December 22, 2005 7:17 AM

Wage rage
Posted by Jason Tuoheyat 7:17 AM

Mary Helen Gillespie hits upon a lighting rod topic with her latest column "A case of wage rage." She points to a recent book on the wage gap between genders in America that claims women make anywhere between $700,000 and $2 million less than men over the course of their careers. From the article:

"For every dollar earned by a working male, a working female will earn 77 cents. The gap: 23 cents. Doesn't even add up to two dimes and one nickel. Until you do the math, and realize that over the career of a working female, this adds up to thousands and thousands of dollars less than what her male equal in the workplace will earn."

However, that's only part of the story. Many readers who sounded off on the BostonWorks message board charged that such wage gap studies incorporate fuzzy math and warped statistics to make the difference seem larger than it really is. From one reader:

"What that oft-quoted study (77 cent) neglects to mention is that women typically enter the workforce later than men, work less hours over their lifetime than men, often remove themselves voluntarily from the workforce for extended periods (usually for family reasons)"

What do you think?