A problem in society
Despite endeavors to the contrary, indications of a definite gender pay gap seem to persist. Wanzenreids (2008), for instance, conducted a large-scale study of 108,628 observations on 26,047 executives and 2,598 firms, between the years 1992 to 2003, and showed that women are working for smaller, less profitable firms than men and that female executives earn 14% less than their male colleagues. More so, the gender pay gap is higher towards the upper end of the pay distribution. As recently as 2002, women who worked more than thirty-five hours per week for fifty-two weeks per year earned only 78% as much as men (Giddens, Duneir, & Applebaum, 2003).
Most sociologists (e.g. Alksnis, Desmarais, & Curtis, 2008) seem to think that sexism is the determining factor for the differnce in gender wage, but it may just be that other, less innocuous, reasons may explain the disparity.
These include (1) self-selection by women into female-dominated industries, which pay less (2) self-selection by women out of the workforce periodically (e.g., to raise children), which fragments their work history and thereby reduces their income potential and (3) men ‘s internalized status beliefs that makes them more likely to feel worthy of higher pay. Men, more assertive than women, are able to demand, and receive, the higher wages.