Why Are Women Frequently Settling for Lower Salaries Than Men?

Well, the good news is, the gender pay gap is gradually getting smaller – further statistics by the Resolution Foundation have reported that although women born between 1981 and 2000 have salaries that are five percent lower on average, women born between 1966 and 1980 were paid nine percent less than men when they were beginning their careers in their 20s – ladies, let us take a moment to express our gratitude.

Amanda Goodall, a Senior Lecturer at Cass Business School in London, said that progress has been made because young women today are better equipped than their predecessors to effectively negotiate salaries. Maybe that gives women of my generation a glimmer of hope, in that they now own the privilege to be able to have a say in what they can and can’t earn?

…and bad news

Yet, I wouldn’t get too excited if I were you. Unfortunately, despite all our attempts to stick our heads out of the dark ages, women can still expect to suffer underpayment throughout our careers. – Wait, is that my lifetime I am being told? Laura Gardiner of the Resolution Foundation said that, “Small hourly pay gaps quickly grow into large lifetime pay penalties that can leave women…worse off over the course of their careers.” (I think I’m about to lose all my inhibitions and manners at this point.)

Gardiner also adds that having children still comes with a rather unfair price to pay: “Training, progression and promotion are much harder to come by when working part-time, which many women with children either choose to do or feel they have to because of high childcare costs.” That’s nice, discourage more women from enjoying motherhood in their lives, why don’t you.

In October 2017, the UK government’s Office for National Statistics reported that men are more likely than women to work in higher paying jobs, such as managers, directors and senior officials, while women in the very same professions are getting paid an hourly wage that is 16 percent less on average.

The statistics also revealed that one of the reasons there is an overall gender pay gap – which is 18 percent in favor of men – is the fact that there are three times as many women working part-time than men. Is that it? Not quite. A pay gap of nine percent remains for full-time working women in every major occupation group, including those dominated by female workers – say what?

Additionally, even though women hold nearly half (45 percent) of full-time “professional occupations” including scientists, engineers and health professionals, their hourly wage is, on average, 11 percent lower than that of their male co-workers. That is pretty darn unfair, if you ask me.

There is also no doubt that young women at universities are more often than not choosing to study subjects that, in comparison to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), tend to lead to lower-paying jobs. Last year, the BBC reported that some of the discrepancies in the gender pay gap can be explained by differences in subject choices, where women are more likely to go for courses such as education, creative arts, humanities and English language/literature – while men tend to gear more towards subjects like computing, engineering and architecture.

Why are women underrepresented in STEM?

It could very well be argued that many women are discouraged from entering the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, because of the common gender-based stereotypes that surround those subjects.

As reported by The Guardian recently, women make up a mere 14.4 percent of those working in STEM in the UK, despite occupying almost half of the overall workforce. One of the main reasons for this revolves around the fact that, quite simply, fewer girls than boys are choosing to study STEM subjects. Why? Let us explore…

Science may have something to do with it.

Apparently, science has a little something to answer to this. The Guardian’s report reveals that as we’ve learnt from biological accounts, boys tend to be better than girls at spatial tasks, whereas girls are more inclined to perform well in verbal recall tasks. Although you would be relieved to know that these are minor differences, and their impact on STEM ability is quite futile.

Naturally, girls have been found to perform just as well, if not better than their male peers in STEM classwork, but their level of performance sees a decline in tests and exams. The reason for this is partially due to girls being more anxious about tests than boys – but could this also be a result of the stereotypical expectations that are imposed on young girls? 

Society may have a lot to do with it.

A study by Luigi Guiso, Professor and Chair of Macroeconomics and Finance at Goethe University Frankfurt and his colleagues explored how boys perform in mathematics compared to girls. Overall, the maths scores for girls averaged 10.5 points (two percent) lower than the mean average for boys. But here’s the catch – this difference varied depending on the country. For instance, in Turkey, boys outperform girls by 22.6 points, whereas in Iceland, it is the girls that outperform the boys by 14.5 points. When the countries were classified according to gender equality, the research discovered that the mathematics gender gap disappeared in the more gender-equal countries, such as Norway and Sweden.

Fascinating, right?

But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here. Even with these numbers at hand, there is still a higher proportion of men than women in STEM-related careers, even in gender-neutral countries like Sweden. Why is that? Well, a study of 1,327 Swedish secondary school students was able to discover why boys are more attracted to STEM subjects than girls: Girls reported feelings of “social belongingness”, which means that they felt more comfortable studying in classes that had more of their own gender. “Self-efficacy” (the belief that one has the capacity to succeed in a specific field) was another very significant influence; girls scored lower with “self-efficacy” in STEM, which demonstrates that they conform with the stereotype that girls are less capable than boys in these subjects.

In a nutshell, I think society is to blame for all the troubles women face, including their professional aspirations – (yeah okay, drama queen). I admit, prior to my delving into writing this piece, I had assumed that biology and (a very basic understanding of) so-called ‘societal norms’ were indeed the main culprits as to why so many women are expecting lower salaries than their male counterparts.

Now I know that that is simply not the case; with the gender pay gap still in existence, it has many of us almost surrendering to the idea that our academic and professional abilities are inherently different to those of men.

Of course, we’ve now established that the effects of science and biological predispositions are rather trivial in this case. Studies such as Luigi Guiso’s, which proved that women in gender-equal societies are much more likely to achieve mathematics grades that are as high as, if not higher than those of their male peers, have also proven that differences in academic abilities among the two genders are indeed determined by the social stigmas and gender-based stereotypes that have been plaguing us since the Big Bang.

So, what do you think? Do you agree that it’s all down to society, or do you stand by the notion that women are just ‘naturally’ different to men when it comes to their subject choices and salary expectations? Let us know in the comments below.