Kay Hymowitz: Why Women Make Less Than Men (h/t Instapundit):
One stubborn fact of the labor market argues against the idea. That is the gender-hours gap, close cousin of the gender-wage gap. Most people have heard that full-time working American women earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Yet these numbers don’t take into account the actual number of hours worked. And it turns out that women work fewer hours than men.
The Labor Department defines full-time as 35 hours a week or more, and the “or more” is far more likely to refer to male workers than to female ones. According to the department, almost 55% of workers logging more than 35 hours a week are men. In 2007, 25% of men working full-time jobs had workweeks of 41 or more hours, compared with 14% of female full-time workers. In other words, the famous gender-wage gap is to a considerable degree a gender-hours gap.
The main reason that women spend less time at work than men—and that women are unlikely to be the richer sex—is obvious: children. Today, childless 20-something women do earn more than their male peers. But most are likely to cut back their hours after they have kids, giving men the hours, and income, advantage.
And I thought it all was the fault of the Republicans in the House.
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Comments
Women with kids do tend to work less and that is a good thing.
The thing is however that they have to have the sort of job where they can do that.
Many professional women will take their maternity leave while they work from home on their computer and telephone and then go to a reduced schedule after five of six months.
That sort of situation is a little harder to come by for lower income workers or those who may have a more physical or labor intensive job where working at home is not an option.
A nurse or a restaurant manager for example.Two jobs that require long hours on their feet and working at night.
They cannot phone it in and may lose income during their recovery and come back to a new or reduced schedule.
Women TEND to work in less dangerous occupations, as well.
Some of those occupations are relatively better paid than their less dangerous comparative-skill jobs.
I recall a zealot addressing a group of women lawyers about what a shame it was that women were underrepresented among loggers, railroad crews, long haul truckers, oil platform workers, etc and we needed to do something about it. At my table we all looked at each other like the speaker was from another planet. Most of the jobs on the speaker’s list were dangerous, dirty and kept one away from home for days at a time. We couldn’t imagine finding women who would want to do such work.
Agreed. Though you will find a lot of women in trucking these days, due in large part to the VASTLY lower physical demands and increased comforts offered by modern trucks. I’ve known several retired couples (one was a president of a mid-west motorcoach builder) who drive as teams, and LOVE touring the nation in what are essentially money-making RVs.
cue the Left-feminist rant about how The Patriarchy forces women to assume more of the childcare responsibilities yadda yadda yadda in 3 … 2 … 1
Soon there should be some openings for women as secret service agents.
Nifty thought, I read an article the other day that said one of the best ways to fix the hours gap would be to have more places provide paternity leave (equal to maternity leave). Yes *paternity.* The idea was simple, many women (esepcially in the sciences) have trouble coming back into the career after having kids and taking maternity leave. In at least some of those cases their spouses (who may not even work in a science field) would take that “hit” except many places don’t offer it.
Now I’m not wanting mandated paternity leave from Big Papp Gov’ment, but I do find it fascinating that you hardly ever hear this brought up by the people fighting to fix the “wage gap”
Too loud and revealing? No, no, no honey.
That #WarOnWomen narrative fits your whiney ass perfectly!
OK…THAT was funny…!!!
Reminds me of my favorite Obama bumper-sticker.
It shows Obama’s image and asks, “Does this ASS make my truck look big?”.
Haha! Nice! I’ve got to find one of those!
https://www.google.com/search?q=Does+this+ASS+make+my+truck+look+big&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Socialization begins at home with family. There is a reason why that natural construct is being sabotaged.