Yeah, I think a bit more specific social scientific research needs to be done (or shown, at least) before I'd jump on this particular bandwagon. To merely point out that women jump at the chance at getting crappy but better-paying jobs is to avoid the question about their reasons (in the aggregate) for not being firefighters.

Fair enough. Does your book have random-sampled survey research? That would be solid enough for me.

E.J Graff briefly delays launch into standard feminist insinuation mode (you know, glass ceilings, male conspiracies) when assorted "pay gap" stories arise.It all appears very reasonable, however the op-ed tells a different story. Standard feminist operational mode hasn't changed. is focused heavily on the difficulty females have in landing firefighting jobs. Throw in this "pay gap" blurb and you have yet another "glass ceiling" story (those evil males again.)

Focused as it is on insinuating male evil, the op-ed appears to lack even basic common sense. It laments for example: "When they're pregnant, you cut their overtime, refuse to put them on "light duty" if they ask or force them to take time off without pay." Think about it folks. Do you want a pregnant woman climbing a burning building knocking down flames? For whose protection is this "unfair" policy? Do you want a pregrant woman trying to wrestle you out of a burning building people or a healthy strong firefighter (be they male or female)? In any event MALE firefighters suffer from a variety of policies when they are disabled. They receive no special dispensation to spend more time with newborn babies, nor are those able to function at top physical capacity simply granted "light duty" as a matter of course.

Too often feminists want to have it both ways. They demand to fully participate in rough and tumble jobs like firefighting, but want special privileges and lower standards based on being female.  Men receive no such privileges. Thousands of guys every year are turned away from being firefighters. No one is doing them any special favors.

Graff asks "questions" about the 5% pay gap.
Some fairly obvious questions arise about the "pay gap".

1. How long have said firemen been on the job? Astonishing as it may seem, pay IS based on seniority sometimes.
   
   
2. What are the qualifications of said firemen? Again, such things DO affect pay.
   
   
3. How many hours per week are said firemen putting in? Typically "pay gap" stories neglect to mention that women, on the average, work fewer hours per week than men. Full-timers DO receive more pay than part-timers in most places, strange as it may seem.
   
   
4. Are any of said female firemen married or have children? Marriage  and childbearing is the single most important factor in the paygap, because if affects working hours and seniority. Single never married women have essentially achieved parity with men for similar jobs. But of course, such things, don't seem to appear much in the standard "glass ceiling" stories.
   
   
5. What job area are said female firemen working in and the numbers of hours spent? Those doing more dangerous jobs DO get more pay, curious as this may seem. Someone doing fire prevention in the schools, versus knocking down blazes in skyscrapers is not in as dangerous a situation. Said school prevention speaker may of course rotate on to the skyscraper detail when their experience and physical skills warrant.
   

Perhaps the Times "curiously" DIDN'T ask about the "prevailing" gap because it had already considered some of the obvious questions above. E.J. Graff perhaps should do likewise.

Fair enough, and that's important to keep in mind, but the really contentious issue here has to do specifically with the profession of firefighting.

I didn't get that impression. EC made specific points about the profession of firefighting.

Thank you for your chart. It is very interesting to see the percentages. They undeniably show that there is a wage gap within each category.

I have some questions, though.
- Did the waiters/waitresses category include or exclude tips? They (along with, for example, hairdressers) will often not report those.
- Why are professions that are less than 50% male placed in the "male" category, and same with females?

The charts Karen G presents do show a wage gap,  but they are essentially a red herring. No one disputes a gap. We all know it is there.  The question is not the existence of a gap but the CAUSE of the gap.
Feminist typically holler "discrimination"  but is it really this all too convenient reason? As shown above, female choices, seniority, hours worked, type of work etc are all some OTHER reasons for the wage gap. Marriage and child-bearing are much more significant that alleged male consipracies because they affect working hours and seniority. Such factors however, are not as dramatic as yet another "glass ceiling" insinuation. 

Karen G argues that her 4 charts show that the gap is not the result of female choices. Oh really? She packages her data into "women's work" or female dominated jobs, versus "men's work". So far so good. But that still doesnt get around the fact of female choice.  Here's why:

• Many of the occupations females specialize in are less renumerative that those males specialize in. Females typically go into occupations that allow them greater flexibility and safety as regards marriage and childbearing. A teacher (most of them are female) can drop out for 2- 3 years to raise kids, or can go part time. A computer network analyst, or even a high level technician  doesn't have that kind of time if he wants to keep up with fast developments in the field.
• Nursing or clerical occupations (most are dominated by females) strangely enough are physically safer than construction, or firefighting. On the average, in general, women prefer such safer occupations rather than pursue more demanding firefighting or police work, or areas requiring extreme effort to keep up with developments. Note: I did NOT say ALL women, but women in general- most women.
  
• As far as education, women again, tend to obtain college degrees in areas that are not as renumerative. There are plenty of female social workers with social work degrees for example, but on the market, they will not make as much as a man with a degree or technical qualification in say computer science.
• Women also specialize in occupations that are less unionized. Amazing as it may seem folks, people in more unizioned industries or jobs make more that people who are not or less unionized.

No doubt pointing out such mundane facts will provoke charges of "sexism" but that is the reality on the ground, undramatic as it may be.

Karen G has not even began to answer the question raised by Graff. All she has done is repeat the obvious. Yes Virginia, there is a pay gap. Let's start asking "so what?"

- Did the waiters/ waitresses category include or exclude tips? They (along with, for example, hairdressers) will often not report those.
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It's unfortunate that the study has been removed from the BLS website. The hard copy I have says that wages and tips were included, but I have nothing to point you to for independent verification of that. Specifically, the methodology section states that, "Data are collected on wages and salaries before taxes and other deductions, and include any overtime pay, commissions, or tips usually received." The data was obtained from the Current Population Survey, which is collected monthly by the U.S. Census Bureau.
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- Why are professions that are less than 50% male placed in the "male" category, and same with females?
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The "top 20" occupations are selected based on the number of actual workers of that gender in that category. I.e., the "top 20" jobs in absolute numbers. So even though men only held 26.5% of the "Teachers except colleges/universities" jobs, there were still more men working in that field (1,130,000) than were working in "Math & Computer Scientists" jobs (1,117,000), even though men held 68.2% of those jobs.
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I went ahead and reproduced the article with all the charts here, because I explain more in the article, and it makes no sense to simply reproduce it here as a post - plus, I'd have to link to all the charts individually. Be forwarned that many of the links to other sites don't work anymore. I just put my archive copy of the site up with no modification.
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The current BLS "Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by detailed occupation and sex" report is here (pdf file) or in really funky barely-formated text here if you're interested in the most current numbers.

Having been in the fire service for 32 years and having been an early supporter of women in the fire service I have come to several conclusions.   In my fire department all the females hired as fire fighters want out of the "combat" position as soon as they can.  They want to become paramedics and if they fail in transferring to that role they promote to a fire truck driver or an administrative position or quit. Every single one of them (6).  Where some men will be a firefighter for years and not promote, my experience is the women want out of the position FAST. No, I don't believe it is related to their being high achievers, though some of them where/are.  They just don't like the hard dirty physical portion of the job.

Frankly, my experience with women in the "combat"/grunt side of the work is not positive.  The ones I have worked with do not have the physical strength to perform the job (I have worked with several men who also lacked sufficient strength for the job, too), and they do not have the mechanical apptitude that is neccesary for all aspects of the job.

In short, my long ago high expectations of females in the fire service have in the real world come up very short.  This does not mean I do not believe that there are capable women employed/volunteering in the fire fighting trade, it is just that I have not worked with any.

Firefighting is, I think, not the most favorable ground for fighting the "equality" battle. It requires a physical strength that fewer women than men meet. (I was going to say most women don't meet, but I don't know if that's true. And I also don't know if most men could meet it these days either, in this land of couch potatos).

In general, I've always felt that anybody who *could* do the job should have an equal opportunity to *get* the job - and if they get the job, to be free from harassment or unfair practices to drive them out.

But I don't agree with lowering standards that actually *matter* on the job. Now, when they used to have "standards" like "you have to be six feet tall," that's just a ruse to keep women out. But being able to carry an unconscious person out of the burning building? That's a reasonable requirement for a firefighter, IMHO. If a woman can't do that, she doesn't get the job and that should be the end of the matter. Same as if a man couldn't do it.