Well, if you take a random sampling of nations around the world and do an honest appraisal, what you will find is that America is relatively fair. Compared to less developed nations, American women are treated very well and equal opportunity is quite prevalent. Discrimination does occur, but it\u2019s muted compared to what\u2019s happening in most developing nations.<\/span><\/p>\n While all of that might be true, this line of reasoning sounds a lot like a justification or excuse; An attempt to pass and cover something that doesn\u2019t smell right. Although America has historically been a champion for equal rights and civil liberties, the rest of the world is starting to sense that all may not be what it seems.<\/span><\/p>\n Gender-based pay disparities in the US clearly demonstrate that American women are significantly discriminated against due to their gender. Looking into a few wage statistics that were recently published by the US Department of Labor, let\u2019s consider the wages of American men and women that work in engineering. The statistics are based on weekly salary rates for full-time employment only. Due to the way this data is segmented and reported by the US Department of Labor, it\u2019s certain that we\u2019re comparing apples to apples. The results are alarming.<\/span><\/p>\n Gender-based pay disparities in the US clearly demonstrate that American women are significantly discriminated against due to their gender.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n From the data shown<\/a> above you can see that, as far as wage rates, the three most gender unbiased engineering fields are marine and naval engineering, environmental engineering, and petroleum engineering (in order from fairest to less fair). The three engineering fields with the largest gender-based pay gaps are mechanical engineering, mining engineering, and computer hardware engineering (in order from less unfair to more unfair).<\/span><\/p>\n The most alarming statistic generated from this analysis shows that a female computer hardware engineer in America will, on average, earn 27% less money than her male counterpart for the same job. As appalling as that fact is, things get worse\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n The gender-based inequality in wage stability is by far the most alarming thing about the statistics generated in this investigation. Wage instability<\/em> here refers to the net change in reported \u00a0income between consecutive years. \u00a0Looking at the same engineering fields discussed above we find that, along with earning 27% less, female hardware engineers experience 3.6x more wage instability than their male counterparts. The mining engineering field is even worse! Female mining engineers earn wage rates that are 6.5x less stable than those of male mining engineer counterparts. Across the board, female engineers experience far more wage instability then male engineers. Environmental engineering is the fairest of all fields, and even there, females in environmental engineering still experience 1.5x more wage instability than their male counter parts.<\/span><\/p>\n As startling as these statistics may be, they\u2019re what the US Department of Labor is reporting. Are these injustices simply a result of the good old boy club mentality? Or are these fields still struggling to catch on to the notion of equal civil rights for every man, woman, and child? If it\u2019s the former, then that\u2019s illegal \u2013 and why isn\u2019t the American justice system doing something about it? If it\u2019s the latter, well \u2013 the civil rights movement happened 50 years ago now. They\u2019ve had 50 years to catch on! If they haven\u2019t done so yet, maybe they need a little external encouragement.<\/span><\/p>\n This is a contribution that I originally made to Statistics Views website<\/a>\u00a0back in August, 2014. If\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0interested in learning more about the practice of data\u00a0science, or how you can learn to do it yourself, make sure to check out\u00a0<\/span>Data-Mania\u2019s learning resources<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
![\"women](\"http:\/\/data-mania.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Engineerings-dirty-little-secret-final-correction.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWomen Earn Smaller Wages \u2013 That\u2019s Not Breaking News<\/span><\/h2>\n
The Wage Instability Disparity between Men and Women is Especially Appalling<\/span><\/h2>\n