Wages and education

[MrsTerryPratchett]

I was looking at an interesting piece about ACE (adverse childhood events) and outcomes. All very interesting. Then I saw this graph. It is US data. Women essentially get the wages that men get for the next tier of education up. So a high school graduate man gets the same as a college woman. A college man gets the same as a bachelors degree woman and so on. Considering how much education costs (and women don't get it for free) it's stark.

I also thought about the whole, 'education is better for girls, more girls graduate' thing. Well, in this case, great. Because they have to do better in school and beyond.

UnfortunatelyI didn’t save the source, but I remember seeing similar statistics, which found even within the same subjects studied (I think they were focussing on STEM and law subjects) the same holds true.

Women with postgraduate degrees get the same starting salary as men with Bachelors.

I guess the next question would be if they are applying for the same jobs - not the same sector, but the same kinds of positions.

Men are more likely to be aggressive in applications than women, so that could be a factor. But women can also be more likely to apply for jobs with more flexibility or leave benefits or limited house etc, so that might also account for it.

Is that the next question though? Because the whole article was about ACE and at not point did I think, "well those kids with ACE are applying for different kinds of jobs or jobs with more flexibility". I assume there's a serious systemic issue.

There's a massive gap. Massive. That isn't accounted for by women just not asking for money. And if it is, that should be addressed in career advice and hiring.

I think unless you know what the jobs are, and whether or not they are the same jobs, you are really stuck in terms of understanding what is going on.

"Systemic issues" just isn't meaningful, it's an abstraction that doesn't cause anything. There has to be an actual cause, so the next step is to think what they could be and start to eliminate them or look for correlations.

I think that is definitely part of the reason women go for education more than men. The statistics show it clearly but most people know that the stereotypical straight out of school (no degree) jobs for men and women pay differently
I have also seen people talking about how immediately after graduating women can do better than men pay wise. In my experience with my friends though that was because there was an awareness that they might well want children in the future and therefore take a hit to their career. So there was more planning "I need to be at X point by this date so I can take this much time etc". Whereas I didn't notice any of the boys (even if they were hardworking) having that same mentality of needing to hit the ground running.
The problem is, the fact that women do better in higher education/go for higher education more/work harder immediately post graduating is taken as evidence that women are somehow more favoured by the system than men. Rather than that they are rational actors trying to mitigate future inequalities/disadvantages against them (eg the motherhood penalty further along their career)