Gender Wage Gap Analysis

The home economics theory is used in explaining the wage gap because it examines the relationship between the amount of time and effort put into working and the varying incomes that correspond to the amount of time being worked. In the scholarly article “Working from home and the gender gap in earnings for self-employed US Millennials”, Jessica Simon explores the gender differences in terms of self-employment for millennials who are working from home. The increase in women’s self-employment along with the tendency for women to work from home suggests that working in their own home is becoming the new work environment for women, which is why it is essential to study the economic consequences. Based off of a few theories of women’s wage and self-employment earnings, Simon argues that working from home will be negatively related to women’s earnings, but not to men’s earnings. In order to support her thesis’, she conducted a study using a population-based survey, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, which allowed her to compare home-based and non-home-based

self-employed women and men on a wide variety of characteristics. Her analysis showed the conditional correlations between working from home and earnings for both women and men. She identified the dependent variable of weekly earnings, demographic variables, human capital variables, household and parenting variables, and business characteristic variables to examine differences in the association between earnings.
After investigating the data consistent with the variables needed to test her hypothesis, Simon’s proves that earnings are far lower for women working from home than for men. To test that home employment is associated with lower earnings for women but not men, Simon used U-tests. From these tests she found that self-employed, home-based women earn less than their counterparts who work outside the home. But home-based work for self-employed men was not associated with a wage penalty. After completing her analysis, Simon determines that work hours are also an important factor in the gender earnings gap because they tend to differ when people work at home and when they work outside the home. Her data concludes that on average, self-employed respondents working outside the home worked 41.0 hours per week, whereas self-employed respondents working from home worked 33.1 hours per week. The gender difference for self-employment at home suggests that on average men worked approximately 37.3 hours, whereas women worked 27.0 hours. Author Karl Reichardt also touches on the concept of time spent in the workforce. From his research he concludes that women are less likely to want to work and want a more flexible lifestyle. His data shows that women are 46% likely to prefer a reduction in work hours or compensation whereas men are 28% likely, and women are 88% likely to prefer a flexible and slower career path where as men are less likely to pick that lifestyle at only 74%.This is where the home economics theory plays a role, when people spend different amounts of time at work or don’t want to work as much, their productivity and pay reflect it. When people work in offices they tend to work longer hours and when men and women work at home, men tend to work longer than women which is why their wages are different. Simon concludes that earnings differences by gender are effected by the hours worked as well as the pay rate itself, this gap in hours is perplexing because its unknown if the weekly hours are a choice because women want a more flexible lifestyle, a constraint of the type of work they do, or a result of a lack of demand in the industries. In conclusion this article proves that working from home is negatively correlated with earnings for women and not for men, but it is important to remember that the average hours worked by men and women has also impacted the increasing wage gap in society because when someone works more or less hours than someone else, it is reflected in the amount they are paid.
Author Youngjoo Cha also touches on the home economic theory in his article “Overwork and the Slow Convergence in the Gender Gap in Wages”, when he explains his thoughts on as to why the gender wage gap is still in our society today.

Despite rapid changes in women’s educational achievement and continuous labor force experience, the gender wage gap is still an issue. In order to explain the wage gap, Cha focuses on a major factor affecting trends in the gender gap in wages, the increasing occurrence of long work hours and the growth of overwork wages. These changes have occurred because of the differences in the proportion of men and women who are willing or able to put in longer hours at work. Cha argues that the gender gap in overwork, working 50 or more hours per week, coupled with the higher pay, has raised men’s wages in relation to women’s, thereby slowing the convergence in the gender wage

gap.
In order to prove his thesis, Cha assessed the relationship between trends in overwork and trends in the gender wage gap using Current Population Survey data from 1979 to 2009. After examining his data Cha could see that the growing frequency of overwork by employees worsened the gender wage gap by about 10 percent. Cha shows that the convergence in the gender gap in hourly pay was diminished by the increasing prevalence of overwork and the rising hourly wage returns to overwork. Just like the home economic theory states, if someone is working more hours, they will be more productive and make more money. Because more men engage in overwork, these changes raised men’s wages more than women’s and worsened the gender wage gap. The overwork effect on the gender gap in wages was most distinct in professional and managerial occupations, where long work hours are common. This ties into the home economic theory because it is focusing on the amount of hours worked by employees. This article concentrates on the overwork being done by mostly males in a multitude of industries. Since males are working more hours at higher wages, it is widening the wage gap between men and women because women aren’t working those extra hours, thus making them earn less money.