The World Needs More Ninjas

Here’s an interesting NY Times article looking at why, on average, women make 25% less than men. There’s some rather interesting statistics (who knew unmarried, childless women make 17% more than their childless male counterparts?). It looks at salaries as a function of decisions people make between the life-work tradeoff and finds that, many times, women and men make different choices within this realm.

After years of research, I discovered 25 differences in the work-life choices of men and women. All 25 lead to men earning more money, but to women having better lives.

High pay, as it turns out, is about tradeoffs. Men’s tradeoffs include working more hours (women work more around the home); taking more dangerous, dirtier and outdoor jobs (garbage collecting, construction, trucking); relocating and traveling; and training for technical jobs with less people contact (like engineering).

Is the pay gap, then, about the different choices of men and women? Not quite. It’s about parents’ choices. Women who have never been married and are childless earn 117 percent of their childless male counterparts. (This comparison controls for education, hours worked and age.) Their decisions are more like married men’s, and never-married men’s decisions are more like women’s in general (careers in arts, no weekend work, etc.).

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Is there discrimination against women? Yes, like the old boys’ network. And sometimes discrimination against women becomes discrimination against men: in hazardous fields, women suffer fewer hazards. For example, more than 500 marines have died in the war in Iraq. All but two were men. In other fields, men are virtually excluded – try getting hired as a male dental hygienist, nursery school teacher, cocktail waiter.