You're Not Earning as Much as the Guys? Here's Why.

Stay-at-home moms often talk about the loving husbands who would gladly take time off to be with the kids, except that they earn the larger salary. But men's making more money is not a fact of nature; it's a result of the choices adults make starting out. And the crucial difference is not gender; it's mindset. I interviewed a young male classics major just as he was setting out for a summer trip to study Greek philosophy before his junior year. Classics was his "passion," he told me. But his plan after college is to do something in finance. He is not prepared to experience, as he put it, the "culture shock" of poverty after his affluent upbringing.

Similarly, the male accountant from the University of Albany didn't even think about majoring in accounting until he got a scholarship in that subject because his math scores were so high. As a result, "I don't have a lot of debt," he told me proudly. By contrast, the Tulane psych major was surprised to learn what bankers earn 10 years out. "I guess I'll end up making a lot less than half," she concluded, laughing nervously. "It's okay. It is what it is."

Certainly someone needs to teach math and to work for nonprofits and local government. And, of course, money isn't everything. The Tulane psych major won a significant award for her community organizing before she even left school. She's frustrated with the "unfairness" of her classmates' earning so much more when she is "helping people." But it's alarming when the altruism is so heavily concentrated in one sex. And colleges offer precious little career counseling to tell women a different story from the one society has always told them.

And in the end, college-educated women often don't make lasting careers of mathematical pedagogy or become the head of the Ford Foundation. They weigh their 69 percent paychecks against the money their business- or computer science-oriented spouses bring in, and they leave their jobs, in whole or in part. Even the high-achieving Liz Funk thinks that writing would be a great job to do from home after the babies come. When I asked her how she planned to continue her productive ways with infants crying for attention, she responded that she has screaming roommates now.

Maybe, on the whole, women just aren't as interested in worldly success as men are. According to AAUW, 25 percent more men than women go to "highly selective" schools. In that very formative first year in the work world, 10 percent more men are working full-time for one employer rather than holding several part-time or successive full-time jobs, as women are more apt to do. Studies show that women don't ask for as much money as men do and that they're less willing to take the higher risks that often accompany higher-paying jobs.

If women just don't want to become engineers or run big firms, well, it's a free country. But the social consequences of these decisions are not positive. Consider that just as AAUW released its report, the big news about women in the media -- as reported by Women in Media and the News -- was that the reality-TV show "America's Next Top Model" was running an episode featuring the scarily thin competitors posing as victims in a shoot about murder and suicide. Surely this isn't the best we can offer our young women to aspire to.

The poet Wordsworth said the child is father to the man. If the girl is mother to the woman, her child-rearing skills are sorely in need of some sharpening.

Linda@gettoworkmanifesto.com

Linda Hirshman is the author of "Get to Work . . . and Get a Life, Before It's Too Late."