No Matter What 'The Truth About the Pay Gap,' It's Still Disturbing

This article from the libertarian ReasonOnline suggests that the pay gap between men and women in the workplace--women make only 77 cents for every dollar made by men--has less to do with gender than two other factors:

• ...women with college degrees tend to go into fields like education, psychology and the humanities, which typically pay less than the sectors preferred by men, such as engineering, math and business. They are also more likely than men to work for nonprofit groups and local governments, which do not offer salaries that Alex Rodriguez would envy.
• As they get older, many women elect to work less so they can spend time with their children. A decade after graduation, 39 percent of women are out of the work force or working part time -- compared with only 3 percent of men. When these mothers return to full-time jobs, they naturally earn less than they would have if they had never left.

Valid points, maybe. But even these two facts present us with some disturbing issues:

1. Why are "fields like education, psychology and the humanities" or employment with "nonprofit groups and local governments" so little valued? As I mentioned to my son, who forwarded the ReasonOnline article to me and had the same reaction to it as I have, it says something bad about our society when a talented baseball player like Rodriguez is paid hundreds of times more per year than the person who teaches a first grader how to read, or the therapist who helps a troubled teen, or the History professor who reminds us of useful lessons from the past, or the director of afterschool programs, like the Boys and Girls Club, that keeps young people out of trouble, boosts their performance in school, and teaches them to dream of a better life. (By the way, I've got nothing against Rodriguez, who may turn out to be the greatest player in the history of my favorite sport, baseball, and who is a product of and a spokesperson for the Boys and Girls Club movement. As someone who serves on the corporate board of our local B&G Club, I appreciate Rodriguez's involvement.)
2. Do we value those in helping or nurturing professions less because they're mostly filled by women? If that's the case, we're once more dealing with the ugliness of sexism and a gender-based pay gap.
3. And how much lost income should a woman--or a man--endure for taking time off to be there for their kids? Granted, during the time of their absence from the fulltime workforce, stay-at-home parents are losing out on experience and exposure to new ways of doing things in their fields. But, they also are gaining experience in interpersonal skills and the management of time and other resources. Many employers find that women who have taken time away to be with their kids become great managers, better managers maybe than they would have been had they not taken time away from full-time employment. How much of the twenty-three cent pay gap between genders would be erased if employers recognized the value of the stay-at-home experience in the paying work environment?

ReasonOnline says:

June O'Neill, an economist at Baruch College and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, has uncovered something that debunks the discrimination thesis. Take out the effects of marriage and child-rearing, and the difference between the genders suddenly vanishes. "For men and women who never marry and never have children, there is no earnings gap," she said in an interview.

I'm not sure the discrimination thesis really has been "debunked." Instead, I think that the discrimination behind the pay gap is more multilayered and more complex than it's usually portrayed as being. What do you think?

[For another slant on the gender pay gap, see here.]