You know how the male conservative types like to go on about how the wage gap is false because you are comparing apples to oranges (women have only been in the work force for x many years, they tend to enter 'nurture' careers like nursing or teaching and those pay less, they leave to have babies, blah blah blah).
Fortune has a survey of MBA holders, broken down by sex, and how much they make after graduation, and how much they make 5 years after graduation. Apples to apples baby. Same degree and everything.
The link she gave is here, and she's precisely correct. The study breaks out the salary both on first jobs after graduation and five years later. Here are the numbers for 2006 expected salaries:
First job after graduation
All students . . . . . . . . . .88,087
Women . . . . . . . . . . . . .86,805
Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94,710
5 years after graduation
All students . . . . . . . . . .167,052
Women . . . . . . . . . . . . .156,290
Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191,541
The only loophole for argument I can see is that it states "expected" salaries, not actual, so one could posit that men simply expect higher salaries, and that may not be borne out by actual dollars paid, so the almost $8000 difference in starting salaries might be fictitious. However, the gap actually widens by the five year mark to over a $35,000 difference. Mommy-track influence? Possibly somewhat, as the last census shows the average age in which women give birth to their first child is 25.2 years. But given the figures are only five years out of school, most of those women who are mommy-tracking are just having their first kid, and most will return to work within four months, so the $35,000 difference is too steep to be simply explained away.
Apples to apples, and the wage gap remains.
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