There are many systemic issues at the core of why men tend to earn more than women, from discrimination to racial discrimination, segregation of occupations, and many other factors. In this article, we shall find out why men make more money than women. Keep reading to find out!
1. The Gender Pay Gap Is A Real Thing.
The gender pay gap exists for the following reasons:
1). Men make more money than women for doing the same job
Several measurable factors such as the level of education attained, work experience, and occupational segregation have been used in a bid to try to explain this gap, but the gender pay gap still exists.
2). Work experience
Women tend to have less work experience than men because they are disproportionately forced to leave the workforce to attend to caregiving obligations of their children, which is an unpaid job. Within that period, men are adding to their level of experience and earning potential.
3). Women invest forty percent less than what men invest.
Men are more risk-takers when it comes to investment decision-making than women. Women invest 40% less than what men invest in total, according to a study by nbcnews.com. According to this study, if women are given an investment opportunity, there is a very unlikely chance that they will step up. The study further proved this result by running a survey where men and women were asked what they would do with an extra one thousand dollars. The results showed that a likelihood of 35% men would invest compared to women.
2. Occupational Segregation
There has been a stereotype of men's jobs and those that women should do. For example, out of a class of 60% women graduates, you will find a very small percentage of these graduates in fields like engineering and computing.
Women and men have been funneled into different types of industries. What has been termed as women's jobs like hospitality, home health aides, and working as child care workers earn very low pay than the jobs termed as ‘men's work’ like building and construction, which have very high pay.
2. Less Than Half of The Women Invest in The Stock Market.
A survey done by nerdwallet.com on gender investment in the stock market in the United States revealed that a big percentage of women do not participate in the profitable stock market. Only 48% of women take part in the stock market compared to the high 68% of men who participate in the stock market. A big percentage of those women who invest in the stock market delegate the management of their portfolios. The survey indicates that 41% of men feel more confident in stock market investment than 22% of women who lack confidence in the same.
3. Education Level and Racial Discrimination
Race and education have played a big role in the earning disparity of men and women. A white man with the same education level as a Latina woman tends to earn more than the black and Latina woman. Black and Latina women who hold only a degree earn 65% off what a white man earns with the same degree.
Black women holding advanced degrees earn up to 70% of what a white man holding the same degree earns.
3. Men Attract High Credit Limits Than Women When It Comes to Personal Finance.
The survey by cnbc.com on the findings of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia revealed that female borrowers are given less bank card credit for investment purposes than men. Men had access to higher borrowing limits than women. Another finding of this research showed that a difference in credit card offers that were mailed to men and women. Women had fewer offers than their male counterparts, and the same applied to solicitations.
4. Men Receive More Passive Income Than Women.
Women are always shortchanged not just in hiring and salary negotiation decisions but also when it comes to passive income in terms of bonuses received. An Australian study by Mercer showed that the bonuses received by men were 35% more than those received by women with the same rating.
5. Women Often Face Discrimination in Pay at the Workplace
This can lead to lower salaries and fewer opportunities for advancement, which lead to wage discrepancies between men and women. Pew research center survey in the year 2017 showed that when you choose four working women at random, four of them had experienced gender discrimination at their workplace. This makes 42% compared to the two out of ten (22%) of their male counterparts. The most reported form of discrimination is being skewed towards equality in earnings. In four women employees, one complained of earning less than a man doing a similar job.
6. Lack of Flexibility for Mothers Returning To Work
Pew research center survey in the year 2017 showed that around one in five women said that they had missed out on promotions and important assignments, while 27% remarked that they had received a treatment that would otherwise imply that they were not committed to their work.
Women are therefore face what is termed as the 'motherly penalty' when they return to work. Many workplaces do not offer flexibility to mothers after childbirth, and mostly the mothers are forced to take on less demanding jobs, which are low-paying duties.
Mothers are also more unlikely to get interviews for jobs that suit them than those who don't have children and fathers.
Final Take Away
Though there has been advancements in closing the gender equality gap today, there is still more that needs to be addressed. For example, in 2020, women in the U.S.A earned eighty-four percent of what men earned for a similar job. This means that a woman would need an extra forty-two days working to earn a salary equal to what a man earns in thirty days. The factors mentioned above continue to be why men earn more than women in the same workforce. More needs to be done to correct this disparity.
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