Jeez, you’d think at least nursing would pay women as much as men. But no.
Even though nine out of 10 nurses are women, men in the profession earn higher salaries, and the pay gap has remained constant over the past quarter century, a study finds.
The typical salary gap has consistently been about $5,000 even after adjusting for factors such as experience, education, work hours, clinical specialty, and marital and parental status, according to a report in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association.
Well boo.
Muench and colleagues used two large U.S. data sets to examine earnings over time. One, the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, provided responses from nearly 88,000 participants from 1988 to 2008. The other, the American Community Survey, offered responses from nearly 206,000 registered nurses from 2001 to 2013.
Every year, each of the data sets found men earned more than women; the unadjusted pay gap ranged from $10,243 to $11,306 in one survey and from $9,163 to $9,961 in the other.
*blinks*
While the study didn’t address the reasons for persistent gaps in pay, it’s possible that men are better at negotiating raises and promotions or that they are less likely than women to take extended breaks from the labor force to care for young children or aging parents, said Patricia Davidson, dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing in Baltimore, Maryland.
Um…hello? To repeat, with emphasis added –
The typical salary gap has consistently been about $5,000 even after adjusting for factors such as experience, education, work hours, clinical specialty, and marital and parental status
Next up –
It’s also possible that the study exposed a gender difference in career choices, rather than a genuine lack of equal pay for equal work, said Linda Aiken, a nursing and health policy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania.
Again…
The typical salary gap has consistently been about $5,000 even after adjusting for factors such as experience, education, work hours, clinical specialty, and marital and parental status
Are the words “even after adjusting” simply invisible to some people? Is this a new disorder, should we call it Sommers Syndrome?
H/t Janet Factor
Just yesterday I was explaining to a genuinely feminist man that women steep in this garbage just as much as men do. Without an act of will, nobody lets themself understand what hurts. It hurts too much.
I had an entire semester-long course that demolished the BS excuses people give for demographic wage gaps. It really is sexism, racism, and homophobia that make women, non-White people, and queer people earn less on average. Becasue even when part of the problem can be traced to other factors, gaps persist when controlling for those factors AND a lot of the other cited differences (educational differences, parental leave being viewed unfavorably, lower incidence or less-forceful self-advocacy, etc.) where they actually exist are ALSO the result of sexism, racism, etc.
I thought hospital nurses were usually union-represented. Am I wrong, or are the unions themselves allowing gender discrimination?
There are unions and then there are unions. “White collar” unions tend not to set salaries. I’m a former member of one.