(VEDIOR) 3 March 2008:

Recent research by the International Trade Union Confederation shows that the gender pay gap is a global phenomenon. In those 63 countries that actually keep accurate records, women earn an average 16 percent less than men. Further, the pay gap is larger the higher the level of education.

This shows one of two things might be true: Either the pay gap is not the creation of some structural unfairness in an individual society, or that all societies have the same structural unfairness.

What makes the findings somewhat bizarre is that in Bahrain, women are paid 40 percent more than men. A very odd finding for a highly patriarchal society.

(TIMES LEADER) 25 November 2007:

A recent finding reveals that gender separation leads to greater flexibility about gender roles. The study revealed that students from single sex high schools choose more gender neutral majors in college.

You would expect it to work the other way: that those used to the presence of the other sex through school would be more open to thinking about non-traditional roles. However, it seems that the socialization pressures in the teenage years work the other way: both boys and girls are pressured by their peers into the stereotypical methods of thinking about gender roles.

(THE POST STANDARD) 24 November 2007:

Times change and thus so do the mores and usual assumptions about life in general and sex in particular. It wasn’t all that long ago that men and women went to entirely different colleges. Then, when colleges became mixed, halls of residence were still separated. Then came the introduction of coed dorms, Now we seem to have reached the natural end point of the changes: the coed dorm room.

(American Chronicle) 26 October 2007:

One of the many compelling things the subprime housing crunch has brought to light is that women were disproportionately steered into more expensive subprime mortgages

This effect held even when checking credit histories and earnings potentials and remarkably, got worse the higher the income group.

There are three possible stories here: one, that there was direct discrimination, two, that women were less financially educated and thus easier to fool (neither of these would be happy findings) or there’s more variability in women’s earnings, leading to what appears to be the same credit rating not actually being so.

(THE AUSTRALIAN) 6 October 2007:

One of the usual problems with the way that gender statistics are reported is that little note is taken of age cohorts. That there are few women in senior management doesn’t tell us whether there is discrimination now, or whether there used to be and isn’t now and we’re just waiting for that generation that didn’t suffer the discrimination to get to the right age to take such jobs.

An interesting result from Western Australia: The number of women managers has grown from 28% to 34% of the total in just five years. We’ve known that for the past decade and more women have been getting the majority of the college degrees: it looks like we’re finally beginning to see this feed through into the number of women managers.

(TIMES DEMOCRAT) 4 September 2007:

Women now are a majority of those taking college degrees, but there’s still a gender gap in which types of degrees are being taken. Those who have looked at the background to the EQSQ personality tests will understand the point well enough: men still predominate in the hard sciences while women do in such areas as teaching.

What is less well understood is that women also seem to be concentrating upon those careers that require a four year degree and simple effort and application. Men, on the other hand, seem to be pursuing more advanced degrees and no degrees at all.

One possible explanation is the different acceptance of risk. A Ph.D. is a very risky investment: very few go on to get tenure as a professor. The risk from a more conventional degree and career path is low, which is perhaps why men do the former and women the latter.

(BOSTON GLOBE) 2 September 2007:

Most academic research now discounts the idea that the gender pay gap is caused by direct discrimination and points rather to the career interruptions caused by the having and raising of children. In the absence of men being the ones who get pregnant, what, exactly, could be done about this?

It might well be that it will sort itself out as a byproduct of womens’ now higher educational levels. Human resources departments now concentrate on “onramping,” the attracting back into the work force of those who have left to raise children. Increasingly, such women are highly educated and have had their children later in life than used to be the case. They often also have a decade or more experience of work.

Such potential employees are valuable: so companies are designing flexible work schedules to attract them: and thus might the gender pay gap close.

(MACON TELEGRAPH) 12 August 2007

How things have changed in only one short generation. It really wasn’t all that long ago, 30 years or so, when men were the vast majority of students on most college campuses. That has now reversed, with the figure nationally being 57 percent female, and in some places as much as 60 percent.

This has led to some colleges going out to try and increase male applications: just as the were all once trying to increase female enrollment.

Of course, it’s against the law to base actual acceptances upon sex, but the pool of applicants can be expanded.

There’s perhaps no great lesson here: other than that it can be amazing quite how quickly a society can change.

(THE TELEGRAPH) 1 August 2007:

A cosmetics company has investigated why women dress up in various countries around the world. British women are the least concerned to gussy up for the sake of their menfolk, similar to American women, while Russian, Korean, and Indian women were the most likely to dress and make up to impress men.

The study unfortunately missed the opportunity to explain why. There’s a very close connection between this propensity to slap on the war paint and the relative economic status of men and women in each country. Where status and success are only available to women through their relationship with a man, more is done to please one. Where women are more equal in economic terms, less is done.

The economist Tyler Cowen has in fact postulated this as a rough test of a society: where women are primped and preened to within an inch of their lives, that society will be unequal in the economic opportunities available to women.

(REUTERS) 17 July 2007:

A teenager whose teachers had stopped her wearing a “purity ring” at school to symbolize her commitment to virginity has lost a High Court fight against the ban.

Lydia Playfoot, 16, says her silver ring is an expression of her faith and had argued in court that it should be exempt from school regulations banning the wearing of jewelry.

“I am very disappointed by the decision this morning by the High Court not to allow me to wear my purity ring to school as an expression of my Christian faith not to have sex outside marriage,” Playfoot said in a statement Monday.