Making Sense

Is the Gender Pay Gap by Choice?

BY Lynn Duggan | September/October 2024

This article is from Dollars & Sense: Real World Economics, available at http://www.dollarsandsense.org


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Elise Gould, “Gender Wage Gap Persists in 2023,” Economic Policy Institute, March 8, 2024 (epi.org); Grace Enda and William Gale, “How Does Gender Inequality Affect Women in Retirement?” Brookings Institution, July 2020 (brookings.edu); Salma Elakbawy, “The U.S. National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence in the Workplace,” Institute for Women’s Policy Research, June 12, 2023 (iwpr.org); Nancy Folbre, The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems: An Intersectional Political Economy (Verso, 2020); Phil Gramm and John Early, “The ‘Gender Pay Gap’ Is a Myth That Won’t Go Away,” Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2024 (wsj.com); Ariane Hegewisch, Jessica Forden, and Eve Mefford, “Paying Today and Tomorrow: Charting the Financial Costs of Workplace Sexual Harassment,” Institute for Women’s Policy Research, July 2021 (iwpr.org); Rose Khattar, “Closing the Gender Pay Gap,” Ch. 5 in Sarah Estep and Rose Khattar (eds), Playbook for the Advancement of Women in the Economy, Center for American Progress, March 14, 2024 (americanprogress.org); John Miller, “Equal Pay Is Not So Equal,” Dollars & Sense, September/October 2016 (dollarsandsense.org); Liana Christin Landivar, et al., “Remote Schooling and Mothers’ Employment During the COVID-19 Pandemic by Race, Education, and Marital Status,” The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, May 2023; Débora Nunes, “Who Can Afford to Have Kids, Anyway?” Dollars & Sense, November/December 2022 (dollarsandsense.org); “Net childcare costs (indicator),” OECD iLibrary (oecd-ilibrary.org); Kim Parker and Cary Funk, “Gender Discrimination Comes in Many Forms for Today’s Working Women,” Pew Research Center, December 14, 2017 (pewresearch.org); Andras Tilcsik, “Statistical Discrimination and the Rationalization of Stereotypes,” American Sociological Review, 2021; Isabela Salas-Betsch, “Ending Discrimination and Harassment at Work,” Ch. 7 in Sarah Estep and Rose Khattar (eds), Playbook for the Advancement of Women in the Economy, Center for American Progress, March 14, 2024 (americanprogress.org); Sonja Starr, “Statistical Discrimination,” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Vol. 28, 2023; Anne Morse, “Fertility Rates: Declined for Younger Women, Increased for Older Women,” U.S. Census Bureau, April 6, 2022 (census.gov).

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