Horizon

A comment -- not entirely related -- but the book Perfect Madness is a really interesting exploration of what happens when girls similar to these (in this case born in the late 60s and early 70s and coming of age in the 80s) become mothers.

Incidentally, I think it's true that part of this discrepancy mentioned in the original article is that girls are socialized to be fairly docile while males are taught that aggression and individuality are important. That probably is most of it, along perhaps with the well documented effects of various hormones.

On the other hand two observations come to mind.

I have lived in Berkeley off and on for about a decade. There is one very nice part of town fairly near the campus that is very expensive and very safe. Ever since I came here I have noticed a majority of the students you see walking back and forth to school down college avenue each day are female. (I don't know whether the same applies to the even more expensive north side, as I hardly ever go there. In any case the existence of several large co-ops in that area would skew the data.)

I was browsing a list of past exemplary research projects for my sociolinguistics class the other day and noticed that every one of them (there are about 16-20) were written by females. It briefly crossed my mind that this might not bode well for me.

Ah, before someone misinterprets let me just discuss that first example a little more.

Going to a good college requires a great deal of resources. There seems to be a higher expectation placed on boys that they will be self-reliant and this may lead to an unequal distribution of these resources in favor of girls (I'm talking here about students' families). Also, personal safety is considered much more important for girls than boys.

Whatever the reason, if there is a discrepancy in resources then that's the sort of thing that might show up in aggregate as a discrepancy in achievement.

All my life I've heard stories of conservative parents saving money to send the boy to the Ivy League and then sending the girl to the state school. Has this fact of life been suddenly reversed? Does it perhaps matter that UC-Berkeley is a state school?

My experience is almost uniformly opposite to yours. If anything, my experience suggests that girls generally get a lot of special treatment nowadays. I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions but I believe this is becoming more common.

As far as Berkeley being a state school, I'm not sure what the difference would be. Are you suggesting that the female students at Berkeley tend to have richer parents than the male students?

I don't know the truth of the matter, and if you have time to dig up figures please do. However, you seem to be saying that, among UC-Berkeley students, the female ones seem to come from the fancier neighborhoods. If so, that would certainly fit the old pattern of the rich family on the hill sending son to Stanford and daughter to UC. It would be helpful on this point to know if average *family* incomes of UC students differ by gender. Do you know how to get such data?

As for girls' treatment being so all-fired special these days, why, then, are women paid so much less money?

I suspect you may be looking at a U.S. version of the Soviet doctors phenomenon. Over there, many women became doctors. Doctors therefore became underpaid, overworked, and less respected. Whatever women begin to do, the world promptly learns to respect less.

It would be helpful on this point to know if average *family* incomes of UC students differ by gender. Do you know how to get such data?

I think I can find what we need. I'll get back to you on that.

As for girls' treatment being so all-fired special these days, why, then, are women paid so much less money?

I don't think anyone knows for sure, but if you are implying that this, on the face of it, disproves my pointedly unscientific observations then I have to disagree. There may well be a class component that isn't isolated in such statistics for instance. (Thanks for providing them.)

But again going back to my experiences, I recently worked in an environment in which practicing attorneys came to work for a fraction of their previous wages as counselors at a law school (a rather low status job as well). How many men vs. women do you think worked there? How many of them do you suppose had spouses who made huge amounts of money as partners?

It seems to me the important statistics involve comparing wages for the same jobs. And on that there seems to be a lot of controversy now (on whether discrepancies exist and on their magnitude, not on whether they haven't improved substantially -- as far as I know everyone agrees on that point).

Whatever women begin to do, the world promptly learns to respect less.

Interesting. I've been told by reliable sources that doctors in the states are not doing as well as they used to. Obviously the world noticed that there are a lot more female doctors in the US than there used to be.

Ah, but why are the counselors (female, I presume) paid less than practicing attorneys?

Well, I hardly know how to answer that question. Almost all the people I see walking down the street with grocery carts filled with soda cans are male so I guess all the females must be hiding somewhere otherwise presumably they'd be doing pretty well for themselves.

And by the way, just in case it's not obvious to our readers, Berkeley is cheaper than a private school but last I heard its research library is ranked #2 in the nation (first, depending who you talk to). The likes of Stephen Greenblat, John Searle, Judith Butler, George Lakoff and Martin Jay are on the faculty.* This hardly puts its students in the bargain bin.

* Point being that they are famous, not necessarily that I like them.

Even Orwell knew that women can usually manage to get indoors, but with certain well-known sacrifices.

No, but really, why do you think that counselors at law schools are not paid as much as partners at law firms?

No, but really, why do you think that counselors at law schools are not paid as much as partners at law firms?

Now, now, first you said "practicing attorneys came to work for a fraction of their previous wages..." and now suddenly the standard for comparison is "partners at law firms"?

But supposing I were to turn the question around and ask why you think it's women who have tended to take pay cuts in order to accept counseling jobs. The women's motives and the salary-setters' motives are likely to be two sides of the same coin, don't you think?

But supposing I were to turn the question around

Supposing you were to answer the question and explain why you think they should earn precisely the same amount?

No, that's not the right question to ask. Better to ask why the legal profession puts law-school career counselors on a low-potential career track and practicing lawyers on a high-potential career track, and why women still seem to be getting discouraged out of the active practice of law into less respected work such as career counseling.

You seem to be attributing intelligent design to a situation where there is none in evidence. It makes more sense to me to simply accept that law-school career counselors have a low-potential career track compared to lawyers within the private sector (due to prefectly reasonable gender-blind forces), accept that that combined with a larger applicant pool will imply lower salaries, and then ask (as you do) "why it's women who have tended to take pay cuts in order to accept counseling jobs."

My own experience watching IT professionals within academia and in the private sector makes me not at all surprised that career prospects are more limited within academia. Last year I looked at a current org chart for the IT department I worked for in 1994-1995. Perhaps three-quarters of my old coworkers were still there, and more than half of them held exactly the same job.

[W]hy women still seem to be getting discouraged out of the active practice of law into less respected work such as career counseling

One theory admitting of both conservative and liberal solutions is that professional women tend to marry men with even higher earning potential than they themselves have, due to ambition, degrees, or professional trajectory. If the couple reaches a point at which sacrifices are demanded (for child-rearing, job opportunities in different cities, etc), the lower-earner makes the sacrifice.

See Kidding Ourselves or the far more obnoxious Linda Hirschman article (discussion in links here) on this.

All my life I've heard stories of conservative parents saving money to send the boy to the Ivy League and then sending the girl to the state school.

Outside of conservative ethnic stereotypes, I've never heard of this, nor had Alan's experience of the opposite. Regarding the larger point, though, the "research" in The Millionaire Mind probably backs up both of you:

Much of the variation in gift giving among different children can be explained by occupation (or socioeconomic status) and gender. We have found that housewives have the highest propensity of all major occupational groups to receive inheritances as well as periodic financial gifts from their parents. In fact, housewives are three times more likely to receive substantial inheritances from their parents than are adult children of the affluent on average.

The objective data make it quite clear. In America, the odds are against women earning high incomoes. Some of this variation in income can certainly be explained by biases in the economic marketplace. But biases alone do not fully explain the fact that there are five men for every one woman in the top 1 percent of the earned income distribution. Could it be that the tendency for affluent parents to subsidize their daughters is helping to perpetuate this inequality?

Daughters of wealthy couples tend not to have careers of their own. Why? In the past twenty years, the affluent population has typically been composed of one type of household: More than 80 percent have been married couples with children in which the wife did not work full time. What message did this send to the daughters of such couples? [. . .] Many affluent parents actually encourage their daughters not to work, not to have their own careers, and not to be economically and psychologically independent.