Women must stand by themselves to close wage gap

In an article published in Time Magazine there is an explanation on why men earn more than women doing the same job.

A study made by two researchers from the University of Florida found that men that have more stereotypical views of gender roles earn more than their peers with more egalitarian ideas.

In the case of women, those who have more traditional ideas (i.e. that women belong in the home) earn less than women with egalitarian ideas.

Why does this happen? The article explains that men with traditional roles and women with egalitarian ideas earn more because they negotiate a better salary, because they believe they deserve this wage.

Also, a woman with traditional ideas show attitudes that is possible their employers perceive. In this case, employers are more likely to take advantage of them.

In other words, it's an everyday job to show women deserve the same kind of wage.  This may seem unfair, but there is hope in the fact that women are being treated less like second-class persons and more like any other employee.

Underemployment, a critical situation in Mexico and developing countries

Economic trends in the world are causing problems in developing countries. In Mexico, underemployment is a important phenomenon, but curiously it is not easy to know how many people is underemployed due to the lack of statistics and research about this.

And even if some sources claim that the number of underemployed people is decreasing, it's a dramatic situation that people with specialized skills have to search for jobs that are not what they were trained for. I do not believe this because I found humiliating for this persons to have a lower skills job, but because if they are trained to do a specialized job and possibly to earn a little more than a person who does not have higher skills, then it is difficult to maintain certain level of living they expected to have.

Besides, in Mexico the wages are lower than in developed countries in any range of jobs. An electrical engineer is sometimes offered 400 dollars a month, while in USA the lowest wage is 4,000 dollars. The difference is abysmal. And the lower a position is in skills, the wages are almost non existing.

Our country lacks of a strong strategy to avoid underemployment and unemployment. There has been different policies, but not a continuous and well analyzed plan. In various states of Mexico there are different levels of development and then it's difficult to make a policy that is useful for all. It is not impossible if the governments of this states cooperated with the federal government, but this is not happening.

And Mexican government is still wondering why so many people tries to migrate to USA, Canada or other developed countries.