Deleted:Personal choice
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Template:Merge Personal choice is one reason given to explain the different numbers of men and women performing tasks that provide high pay or status. Other reasons include social pressure, inherent biological or psychological differences, and sexism.
Columnist Suzanne Fields, commenting on the recent Google Memo case - where an employee was fired for suggesting that sexism might not be the only reason for the disparity between the sexes at Google - wrote:
- In 1973 the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission waged a famous discrimination case against Sears and Roebuck, then the largest retailer in the nation and the second-largest employer of women in the United States, arguing that Sears tolerated dramatic statistical pay and position disparities between men and women. After a 10-month courtroom struggle the judges determined that personal choice, not willful discrimination, was why men were usually paid more than women. Among more than 13,000 employees, the court observed that women often didn’t want to work weekends or deal with specialized equipment, which meant longer hours and less comfortable working conditions, despite the higher pay that came with it. Pay policy was not discriminatory, though the statistical data was initially interpreted as if it were.
Sarah Jane Glynn, Associate Director for Women’s Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress, wrote:
- In reality, the 77-cent figure does capture some discrimination, but it also reflects gender differences in jobs, hours worked, years of experience, educational attainment, or personal choices that people make about their careers. Explaining the Gender Wage Gap
Personal choice is not the only factor, and historically social pressure against girls or women taking on "men's work" or departing from traditional female roles is widely believed to be responsible for female predominance in nursing, teaching elementary school, and so on. There are very few male "supermodels". Jobs that require greater manual dexterity or attention (like seamstress) may also attract women, while jobs requiring greater physical strength (like lumberjack or stevedore) tend to be filled by women. It is a matter of controversy whether there are any jobs - at least in America - where inherent psychological differences would tend to disqualify women, although research into the matter continues. Finally, it has been several years since wage discrimination against women was outlawed in the United States (see, for example, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009).
