As indicated by writer Claire Cain Miller, women’s median annual earnings remain approximately twenty percent below that of men. Many have tried to explain why women earn less, including pointing to the role of career interruption due to time taken off to raise young children.
Others have suggested that the gender pay gap is attributable to disproportionate concentration of women in lower paying positions like social work. But it may simply come down to discrimination. For instance, the median earnings of information technology managers, most of whom are men, are twenty seven percent higher than human resource managers, who are mostly women – this according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
These positions are quite similar in terms of educational requirements and responsibility, but are divided by gender. At the other end of the wage spectrum, janitors, who are mostly men, earn twenty two percent more than mains and house cleaners, usually women.
According to Paula England, a sociology professor at New York University, once women begin doing a job, "It just doesn’t look like it’s as important to the bottom line or requires as much skill."
