What about same sex couples? They too have couple inequity, but they don't give rise to gender inequality. They are the two sides of the same issue.
So if we're talking about a heterosexual couple, then it's generally the case that the woman would specialize more, take the flexible job, specialize more in family, and the reverse for the man, then couple inequity also means gender inequality. But it's also the case that when a man takes a job, that is the greedier job and he spends less time with his family, then he also loses out. And they'll probably lose out more when they're older, when they need to build up wealth to retire, for example, or if they get divorced. So if women take the jobs that are more flexible, and have less chance to let's say advance in their career, then they lose out. So couple inequity is when each member of the couple gets much more of one of these parts than the other. But the two, let's say are career on the one hand, or job or income, and family, and children, relatives. And we know that there are more, there is love and warm, fuzzy things. So let's say that they have just two goals. And I'll talk about same sex-couple differences. And let us just say that this is a heterosexual couple. So let's think about just two goals for a couple. So can you tell me about what that is? And how does it relate to the career and wage gap?Ĭlaudia Goldin: Certainly. So you found that one of the engines behind that wage gap is something called couple inequity. That said, it's still the case that even for full-time workers, men work considerably more hours than women do. And in addition, you wouldn't be holding ours constant. Because a mean is bigger than a median here. And therefore, it's, if you took the average of everything in the nation, you'd never get anything that looked like that, it would actually be much, much larger. So it is the ratio of the income of the median woman to the median man who are full-time, full-year workers. So first of all, what do we actually mean, when we talk about a gender earnings gap? Are women's paychecks literally 81% that of their male counterparts?Ĭlaudia Goldin: Well, 81 cents, or whatever it is, number, is computed in a very, very particular way to make certain that the number isn't greatly influenced by very high incomes, and that it is standardized to some degree by hours. Goldin.Ĭlaudia Goldin: I'm very glad to be here. Her new book, Career and Family: Women's Century-Long Journey Toward Equity, looks at the lives of five generations of college-educated women to answer why true workplace equity for working mothers is still out of reach. She's known for her work on the female labor force and income inequality, and has served as the president of the American Economic Association, and as Director of the Development of the American Economy Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee professor of economics, and the first tenured woman in Harvard's economics department. Welcome to the Harvard Magazine podcast, "Ask a Harvard Professor." I'm Nancy Kathryn Walecki.
Nancy Kathryn Walecki: Why now when more women graduate college than men and about 30% of working women are mothers, is it still so hard for women to advance their careers and build their families? Why are women still making 81 cents to a man's dollar as the statistic goes? One reason for the persistent inequality might just be something we all have, but want more of: time.