The Gender Wage Gap

The Gender Wage Gap

In the 21st Century the number of women enrolling in higher education institutions is surpassing the numbers of men enrolled. The graduation rates of women from high school and higher education are most often higher than for men. The number of women graduates from most professional occupations, including higher paying medicine, law and business, will exceed the number of men graduates in the near future. In numerous occupational areas with a majority of women graduates, salaries already surpass salaries in occupational areas with a majority of men graduates.

Gender wage gaps in 2004 are not primarily caused by discrimination against women.
Gender wage gaps are largely the result of work history, experience, industry and the choices women make. Examples would be three of my four very successfully employed Master’s degree daughters in their 30s who are now temporarily staying at home taking care of their young children.

An example of the significant advances made by women in employment and wages is the annual follow-up of the graduates of the Wisconsin Technical College System. Universities and university systems like the University of Wisconsin System do not have comparable data for their graduates. University research on employment is largely hype about the importance of four-year graduates with no analysis of comprehensive hard data.

Women graduates from the 16 Wisconsin Technical College Districts in 2003 made up 12,589 (65%) of 19,358 graduates as compared to 6,745 (35%) men. The percentage of women graduates from the WTCS has increased significantly since the 1980s but has been more than 50% for at least the last 20 years. The percentage of women graduates nationally from American two and four colleges and universities is increasing significantly each year and will eventually exceed or be on a par with men graduates from higher education nationally in “most” academic and professional majors, if they do not already exceed men in 2004.

Unbelievably, women and the media have reiterated the phony claim that discrimination is “the” reason that women on average make less money than men in “selected” occupations forever. But the most flagrant misinformation about gender and jobs is (1) That in order to achieve wage equity with men it is claimed that affirmative action is necessary to employ more women in higher paying occupations i...

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... the median and well below the high salaries for women in Health Occupations, Business and Marketing.

Dental Hygiene ($45,756 in 2003) has had the highest entry-level salary for years. The following misleading statement is often made, “Women must be recruited into the many higher paying technical jobs in order to earn a living wage”. The AD Nursing ($40,735 in 2003 and 872 graduates) and CIS Programmer Analyst ($35,364 in 2003 and 357 graduates) programs have a majority of women graduates. Minority men and all men might be recruited into occupations dominated by women for money reasons.

Because many Health Occupations require certification or licensing prior to obtaining employment, most health graduates are not employed in their field prior to graduation. The high paying jobs in the Service, T & I and Business Divisions are often those in which graduates have prior experience or are employed in the field prior to graduation. Programs such as Fire Science, Basic Police Recruit, Supervisory Management, and Materials Management would be examples. Other examples would be a number of Technical and Industrial programs with less than 25 graduates.