You’ve got to hand it to the writers at Vox — they know how to stay on message.
In an article about the differences between earning/job potential and college majors, Vox writer Libby Nelson couldn’t help but claim that differences in pay really all come down to gender discrimination. When discussing the median income between different college majors (finance and nursing), Nelson argues that just because one major appears to earn more than another doesn’t make it so — in fact, it all really comes down to the gender of the individual.
Nelson quotes Ben Schmidt, an assistant history professor at Northeastern University, to make the case.
“A male English major makes the same as a female math major, and a female economics major makes less than a male history major,” Schmidt had written. “So the next time you see someone arguing that only fools major in art history, remind them that the real thing holding back most English majors in the workplace isn’t their degree but systemic discrimination against their sex in the American economy.”
Schmidt does indeed argue that the “apparent gulf” between the two majors “has nothing to do with the actual majors, and everything to do with the pervasive gender gaps across the American economy.” But he never takes into account other choices women make in their careers as the reason for the discrepancy.
Take, for example, this other Vox article from Nelson in which she draws from Schmidt’s writing (you might see a pattern here). In this article, Schmidt addresses what careers people actually pursue with their majors. It turns out that men and women with the same majors tend to make very different career choices.
Among English majors, for example, the top two career paths are teaching and law. Teaching, which pays less, is dominated by women. Law is, at least for now, dominated by men (64.5 percent of lawyers are men, according to FiveThirtyEight). And not all lawyers are paid the same. A 2014 survey from the National Association of Women Lawyers shows that women make up the majority of staff attorneys — lawyers who are not on track to become partners. In fact, this is often called the “mommy track” because it allows women lawyers more flexibility.
Feminists and talking heads will claim that all of this stems from a deep cultural bias that pushes women into lower-paying fields. But maybe — just maybe — women truly are free to make their own choices and find some things in life more important and more rewarding than money.
