The first blog entry from cartoonist Nolan.

Yesterday, Dillon’s family commented that they were wondering if there was a gender pay gap in the classroom jobs. I thought that was a very interesting question. The math would also be interesting.

So first thing this morning, I asked what a gender pay gap is. Several people told me that it was when a man and a woman do the same job and get different pay for it. I am old enough to remember when this was standard procedure.

So I asked if our class system had a gender pay gap.  The firm answer was no- they didn’t know for sure who would have which job, so there could be no gender pay gap. And all of the jobs in a given category pay the same for now.

Then I explained a broader idea of a gender pay gap- jobs often held by women may be paid less, or women as a whole in an organization may be paid less because of what that organization values. How could we tell if we had one?

Tom suggested that we add up all of the girls salaries, and all of the boys salaries. The gender which is making the most money as a  grand total would be the benficiaries of any pay gap, and if the total is the same, there is no gap. (If the numbers of boys and girls were equal, this would work.) But it was pointed out that we have more boys than girls, so in total, the boys should be making more- there are more of them. How could we account for this? Three or four people knew that the name for how two groups relate numerically is called the ratio, and Lorenzo could even figure out the ratio- 2 girls to 3 boys. But the group couldn’t quite figure out how to apply that. Tom had another idea- just compare the top five jobs – boy and girl, to the bottom five jobs, boy and girl, and maybe that would give us an idea. So we got the pay list and looked, and…  All of the top five jobs are held by boys. The bottom jobs are split boy/girl. How could we account for this?

During job interviews, I asked everyone if there was any other job they might be interested in, or suggested a different job and asked if they would be interested. Part of what I was trying to do was see if I could steer some girls to what I suspected from preliminary discussions would be the higher paying jobs. I didn’t get takers. So I was interested in this topic myself.  I let them know that this was what I had been going for.  May said that maybe the girls just didn’t want to do a job that was a lot of hard work and took strength. But there were comments that we have a very athletic class of girls this year, so they shouldn’t have any trouble with any of the jobs.  And Oliver said that the highest paying job, banker, is really an all brain job. So what is going on?

I told the group about a fairly recent study that found that men often make more than women in starting positions simply because they negotiate and women take what they are offered. Everyone may get a low offer, but the men counter offer and the women don’t. (Statistically speaking, of course- I am sure some women negotiate and some men don’t)

So Emerson wanted to know when men get taught to make that counter offer. I have NO idea.
Marcie theorizes that perhaps our grandparents or great grandparents were very sexist, and each generation has been getting less so, but it takes a really long time to get rid of it all.

At this point, we had to leave for PE. We have many more questions than answers. So I asked them to talk to you over the weekend. What have you found and noticed? ARE there secret negotiating lessons for men? We are going to think this over and see if we want to revisit any of this in the future.

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