Seventy-Seven Cents on the Thaler? Women’s Wages in the Middle Ages (2016)
The article links to several sites that all make the same claim that &quot;women only earn X cents for every dollar a man earns.&quot; My understanding is that this statistic is calculated by looking at all full-time working men and women across <i>all jobs</i>, and I just keep wondering why they never do any comparisons of men&#x2F;women who do the same job? How is that a meaningful statistic?<p>I think the people who wrote freakonomics did adjust for gender pay gaps between men&#x2F;women who have the same job and found that the gap is much smaller[0], and I understand how that is a problem if a man gets paid more than a woman for doing the same job. But I do not get why we all pretend that it makes any sense at all to claim that women are &quot;losing wages&quot; because women as a whole make less than men as a whole, because men and women tend to work different jobs. What kind of legislation can we possibly write that addresses the issue that men tend to pursue higher paying jobs than women?<p>I say this as a male software developer who makes good money and is dating a female social worker who does not. Is she &quot;losing wages&quot; because she doesn&#x27;t make as much as I do?<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;freakonomics.com&#x2F;podcast&#x2F;the-true-story-of-the-gender-pay-gap-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;freakonomics.com&#x2F;podcast&#x2F;the-true-story-of-the-gende...</a>