Human capital

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• Human capital
• - Despite equal human capital, slow turnover and
  a lack of positions can create lag.
• Women have less training and less of the
  experience in those areas that are most valued
  for promotion
• However, this lack of training may result from
  employers policies
• Combat experience required for promotion to C.O.
• Need for commercial lending experience in banking.

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• Preferences
• Women do not seem to have a pre-existing
  preference to not work in high-authority
  positions

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• Reskin and Cassirer 2000
• - Asked about importance of promotion for
  respondent.
• - Established a baseline difference that
  disappeared when opportunities for promotion were
  controlled for

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• Sex differences in Earnings
• - Size of the pay gap has decreased significantly
  over the 20th century

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• Womens earnings have improved slightly over the
  past 20 years, while mens earnings have
  stagnated.
• Current ratio is around 75.

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• Controlling for differences?
• To control for something is to see whether it
  creates observed differences.
• This does not mean that the difference does not
  exist or is inconsequential.
• The type of control helps explain how differences
  are created.

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• Age
• Differences across age could signal the existence
  of previous discrimination against women.
• Could also signal that disadvantage is cumulative
  over the course of careers.

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• Occupations
• Men out-earn women in all occupations.
• However, variability exists.
• Segregation has its greatest effect because
  occupations pay differently, rather than
  within-occupation disadvantage.

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• Occupations
• Pay gap higher in higher-earning occupations
• Note dual disadvantage women less likely to work
  in higher-earnings occupations, then earn less in
  them.

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• Where is there more equality?
• Womens earnings are closer to mens for young,
  highly educated workers as well as those who are
  in relatively low-earning occupations.

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• Individual-level explanations (supply-side)
• Productivity differences
• Time at work
• Effort
• Skill
• Education
• Experience
• Wage bargaining

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• Time at work
• Men spend more time at work than women across all
  racial and ethnic groups
• Part of reason is that women bear primary
  responsibility for work at home
• Women more likely to work in occupations where
  workers do not put in long hours

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• Skill, effort
• Likely not important explanations
• Little evidence that men work harder than women
  or that men have more skills than women.

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• Education
• Mattered in the past, but not now.
• Convergence in educational levels explains part
  of convergence in earnings.
• Men and women still major in different fields.

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• Experience.
• Again, more important in past than now.
• Men have more labor force experience and also
  more continuous labor force experience.
• Yet both education and labor force experience
  favor men and still contribute to earnings
  differences.

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• Wage bargaining
• Men and women may negotiate separate pay rates
• Can result because women accept lower pay in
  exchange for easier work
• Women may ask for lower pay b/c their
  expectations are set on the basis of what other
  women currently earn.

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• Wage bargaining
• Finally, unions typically allow workers to more
  successfully bargain for higher wages
• Men are more likely to be unionized than women.

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• Individual-level explanations (supply-side)
• Productivity differences
• Time at work
• Effort
• Skill
• Education
• Experience
• Wage bargaining