CHAPTER 29A “Nudge” for Reducing the Male/Female Wage Gap
Around the world, men on average earn more money than women. Conventional explanations attribute this to differences in education and interruptions in employment. New findings show there are additionally gender differences when it comes to salary negotiations that result in pay differences.
Every year—usually in early fall—the media reports on Equal Pay Day, which is dedicated to raising awareness of the gender pay gap. Equal Pay Day is supposed to be the day on which you can see how much women earn in a given country as a percentage of the amount men get. This percentage corresponds to the number of days in one year up to the Equal Pay Day divided by the number of days in a year, that is, 365. In the United States, the average annual salary of women amounts to slightly more than 80% of the average annual salary of men. At this general level, though, differences in salary that arise from differences in education, length of career, weekly working hours (full‐time or half‐time), or the duration of employment interruptions (e.g., for raising children) are not sufficiently taken into account. But even if these factors are considered, women still earn less than men do for the same work and with the identical qualifications. It goes without saying that this conflicts with the idea of justice in the Western world. To be able to change this situation, we need to know more about possible causes of pay differences between the ...