gender: economics

The figure below, borrowed from U.S. News and World Report, shows that the wage gap between women and men, for nearly all age groups, has narrowed significantly between 1979 and 2008.  It also shows that the wage gap is smallest for men and women aged 20-24, grows for men and women aged 25-34, grows even further for men and women aged 35-44, and remains steady after that.

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These data are for men and women in the same jobs working full time.  So what would explain this change?  Sociologists have found that much of the growth in the wage gap over the life course is due to the fact that women are held disproportionately responsible for childcare and housework (see some data here).  As men and women start to have children, women (whether by choice or necessity) find themselves sacrificing their careers more so than men.  On the flip side, mothers are discriminated against by employers more often than fathers and women without children. (See, for example, this clip of Gov. Rendell commenting that Janet Napolitano is a good candidate for secretary of Homeland Security because she has no family.) That’s why you see the wage gap increasing during prime childbearing years (25-44), but not afterward.

For more on the wage gap, see our posts on the wage gap for college grads, comparing different kinds of wage gaps, the role of job segregation, gender and the wage gap in different professions.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Stephen W. sent us a photograph of a billboard in Rock Valley, IA.  It suggests that keeping your baby, instead of having an abortion, is good for the economy:

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Sociologists talk about how nations are invested in reproduction.  Without babies, nations literally disappear; too many babies and nations collapse under the strain of a population they cannot support.  Because nations need babies (but not too many babies), states adopt pro- and anti-natal policies (e.g., the one child rule or medals for mothers) that encourage or discourage childbearing.  This billboard is an interesting example of a call to women to have children so as to help the nation (though it is sponsored by a pro-life organization, not the state).  Women, in this argument, have a responsibility to the nation (perhaps equivalent to military service?) that transcends their individual reproductive preferences.

(See this related post on making babies for the military.)

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Matthew Yglesias featured two figures from the Pew Economic Mobility project.  They show how long different types of people tend to take to recover from income loss (within 1 year, 2-4 years, or 5-10 years).

This figure shows that people who are older, have more education, or are poor, working, or middle class have a harder time recovering from tough economic times:

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This figure shows how marital status is related to recovery.  Most dramatically, people who get married before recovering financially (especially men), women who split with a partner, and women who are single have a more difficult time recovering.

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Something to consider: As several commenters noted, I’m not sure how they defined “recovery” from income loss.  If you never made a lot of money to begin with, does recovery simply mean returning to a state of low income?  Then, does the income for an initially high income person need to return to its high state for it be counted as a “recovery”?

(Just FYI: I revised my interpretation of these figures.  Thanks to the early commenters who noticed I’d misinterpreted.  It was really late at night when I wrote this post!)

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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“Pregnant? Scared?”  They don’t mean hemorrhoids and contractions; they mean social opprobrium and economic ruin due to stingy social services.

Jill at I Blame the Patriarchy writes:

There is only one reason that pregnancy should “scare” you: your culture hates women and kids. It especially hates teenage women. It especially hates pregnant teenage women. It especially hates teenage pregnant women who get knocked up under unapproved circumstances.

It had never occurred to me before that a generalized fear of getting pregnant is a culturally and historically contingent state of mind.  But, of course, it is.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

According to the Economist, beauty spending–on make-up, diet and exercise, fragrances, skin care, hair products, and cosmetic surgery–adds up to a $160 billion-a-year worldwide.  To illustrate this, Lauren Greenfield calculated the monthly spending of six women and photographed them undergoing their beauty treatments (slideshow here).  Thanks to Karl B. for sending along the link!

26 year-old, Ginger spends $650 a month on her physical appearance. At Manhattan’s store Sephora, Ginger shops alone for cosmetics because her friends know she will spend hours. She is so obsessed with makeup that she founded her own line of cosmetics, Ginger Luxe.

PR-Company owner, Claudine (29) compares prices at Duane Reade drug store in Upper East Side Manhattan. Claudine spends only $80 each month on her personal grooming. Her philosophy is ‘the less stuff I use, the better I look’.

New York City actress Cameron (25) spends $620 a month on her personal grooming. Cameron reveals that her hair is the key to her personality, ‘I spend so much time with my hair-stylists, they’re like my family’.

New York City hedge-fund exec Suzanne (36) spends $1720 a month on personal grooming.  At ‘Skin & Spa’ cosmetic surgery center, Suzanne receives Botox from Dr. Howard Sobel, a treatment that she receives 3 times a year.

25-year-old Manhattan publicist, Laura gets her eyebrows threaded, an Indian technique where hair is pulled out at the roots. Laura spends $145 a month on her personal grooming, but her mother is a hair stylist who cuts and colors Laura’s hair monthly for free.

Fashion company spokeswoman, Jennifer, 27 receives a spray tan at a top New York salon. Jennifer spends $865 on personal grooming, ‘My spa time’s not a splurge-it’s a necessity!’

For more on beauty and spending, see our posts on the scientizing of beauty products (here, here, and here), our post on how Dove and Axe are in bed together, and this post on the economics of beauty over a lifetime.

Also see Lauren Greenfield’s work on girl culture and photographs of children at a weight loss camp.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

An  interactive graphic at Newsweek allows us to explore the amount of money women spend on beauty by their tweens, teens, 30s/40s, 50s, and, then, over the course of their lifetimes.  Below is a screenshots of the summary, click here to visit the graphic, and visit here for details on the numbers.

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The New York Times features an interactive graphic about the wage gap between men and women. It shows how different types of professions are distributed along the wage gap.  At the website, you can see click on each dot to see wage gaps for specific professions (e.g., female professors make 22% less than male professors).

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Also about the wage gap, see posts herehere, here, and here.

This week in the New York Times, Catherine Rampell explained how the recession was affecting the ratio of female to male workers:

The proportion of women who are working has changed very little since the recession started. But a full 82 percent of the job losses have befallen men, who are heavily represented in distressed industries like manufacturing and construction. Women tend to be employed in areas like education and health care, which are less sensitive to economic ups and downs, and in jobs that allow more time for child care and other domestic work.

Here are the results:

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Excluding farm workers and the self-employed, women held 49 percent of the nation’s jobs as of November. Including farm workers and the self-employed, women held 47 percent of jobs.

But, Rampell reminds us:

Women may be safer in their jobs, but tend to find it harder to support a family… Women are much more likely to be in part-time jobs without health insurance or unemployment insurance. Even in full-time jobs, women earn 80 cents for each dollar of their male counterparts’ income…

If the recession continues as it has, the U.S. workforce may soon be majority female.

See also this post on job segregation.