I have a question

amandasw

I don't fully understand this article in the Seattle PI about how women make less than men.  Is this just comparing all women to all men?  Does it take into account the jobs/position/etc?  Or is it just saying overall that women make less money than men, not that they are discriminated against?

dreamwinds

It means no matter what industry you are in, women generally make 15% less than men in Washington state.

Nationally, I think women make 10% less than men regardless of industry.

There are exceptions to this, like all generalizations. And there are a lot of factors as to why women make less than men, but one of the primary reasons women tend to make less than men is they're less aggressive when negotiating an initial salary and less aggressive at asking for/demanding raises.

karimychel

Yes in general women earn less.

Though I'm skeptical of the #'s their throwing around based on the technical note at the bottom of the report ( I C&P'd that below). 

"The estimates in this report were obtained from the Current Population Survey (CPS), which provides a wide range of information on the labor force, employment, and unemployment. This survey is conducted monthly for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau, using a national sample of about 60,000 households, with coverage in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The earnings data are collected from one-fourth of the CPS monthly sample."    

amandasw

dreamwinds:

There are exceptions to this, like all generalizations. And there are a lot of factors as to why women make less than men, but one of the primary reasons women tend to make less than men is they're less aggressive when negotiating an initial salary and less aggressive at asking for/demanding raises.

right, I've definitely heard about that before, I was curious if they actually ever take into consideration the types of jobs men and women have.  In general I think these types of articles are stupid.  At this point, I think men and women have the same opportunities for the most part and women often choose to work less etc. in order to have a family.  (as opposed to the problem before where women weren't allowed to have jobs etc)

dreamwinds

amandasw:

dreamwinds:

There are exceptions to this, like all generalizations. And there are a lot of factors as to why women make less than men, but one of the primary reasons women tend to make less than men is they're less aggressive when negotiating an initial salary and less aggressive at asking for/demanding raises.

right, I've definitely heard about that before, I was curious if they actually ever take into consideration the types of jobs men and women have.  In general I think these types of articles are stupid.  At this point, I think men and women have the same opportunities for the most part and women often choose to work less etc. in order to have a family.  (as opposed to the problem before where women weren't allowed to have jobs etc)

There are a lot of studies on this and how women sometimes start off with less salary and companies justify giving a newly hired women less of a base salary than a newly hired man because she may or may not go off and have a family and 'lose' the company the money it invests in training her up to her position, cause there was also some statistic  about how often women who have kids return to their jobs. 

 I read an article a few years ago that talked about this in the NYT I think, if I come across it again I'll try to remember to link it here.

sarack

Wow, I'm not sure why I think it's surprising but knowing that the percentage is higher in Washington than in the US is interesting... a bummer, but interesting all the same.