Thought Press.

This is a response to a comment by Kate on my Sexist Products entry. She feels this was my opinion, not surprisingly, after a discussion we had on why women, on average, make 25% less than men (according to a GAO report).

There are many reasons that feminist organizations do not often take into account when reporting these numbers. The GAO concluded some reasons: Many women leave their job either to have a child or raise a family. When they decide to return to a career they have fallen behind the amount of time they were out of the workforce. They are not in the same point in their career or experience as they may have been if they hadn’t left work. So, if you compare men and women in their same period of life, you will most likely find women with a lesser median salary partly because of this gap in career experience. Women also tend to have fewer years of work experience.

Another possible reason is that women do not tend to ask for a raise or promotion as often as men do. We should not discount any discrimination, as black people also statistically make less, though factors such as education and time in the workforce must be considered. There are many reasons such as this that contribute to women earning less than men.

CNNMoney.com’s Jeanne Sahadi published an article called the “76-cent myth“, and she comes to similar conclusions, but doesn’t discount any discrimination (which may account for a quarter of the wage gap):

“But all the wage-gap ratio reflects is a comparison of the median earnings of all working women and men who log at least 35 hours a week on the job, any job. That’s it.

“It doesn’t compare those with equal work, equal training, equal education or equal tenure. Nor does it take into account the hours of overtime worked.”

>> Read more about the pay gap and the GAO report.