, it remains that on average men are physically stronger than are women.
Although there are a small number of married individuals in this sample, the number is low enough that the effect is essentially neutralized.
Block does present numbers that indicate that single women with a university degree earn 109.8% more than do men. These data, however, seem questionable. The average income of women is listed as $7,720, with the average income of men equaling $8,855. If women’s earnings are taken as a percentage of men’s, the result is 87.18%. The 109.8% reported by Block is only found if the average income of women is adjusted to be $9,720. Evidently, a human error has occurred in the process of running these numbers. In 1982, the data spread lists women’s wage to be 91.3% of men’s (derived from an average income of $24,349 for women and $26,679 for men). Unless 1971 was a year that, for no known reason, deviated in extreme form from all other years on account, it seems likely that the discrepancy in the 1971 data is a result of an error when calculating the percentage, rather than an incorrect number for the average wage. (Block 1989).
Recently, Census data also revealed that young, childless women in urban areas earn an average of 108% more than their male counterparts (Clark-Flory 2010; Dougherty 2010). Although the news media rejoiced over the news, it is important to realize that these data are rather misleading. Firstly, they do not compare incomes within industries or control for education levels. Women are 1.5 times more likely than men to go to college, and as such earn more, on average, than men (Clark-Flory 2010). If education levels were controlled for and women were compared with men in similar jobs, the significant residual pay gap discussed above would still remain.
Interestingly, the marital asymmetry hypothesis has been supported by studies which seek to answer whether the oft-noted relation between marriage and high wage for men (frequently referred to as the marital wage premium) is causal or simply correlational. By looking at the effect of marital status upon wage in monozygotic twin pairs, researchers were able to convincingly indicate that the marital wage premium for men is likely causal in relation (Varian 2004).
In the study, subjects were shown three video clips of an employee-customer interaction. The videos, including the script, were identical, except for the employee. In the highest rated video, the worker was a white male; in the lowest rated videos, the sales clerk was, alternatively, a white woman or a black man (Bakalar 2009).
Revealingly, many major symphony orchestras now conduct auditions behind curtains, so as to eliminate their admitted, yet unconscious, gender bias. Since the blind audition process was implemented, the gender ratio in orchestras has almost reached equality (Weiner 2010).
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Acknowledgments
The author of this article would like to extend great thanks, perhaps paradoxically, to Walter Block for inspiring her to write this article; the first draft was written for this professor’s class in labor economics. She also thanks Block and fellow classmate Allison Derrick for editorial assistance. She is solely responsible for the substantive research and analysis in this article.
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Sayers, R.C. The Cost of Being Female: Critical Comment on Block. J Bus Ethics 106, 519–524 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-1017-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-1017-4