Labor Based Economic Supply and Demand
The third social force is the economy. One example of this force at work is wage disparities between males and females. Statistics show past and current discrepancies in lower pay for women.
"As employees, women are still seeking equal pay with men. Closing the gap between women's and men's pay continues to be a major challenge in most parts of the world."
- The World's Women 2005: Progress and Statistics
Women are paid less in comparison to men and their cumulative losses add up to staggering figures. The US Census Bureau reported in 2012 that on average U.S. women earn 77 cents for every U.S. man's $1. In some places, such as Washington DC, in certain fields (Computers and mathematical fields) women earn as much as 98 cents per a man's $1. In other places, such as Seattle, women earn as low as 73 cents per a man's $1.
The World's Women 2005: Progress and Statistics report also discussed the fact that about 60 countries have begun to keep statistics on informal (unpaid) work by women. Needless to say, even though measuring paid and unpaid work of women is not as accurate as needed for world considerations, "Women contribute to development not only through remuneratedwork for which someone receives pay work but also through a great deal of non-remunerated work."
The question remains: why do women receive lower wages? The traditional definition of the reproductive roles of women as being 'broken, diseased, or flawed' is part of the answer. The maltreatment of women can be found in two ideas: one, the idea that reproductive roles interfere with the continuity of the workplace and two, the idea that women are not dependable. These traditional gender role negative stereotypes have led to the existing pattern of paying women less for their same education, experience, and efforts compared to men.
One way to improve the workplace for women is through education. Efforts to provide formal education to females worldwide have escalated over the last few decades.
A 1993 World Bank report made it very clear that females throughout the world were being neglected in receiving their formal educations when compared to males. Take for example the case of elementary education in Somalia. UNICEF estimated that as few as 7% of females were enrolled in primary schools in Somalia in 2003.
After directed efforts from the national and international community, a 2008 report showed that Somalia has almost doubled primary school enrollment. While the case in Somalia is improving, in most countries females are still less likely to be educated than males. The main point that UNICEF and many other formal international reports tries to make is that raising female formal education rates is associated with improved quality of life, health, protection from crime and sexual exploitation, and countless other benefits, especially in the poorer regions of the world.
Another aspect of education to consider is literacy rate, which is the number of people who can read. In 1999 it was reported by UNICEF that 1 billion people would never learn to read as children and of those billion, 130 million school-aged children (73 million girls) would be without access to learn. A 2008 UNICEF literacy report clearly identifies the specific importance of educating girls to read because they will grow up to be mothers and face tremendous odds against educated mothers who will ensure that their children are also formally educated.
In the United States, most females and males attend some form of formal education. After high school, many go to college. Even though there are more 18-24 year-old men in the United States, women are more likely to attend college based on percentages (57%). A projection from the National Center for Education Statistics estimates that this will continue to trend up and by the year 2016 58% of U.S. college students will be female.
Following with the enrollment estimation, by 2016, about 60% of graduated students will be females. These numbers reflect a strong and concerted push toward equality of opportunity for females in formal education that dates back over a century in the U.S.. One major challenge with this progress in education is to avoid defining it as women "winning" and men "losing." Women becoming more educated is not taking anything away from males. That position is much too simplistic.
Overall, even with improved successes in education, women are still being punished for having children. Examples of this include not being offered promotions in their jobs, not being
considered for jobs, or being dismissed altogether. This is called the child penalty.
Child penalty is discrimination that women experience in their careers because they either have a family, become pregnant while on the job, or choose to have children.
Also, in higher education, even though more women are attending college to earn undergraduate degrees, men are earning more degrees than women in graduate school and professional schools like law or medicine. The table below shows that even though there are more women than ever in medical programs nationwide, they still haven't caught up to men.
Table 4: The Percentage of Physicians who are Male and Female
| Year | %Male | %Female |
| 1970 | 92.4 | 7.6 |
| 1980 | 88.4 | 11.6 |
| 1990 | 83.1 | 16.9 |
| 2000 | 76.3 | 24.0 |
| 2002 | 74.8 | 25.2 |
| 2003 | 74.2 | 25.8 |
| 2006 | 72.2 | 27.8 |
This table illustrates how men are earning more degrees than women. As you can see below, men are out-earning women in doctoral degrees in almost all fields except psychology.
On the previous chart, the first 6 fields are the highest paying fields to work in, while social and psychological sciences are among the least paying. Women dominate Psychology and nearly tie in social sciences and biology. True, at the doctoral level pay is higher than at the masters and bachelors levels, but the difference in engineering and psychology is remarkable at every level of education. Some fields that lack a large number of females have actually tried to recruit women to the field.
Engineers is one field that has seen a concerted effort to facilitate females into the profession. The Society of Women Engineers is a non-profit organization which helps support and recognizes women as engineers. Computer-based careers are also seeing striking gains in some areas for women who are hired competitively based on merit.
