Written By: Rajen Modi
Feminists all across the country making the case that men get paid more than women for doing the same job. That statement is simply untrue. The number that is generally presented is that women make $0.79 to the men's dollar. This is entirely false, even feminists agree that this is absolute conjecture. In a 2007 report, the American Association of University Women admitted that the notion that women get paid for the same work is mostly is untrue. They stated that the differences in the pay between men and women are due to “personal choices rather than sexist activities”. This shows that even the people who are pushing this agenda don't believe in it. Another issue is that most people don't understand exactly how the wage gap is calculated. It is calculated by taking all the men's earnings and dividing it by all women's earning and then you get a number like 79 cents to the dollar. Therefore, that 79 cents are actually the earnings gap, rather than the wage gap. This is misleading for multiple reasons, it ignores the fact that men are 3 times more likely to work overtime at any job full time or part time, additionally, men are more likely to work on weekends and work at home on weekdays. Men with a full-time job tend to work about 8.6 hours per day while women with a full-time job tend to work 7.8. This is not to say men deserve more due to the fact that they work longer but it proves how the earnings gap has been created and why it is the way that it is. The gap is also due to the fact that men generally choose higher paying careers compared to women. For example, the highest paying major in America right now is petroleum engineering with an average salary of $120k/year. That being said, according to DataUSA, 79% of the students who majored in an engineering field were men. On the other side of the spectrum, one of the least profitable college majors is human sciences, with an average salary of $48k/year. Human Sciences is dominated by women, where 90% of the student that major in Human sciences are female. These trends are also prevalent in many other majors. Once one adjusts for all of that, the remaining gender pay gap is said to be around 5.5%. This still does not include family choices and willingness to negotiate salaries.
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