Gender Wage Gap

Recently the National Bureau of Economic Research put out a 70-page paper on the gender wage gap, and when taking many economic factors and many different studies into consideration, the gender wap gap may be much smaller than initially reported.  The primary cause for the appearance of the wage gap is on average females tend to work fewer hours than males.

The study requires you to be aware of past studies and have knowledge of how pay works. As a journalism major, I had neither, but I was still able to decipher it. Females have made significant progress in several areas in 1978 females made up 43 percent of all Bachelors and Associates degrees now they make up 57 percent

79 cents for every dollar males earn is probably a saying you’ve heard thrown around. However, some studies even have females making more in some fields, but the average came out to 92 cents for every dollar a male earned when taking into account working fewer hours and factors.

I asked Chabot students what they thought of the wage gap and got a surprising answer from the first woman I asked, Sharon Tang a second-year economics major said: “if a woman made 78 cents for every dollar no company would ever hire men.” She said she wasn’t surprised that multiple studies seemingly closed the original gap the department of labor puts out. She also cited anti-discrimination laws that make pay based on gender illegal.

Although the gender wage gap may be nowhere near as large as many pundits like to cite the same calculation of studies has it closing 21 percent since 1980 if the current trend continues the outlook is very good.

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