Free Essay: How Men and Women Have Differences in Income

The research question of this paper under the topic of Gender Pay Gap is, "Do men and women have differences in income?" The pay gap regarding gender is an area of great interest to our nation and the whole world as well. Hence, it is of best importance to research in determining the scope in which the research question will take. Due to the broad nature of the topic, there are previous researches that are documented. Giving an illustration, American football does not value equally male and female while paying them. The research on the topic of Gender Pay Gap clearly illustrated that through computations and extensive research, female players in the United States earn 38% of every dollar earned by their male players (Manning & Saidi, 2010). That topic concluded that it was wrong for female players to receive less payment due to their gender.

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The population of interest in this paper is the engineers in the United States. Salary is the best reflection of the employment and success of fulfilling the goals of the held position. Due to this reason, taking employees as the population of interest is a strong recognition of the contribution made in researching the difference in income between men and women. The research will extend to determining whether the fewer payments and little rewards made to women compared to men could have resulted from undervaluation of their work hence underpayment.

The research has some aspects of a scientific experiment hence includes both dependent and independent variables. The variables used in the study include the engineers' salary differences regarding the gross gender. The engineers, in this case, cannot have a change after scientific analysis hence regarded as independent. A change in their salaries is, however, prone to change, making it dependent. The use of such variables in the research is necessary as they will aid in decomposing the gender salaries differences and enable in determining the degree of similarity in characteristics while males and females have different payments. The sample size includes all engineers who are in the country.

The research focused on an existing data set rather than a survey from scratch. The reason is that there has been zero alteration of the pay discrepancy in the engineers in the country. Firstly, the data indicate that the female average professional age is less compared to male counterparts. Due to the effect, that year of experience is the most significant factor determining payments of salaries, regardless of women having an equal compensation of wages, men still find them receiving higher salaries due to their experience (Manning & Saidi, 2010). Notably, the small difference in the advantage of salaries at the start of career broadens as the years advance. Hence, the existing data is cumulative, and exhaustively explains the research topic.

There have been several variables and explanations used in answering the research question. Firstly, women receive fewer payments, as they are less qualified compared to men (Oh & Lewis, 2011). Whereas educational background consists of fewer gender differences, there is a possibility that the small difference also accounts for men being paid more than women. Males strongly dominate the professionals in the engineering sector. Hence, by nature, men get a stronger educational background through learning and carrying out extensive research. This eventually leads to earnings disparities in the long run.

Cumulative advantage gives a notion that men greatly benefit from income inequalities, and such disparities become vast over time (Oh & Lewis, 2011). Comparative advantage is the advantage that a given party has over the other party that is at the same production level. Regardless of salary depending on productivity, early women's employment disadvantage causes a pay gap that grows throughout the occupations. Besides, the theory of comparable worth indicates that fields that require more women for employment opportunities, in turn, offer them lower salaries because women are devalued in society (Oh & Lewis, 2011). Regarding this theory, gender suppressing composition effects are a result of the economic factors that affect salaries. Hence, through cumulative advantage and the approach of comparable wealth, men become the beneficiaries, and such benefits get broader over time.

Crowding of women into specific subfields in engineering eventually leads to the gender pay gap (Oh & Lewis, 2011). This crowding is brought about by aspects such as social mentoring and norms, choice, and entry barriers in some subfields. Because salaries depend on demand and supply in the market, an upward movement in supply leads to a decrease in pressure on wages where there are more females in some subfields. On the other hand, fewer men in the fields where women have entry barriers attract more salaries compared to areas where women have crowded.

The last controversial explanation regarding female engineers is that they are less paid due to subtle discrimination by their employers (Oh & Lewis, 2011). This discrimination goes to the extent of lower wages and salaries to females working on the same levels of experience with their male counterparts. Through research, the impact of expertise on salary is indeed more significant to men compared to women. Besides, discrimination in society takes a reflection on the devaluation of work done by women engineers hence lesser payments. Through barriers to entry, bias manifests itself as less privileged subfields that go to women while the well-paying subfields are only dedicated to men. Therefore, discrimination has also led to the gender pay gap.

The mean, median, and standard deviation indicate that the male gender generally receives high salaries and wages compared to the female in the country. However, girls and ladies have turned to score better grades than boys and young men in colleges and universities. The effect of discrimination may act as the major hindrance of lesser payments, even while better educated.

The gender pay gap above clearly shows that the results are compelling. Through an interview of company heads regarding their payment patterns, a conclusion was drawn that the gender pay gap is all over the nation regardless of the progress made in the last decade to bridge that gap. The above data shows that female engineers approximately receive 20% fewer payments compared to women. Additionally, the above data indicate that monitoring of company management consistently would eventually lead to a zero gender pay gap.

Below is a regression analysis where the data was calculated using excel. All the calculations are summarized and an explanation of the test was done after the investigation.

Describing the regression analysis, it is visible that the results are statistically significant. Having obtained an R Square of 26.24% and F-Test P-Value as 1.23E-18, it is clear that the gap between males and females regarding wages and salaries is significant.

The figure below the regression analysis table indicates men's salary advantage as a variable that is added while putting regression into consideration. The two panels stand for similar data arranged in a manner that gives different results. The first bar shows an inconsistent pattern as time progresses (Beede et al., 2011). This explains the initial conclusion of why men earn 20% more than women. In the second bar, career age is included in the regression (Beede et al., 2011). Differences in gender go down by 2 points in 1973, with a reduction of 7-10% points as there is progress in years. The use of career age rather than full-time years is due to a lack of data in the experience variable. However, the gender pay gap gets narrow as years progress due to the inclusion of primary and sector work activities.

In conclusion, there is a gender pay gap between males and females in the United States. Through a study on salary differences of engineers, it was discovered that men are on a higher pay slip compared to women even when working at the same experience level. Factors that were identified to cause the gender pay gap include cumulative advantage, the theory of comparable worth, crowding of women in various subfields, and discrimination of women by their employers. These factors have overcome the call for equal pay regardless of such campaigns being so vast. Notably, women are performing well in their early stage and progressive stage learning compared to men. This should translate to women having better payments compared to the male gender, which is not the case. Hence, the gender pay gap should be addressed in a more significant manner with a great part, including government involvement. Lastly, the research paper includes parts of the literature review and own research as well.

References

Beede, D. N., Julian, T. A., Langdon, D., McKittrick, G., Khan, B., & Doms, M. E. (2011). Women in STEM: A gender gap to innovation. Economics and Statistics Administration Issue Brief (04-11).

Manning, A., & Saidi, F. (2010). Understanding the gender pay gap: what's competition got to do with it?. ILR Review, 63(4), 681-698.

Oh, S. S., & Lewis, G. B. (2011). Stemming inequality? Employment and pay of female and minority scientists and engineers. The Social Science Journal, 48(2), 397-403.