Why Can't a Women Earn More Like A Man?

Linda Hirshman explains why, in the Washington Post:

The conventional wisdom assumes that employers are discriminating against young women, despite the laws against it. And some of the disparity -- about 5 percent -- does appear to be at least partly discrimination. But most of it isn't. Somewhere during their four years in the college womb, women develop into candidates for the world of work with 15 percent less market value than men.

Why does this happen? It's not as though the women are 15 percent dumber. After all, they enter college with better grades and graduate with better grades. Nor is it self-inflicted, driven by women who opt out to care for children or pick up socks. Most of the competing workers are single and childless and have no gaps in their nascent résumés.

In fact, what the AAUW report reveals is that, at almost every step of the way, women could make decisions that would keep them even with their male classmates. But they don't.

The biggest decision any student keeping an eye on the bottom line can make is the choice of a major. According to the AAUW report, women who major in education make 60 percent of what female engineers make in their first year of work. But far more women still choose education over engineering.

Despite the talk of discrimination, the same disparity holds true for the guys.

Tell me about it.  When I had to decide what to do for a living, I apparently listened to my feminine side and chose education. 

This is no big surprise.  Pernicious discrimination (based on prejudice) is usually easy to isolate, punish, and thus get rid of.  In fact, in the business world, it punishes itself.   An employer  who refuses to hire equally capable women, Hispanics, etc., effectively reduces the size of the hiring pool; this is leaves him with less leverage for wages, and opens up opportunities for his competition.  I am not arguing here that we should not punish intentional discrimination, only that it is problematic for a number of reasons. 

When we do get rid of pernicious discrimination, there is no reason to think that an even distribution of women and minorities in every industry will be the result.  All kinds of free choices and personal histories have an enormous effect on does the banking and the baking.