A Panel on Gendered Wage Gaps

The continuing presidential campaign in the United States has been dominated by a number of noticeable trends, including contentious debates about reproductive rights specifically (what some have called the “war on women“) and, more broadly, about gender roles in American society (think about the recent commentary on Ann Romney, a topic Adia has blogged about). There has also been much discussion about the state of the economy in the United States and continuing issues of un- and under-employment (see my posts here and here).

An important intersection of these two political debates is the counting disparity in pay by gender. A recent article in The Economist, citing work done by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, documented this phenomena, noting that women continue to earn, on average, 82.2% of what men earn. This gap, as the graphic below shows, varies considerably by occupational category.

Image via The Economist (April 17, 2012)

In the following three pieces, our regular bloggers Adia Harvey Wingfield and Julie Kmec join guest blogger Rebecca Glauber in dissecting some of the causes and debates surrounding the gender wage gap, both within and outside of sociology.