The Male-Female Wage Gap: Background and Analyses

Although women continue to often earn less than men, the wage gap has gradually narrowed. Today, women with a strong attachment to the labour market typically earn 72-77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Studies have identified factors that contribute to the pay disparity, but they have been unable to fully justify its existence. The unexplained portion of the wage differential is often attributed entirely to discrimination (ie: unequal rewards for equal labour market qualifications), but it also represents omitted variables and measurements error. Some believe that as women increasingly become like men in terms of the extent and nature of their participation in the paid labour force, women's earnings will further approach those of men. They thus believe that no government intervention is warranted to achieve pay equity beyond current anti-discrimination measures (i.e., Equal Pay Act of 1963, EPA, which amends the Fair Labour Standards Act, FLSA; Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; and E.O. 11246). Others believe that obstacles in the labour market continue to hamper women's progress, particularly their concentration in fairly few occupations and the undervaluing of female-dominated jobs. In the 1980's this perspective led to lawsuits that brought largely unsuccessful comparable worth claims under Title VII (ie: allowing a job evaluation's finding of unequal pay for equally rated female- and male-dominated jobs within a firm as proof of wage discrimination) and to bills that proposed conducting pay equity studies of the federal job classification system. This book reviews the issue in all its complexities.Charles V. Dale is the author of 'The Male-Female Wage Gap: Background and Analyses' with ISBN 9781590339022 and ISBN 1590339029.