On average, women earn 20 percent less than men. This discrepancy increases as we factor in the race, with black women earning 37 percent less and Latina women earning 46 percent less than white men. There are plenty of fields where women are paid less than men for performing the same job. The most common explanation for the 20-percent wage gap, and the reason many people feel comfortable claiming it doesn’t exist, is that women occupy lower-paying fields of work than men. With this in mind, it would make sense for the average woman’s salary to be less than the average man’s.
Women have to choose to prioritize family over work, choosing to major in the humanities instead of the sciences, choosing to be nice at work instead of playing hardball. It only makes sense that personal choice plays a factor in the gender wage gap. No one is holding women at gunpoint and forcing them to study cosmetology instead of welding. But there are several ways the choices women make might not be as free as we think. Women are significantly less likely to negotiate for a higher salary than their male peers. Some might say this is a result of women choosing to be liked over being respected, which is also a commonly used explanation for why women occupy fewer leadership positions than men. But for women in the workplace, choosing not to negotiate is less of a choice than a survival instinct. Studies show that both male and female colleagues often resist working with a woman who has negotiated for a higher salary because she’s seen as more demanding than a woman who refrained from negotiating.
You might assume this trend occurs because women prioritize family more than men do, and will often choose a flexible, lower-paying job over a rigid higher-paying one. But according to the study it is mostly to do with the patriarchal setup of our society which has made gender norms and role which forces women to choose household work over their career. Also, they being mostly dependent on the husband, they don’t have much say in the choices. All we can do is to make them more educated and independent in order to give them more bargaining power.