On June 8, 2004, EPPC fellow Christine Rosen debated women's earnings on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" program.

Some excerpts from her remarks:

• On the difficulty of solving the pay disparity problem: What a lot of people draw from these data is an argument for greater federal government intervention to correct what they perceive as a problem of discrimination, and I actually think it’s more complicated than that. … A lot of the solutions we hear bandied about are one-size-fits-all solutions: paid family leave, or efforts to craft wage structures and impose wage rates that would raise the wages in female-dominated professions, for example, so that they’re comparable with men’s. And I think then we’re talking about [interfering with] the free market in a way that Americans, as a rule, haven’t been that comfortable doing. ... I think Americans have become a little less comfortable with things such as government-sponsored daycare programs, for example, or wage-setting comparable-worth legislation. This is a different kind of involvement, in degree and kind, than we’ve had so far.

• On the cultural factors behind the "wage gap": There are some cultural questions, and those are more difficult to solve through particular legislation. There is some sociological and psychological research that shows that women – not only do they not demand as much money at the get-go, but they often won’t go back in for raises, and ask for raises as frequently as men will. And now that’s something, obviously, we want to discourage: we want women to be just as bold and demanding getting paid what they’re worth. The other part of the culture equation ... is the accumulation of these choices that women are making. And again, I think the question we all should be grappling with isn’t, “Is there discrimination?” – there might be some; we have laws on the books to deal with it – but how would we change things? Is it going to be possible to get men to use family leave policies, for example, as often as women? Because right now, they don’t. And if that’s not the case, do we need to rethink how we’re even approaching the work and family balance issue.

• Will the "wage gap" last forever?: Unless and until men and women make the same choices about both their work lives and their home lives – in other words, men choose as often as women to be caregivers to their children; and women choose to be in the workforce as often as men want to – then we will continue to see pay gaps. As we still do in other areas: married versus unmarried people have a wage gap as well. There are always these sorts of wage gaps in the economy. I would just be cautious about trying to legislate that sort of world, when it comes to making individual social choices that are right for individual families.
  

Click here to hear the entire half-hour program:
http://www.npr.org/rundowns/segment.php?wfId=1949493