Susan M. Belcher
Lecturer, Sociology and Women's Studies
Athabasca University
P.O. Box 11411
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada T5J 3K6
Tel.: 477-5092
FAX: 492-2024
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On Tue, 10 Mar 1998, Robert Weverka wrote:
>
> Linda Purrington wrote:
> >
> > An interesting, nonfrivolous case could be made for giving women even
> > more education, since an average male worker with a high school
> > education makes more per year than a woman who has graduated from
> > college. (Need a standard for deciding the value of education--economic
> > opportunity?) Linda Purrington, Title IX Advocates (and yes, you can use
> > the 14th Amendment)
> >
> > Linda Purrington <lpurring@earthlink.net>
> _______________________________________________
>
> 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>
>