A recent report by British researchers examining earnings inequalities between men and women in the United Kingdom comes to much the same conclusion that similar studies of the U.S. wage gap have arrived at — women make significantly less than men, but the difference is better explained by choices women make rather than sexual discrimination.
In 1998, the average full-time pay of women in the United Kingdom was 80 percent of the average full-time pay of men. As researchers J.R. Shackleton and Peter Urwin of the Westminster Business School argue, however, “Only a part of the labour market advantage enjoyed by men can be attributed to discrimination in any sense that can be addressed by public policy.”
Specifically, a major cause of the wage inequality in the UK and US is the way men and women deal differently with marriage. Single men tend to learn less than married men and tend to work fewer hours. The reverse is true for women — single women tend to earn more than married women and work more hours. A very large proportion of the difference in men’s and women’s wages is due to the fact that for a variety of reasons, women are far more likely than men to switch to part-time work or exit the work force altogether after they are married.
In fact when you hold hours worked, experience and other factors constant, the UK researchers found that women’s wages averages about 90 percent of men’s wages. In the United States similar results have been found, and in fact there are some professions where women earn higher wages on average than men.
Short of using paternalistic tax policies to force married women to work more, it is hard to see, as the report puts it, “that [wage inequality] can be addressed by public policy.”
Source:
Work inequality questioned as women catch up. Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph (UK), November 27, 2000.