Most people are familiar with the pay gap between women and men, but here’s a gap you may not have been aware of. According to a recent post on the blog BoingBoing, lesbian women are paid more than heterosexual women.
According to the research the site pointed to, lesbians make about 6 percent more than heterosexual women when factors like race, education, profession, location and number of children are accounted for.
Why does this gap exist? The BoingBoing writer Maggie Koerth-Baker offers up a number of theories, including that heterosexual women may expect that they will end up with husbands or partners who will earn more than they will. As a result, they will be the ones to make career sacrifices, so they invest less in making themselves attractive to the labor market in the first place, a theory she notes was tested in a 2009 study covered in a recent Big Think blog post.
Among the other theories Ms. Koerth-Baker offers: lesbian women may be more likely to negotiate salaries in the first place.
Why do you think this pay gap exists?