Even in the twenty first century while having the same college and professional degree, men and women still have a consistent wage gap. According to the data provided in the article, younger women are completing bachelor's degree at higher rate than men, yet they represent a higher proportion of low-wage workers. After adjusting for other factors like age, race, number of children, women still earn 14 cent less than men per dollar. Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee said that he is surprised with the report and thought that with the increase in level of education, the wage gap between men and women would narrow down even more.
The article provided many reasons for the wage gap, such as job nature, flexible hours for women and discrimination. One of the reason I would like to further discuss is the job nature of women. Female most likely are to take job in health care and social assistance, and these jobs have lower pay than other jobs like construction, transportation. It seems to me that instead of women wanting to get into these lower wage fields, it is more like the society in many years have presumed that women should take these jobs. Think about it, when I think of a nurse, I think of female. When I think of flight attendant, I think of female. People expect women to take these jobs no matter how equivalent men and women's education are.
Therefore, I don't think that the wage gap between men and women would be narrow down a lot more in the future, largely because of the social norm. Women are to be expected to be in job field that provides caring or assistance, and these jobs are most likely to be lower wage. Unless the thinking of society changes dynamically, for example like the social norm of women is now to work in the finance field/ construction, then the wage gap might alter. But that seems to be very unlikely.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/gender-gap-on-wages-is-slow-to-close/
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