Over their lifetime most child bearing women will make less than their male counterparts because in the United States, women in the United States only get 6 weeks of maternity leave... most European country give 10 - 20 weeks. So women have to take unpaid leave.
You get unpaid maternity leave for upwards of 12 weeks so long as you work a full time job at a company with 50 or more employees. That's us law but many major companies offer paid maternity leave.
I don't concede that women engineers make less than their male counterparts, but if they did there could be several reasons for that being true:
-more women than men will take several years off to stay home with children.
-More women than men will be a "following spouse" if the other one in the couple gets the chance to have an overseas career move, or a relocation for promotion.
- it's been shown in several places that on average women are worse negotiators than men when negotiating for salary.
That doesn't mean that those things apply in every case, but when you look at large numbers of things all those add up and can explain why women engineers could earn less than their male counterparts, or women in general are less than male counterparts. The "in general" portion also includes the fact that women go into lower paying jobs by choice. You don't see a lot of male fashion interns or ballet instructors.
-more women than men will take several years off to stay home with children.
-More women than men will be a "following spouse" if the other one in the couple gets the chance to have an overseas career move, or a relocation for promotion.
- it's been shown in several places that on average women are worse negotiators than men when negotiating for salary.
That doesn't mean that those things apply in every case, but when you look at large numbers of things all those add up and can explain why women engineers could earn less than their male counterparts, or women in general are less than male counterparts. The "in general" portion also includes the fact that women go into lower paying jobs by choice. You don't see a lot of male fashion interns or ballet instructors.