About ten years ago, former US President Barack Obama claimed that women in the US were paid 77 cents on the dollar when compared to men. Soon after, further dissemination of the studies showed that the actual pay gap between the two genders are actually much lower (93 cents on the dollar) when taking into account career choices, hazardous posts, and hours worked. An article on The Atlantic illustrates the gender-equality paradox by highlighting a lack of gender balance in STEM fields.
Then, I read an article on the New York Times on how women earn less than men even when they are in the same positions. The author also brought in the issue of race as an additional factor in the gender pay gap with data showing how Asian women were paid more than Hispanic women, both races of women were still paid less than men.
But this article isn’t about the gender pay gap, it’s about the profession pay gap. The data that suggested a gender pay gap was the result of gender imbalance in high-paying professional jobs made me think: “Why are STEM professions paid more than careers in healthcare or education?” A quick review of my old economics class notes from university explains that prices have something to do with market forces and incentives. I won’t go into details because I’m woefully underqualified to explain the reasoning behind those forces.
Economics aside, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that this could be a result of how we are conditioned to value different professions. For example, many parents would like their children to become professionals such as doctors and accountants instead of painters or fishermen, as would many single people who are seeking life partners to bear children with. This appears to be a sort of social hierarchy based on financial security and the means to accumulate resources, primitive yet completely logical.
As early as 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels realized and acknowledged this in The Communist Manifesto. Though the choice of diction leaves much to be desired, the general sentiment is clear:
“The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.”
If we can set aside all the words used to antagonize the property-owning class, one question remains: “What is the correct measure of a profession’s worth?” Marx suggests that a capitalist order of society only values professions based on income levels and ignores the fact that each job has its own irreplaceable intrinsic worth.
Perhaps it is true that we can’t do without policemen just as we can’t do without doctors, but it is also true that being a doctor takes many more years of training than a policeman. Both professions, and many others, are essential parts of a functional society and are indispensable to the community as a whole. Sure, we can do with one or two fewer private medical practices in any given city, but we can’t do without them.
Though what Marx fails to mention in that particular chapter is that each job has its own differences and monetary remuneration tends to compensate for opportunity cost. According to Max Weber, some employees may be willing to sacrifice pay to work in universities or social enterprises where the salary may not be as competitive, but the employee is compensated in the satisfaction that they are making a meaningful impact. According to Adam Smith, jobs that require extensive travel to dangerous locations or odd hours may compensate for time spent away from family.
If we use Smith’s Economics as Worldly Philosophy as a guide, then salary should be a clear indication of a job’s worth. A perfectly functional economy should pay its working population according to quantifiable factors such as scarcity, hazards, working hours, and conditions. But what our modern economy is not so good at doing is assessing qualitative factors that take into account individual differences in abilities and propensities.
A creative artist who designs public information campaigns that reduce the total number of drink driving incidents in a city should be valued no less than a policeman who does the same by different means. Likewise, a Professor who gets a sense of fulfillment from teaching chemistry at a university should be valued no less than a Ph.D. in Chemistry developing new drugs to the commercial medical market.
Although an experienced Bloomberg Account Manager is paid twice that of a police officer in Hong Kong, financial institutions rely on strong rule of law to make the business environment smooth as milk tea. Whether it be similar qualifications with different impacts, same impacts through different jobs, or complementary roles with different salaries, money is no measure of worth.
