Letters to the Editor
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MWise
I'm an attorney. I've represented women in sex discrimination suits. I've represented countless workers in labor arbitrations. One of the main reasons sex discrimination is hard to prove is that it's so rare. If sex discrimination were nearly widespread enough to account for 23% difference in wages nationwide, there'd be so much evidence cases would become laughably easy to prove. I mean think about what it would mean for discrimination to make that much of a difference in wages for that many people. Just to take a couple of hypothetical examples, if all women were discriminated against equally (i.e reveived 77% of the salary of their male counterparts), there would potentially be the same number of lawsuits as women and girls working full or part time. I forget what that number is, but I think it's on the order of 80M. Courts in this country are swamped with asbestos litigation that has produced about 600,000 suits so far. Can you imagine what they'd be doing with 100 times that many?
A second hypothetical would have "only" half the women and girls discriminated against which would mean that each one of them would earn about 54 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make, and there would be up to 40M lawsuits (if I have the right employment figure). Do you honestly believe that corporate America has the competence to keep a lid on those types of figures? I don't. And of course an attorney can subpoena a company's records.
Now with that many women being discriminated against, it couldn't just be little ma and pa employers doing it, it'd be huge ones like GM and McDonalds. And middle management at those companies don't make those decisions, so there'd be memos to all branches and regions that said something like "When you hire a man start him at $10/hour, but when you hire a woman, start her at $5.40/hr. In short, a trial lawyer's dream.
The cases are difficult to win precisely because that type of evidence doesn't exist. It doesn't exist because nothing like that level of discrimination exists.
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Math is tough, part 13
Robert Franklin,
If it is so rare, and large employers wouldn't do it, how do you explain the Walmart class action? Over 2 million women, who now work or have previously work at Walmart, are part of this lawsuit.
http://www.walmartclass.com/walmartclass_casedevelopments.html
According to the BLS, 69 million women work in the US.
http://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/main.htm
According to the EEOC, 23,000 sexual discrimination complaints were filed with the EEOC, 10,000 of which were not meritless. You'd think that some enterprising attorney would be all over that $100 million/per year recovery. That's 0.015% of American working women filing complaints with the EEOC, btw.
I'm not saying that all the disparty can be explained though blatant sex discrimination, but I think it's more common than you want to admit. I think that you also think that discrimination means something very blatant -- a boss deciding to not promote his female employee because she's female. I think it's often much more subtle than that, and more complicated. I think a lot of people maybe don't even realize that they are engaging in baseless stereotyping, and that they make judgments on that.
Plus, I'm still wondering how the lower number of female workers can affect the wage or salary per worker. It seems you don't want to address it.
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LeCastor
I'm beginning to think math is tough for you. You throw numbers around that don't make much sense. $100M recovery? Two of my best friends do nothing but employment law and they don't seem to be quite that rich. Too bad.
As to the Walmart case, if the women prove their case and if it's about wages, then that will be a big deal. Of course it still won't have much effect on the overall totals, but still it'll be significant. I mean, even you can do that math, right?
As to the numbers, I've explained this to you before several months ago. This is the last time.
The US Census Bureau statistics are what show the disparity in incomes that are so much cited, the current figure being 77%. They got that figure by interviewing some people in person and sending out questionnaires to others. They asked them lots of questions including their sex and how much they made in the last year. That gave them the fact that women in the aggregate make about 77% of what men make. See? Those figures include women who don't work, men who don't work, women who work full time, men who work full time, etc.
Those figures establish the discrepancy in incomes, but they don't explain it, so what does? The answer is "other figures." For example, the ones I've given now 3 times on this thread alone - that women who work full time still work about 12% less than men who work full time. But that, obviously is only 12% of the difference which is 23%, so what explains the rest of it? What explains a large part of it is the fact that about 8M fewer women work at all than do men. Since they don't work, they don't earn money but were included in the Census Bureau data, so that explains another 9% or so. That gives us about 21% of the 23%. The rest is probably explained by seniority and by differences in how much women and men work part time and some perhaps by discrimination.
Now to me this looks really simple, but if it doesn't to you, ask someone else to explain it to you.
Finally, you claim I think that sex discrimination is really blatant. As before, I wish you would read what I write. In responding to MWise, I really tried to make it clear that it is precisely because it is not blatant that it is so hard to prove. I've tried these cases; you haven't.
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Robert Franklin:
I posted a link here, from the BLS. To a BLS PDF surveying a lot of the things you address
I'm beginning to think math is tough for you. You throw numbers around that don't make much sense. $100M recovery? Two of my best friends do nothing but employment law and they don't seem to be quite that rich. Too bad.
Yes, according to the EEOC website, in 2006, the 10,000 legitimate complaints it processed netted to $100 million in recovery for plaintiffs, and as stated on the website, "Does not include monetary benefits obtained through litigation." Perhaps I didn't make myself clear.
http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/sex.html
As for this explanation, it is simply misleading, and I think you're doing it on purpose. You argue, essentially, that there is a discrepancy, but that it can be explained. You write that "that women who work full time still work about 12% less than men who work full time. But that, obviously is only 12% of the difference which is 23%, so what explains the rest of it? What explains a large part of it is the fact that about 8M fewer women work at all than do men. Since they don't work, they don't earn money but were included in the Census Bureau data, so that explains another 9% or so. That gives us about 21% of the 23%. The rest is probably explained by seniority and by differences in how much women and men work part time and some perhaps by discrimination."
If your explanation were true, you're right, it would explain everything. But please go actually read the BLS website. Statistics that show women earn significantly less than men are studies of working women, not all women. Women who work full time.
This is from the aforementioned PDF:
"Nonetheless, female college graduates who were full-time wage and salary workers had median earnings of $809 a week, compared with $1,089 for men."
809 divided by 1089 = 74%. That's among FULL TIME WORKERS, not all women. So, the fact that 9 million women don't work is not relevant, because we're comparing apples to apples here, full time workers, to full time workers. Non-working women are not included in the data, as you allege.
This is corroborated by Census data as well. Look, compare this table:
Median Earnings for Female Full-Time, Year-Round Workers (In 2005 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars): 2005
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTTable?_bm=y&-_box_head_nbr=R1902&-ds_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_&-_lang=en&-format=US-30
To this table:
Median Earnings for Male Full-Time, Year-Round Workers (In 2005 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars): 2005
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GCTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-_box_head_nbr=GCT1901&-ds_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_&-_lang=en&-mt_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_GCT1901_US9&-format=US-9
If you do the math, by state, you will see that the range of disparity is between 60% to 91%, with the US average at 76%. This for FULL-TIME, YEAR-ROUND WORKERS.