Punch line:Women are attending college at higher rates than men, graduating in greater numbers and earning higher grades. Yet one year after graduation, women were making only 82 percent of what their male colleagues were paid.
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Excerpted from The Washington Post’s, “One year out of college, women already paid less than men, report finds”
Nearly every occupation has long paid men more than women, despite laws aimed at narrowing and dissolving the differences.
Even when men and women had the same majors, there were often gaps in pay.
But much of the overall gap — the 18-percentage-point disparity — could be explained by career choices; men are more likely to enter high-paying fields such as engineering and computer science.
The researchers controlled for that, along with other variables, but an “unexplained” 6.6-percentage-point gap remained.
The researchers put forward suggestions for reducing the pay gap, including encouraging women to pursue careers in higher-paying fields and to negotiate higher pay.
“A problem as long-standing and widespread as the pay gap, however, cannot be solved by the actions of individual women alone,” the researchers wrote.
“Employers and the government have important roles to play. The pay gap has been part of the workplace so long that it has become simply normal.”
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