Women have made great strides in the halls of academe, with many campuses now enrolling more females than males. But the majority of women continue to choose majors such as education, social sciences, humanities and art that lead to lower wages over the course of their careers. A new study shows that this pattern is becoming increasingly important in perpetuating the wage gap.
paper bag printing "Women are still segregated into college majors that will lead them to careers with less pay than men," said Dr. Donna Bobbitt-Zeher, author of the study and assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University-Marion. "Gender segregation in college majors is becoming more influential in how men and women are rewarded later in life."
Bobbitt-Zeher says there are many reports about the positive gains made by women when it comes to enrollment in college and graduation rates; however, more work needs to be done in examining the long-term outcomes of those trends.
"A lot of people look at data showing that women are more likely to go to college than men, and that women get better grades in college than men, and assume that everything is all right," she said. "But this research suggests there are still problems for women that relate to college."
No one is denying that progress in gender equality has helped narrow the wage gap between men and women. But this study shows that the choices women make in college are a contributing factor in perpetuating the disparity in earnings. Specifically, choice of major makes a difference.
"If you really want to eliminate earnings inequality, college-major segregation is a piece of the puzzle that really stands out," said Bobbitt-Zeher.
The conclusions in her study are based on two data sets comparing women who graduated from high school in 1972 and 1992. She compared the incomes of college graduates seven years after their high school graduations, in 1979 and 1999. Both samples included about 10,000 cases.
On the plus side, findings showed the income gap between college-educated men and women declined significantly in 20 years - in 1979, women's earnings were 78 percent of their male counterparts, but by 1999 the women were earning 83 percent as much as men.
However, the persistence of the wage gap means that there might be other factors at work rather than one simple problem Cartier Replica Watches that could be pinpointed and then "fixed," said Bobbitt-Zeher.
Some of the factors she examined included: occupations and industries in which men and women work; background, including socioeconomic status and race; how much individuals valued earning a lot of money; factors related to parental and marital status; SAT scores; the colleges that people attended and whether they earned graduate degrees; and, of course, the percentage of women in their college majors.
Findings showed that about 19 percent of the income gap between college-educated men and women in 1999 could be explained by their college major - nearly twice as much as in 1979, when 10 percent of the gap was explained by college major.
Although work-related characteristics combine to explain a bigger share of the gap, no other single known factor was more important than college major in explaining the income gap in 1999.
In addition, college major is the only factor explaining a substantial part of the income gap that increased in importance between 1979 and 1999.
"What mis suggests is that college-major segregat
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