Gender and Work - Practice Exercise
Questions (8 points)
1. Explain the difference between sex and gender (2 points)
2. What consequences did the male breadwinner model have for women and
men on the job market? (3 points)
3. Is it fair to say, from a Gender Studies perspective, that organizations are
meritocratic systems? (2 points)
4. What impact do women who choose “atypical” careers have on their chosen
profession? (1 point)
Documents (12 points)
1. What main conclusions, according to you, can be drawn from document 1
about the gender pay gap in the United States? (4 points)
2. Why, according to the authors of document 2, is there a gender pay gap in
the USA? (4 points)
3. Are the arguments in doc 2 convincing? Explain your answer (4 points)
Doc. 1 ”The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap”, by the American
Association of University Women (AAUW), 2018
Doc 2. ”Equal Pay Day celebrates a tiresome myth that just won’t die”, by
Mark J. Perry and Andrew G. Biggs, American Enterprise Institute, 2018
Equal Pay Day falls on April 10 this year, and supposedly represents how far into
2018 women must continue working to earn what their male counterparts earned
last year. The National Center for Pay Equity promotes Equal Pay Day annually to
bring attention to the so-called “gender pay gap,” which claims that women receive
20% lower pay on average for doing the same work as men. But the 20% gender
wage gap is actually a tiresome statistical myth that persists in the face of
overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The reality is that men and women make very different career and work choices,
and frequently play very different family roles, especially for families with children.
While gender discrimination undoubtedly occurs, it is individuals’ choice – not
discrimination – which accounts for the vast majority of gender differences in
earnings.
Labor economists have conducted numerous studies over many decades to explain
differences in earnings among all types of workers. Economists believe that [the
most important factor influencing the earnings received by a given worker] is the
skills and productivity that an employee brings to the job. This can include both
formal education, skills learned on the job through work experience and the sheer
amount of time that a person works. Data show that male employees tend to have
more years of work experience than females, and also work more hours per week
on average than women.
Men also tend to gravitate toward college majors with greater market value than
women. For instance, roughly 80% of engineering and computer science majors
are male while two-thirds of liberal arts, drama, dance, education and fine arts
majors are female. There is nothing wrong with these choices, but it’s also
reasonable to expect these choices to translate into wide variations in earnings
after graduation, since market forces in the labor market determine salaries for
different educational specialties. (…)
Proponents of the gender pay gap myth would have you believe that any difference
in earnings between men and women is the result of gender pay discrimination. The
reality is that men and women are different – they gravitate to different college
majors, they have different levels of work experiences, they play different family
roles, and they often work in very different types of jobs. It is bizarre to imagine that
men and women would earn precisely the same on average despite those
differences.
