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The Biggest (And Smallest) Pay Gaps

More numbers, this time showing income disparity between men and women by occupation. Cheat sheet: if you are a woman, do not go into sales; do go into health or medicine as anything but a doctor.

Part of the gap in pay is driven by choices, even within single job categories. Among physicians, for example, women are more likely than men to choose lower-paid specialties (though this does not explain all of the pay gap among doctors).

And among all workers, women are more likely than men to take a significant time off from work to raise children, and they tend to be re-hired at lower wages than their counterparts who remained in the workforce.

This suggests to me that if employers don’t want to disadvantage themselves long-term by perpetuating a lack of gender diversity they should swallow the short-term costs of better accommodating working women who want to start families.

Via The Jane Dough.

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