The longstanding debate about women earning less than men has been gaining steam this political season with Obama’s commercial bringing this discussion back into the limelight. Regardless of your opinion or dis/agreement with the statistics that get thrown around a few things are clear: 1)In many instances women are paid less than men and 2) You can lie with statistics.

Growing up as a kid I was always enthralled with a book that sat in my Dad’s office which he used when he taught probability and statistics entitled “How to Lie with Statistics”. I can’t even remember if I ever read the book but the premise was that depending on what you do with the numbers (sample sizes, variables, combinations, permutations and such) you could essentially “lie” with statistics. It is what they call “creative number crunching”.

The video and the resulting discussions interest me a great deal. As a woman and a businessowner and someone who spent many years in Corporate America, the topic of revenues and earnings are often at the forefront of my mind. If you haven’t seen the Obama video you can catch it here and listen to the “women earn only 77 cents on a dollar compared to men” statistic.

Not everyone agrees with the premise. Some are saying Obama’s claim is outright dishonest.

The ad cites the statistic loved by liberals that women earn 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. This is such a phony statistic.

As Carrie Lukacs pointed out last year, this stat says nothing about women’s training and steady presence in the job force.

Yes, the Labor Department regularly issues new data comparing the median wage of women who work full time with the median wage of men who work full time, and women’s earnings bob at around three-quarters those of men. But this statistic says little about women’s compensation and the influence of discrimination on men’s and women’s earnings. All the relevant factors that affect pay – occupation, experience, seniority, education and hours worked – are ignored. This sound-bite statistic fails to take into account the different roles that work tends to play in men’s and women’s lives.

Perhaps there are many variables such as types of occupations, time spent in the workforce, skills, and training that get bantered around to explain away the difference. In the same article Betsy Newmark gives an example of why she believes the statistic is a phony:

So what happens if we examine the statistics and control for such factors? Do women still earn less? Well, no.

When these kinds of differences are taken into account and the comparison is truly between men and women in equivalent roles, the wage gap shrinks. In his book “Why Men Earn More,” Warren Farrell – a former board member of the National Organization for Women in New York – identifies more than three dozen professions in which women out-earn men (including engineering management, aerospace engineering, radiation therapy and speech-language pathology). Farrell seeks to empower women with this information. Discrimination certainly plays a role in some workplaces, but individual preferences are the real root of the wage gap.

When women realize that it isn’t systemic bias but the choices they make that determine their earnings, they can make better-informed decisions. Many women may not want to follow the path toward higher pay – which often requires more time on the road, more hours in the office or less comfortable and less interesting work – but they’re better off not feeling like victims.

Oh, so now it is only because of choice?

Well, then explain some instances in which the profession is exactly the same (with less perks I might add) yet the pay is unfathomably different. Think 77 percent is bad, then how about making less than 1% of what your counterparts do as is the case in some professional sports.

Let’s take this statistic as it relates to one of my favorites – professional basketball. As a women’s basketball fan who is also a big WNBA fan, I almost fell off my chair when I read the facts and figures in the article “WNBA Enjoying Growth In Tough Economic Times”. I knew they earned a fraction compared to the men, but this is pretty mindblowing:

There are still major challenges the league faces. Players’ salaries, for example, have been a source of contention since the league’s inception. The top four rookie selections in the 2008 draft made $44,064 this season. The maximum salary is $97,500.

Thanks to a new collective bargaining agreement, salaries will gradually increase over the next five years, with the high end salary maxing out at $107,500 in 2013. But that won’t be enough to prevent players from playing overseas in the winter.

Anyone who has been watching the league knows the 2008 rookies are some of the best women to play the game and all the WNBA players have a grueling schedule and face a great deal of physical play.

Now, consider the men’s 2008 draft for the NBA. Crashing the Goalie has this to say about the #1 draft pick:

With one handshake, Derrick Rose becomes a $5 million man.

In a handy chart on the site, it shows the minimum range for a rookie (0 years in the NBA) is $442, 114 and the maximum salary is $13,758,000.

Call me crazy, but how does $44,000 compare to $5 million? Even if you adjust for whatever factors you like, it is still, well, an insane gap.

You can read the Equal Pay Act of 1963″ all you like, but in the real world we all know that “management discretion” plays a HUGE factor in setting starting salaries.

Another recent study tries to account for the differences using gender roles and is discussed at “Knit Me A Sweater, Bake Me A Pie, Give Me A Raise”.

It is the first time social scientists have produced evidence that large numbers of men might be victims of gender-related income disparities. The study raises the provocative possibility that a substantial part of the widely discussed gap in income between men and women who do the same work is really a gap between men with a traditional outlook and everyone else.

The differences found in the study were substantial. Men with traditional attitudes about gender roles earned $11,930 more a year than men with egalitarian views and $14,404 more than women with traditional attitudes. The comparisons were based on men and women working in the same kinds of jobs with the same levels of education and putting in the same number of hours per week.

Although men with a traditional outlook earned the most, women with a traditional outlook earned the least. The wage gap between working men and women with a traditional attitude was more than 10 times as large as the gap between men and women with egalitarian views. […]

I don’t know about you but it almost sounds like both sexes get punished for having a progressive or different attitude. So much for progress!

Regardless of your political or gender views, one thing is certain — every woman needs to empower herself with choices, know that you can be as good or better than anyone else at your craft, and stand up for what you deserve leaving all thoughts of victim mentality behind. Beyond that, I suspect that unfortunately this debate will rage on for some time.

 

Paula Gregorowicz, owner of The Paula G. Company, works with women who are ready to create their lives and businesses in a way that fits who they are rather than how they were told they "should". Get the free 12 part eCourse "How to Be Comfortable in Your Own Skin" http://www.coaching4lesbians.com and start taking charge of your own success.