Photo: urban_dataCall it a self-fulfilling stereotype.
Men who believe a woman’s place is in the home, rather than in the workplace, are likely to earn substantially more than men who believe women deserve equal pay for equal work. That’s according to a new study, by University of Florida organizational psychologists Timothy Judge and Beth Livingston, of 12,686 Americans and how their understanding of gender roles affected their earnings over time.
That male chauvinism works to the advantage of men in a male-dominated marketplace shouldn’t be surprising. But the magnitude of the effect took the study’s authors by surprise: sexist men earned, on average, $11,930 more per year than their egalitarian male counterparts over a 25-year period.
The effect works in reverse for women. While they still earned slightly less than egalitarian-minded men, women who believed in gender equality earned $1,052 more per year than women who held more “traditional” views.
In other words, for both sexes, it pays to pick a side.
We can think of at least two other studies that seem to illustrate this effect.
A 2007 study found that female executives (who are outnumbered eight to one in corporate America) earn roughly $16,000 more per year than male executives. Presumably, female executives believe in gender equality. Considering how relatively thin their ranks are, they know what it means to have fought for it.
That same year, women living in major American cities earned substantially more than men in the same age groups (women in their 20′s earned 17 percent more in New York, and 20 percent more in Dallas, Tex.), according to a study by Andrew Beveridge, of Queens College. Beveridge attributed the flip-flopped wage gap to the fact that, in cities, more women tended to be college educated than men, and their lifestyle choices bucked traditional gender roles.
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Maybe caring about fairness is the key factor here. If a man cares about fairness too much, that’s likely to both hurt him in the business world and make him believe women should get equal pay.
I smell an example of “correlation is not causation”. For example, it seems reasonable that men who believe strongly in things, and who aren’t afraid to hold unpopular opinions, would be more successful. It seems just as reasonable that men with those traits would be more successful.
Put another way, I think you can just as easily say “successful men tend to be sexist” as “sexist men tend to be successful”.
This makes me curious. Most entry level jobs advertise how much they pay and stick to that without negotiation. Mid and upper level job salaries are negotiated. It makes me wonder if women just accept lower pay for equal work. Perhaps men are more aggressive when discussing compensation.
I haven’t read much on the subject, does anybody know if this has been accounted for in any studies.
I have always felt pretty strongly that women should be paid equally well for equal work.
That is, until I met one of my colleagues. She firmly believes, that as a woman, she should never have to pay for dinner or drinks when she’s on a date (and wouldn’t even think of offering), and that saving for retirement is “the man’s job.” Oh, and she makes substantially above the median income for this country (in the area of 2.5x it).
As long as there are women around like her around there will need to be some income disparity.
I agree with #7. I think that more egalitarian households share responsibilities and are more likely to have two wage earner families so you don’t have to quite as much for either party, but both parties probably skimp a little at work to help with kids and other family resonsibilities. But the more traditional households the man needs to make more because he is more likely to be the only wage earner. At the same time his stay at home wife is probably doing the majority of the housework and childrearing thus enabling him to work longer hours and a more demanding job. In all likelihood the more egalitarian households make more money than the traditional.
Until men can become pregnant, give birth, and nurse their young, with the same frequency as women, there will never be the type of gender equality such studies seem to lust after.
What about women who believe that females should run the world and we’re only keeping men around until we perfect cloning? How much do they make?
On the male side, you have your causalities in reverse. Higher earning men can AFFORD to have their women folk stay at home, and are much more likely to be paired with a “trophy-wife” (who is perfectly happy to oblige). As I assume we are talking in marginal functions here, my comments make no absolute statement but simply try to address the appropriate causality. If the results are plotted out by income level, you would probably find a nice curve.