The Gender Pay Gap: Why We Fight The Narrative

The Economist reports on an interesting new study undertaken on differences in gender pay:According to data for 8.7m employees worldwide gathered by Korn Ferry, a consultancy, women in Britain make just 1% less than men who have the same function and level at the same employer. In most European countries, the discrepancy is similarly small. These numbers do not show that the labour market is free of sex discrimination. However, they do suggest that the main problem today is not unequal pay for equal work, but whatever it is that leads women to be in lower-ranking jobs at lower-paying organisations.The figures for Britain in the study break down as follows. The “raw” gender pay gap between all men and women is 28.6 percent. This falls to 9.3 percent once one controls for people being in the same level job. This falls further to 2.6 percent for the same level job at the same company, and to just 0.8 percent for the same level job at the same company wit h the same function. In other words, as free market economists have long explained, there is little to no evidence of overt company discrimination once one controls for observable factors (and beyond those here, things such as educational attainment, or years of continuous work experience).Confronted with studies such as these, some commentators, and even some libertarians, pivot. They suggest that this kind of research attacks a straw man. Few people think it ’s overt wage discrimination at an employer level that’s the ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs