Yet, these factors fail to completely account for gender differences in pay, and lawsuits about gender discrimination in pay abound. In these lawsuits, stereotypes or prejudices about women seem to be the main culprit. In fact, according to a Gallup poll, women are over 12 times more likely than men to perceive gender-based discrimination in the workplace (Avery, McKay, & Wilson, 2008). For example, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was recently sued for alleged gender-discrimination in pay. One of the people who initiated the lawsuit was a female assistant manager who found out that a male assistant manager with similar qualifications was making $10,000 more per year. When she approached the store manager, she was told that the male manager had a “wife and kids to support.” She was then asked to submit a household budget to justify a raise (Daniels, 2003). Such explicit discrimination, while less frequent, contributes to creating an unfair work environment.
I love how the textbook cites all the perfectly valid and logically sound reasons as to why the gender wage gap is a myth then cites a weak lawsuit to justify that it’s actually “discrimination against women” that is the real reason. Even admitted that “such explicit discrimination” was “less frequent” but the trends of women going for lesser paying jobs, prioritizing work-life balance and taking more time off, taking time off to prioritize child raising and family, inability to successfully negotiate starting salaries— which ironically can be linked to the “stereotype” of them being less assertive than men— and other factors was unsatisfactory in explaining why this supposed gap existed? Yeah I call bs.