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Top 7 Reasons Why Women Get Paid Less Than Men
By now, you can’t help but have heard about the latest women are paid less than men study. The twist on this one: it happens their whole lives, even if they get better grades.
While the reality isn’t quite as stark as the headlines (see below), it is still true that women make less money than men in a comparable job.
Is this discrimination? I’m not sure and I’m not particularly qualified to say. What I can say is that there are recurring reasons why women are paid less than men that I see time and again.
And in life you’ve got two choices: Whine/Complain/Fight against the way things are OR Adapt to the way things are so that you can overcome.
In the spirit of the latter, today I’ll talk about WHY women get paid less.
FIRST, DON’T GET CAUGHT UP IN THE HYPE
Before I get into the main reasons that women get paid less, on average, than men, I want to encourage the women out there to not get caught up in the hype.
When you read these studies, the intent is that you get emotionally wrapped around an axle and start crying in the wilderness about how unfair it all is. However, if you’re doing that, you’re not making anything better.
For instance, the sponsoring organization for the most recent study, the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, wants everyone to have some sort of Equal Pay Day where you march or scream or demand or something. Don’t do it.
Instead, focus on what you can do to change your circumstances. Don’t worry about getting every woman in America a raise; just you.
And to do that, it’ll be helpful to understand why women get paid less.
THE TOP 7 REASONS WHY WOMEN GET PAID LESS THAN MEN
Keep in mind that these aren’t excuses. These are the reasons from the brains of bosses why it happens. Once you know the reasons, you can start to use a little psychology to fix the situation.
- Women Go Into Lower Paying Fields - This isn’t just a guess on my part. This is actually part of the study:
Female students tended to study areas with lower pay, such as education, health and psychology, while male students dominated higher-paying fields such as engineering, mathematics and physical sciences, it said.
- Women Go Part-Time or Take Leaves of Absence More Often - Usually in response to parenthood, the study says:
Parenthood affected men and women in vividly different ways. The study showed mothers more likely than fathers, or other women, to work part time or take leaves.
- Married Women Are Assumed to be a “Secondary Provider” - That is, the woman’s income is secondary to her husband’s income, so she doesn’t need as much.
Yes, that sounds terrible and horrible and awful to many people. However, employers have always responded to their employee’s situations. For example, shouldn’t any parent who has a number of children to care for be paid more so that they can?
And the driving factor of this philosophy is actually women themselves. How many wives do you know with a “What’s yours is ours, what’s mine is mine” philosophy to salaries? in other words, the man’s salary goes toward bills and mortgage, etc. But the woman’s salary goes toward whatever she feels like.
That is what is going through a boss’ mind when he offers a married woman less.
- Single Women Are Assumed To Have Fewer Expenses - That is, fewer expenses than their single male counterparts.
Why to bosses make that terrible assumption? Because there’s no “Men’s Night” at the local bar. And I’ve never heard a bunch of men talking about how they cozied up to some woman to get (free) drinks.
Again, it might be wrong and terrible, but that’s what they’re thinking.
- Women Are Viewed As Less Committed To The Company - All those good things that you’ve heard about women also translate into less commitment to the company:
You’ve heard that women take better care of themselves (and their husbands) than men (and that’s why married men are healthier than single men). That also means that they have more partial days off to go to every conceivable doctor in the landscape. Still, for some mysterious reason, somehow women seem to take more sick days than men.
You’ve heard that women bravely accept most of the burden of parenthood along with their job responsibilities. That also means women are the ones to take time off to be with a sick child, take a child to the doctor, or run to the school because the child just pulled out a gun.
You’ve heard that women care more about their community and do the majority of the volunteering and fundraising. And they have to take time off work to do these things, as well.
While you may be a company drone, the assumption (though never expressed out loud) when your pay package was assembled was that you’d be doing the above.
- A Woman In A Key Position Could Disappear At Any Time - The thought is always in the back of managers’ heads that any woman of childbearing age (and these days, that extends throughout the 40’s) could show up pregnant at any time.
And, as all women know, pregnancy is “uses the same energy as climbing a mountain” (though even I could probably climb a mountain in 9 months…) and it takes a lot out of the woman. So, she’s got less to give the company.
Eventually, she’s going to take a “leave of absence”, regardless of whether she plans on coming back to work or not (which is a coin flip). So, you’ve somehow got to get someone to do her job, but make sure that it’s still available after 6-12 weeks if she wants to come back.
- Women React To Social Pressure - It’s never fun to ask for a raise. It’s a very stressful situation. Women are generally more in tune with the personal / emotional side of life. And they (to their credit, by the way) don’t like to cause any more stress in people’s lives than necessary.
As a result, fewer women actually ask for a raise. And those that do are likely to respond to the mandatory manager push back, where he wrinkles his brow and puts on a stressed look while rubbing his face and saying, “Gee….I don’t know. Budgets are really tight right now and this could put us in a bind….”
Women believe the act more often and assume that there is a good time for a raise, so they go away and wait to be approached by the boss for that raise. Ladies, it ain’t gonna happen.
Whether these reasons are true or not in your life, they seem unfair and wrong to most women. Regardless, it’s easy to see that if you get a slow start (financially) in your career, that’s going to follow you around the rest of your career, too, since your new salary is going to be based on your past salary.
Tomorrow, we’ll talk about what you can do about these.
Enjoy the Search!
-Dan
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Daniel R. Sweet
Owner / Author / Chief Cook-And-Bottle-Washer / Sr. Recruiter
FRACAT.com - Free Resume and Career Toolbox
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielrsweet
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