User:Eleland/Sandbox2

Job segregation
Occupations such as teaching, nursing, secretarial and library work are female-dominated while occupations such as architecture, electrical engineering, and piloting are male-dominated. Women occupy the service sector jobs at higher rates then men. Female overrepresentation in service sector jobs as opposed to jobs that require managerial work contributes to the wage gap.

A female worker's choice of occupation is not entirely a matter of preference. Women face greater barriers than men in obtaining human capital or in entering certain occupations and industries. Moreover, gender socialization steers women away from certain occupations, and tends to incentivize jobs with flexible hours, and careers in which job skills deteriorate less markedly during long absences from the workforce.

Almost without exception, the gender gap exists even within the same job type – for instance, female cashiers earn on average 15% less than male cashiers, and female postsecondary teachers earn 22% less than males.

Maternity leave
The possibility that a female employee will leave work, temporarily or permanently, to care for a child is often cited, particularly to explain why women are rarely found in the most demanding jobs, such as upper management (the so-called glass ceiling.)

Thomas Sowell argued in his book Civil Rights that most of pay gap is based on marital status, not a “glass ceiling” discrimination. Earnings for men and women of the same basic description (education, jobs, hours worked, marital status) were essentially equal. That result would not be predicted under explanatory theories of “sexism”. However, it can be seen as a symptom of the unequal contributions made by each partner to child raising. Cathy Young argues that rather than men being disinterested in child-rearing resulting in an unequal burden for women, women barring men from taking on paternal responsibilities may sometimes be at fault. Many Western countries have some form of paternity leave to attempt to level the playing field in this regard. In addition to maternity leave, Walter Block and Walter E. Williams have argued that marriage in and of itself, not maternity leave, in general will leave females with more household labor than the males [][] [][].

Different choices
Women and men often make different choices: in college major, in hours and years worked, and in what jobs to take.

Critics of the discrimination theory, including men's rights activists, argue that these "free choice" elements are the source of virtually all of the gender earnings gap. According to these critics, women often choose to prioritize social and family life before their careers, and will therefore avoid jobs that require long or inflexible hours.

Proponents of the discrimination theory, including feminists, argue that such "free choice" factors, while significant, have been shown in studies to leave large portions of the gender earnings gap unexplained (Blau and Kahn 1997, Wood et al 1993). Furthermore, some feminists argue that the social expectation that women are the sex responsible for child and elder care is not an example of "free choice," but instead an example of sexism.

Male activist Warren Farrell has claimed that childless women who have never married earn 117 percent of their childless male counterparts, when the comparison controls for education, hours worked and age. However, Farrell's calculations and methodology have never been subjected to peer review. Economists publishing research in peer-reviewed scholarly journals have found that, even after accounting for parenthood status, education, job title, and other factors, there is still a significant income disparity in men's favor (Blau and Kahn 1997, Wood et al 1993).

Men may get more credit for their work
Some argue that work by men is often subjectively seen as higher-quality than objectively equal or better work by women (Goldin and Rouse, 1997; Johnson, 1997). This can impact who is offered mentoring, who is given a job assignment, who is offered a promotion, and so on - and all of these factors in turn have an effect on the gender earnings gap.

For example, one study of credit in the sciences, published in Nature, looked at productivity (measured in terms of publications in scientific journals, how many times a person was a "lead author" of an article, and how often the articles were cited in scientific journals) and sex. These factors were then compared to how an actual scientific review panel measured scientific competence when deciding on research grants. The results showed that female scientists needed to be at least twice as accomplished as their male counterparts to receive equal credit (Wenneras and Wold, 1997).

Is there a "danger" pay premium?
Men's rights activist Warren Farrell has argued that a significant cause of the gender earnings gap is men's greater willingness to take on physically dangerous jobs (New York Times 2008). Men's activists assert that men are taking more dangerous jobs, as suggested by the statistic that in 2006, men accounted for 92% of workplace fatalities in the United States. This men's rights argument contends that because employers have to pay a "danger premium" to entice workers to take dangerous jobs, and because women are not willing or able to take these jobs even for high wages, men's wages are higher.

However, feminists argue that the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. are not necessarily "male", but most often very low-paid jobs, generally performed by immigrants and other workers who have few occupational options. The Bureau of Labor Statistics investigated job traits that are associated with wage premiums, and stated: "Job attributes relating to interpersonal relationships do not seem to affect wages, nor do the attributes of physically demanding or dangerous jobs."