Male-Female Wage Disparity Begins at Home

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Just like everything else, it’s the chicken and the egg conundrum. Which came first? Was it the professional society set-up that led to women being paid less than men for the same job and influencing the way parents treat their children at home, or was it the fact that girls get paid less than boys around the house for doing chores that meant that the same scheme of things was reproduced in society in the workplace. We’ll probably never know.

But, what we do know is that the gender gap starts way before the people step into the executive shoes and don the accoutrements of the professional world, according to the research carried out on elementary school children by ThinkProgress.

The statistics show that we are all in the act of perpetuating a gender gap for pay and it starts with allowances given by parents to their children.

• 67% of boys aged between 8 and 18 years of age in the USA get given an allowance by their parents.
• That figure is much lower for girls (only 59%) since they are expected to work for nothing.
• Boys might well participate much less in household chores according to the research, but when they do do something in the house, they get paid much more than the girls.
• 52% of boys get some form of financial gain for doing something around the house, while only 45% of girls get given money in return.
• Girls end up doing more household chores than boys (and get paid nothing or less).
• Averages show that boys spend 2.1 hours per week on household chores, bringing in $48.
• Girls do 2.7 hours of work in the house and get $45 on average.
• Does this actually explain why 75% of boys use a financial tool to manage their budgets on a smartphone device (while only 71% of girls do so)?
• Boys (43%) also believe that they will be earning more than $35,000 a year when they graduate from college in their first job.
• That figure is much lower for girls standing at 35% who believe that they will earn over $35,000.

Girls are less likely to get given money, making sure that it’s the boys that learn how to run the finances. The boys also learn that we live in a world where everything has a price and that we shouldn’t work for nothing. We would find it hard to believe that any parent would make that sort of distinction between girls and boys, but it’s more likely to be the unconscious bias that we see every day in society. Even women are at fault by reproducing the way things run.

Let’s stop believing that the boys know how to handle money. The banks have proved that one wrong already on many an occasion. Lehman Brothers should never have been run by the men! Let’s stop believing that women are innocent and need protection from the fire and brimstone world of the financial markets.

Strange really that women get paid less and have to work harder and yet growing numbers of people are relying on the salary of women in the household as the sole earner. The Pew Research Center reported last year that 40% of mothers were the sole or primary source of income in households across the country, with the figure tripling since 1960. 66% of those women were single mothers and 37% were married and earning a higher wage than their spouses. Single mothers have just 4% of the wealth of single fathers (just $100 in comparison with $25,300).

Although, maybe one day we might just get to the bottom of the story as to who is at fault for women being paid less than men for the same work. Some believe that we got tot the bottom of the chicken and the egg story since the egg shell relies on the protein only to be found in the chicken’s body (OC-17), thus proving that if the egg shell cannot come into being with that protein and that protein is only to be found in the chicken, then the chicken came first. So what is it in the world that is responsible for women being paid less than men? Is it the family that perpetuates the salary gap that will be reproduced later in life or is it the professional set-up for women that leads parents to pay their children differently?

Whatever it is, women are getting a rough deal in the USA both at home and at work.

Originally posted: Male-Female Wage Disparity Begins at Home

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