There's outright unethical and illegal gender pay discrimination against women that has to be stopped. But then there is Point B: complex, unresolved issues about gender and pay.
Claire Miller and the NYTimes like to scream 'discrimination' wherever they can, or can't, including nursing. But is nursing really biased against women in pay? AllNurses.com, fortunately for you and me, deals with the complex unresolved societal issues behind why male nurses make more than female nurses. Hold on, its fascinating.
Here's why male nurses, according to AllNurses.com, make more money than female nurses:
1.Males go into higher paying nursing specialists.
Some 40% of nurse anesthetists, for example, are male. Only 13% of nurses overall are male. But even here, male anesthetists make $17,000 more a year than female anesthetists, according to the AMA. Here's three more reasons for that.
2.Males put in more overtime than females.
3.Males work shifts that may pay more, such as weekends and third shift (I hope nurses don't call it the graveyard shift).
4.Men are also known to negotiate salary increases and higher pay rates than women.
5.Women are more likely to stop-out of work to have children, then come back to work later.
So people who continue working get annual pay raises, and people who stop out and come back, then get their last pay.
OK folks, you got solutions for these complex societal issues? You wanna take away experience and seniority in pay? You wanna force women to work overtime? My proposal is to focus on getting to Point A before we try to get to Point B. I would ask Claire Miller for her ideas, but she and the NYTimes are stuck on screaming anti-male diatribes.
Photo: Farm near our town with natural artesian wells where the water rises upwards from underground, allowing the farmer to form these ice sculptures.