system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How is there a gender wage gap in government jobs?

Speaking to CA:

Public ed is overwhelmingly female and they make 20% less than cohorts with similar level of education. Comparing a government job to the private sector is tricky. 

But prison guards are overwhelmingly male and can make upwards to $100k at the top end. And you just need a high school education. 

How does a pay gap exist in an entity that can create its own wage price?
gpt
Gender wage gaps are - nowadays - rarely on a direct like-for-like comparison, ie a woman being paid less than a man for exactly the same job. Rather, it tends to be what roles are offered to women - at top levels most clearly seen in the lack of female CEOs - and also how far women have progressed in similar job categories to their male colleagues. For instance women are more likely than men to take parental leave, are often more likely to deal with child-care, can have often (to men) poorly-understood menstrual or menopausal challenges, and so forth. Each individual item may in itself have an incremental effect, but the cumulative effect can lead to women missing out on promotions, pay-rises and bonuses.

This, alongside residual bias towards appointing men over women (the exact point about CEOs), can suppress women’s career advantages compared to men, and therefore depress wages. In any particular case the justification could appear sound but on a generic level it is obvious that there is a disparity through minor cumulative biases.

For example, Cathy could be on maternity leave whilst Bob deals well with a project. Bob deserves to be rewarded for his work. He gets a decent pay rise while Cathy gets an average one, and his efforts draw the attention of senior management. When it comes to being promoted, Bob gets the job. Is it wrong to reward Bob? No. But Cathy was excluded from the opportunity and could well be the better manager: she just is less well known to senior management. Has Cathy been discriminated against? Again, not as such. But pay disparity grows and it could be that the wrong person has been promoted for entirely logical-seeming reasons.

The public sector is no better at addressing this than the private sector. For prison guards it’s more specific: there are more male prisoners and so more male prison guards. Hence any individual male prison guard has more options for promotion than his female counterpart. But that is an unusual case. For most jobs, it is more down to the generic issues above.