In May, the Harvard Business Review looked at why Danish women’s salaries dropped off after childbirth and never recovered. In June, the University of Chicago presented a reason: productivity.
Yana Gallen looked at Danish data and found that an eight percent productivity gap between mothers and others explained two-thirds of the pay gap. What it didn’t explain was the slight drop in pay for childless women, who had higher productivity.
Gallen hypothesized that men were actually working more hours than reported, which would mean their productivity per hour wasn’t that much greater (or greater at all) than women, but that their total work output was higher. The Wall Street Journal summed it up as follows:
When all hours are accounted for, it’s possible mothers are equally as productive per hour. But from a business’s perspective, a worker would likely be judged on output per paid hours. Essentially, a father might be more willing or able to stay late to finish an assignment, even if they receive no overtime compensation for the effort.
To keep reading, click here: Harvard: Why Do Danish Mothers Earn Less? University of Chicago: It’s the Productivity, Stupid.
Interesting. There’s also a new study out of Australia that found that women ask for raises just as often as men, but are not granted raises as much as men. That study — the results of which are also believed to likely apply to the UK and the US also — was carefully controlled to correct for factors such as education, experience, tenure, attendance, skill and job level, etc. The take-away was that something other than women’s so-called “choices” accounted for the wage discrepancy, and that gender-based discrimination could not be eliminated as a factor.