April 14, 2015, was equal pay day. It represents how much longer a woman has to work to earn as much as a man did in 2014. The statistic is that women earn 78 cents for each dollar that a man earns and has to work more than 15 months to earn the same amount that a man does in 12. This doesn’t tell us the whole story.
It is based on comparing the median incomes of full-time employed men and women in 2014, across all jobs. Women generally have lower paying jobs than men do – there are significantly more male CEOs, CFOs, surgeons etc., than female. Women tend to go into lower paying positions than men do.
The question is – why do women tend to choose lower paying jobs? It is not because women aren’t as ambitious or hard-working as men. It is because women have to make different choices than men do.
Tags: College Life