The Economist intimates women prefer less pay

According the article “Sex Changes” in this week’s The Economist, the glass ceilings women face have been replaced by “glass partitions.” Sure, women may be entering professions once dominated by men. Evidently, recent studies reveal that they’re winding up in the “less well-paid bits of them.”

Cambridge surgeon Helen Fernandes is quoted as explaining that the highest-paid positions in medicine are the most demanding. Consequently many women choose lower-paid alternatives which allow them more flexibility: “You can’t leave in the middle of an operation, even if you have a child to pick up from the nursery and will lose your place there if you are late.”

The article intimates that women limit themselves by desiring part-time work, as well as by prioritizing their roles as mothers, with the conclusion:

“Feminists have long had two aims for the workplace. First, that women should be equally represented across the workforce and in all types of jobs. Second, that the sisterhood should be paid as much, or as little, as men doing the same job. They thought these aims were complementary: in fact, they may conflict.”

Cathy Sherry’s piece in Australia’s The Age offers a delightful antidote to The Economist with her analysis of the propensities of a spotlight-hungry media which makes up for lack of research with an abundance of “vibe”:

”The vibe proposition is not well researched. It derives from a general feeling, a sense of what might be correct, but there is not a lot of evidence to back it up. Poke it, and it wobbles.”


Is higher pay meant to be considered as a reward? Should a person be rewarded with higher pay for giving up more of her life? And if maintaining a standard of living requires two people per household to work full-time, who will raise the children?

—Michaele Shapiro