Reuters Money

from David Cay Johnston:

Underpaid women and their men

New data on U.S. incomes, poverty, pensions and philanthropy all show a common economic reality -- women are still getting shortchanged. Do men care?

Men's median total income in 2010 was $1.54 for each dollar women received, my analysis of new U.S. Census data shows. The median -- half make more, half less -- was $32,137 a year for men, $20,831 for women.

Ignoring investment and other income, at the median men were paid $1.29 to the dollar earned by women in 2010. Men made $47,715 a year, women $36,931, a difference of $207 per week.

Among nonprofit executives and managers, men make much more than women in the same occupations.

Women run a majority of organizations with budgets under $1 million, but as budgets grow the ranks of women shrink. At nonprofits with budgets of $50 million or more, only one in six is run by a woman and as a group those women are paid 25 percentage points less than men, according to the 11th annual nonprofit pay study by Guidestar, a project I long ago urged on its founder.

All of which raises a question: Why do men, especially married men, put up with this? Why aren't men in the vanguard of demanding equal pay for women?

It is unfair to the women they love. Viewed in purely selfish terms, pay discrimination limits a family's resources. And what about fringe benefits? Many couples lose the value of a second health or other benefit plan because plans designed in a one-income era are often incompatible with one another.