From: utzoo!decvax!yale-com!leichter
Newsgroups: net.women
Title: Re: Fed-up and healthy
Article-I.D.: yale-com.814
Posted: Sun Feb  6 14:33:06 1983
Received: Mon Feb  7 03:51:22 1983
References: amd70.1400

"Women earn 60 cents for every dollar men earn."  This is a marvelous example of
Mark Twain's comment on there being "Lies, damn lies, and statistics".  While
it is true, it ignores so many factors that drawing conclusions from it are is
next to impossible.  Thus:

There is a strong correlation between age and income (up to retirement age).  Up
until quite recently, women did not enter the job market as much as men (for
whatever reasons - the facts exist independent of the causes).  Before you can
compare average incomes, you have to compare average ages.

Even if you control for ages, you have to consider the strong correlation be-
tween time on a job and income.  Again, men have the edge here because even
if you look at older women, they entered the workforce relatively recently.
(If I remember the numbers right, earning peaks in the late 40's, if not even
later.  Men in their late 40's have been working for over 20 years.  In 1962,
relatively few young women were entering the workforce.)

Finally, tied in with the previous point, there is a correlation between
steady work at a relatively small number of jobs, with no real breaks, and
income.  (Obviously, there are exceptions - job-hopping executives, etc. - but
few people are in this catagory.)  Women are much more likely to change jobs
and take time off.  (I heard a figure of something like an average of 3 jobs
over a lifetime for men and 13 for women.)

Hence, you can explain a large portion of the "income gap" in terms of factors
that have nothing to do with current discrimination (as opposed to discrimi-
nation 20 years ago).  If you intend to "do something" about the income gap,
you will have to "do something" about these factors.  I would submit that they
are extraordinarily difficult to change quickly, if at all.  (Consider the oft-
cited proposal that work be reorganized to allow women - and men - to take time
off and return "without penalty".  No matter how you organize things, the per-
son who stays on the job has advantages - improved skills, expanded contacts -
than the person who leaves.  There really is no way to overcome the advantages,
and this will show up in the averages.  Hence, the only way you could expect
to see a change would be for men, on average, to take as much time off for
child-rearing as men.  Ignoring the merits of this, it doesn't seem likely
in our culture - and it's certainly not something that we have any idea how
to "cause to happen".)
							-- Jerry
						decvax!yale-comix!leichter