Thanks, Suzanne; that’s a very gracious acknowledgement on your part. I think this is one of the many reasons I so enjoy reading your blog, even on the (rare) occasions I disagree with your opinion!

You’re right that I made a very strong statement with flimsy evidence. I probably shouldn’t have done that, even though I am pretty sure it’s correct. I suspect that if she had applied for over a thousand jobs (one job per day for 3 years), the article would have mentioned how diligent she’d been in her job search prior to deciding to go back to school.

But, you’re right, it’s speculation on my part!

the comment system ate a couple words. The sentence was supposed to be: In contrast, to say “The *reality* is she didn’t get a new job for *this* reason” is a very strong statement, …

? Suzanne, I concur that having a husband is likely to help her. Like I said, I don’t disagree with you about this article in general; it was only the one sentence that I felt was an unwarranted conclusion. If you had said ‘I strongly suspect she didn’t search diligently for a job’, that would be one thing; the article doesn’t offer much evidence, but you might be right. In contrast, to say “The *reality* is she didn’t get a job for ” is a very strong statement, with little or no room for doubt. And when the reason is that she started school 3 years later, it doesn’t seem very plausible.

And just to be clear, I wasn’t making any claims about actual salary disparities, just noting that the quoted sentence from the article wasn’t either.

It’s possible that she looked diligently for 3 years, but I strongly suspect that she didn’t.

Even if she did, though, it doesn’t erase the fact that having a husband is helping her with her education. Even if he’s not legally responsible for the loans (if they are in her name only), they will affect him until they are paid off, or they divorce. He’s going to be helping her pay those darn things back.

When you account for number of hours worked per week, type of job, and years in the workforce there is no difference in the amount of pay between women and men.

Women make less money because they make different choices. My background in statistics is a perfect example of that. My husband and I both have master’s degrees in political science with an emphasis in statistics. (We met in grad school.) Except for a 3 month period when he was unemployed, he has out earned me. Discrimination? Hardly. I chose to go into HR and he chose to go into market research. HR just pays less than market research.

Over the years I’ve used my statistical skills less and less and he’s used his more and more.

Different choices. Different results. No discrimination.

I must agree with fposte. The so-called “growth” comes from women’s salaries catching up to mens salaries. So if a women went from 70% of a man’s salary to 80% then her growth would be significantly more than the mans salary going from 100% to 101%. But the woman is still earning less than the man, so I’m not sure how you can claim she is doing better in the workforce. There is only one industry where women out-earn men – Software.

C’mon Suzanne, you have a background in statistics. Don’t take data out of context.

The womens enrollment in university is a different thing. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I also think the higher rate of earnings *growth* needs to be differentiated from higher earnings per se. Disparate earnings growth doesn’t actually indicate women are doing better than men (or worse, or the same) because it doesn’t convey anything about the actual earnings of women or of men–it just means women are doing much better than they used to be while men are only doing somewhat better.

But yeah, this is a statistic to which a story has been creatively applied.

Interesting site for salary info, btw: http://www.catalyst.org/publication/217/womens-earnings-and-income