How did the troll get 5 karma points and he's only posted 3 times?

Two leading labour economists from Cornell University, Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, carried out a comprehensive study that takes into account variables such as education, labour market experience, race and choice of occupation, and report that while the gender wage gap does diminish when all those factors are taken into account, about 12 per cent remains unexplained.

Robert Wood, Mary Corcoran and Paul Courant look at graduates of the University of Michigan Law School. They match the men and women in their sample for many of the possible explanatory factors, such as occupation, age, experience, education, time in the workforce, time spent in childcare, average hours worked, grades while in college, and so on. Even after accounting for all of that, the authors find women lawyers make about a quarter to a third less than the men.

Recent research throws up another suggestion: women simply do not ask for more. In the 2003 book Women Don't Ask, Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever point out that among MBAs from Carnegie Mellon University, starting salaries for men were almost US$4000 higher than for women, to a large extent because while only 7 per cent of women negotiated their starting salary, 57 per cent of the men did so. While this may not be a large difference to start with, given that future increments are based on current salary, a small difference early on translates into large differences later in life.

Many researchers, including myself, document a tendency among women to shy away from competitive environments. They often prefer to wait to be offered a raise rather than negotiate one because they find the process fraught with confrontation.

...real term wage cuts of 3pc in the second half of the year and further sub-inflation pay rises for the following nine months, the latest official forecasts show.