Society’s message to women: Don’t work

We need to accept the truth: Our society, and our businesses, simply don’t want mothers to work.

The latest study examining gender differences in pay, one of thousands, finds that female doctors nationally earn 18 percent less than their male counterparts, according to an excellent story by my colleague Jenny Deam. The study is adjusted for experience levels, specialties and hours worked.

Houston doctors without a Y chromosome make 29 percent less a year for doing the same job as men. And did I mention that the women work the same number of hours, have the same years of experience and have the same expertise?

The data dovetails perfectly with hundreds of other studies that have proved, time and again, that women are paid less than

men for the same work. And yet, some readers are incredulous.

“Since similar results were found all over the country and in all specialties, there must be some reason other than misogyny,” one commenter declared on Deam’s story. “Surely, not everyone who hires doctors shares the same prejudice.”

Yes they do, grasshopper. Oh, how they do.

Deniers have all kinds of excuses for why women get paid less: They choose easier fields, they take time off to have children, they work less hours, or my personal favorite, they don’t know how to negotiate a decent salary.

Let’s say all of those things are true. Do they choose easier fields, or do men exclude them? Why should having a family hurt your career if you have the same skills? Why do employers expect people to neglect their families? And lastly, why do men make it so hard for women to negotiate equal pay?

The answer is that men still run the show.

Among Fortune’s 1,000 top companies, only 54 have female CEOs, according to recruiting firm Talentful. Now, it is true that more women are becoming CEOs than ever before, but they still only made up 18.5 percent of newly hired CEOs in 2016, according to global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Female CEOs are often paid on par with male counterparts, but that’s because there is plenty of information for a woman, her attorney and the recruiter to demand an equivalent pay package. But it’s not so easy for a female vascular surgeon to compare her salary to the man working in the next operating room.

For absolute proof that we don’t value a woman’s work as much as a man’s, let’s look at happens when women become the majority of workers in a once male-dominated field.

Since women began entering the field in 1950, the inflation-adjusted wage for summer camp managers is down 57 percent, housekeepers earn 21 percent less, designers get 34 percent less, and biologists are paid 18 percent less, according to research at Cornell University. All of these fields were once male-dominated, and now women fill most of the jobs.

Women make 20 percent less overall despite the fact that the average American woman now has a higher level of education than the average American man.

Once women start doing a job, “It just doesn’t look like it’s as important to the bottom line or requires as much skill,” Paula England, a sociology professor at New York University, told the New York Times. “Gender bias sneaks into those decisions.”

The main problem seems to be the capacity to give birth. Studies show that men with children get paid more than those who don’t. Women, on the other hand, get paid more than men until they have children. After that, they get paid less.

So our society financially rewards men for reproducing, while punishing women for doing the hard part. And some people think that’s just fine.

Is that really the world we want for our daughters?