I was reading an article on top earners today, when an idea struck me. Being a supporter of peer review, I thought I'd offer my assessment here up for scrutiny. If you have time for a long post, go ahead and rip into it; I won't take offense if you see a legitimate flaw.

The article is from the Seattle Times, showing that the top 10% of 2012 earners in the US took 48.2% of the total earnings, according to economists at Berkeley.

This made me think about the glass ceiling, so I tracked down some quoted numbers from Salon showing that...

Only 16.6 percent of these companies’ board members are women. Women account for only 16 percent of partners at the largest law firms in the United States, and only 19 percent of the country’s surgeons. Across the board, women earn on average twenty-three cents less than men for every dollar that they earn.

All of those numbers hover under 20, and it would actually be generous in this case to go over, so we'll say 20% of the top earners are women. Using that proportion, this must mean that 9.64% of the total US income can go in the pile for women, and 38.56% goes to men.

Now, we need to account for the other 90% of earners. Why don't we use the 77% statistic that I've heard so much about? If women earn 77% of what men do on average, my calculations (below) show that 56.5% of the total US income is going to men, and 43.5% of the total US income is going to women.

X = women, Y = men

X + Y = 100 // men and women together make 100%

X = .77 * Y // women earn an average 77%

(.77 * Y) + Y = 100 // substituting

1.77 * Y = 100 // simplifying

Y = 43.5 so X = 56.5 and 56.5 * .77 = 43.5

If 43.5% of the total US income is going to women, and 56.5% is going to men, then we can subtract the amount going to the top 10% to get what's going to the other 90% (the vast majority). We said men in the top 10% get 38.56 of the total, and subtracting that from 56.5 gives 17.94%. Women in the top 10% got 9.64 and subtracting that from 43.5 gives 33.86%. 17.94/33.86 = 53%

TL;DR
Using recent economic data and feminist statistics, the vast majority of men are earning about half of what the vast majority of women earn.

Edit: Thought of a small flaw myself. If 2% are high earning women, and 8% are high earning men, then 42% are majority men and 48% are majority women. That's not enough though.

42/48 = 87.5%, so of the remaining majority, 53.3% are women, and 46.7% are men. If you then normalize for that distribution, you get (17.94/46.7) / (33.86/53.3) = the vast majority of men getting about 60% of what majority women get.

It seems no matter how you look at it, a piece of the most holy scripture has to die for these numbers to fit. Take your pick.