If your premise is that the difference in salaries is an important measure of
inequities by sex, I wholeheartedly agree. We should make an effort to
correct this disparity.
I disagree with your conclusion.
More women go to college than men. The biggest reason that the average male
college graduate gets a higher starting salary than the average female college
graduate is that these fewer males are concentrated in fields that pay more.
We should encourage more women to go into these higher paying fields. However
it is not sufficient to equalize just these fields. If we achieve 50%
representation of women in higher paying fields and we still have 75% women in
the lower paying fields (with more women getting college degrees overall) the
average pay of all college graduates will still have this inequity by sex. It
is not until we bring male representation in the lower paying fields up to 50%
that the average pay of college graduates can be made equal.
Robert Weverka <weverka@optivision.com>