n I don’t quite understand, why someone who obviously lacks understanding of economics and regressions, thinks herself qualified to talk about gender-based wage gaps.
Some degree of training in economics and mathematics is necessary to fully understand how economic gender inequity can or cannot be verified. Provided the average woman earns 76 percent of the average white male salary, and that the average black female earns 69 percent of the average white male salary, and that Latinas earn, on average, just a “paltry” 58 percent of the average white male salary, you cannot cry hypocrisy, sexism, racism, etc.
To fully verify labor market wage discrimination, a statistical regression must be done on all factors that affect wages. You must control for education, education choice, occupation, experience in labor market, seniority in firm and more, to verify gender based wage discrimination. Much of the difference in pay between whites and minorities, males and females, is mitigated if regressions control for variables such as education level, years spent in workforce, etc. If an empirical study controlled for all other variables (hard to do of course) and still found a 24 percent wage gap, then Olena Ripnick’s cry would be warranted (“Equal pay for equal merit? Not at Boston University,” Nov. 8, p. 5).
Ripnick’s comments about Boston University are an even more ludicrous display of her numerical and economic illiteracy.
Provided female faculty earns 87.3 percent of male faculty, one cannot cry gender-based faculty wage discrimination because that percentage is not controlling for field choice. An extreme example to facilitate understanding: University Imaginary has two departments, sociology and electrical engineering, assume labor market wage equilibrium for sociology professors is 60,000 and labor market wage equilibrium for electrical engineering professors is 100,000.
Now, assume further that most sociology professors are female and most electrical engineering professors are male, then we’d see a gender wage gap of 40 percent, but not because of gender discrimination, but because of field choice. (Dear everyone, please don’t think I’m stipulating males can’t function in sociology, females can’t function in engineering, sociology deserves low pay, engineering deserves high pay. This is for simple mathematical example purposes only).
Also, do not compare us to random universities that might have stronger departments or larger departments in fields that have proportionally more females.
Also, claiming if women earned the same wage as men then annual income would increase by $200 billion shows absolute ignorance of economics. Equalizing wages would obviously not result in a gain of $200 billion in annual income because equalization would not increase United States’ Gross Domestic Product by $200 billion. Equalization does not necessarily stimulate economic growth; any female increase would be funded by lowering male wages. Net change in annual income equals zero absent true economic growth.
Ripnick failed to realize that her numbers do not control for merit. I really advise anyone lacking a sufficient understanding of statistics and economics to refrain from spewing about economic gender-based wage gaps.
Xiang Zheng
CAS ’07