> Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that women were paid 79 cents for each dollar a man was paid. Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar.
"No matter how many times this wage gap claim is decisively refuted by economists, it always comes back. The bottom line: the 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure or hours worked per week. When such relevant factors are considered, the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing."
Doesn't matter. They've won this point by repetition. I suspect most of them even know it is wrong. There's no defense against the rhetorical punch of "77 cents on the dollar".
If you are going to account for position, how do you account for the fact that women are often in a lower ranked position, because they are less likely to be promoted? You can't claim there's no pay gap just because it's being obfuscated by bias in job titles.
I'm not going to argue that this accounts for it entirely, but I do think it's worth pointing out that women typically are less interested in higher ranked positions than men tend to be [0]. They are less likely to be promoted because they are less likely to want a promotion.
> They [women] are less likely to be promoted because they are less likely to want a promotion.
I don't think anyone could ask for a better example of systemic entrenched sexist bias than this quote. "It's okay, don't worry about it; they just don't want to be promoted as much as us men."
This is not that much different from the old "women enjoy being in their husband's kitchen and tending to the house, so it's okay most women are there instead of working independently!" Evidence clearly exists that lot of women used to enjoy being in the kitchen, but that doesn't mean women are less suited to work outside the kitchen -- to make an extreme example.
Did you read the source? I was not being sexist, I was stating a factual finding from a peer-reviewed journal... I believe you misinterpreted my statement.
> Evidence clearly exists that lot of women used to enjoy being in the kitchen, but that doesn't mean women are less suited to work outside the kitchen -- to make an extreme example.
Yes, and this is my point! If you read the article I sourced, it said that women found "high-level positions as equally attainable as men do, but less desirable". Evidence clearly exists that a lot of women want to prioritize non-work related factors in their life, which is why you see less women in higher-level positions currently, but that doesn't mean women are less suited to high-level positions.
Perhaps one of the reasons this aggregate category of "women" doesn't want "these jobs" is because of an expectation of harassment or bias on the job. It's kind of hard to want to progress anywhere that is openly or passively aggressive towards you.
I don't think "they just don't want the jobs" should be considered the end of the story or any sort of proof that sexism isn't happening. Regardless, even if it were, it isn't actionable information in any way. You can't go from "some women just don't want to be CEOs" to "thus, let's continue to operate the ol' boys club". Somewhere in the middle, a message or two are getting lost.
You'd really have to be living under a rock to think there is not sexism going in the workplace. All this study says is that it doesn't manifest in the particular, limited region surrounding compensation, which is by far not the sum total of the employment experience.
> Perhaps one of the reasons this aggregate category of "women" doesn't want "these jobs" is because of an expectation of harassment or bias on the job. It's kind of hard to want to progress anywhere that is openly or passively aggressive towards you.
Sure, perhaps. While we are throwing out guesses, perhaps it is because women consider other things in life more of a priority than achieving career power.
When asked to rate their life priorities, women tend to put a lower ratio of work related goals. Cultural influences teach men and women to prioritize different things in their life. That's probably a bigger gender problem worth tackling.
> I don't think "they just don't want the jobs" should be considered the end of the story or any sort of proof that sexism isn't happening.
Definitely, which is why I said "I'm not going to argue that this accounts for it entirely".
> All this study says is that it doesn't manifest in the particular, limited region surrounding compensation, which is by far not the sum total of the employment experience.
Also true for sure, but the original article posted by OP is about compensation, and I never suggested that the study covered the totality of workplace experiences.
You're certainly didn't seem like you were taking up the "we need to do something about decision in the workplace" position. Seemed more like your taking up the position that nothing should be done.
I think a lot of it has to do with sexual competition. Men know that women are (in general) attracted to power, so they spend effort on earning money and becoming more powerful. Conversely, women know that men are attracted to beauty and youth, so they spend time and money on trying to look younger and prettier.
Is there a citation for women in general being attracted to power? Or perhaps you're just reinforcing gender stereotypes that are convenient for the narrative you're spinning?
Not trying to spin a narrative (I don't have an agenda), this is just based on my personal observations, both of people around me, and the society as a whole (famous people, media, movies, ...).
I mean, when you say that "women (in general) are attracted to [X]," since youre ralking about half of the world's population, that's a pretty extraordinary claim and requires extraordinary evidence to support it.
I guess it's more like a working hypothesis, based on the (circumstantial and anecdotal) evidence that I've collected so far. It's by no means enough evidence, so I'm open to changing my opinion (given conflicting evidence).
I'd argue it more stems from childhood with the way boys are encouraged to approach situations and how that differs from the treatment girls receive. Boys are encouraged to be more aggressive while girls are supposed to be timid. When it's that deeply ingrained in society, you do not fix the problem through posting infographics on the White House website.
The Swedish government agency responsible for statistics do a yearly survey on what people value in their job and by job seekers. Attributes like pay, social status, work environment, safety, and so on is evaluated and then correlated to things like gender.
And yes, there are differences. We could blame it on women for consistently valuating social status higher than pay, or we could blame men for consistently valuating pay higher than social status.
Here is an idea. Lets increase pay for female dominated professions, but lets restrict it to only jobs that has low social status, is risky, and with unfriendly environment. At the same time, lets apply affirmative action to female dominated professions with high social status and low pay, and get a minimum of 40% males.
Those changes would have a almost guarantied effect to eliminate current pay gaps, but would be completely rejected by any feminist group, for the very reason that it would go against the current female and male culture that created the pay gap.
How do you reliably distinguish someone intrinsically not wanting a promotion from someone not wanting to deal with the crap that comes with trying to get a promotion?
From the abstract: "In studies 5–7, when faced with the possibility of receiving a promotion at their current place of employment or obtaining a high-power position after graduating from college, women and men anticipated similar levels of positive outcomes (e.g., prestige and money), but women anticipated more negative outcomes (e.g., conflict and tradeoffs)."
I think the study partially addressed this when they asked different participants to describe and rate their life goals. Men tend to consider workplace-related success as more important in their life:
"In studies 1 and 2, when asked to list their core goals in life, women listed more life goals overall than men, and a smaller proportion of their goals related to achieving power at work."
If you look at the trendlines for what certain types of jobs or fields paid (e.g., doctor, nurse, programmer, marketer), you'd see that when women enter a particular field en masse, the pay drops. And when the gender balance in that field goes from majority female to majority male, the pay increases.
Some well-intentioned parent is probably telling their daughter right now, "Look at field X, which is male-dominated and pays really well! You should study that." And by the time they've grown up to be of working age, the field is at 60F/40M, and the pay has gone way down.
The data should bear it out. If women are promoted less often due to discrimination (as opposed to other factors), they would also be paid less while they are at the lower rungs of the organization.
Ie you don't pay someone the same amount while stifling them during promotion time.
Removing even more factors have found that gap diminish even more. In some cases, looking at young adults with college educations with out children (with some other factors also made equal), they found that women out earned men.
I know that. I take issue when it is stated as an absolute fact when the most well-known study was done in a very specific field and therefore makes it hard to really extrapolate out to the entire workforce.
They mention that explicity
> after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar.
Agreed. If anyone in government was serious about this, they would lobby the SEC to require publicly listed companies to disclose this information on a granular enough level that comparisons inside and outside of industry were possible.
'Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) US Government agency, with the purpose of protecting investors from dangerous or illegal financial practices or fraud, by requiring full and accurate financial disclosure by companies offering stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other securities to the public.'
Why should SEC be involved in feminist causes? Their charter mentions nothing about it. I mean we can't go around demanding government to promote our pet causes because we feel like it.
I'm short and I wish there was no height discrimination. But I don't think SEC should deal with it :)
If this is something you feel strongly about, shouldn't this be dealt with by the legislature?
Oh, ok. So, logically, it must just be that women-associated occupations tend to be lower payed than men, women tend to be slotted into lower positions than men, women aren't encouraged into or supported in higher education the same way as men, women do not receive job tenure as easily as men, and/or gendered pressures cause women to work less hours per week (on careers rather than, e.g., a disproportionate share of domestic responsibilities) than men, resulting in women being paid on average 23% less than men. I guess that's alright, then.
5 downvotes? Alright, I guess I'm wrong. "The 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure or hours worked per week", but also, it's not accounted for by any of those things, and doesn't exist.
No it's like saying most investment bankers are male and make 500k a year, most nurses are female and make 70k a year, Injustice! Look at that pay gap! Outrageous!
- It makes zero sense.
EDIT: What I meant to say is men go into different careers than woman and for different reasons. Usually men go after higher paying jobs (investment banking). When people compute the pay gap they dont take this into account, so they compare pay across industries (investment banking to nursing) which is meaningless, and likely is propaganda.
It is outrageous if a similarly-qualified woman would have a lot more trouble getting the $500k investment banker job. In that case, society is getting lower-quality investment bankers despite spending $500k/year on them.
Consider this. I have a group of 100 people, 50 male and 50 female. Job x is available in industry y. Job x is highly sought after and all 50 men apply for it. Industry y is traditionally male dominated and for whatever reason, none of the 50 women have previously applied for the job. Through the magical powers of the internet, women are now suddenly interested in the field and not only do the 50 men apply for the job but the 50 women do also; doubling the applicant pool.
How will the employer react to the sudden surge in applications?
One of the previously male-dominated field that the article mentions is computer programming. There is no other field in the article that has undergone such a fundamental shift from when women used to dominate the field. There were virtually no barriers to entry to the field back then either in the form of requiring a degree or societal norms ingrained from childhood.
Other fields mentioned either require longer hours or were simply more demanding. We can get into what are reasonable hours or demands in a separate conversation but all things equal, employers are going to pay more for someone who works longer and puts up with more demands.
For everything else, when you introduce half the working population to a field that they were once closed off to, wages are going to drop. I am not pretending that it's the only factor but a huge over supply of labor will cause wages to drop; all things equal.
There's abundant evidence that women prefer to work fewer hours than men and working insane hours is (for better or worse) a requirement of investment banking.
Whether the preference for fewer hours is innate or learned I don't know.
The pay gap of 77c/$ still matters. Not only does the gap persist to a lower extent when you control for everything, "controlling for everything" is not actually a clarifying approach when discussing the gender gap issue.
I'm sympathetic to the notion that discrimination can include subtler factors of pushing women into lower pay positions.
However, the problem with the 77 cent figure is that it's frequently stated like this: "women get paid only 77% of what men do for the same jobs." Which is entirely false. Yet, if you asked most people about the 77 cents figure they'd think it actually meant women got paid much less to do the same work.
If a conversation begins with a lie, it's going to be tough to address a systematic issue and to work together. Distorting the facts is manipulative and prevents rational discourse.
There may be some dumb people out there misinterpreting the stat, but there are also an incredible number of people "straw-manning" the ENTIRE opposition as glib.
For example, I've seen people cite the White House page as "fallen to the delusion", when in fact it is quite explicit:
> In 2014, the typical woman working full-time all year in the United States earned only 79 percent of what the typical man earned working full-time all year. Phrased differently, she earned 79 cents for every dollar that he earned. The pay gap is even greater for African-American and Latina women, with African-American women earning 64 cents and Latina women earning 56 cents for every dollar earned by a white non-Hispanic man. Decades of research shows that no matter how you evaluate the data, there remains a pay gap — even after factoring in the kind of work people do, or qualifications such as education and experience — and there is good evidence that discrimination contributes to the persistent pay disparity between men and women. In other words, pay discrimination is a real and persistent problem that continues to shortchange American women and their families.
There is absolutely no lie or imprecision there. It is a common rhetorical trick to tar your entire opposition as idiots. The people claiming that the pay gap is a "myth" are just as just as zealot-like as the people misinterpreting the 77c figure.
The only thing it is explicit about is that full-time working women as a whole get paid less than men. There is a vague assertion towards the fact that a gap still exists "after factoring in the kind of work people do, or qualifications such as education and experience" but no numbers are provided.
I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that women as a whole get paid less than men and that minority women even more so. What I have an issue with is that by being purposefully vague, proponents are acting like employers somehow just hate women so much that they become blinded by this hatred and throw all business-sense out the window by deciding to pay men a load more than women. It's completely dishonest, proposed "solutions" only serve as a band-aid fix, and distracts from the actual issues at hand.
All the information we have is hourly wage, income, and job title. We can't know if a woman with the lower-paid job title of "Programmer Analyst" is doing the same work as a man with a job title of "Senior Software Engineer."
The "same job" is a subjective distinction, so you can't say it's entirely false; it's really a matter of opinion.
> The "same job" is a subjective distinction, so you can't say it's entirely false; it's really a matter of opinion.
No, it's not. Certainly there are some distinctions at the margins, as you note.
There are, however, some very clear distinctions. Women dominate elementary education, which I hope we can all agree is a very different job than programming (for example).
To reiterate, I don't know whether these preferences are innate or learned. In fact, I suspect it's the latter. But we shouldn't ignore them_if women were in fact paid less for doing the exact same jobs, solution would actually be a lot easier.
> Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar.
The 77 cent thing is a myth and the 92cent thing isn't even that massive a gap.
I have a hypothesis: if you could measure the confidence of both men and women and relate them to job type and income, I bet you'd have a stronger coloration than gender.
It's pretty difficult to test because things like confidence are subjective. There's an article in Salon called "The Confidence Gap" that shows women often don't ask for higher paying positions because they lack confidence in their abilities.
They also don't ask because when they do they are more likely to be shot down, just like they are less likely to be hired in the first place. When women ask for something they are seen as complaining, when men ask for the same thing, it's seen as confidence.
Without controlling for job title, how much does the average man make, and the average woman make?
I'm under the impression that the 77c figure is related to this "total" disparity, that better accounts for the separate, but related, issue of "predominantly female" fields paying less than male ones.
That's another issue entirely. Also you need to take into account things like maternity leave as well as women who man chose not to work full time, that bring that number down as well.
That interpretation is misleading for a few reasons.
One is that "to the point of vanishing" is still very nonzero. There's a report by Consad Corporation prepared for the Department of Labor that reaches the figure 5-7% after accounting for differences in jobs (their website is down at the moment), even though it concludes that "there may be nothing to correct." That's also the number Sommers herself writes in her HuffPo article she cites in that Time article: "After controlling for several relevant factors (though some were left out, as we shall see), they found that the wage gap narrowed to only 6.6 cents." So the Cornell claim of 8% is basically the same. I don't think there's an argument to be made that a 23% gender pay gap is a scandal but a 5-8% gap is totally fine.
The other is that occupations, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked is affected by existing wages. I was unemployed by choice for several months last year, learning Rust and working on a few open-source projects, and I became a more valuable job candidate as a result of that. I could not have done that without the savings to take those months off. If my previous job had paid me anywhere from 8% to 23% less, I would probably not have decided to take those months off, and in return I would have been a less competitive candidate and my job would probably have been one of lower position.
> Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that women were paid 79 cents for each dollar a man was paid. Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar.
What do they mean "even" after controlling for those factors? Why wouldn't you control for those factors -- the comparison is meaningless otherwise.
Suppose, hypothetically, that 10% of all managers are outright sexists and won't promote women. (This is a thought experiment, I'm not making any claim about the real world.) Then, if equally-qualified men and women apply for the same jobs, you'd expect that the "type of job" class is going to include some higher-paying jobs for men about 10% more frequently than for women. If you "control for" those factors, you are eliminating from your sample all women who work for outright sexists. It might be true that the wage gap is (almost) zero once you do that, but your experimental design is flawed.
Plenty of people have done actual experiments and found that many hiring managers are biased, though I don't think anyone is claiming they are outright sexists. Unconcious bias is plenty bad enough to explain current disparities in opportunity for minority genders and races. (https://www.google.com/search?q=Resumes+with+male+names+are+...)
>Study after study demonstrates that women are paid less than men in the United States.
I wish some of these studies are cited because if you are telling me that I could hypothetically be able to hire someone who is able to do the same job, for less money (like the fabled 79%), I would gladly take them up on the offer. Unfortunately it doesn't exist except in delusional minds. This is the free market, not some global male conspiracy.
Q: "Sorry, we can't proceed without this information." If you're a highly-competitive candidate with multiple offers, that's fine, you can ignore this company or convince them to give you an offer anyway—but if you're the sort of person who would be strongly hurt by revealing your old salary, that doesn't help you because you're also probably less competitive, at least on paper. So this very response exacerbates the gap.
Alternatively, Q (aside): "She's pretty abrasive, should we really hire her?" There are studies that this sort of self-confidence is often perceived as a positive attribute in men and a negative attribute in women.
My most uncomfortable interview experience (nearly 20 years ago) came about because of this problem.
I was working in a job I enjoyed, but that didn't pay well. The money had started to become a problem and I started looking for something better-paid. (This was London in 1997 -- I was being paid about £25K and I hoped for more like £35K.)
I used a recruiter, I told them my current salary and what I hoped to get, and they got me a promising-looking interview.
Cut to the interview, and one of the first questions they ask is "Why do you think we should pay you ten grand more than you're getting at the moment?"
Hindsight gives me many ways to answer this, but at the time I just sat there with my mouth open. I had no idea the agent had told them my current salary, so I was completely unprepared. I was dimly aware that a proper answer would express something about my value to the company, so I couldn't just say "I need more money". I eventually muttered something about that seeming to be roughly the market rate, and the interview was effectively over.
Ask a friend to pay you $1 for contract work that takes you half a minute. Draft a contract if you have to. There, now you are "allowed" to say you've been paid $120/hour.
Just tell them what you would like to get. If pressed super hard, give confusing answers in the same way companies give you. Like total compensation, if you add days off, perks etc.
Or you can use the anchoring effect mentioned in the article to your advantage.
Q: 'What's your current salary?'
A: 'I can't disclose my current salary, but I'd be looking for something around $1.5x to come on board.' where x is your preferred salary.
It's not wrong if you want to save on salaries of your staff. I suspect that the people that answer with a $ number rather than the way you did, are less likely to assert themselves and thus consistently take lower salaries.
> When it comes to making pay decisions, we anchor too much on someone’s current salary instead of what the job is worth. Imagine hiring two accountants. One (call her Eliza) currently makes $50,000 and the other (Alexander) makes $58,000. And let’s say the average accountant in your company makes $60,000. It feels natural to offer Alexander a salary of $60,000, just like everyone else gets. But for most managers, it feels wrong to give Eliza the same salary. After all, that’s a $10,000 raise! Wouldn’t that be unfair to Alexander, who only got a $2,000 raise? And why not save a few bucks by paying people based on their past salaries?
What? No. Who thinks this way? The role at your company has a $60k salary. People you hire for that role get $60k, no matter how much they were being paid in the past.
Given the comments in this thread, it seems this is an insanely difficult concept to grasp. It's like the notion just bounces off Teflon.
But ... but ... but John is working 60 hours a week for his $60K, and Jane puts her foot down and doesn't work more than 40 hours! She's not as committed! She doesn't want it badly enough! She doesn't deserve to be paid $60K when she's working 20 hours less!
So Jane gets punished because John is a dumbass who lets the company steal 20 hours of unpaid additional labor. Can't have John thinking about that, though, so Jane gets a pay cut because she's not "working as hard" as John.
But ... but ... but John just negotiated better/harder/longer/more successfully! It's Jane's fault she's paid less. She's just poor at negotiations.
Bullshit. If ever there was a reason to eliminate salary negotiations, this is one of the stronger cases. Just fucking pay a set wage for each position in the company. Make it known. Enjoy there being no wage tension or envy in the workplace. Be proud you've eliminated any chance that your team members could even entertain the notion you weren't valuing them equally and fairly.
Oh, wait. That's stupid. Instead, let's argue about just exactly how much less women are paid—but as a whole, cos it's really nasty when we start breaking the pay gap down by ethnicity. Cos it's so productive to argue about the rules for quantifying the pay gap than it is to just start and stop at the simple rule that there shouldn't fucking be one.
C'mon. You assume they are/will when you hire them. When/if you discover they are not, you don't cut their pay, you fire them.
It seems you're trying to angle for some defense of Peter earning more than Paul because the former contributed "more". Contributing to a team isn't a metric that should be set by an overachiever. Everyone—especially every overachiever (including myself)—should disabuse themselves of the notion that others aren't contributing equally when they're really just not over-contributing. And evaluating contributions is already a difficult and subjective task.
A better approach is offer the over-achievers a promotion. New position, new responsibilities perhaps, and a new salary. Attainable equally by anyone else who wants it.
I'm arguing that talented people move to greener pastures when they feel that they are undervalued or not treated equally. If for every overachiever you have x number of people who go "well I'm going to get paid the same as long as I put in my 40", you will no longer have a successful company. If you doubt the existence of this, you will have proven that you have never worked for the government.
> A better approach is offer the over-achievers a promotion. New position, new responsibilities perhaps, and a new salary. Attainable equally by anyone else who wants it.
I don't see how this is any different from offering pay raises. What if there is no room for advancement in the company? How do you measure whether people qualify for this? You can always offer more pay, you aren't necessarily able to create new job responsibilities and titles out of thing air.
> I'm arguing that talented people move to greener pastures when they feel that they are undervalued or not treated equally.
Well, if everyone has the same jobs and responsibilities for the same pay, and someone thinks they aren't being treated equally, they're wrong, aren't they? They are being treated equally. What they're wanting is to be treated as better than equal to their peers. And if they think they're undervalued, but nobody else feels that way, that seems to further indicate they are wanting to be treated as better than equal to their peers. This is irrational and selfish. If everyone lounging on the other side's green grass is also treated equally and valued the same, then there will be no other green pastures to seek reinforcement of one's belief that s/he is better and worth more than other team members.
> If for every overachiever you have x number of people who go "well I'm going to get paid the same as long as I put in my 40", you will no longer have a successful company.
If a company's success depends on extracting more labor from their employees than they are willing to pay for, the company is morally and ethically in the wrong, and has far greater problems to tackle. If its success depends on abusing overachievers, the overachievers should stop permitting such abuse, and the company should realign its objectives with treating employees fairly. Employees—especially those on salary—should not be subjected to overworking. A company should take an active role in ensuring its workers don't burn themselves out.
> If you doubt the existence of this, you will have proven that you have never worked for the government.
Disagreement proves nothing, and whether I have ever worked for the government is in no way germane to this discussion.
> I don't see how this is any different from offering pay raises. What if there is no room for advancement in the company? How do you measure whether people qualify for this? You can always offer more pay, you aren't necessarily able to create new job responsibilities and titles out of thing air.
Pay raises are not and should not be tied to promotions. I was talking here of satisfying the overachiever's need to be recognized as "special". I'm that type of person, but I've also disabused myself of the notion that my natural inclination to push myself is a negative reflection on those around me. I have to remain mindful that we are all different in our own ways, and that difference shouldn't translate into greater remuneration for me only. If there are pay raises to be had—and there should be—they should be applied equally to all. If an overachiever doesn't want new responsibilities and a promotion to feel special, then s/he ought to be able to accept that being paid equally for the same job is not a personal slight. If a company cannot offer pay raises equally, they should not offer them at all. If everyone is putting in their 40 hours, and one overachiever is putting in 60, the wrong response is for the company to pressure everyone else to be like the lone overachiever.
Measuring whether people qualify for a raise is rather simpler than it's made to be, apparently. Is the person performing satisfactorily in their job? Is the budget able to handle an annual raise or bonus for good work? Then everyone who isn't being fired gets it.
Treating people equally, and valuing them all individually, is not a very complicated thing to do.
I think where a lot of technical people get fleeced in compensation discussions is they let themselves get into a 1:1 personal discussion where they feel compelled to agree on the spot. Most business deals are worked out at a distance once the in person meetings are out of the way.
Treat this the same way you might go over a lease for office space. Let them make the initial offer (they have much better data about market rate and what they are willing to pay, you don't and may box yourself into a lowball position). Then take some time to figure out if it works, and take the comp discussion offline.
Keep the negotiation about compensation in writing. There are a million ways for an experienced negotiator to manipulate you in a live conversation. Break things down (salary, PTO, equity, 401k match, telework, other hard benefits), and figure out where they'll budge. And remember, it's not about being greedy, you'll be locking in your pay for 1-2 years, and you're doing your job of negotiating a good deal for you and your family. If someone doesn't respect that, that's a big red flag right there.
Presume you were born a slave. Your family had been slaves for 5 centuries. Slaves are taught in early childhood that walking is always the "honourable" thing to do - only free people ride. Slaves also never fight back in an argument, always give way, always put other people's needs first, shrink their own presence as much as possible, etc.
Even when you earn your freedom, your instinct when anyone asks for riders would be to walk. You have to unlearn multiple anti-patterns of freedom and it is a conscious effort every single day to keep up your guard. When someone rejects you, you never know if it is because of the specific task you completed, or an anti-pattern, or your past slave roots. 30% of your brain goes towards self-correcting and self-consciousness, leaving only 70% to focus on a task. That means only slaves that sport an IQ of 130 to keep up with a non-inhibited free person. Furthermore, every single one of your elderly and senior Slave relatives scolds you every time you do a free person action, for not honouring your heritage. On top of that, some unknown percentile of free people cannot see themselves taking orders from a former slave in a higher position than them at work. Add insult to injury, because it is very obvious you are a slave (all slaves have an extra body part) a mistake is instantly attributed to your slavehood, further adding to the bias libraries of free people and to your own self-consciousness. Forgot to mention, you still have to do 100% of your slave duties in 50% of your time as a free person. It is a HUGE f-ing hill to climb.
However since slaves have carried half of humanity's domestic needs for the past 5 centuries, they've also built up tremendous self-discipline and other valuable muscles required to survive that darn hill. The moment they are able to apply their freedom and start thinking and acting like independent enterprising people is the moment they solve all mundane unnecessary inefficiencies they have been doing to "honor" the heritage of servitude. Humanity gets half of its productivity back, and uses the brainpower to deploy to more important things than walking. Before that point you're feeding 100 people but get the productivity of 50. After that point, you are getting 100 at the productivity of 200 for the same feeding costs. Add the exponential growth of knowledge and tech and developed technology might beat an extinction level event to save itself one day because of the acceleration. Conditioning and history aught to teach us to stop treating other humans as inferior and to build systems that apply the intellect of every one of us. The alternative is a waste.
Aside from arguing about whether there is some kind of feminist misinformation campaign regarding the size of the pay gap, does anyone want to talk about the effect of "what's your current salary" on the pay gap?
I never answer this question. I always answer with my salary expectations and push back if the recruiter is trying to play hardball. Answering gives them leverage over you.
Whatever your feelings on the existence (or not) of the "gender pay gap" the process the article describes seems perfectly fair. I think people are getting hung up on the gender part and not seeing the "fair pay" system they've apparently setup.
I'm wondering why people don't respond with something like "My past salary is confidential, my asking salary is XYZ" and//or "What is the budget window for this position".
I don't understand this 'gender pay gap' concept at all. Whatever figure my compensation is is, to a large extent, quite arbitrary. Sure there's a general sense of what range I should expect my salary to be in, based on my experience/location/etc, but really the final figure comes down to whatever number gets thrown out and accepted in negotiation.
So if you poll half a workforce who are male, and poll half a workforce who are female, and discover that their pay doesn't line up... why would you be surprised?
Right, that's not surprising, if you do that poll once. There's a 50% chance of that.
If you do that poll repeatedly, over many groups and many industries and many times and many subsets, and in every case the men are paid more (whether 5% or 23%), there is either an actual statistical difference, or Maxwell's social justice demon is out to get you.
And if there is an actual statistical difference, the question is why. Are men more valuable to the market?
> If you do that poll repeatedly, over many groups and many industries and many times and many subsets, and in every case the men are paid more
That's a great idea! Someone should do that study one of these days instead of just relying on the aggregate BLS statistics that the 77% number is drawn from. Sadly, I doubt it'll happen...
And if so, why? Maybe men and women work equally hard, all else being equal, but in a society where a man's income is used to determine his worth as a person to a greater extent that a woman's income is used to determine her worth, a man will spend more time focusing on improving his income, and thus work in ways that provide more value by sacrificing quality of life (while a woman in such a society would focus on increasing what ever attributes the society judges her worthiness based upon). In such a case, there is clearly sexism, but unequal pay is not the cause, only a symptom, and thus equalizing pay will only cover up a symptom of the deeper problem (and perhaps even exaggerating the problem).
People should really stop labeling some double standards towards men and women sexism.
The sexes are NOT the same and should not be treated the same. In fact it is quite ironic how the libertarian leaning HN crowd manages to fit the conflicting facts of just markets and wage discrimination in their collective heads.
That's the meat of the discussion, right, the "why"?
If you want to be particularly devil's advocate about it, there was a time when the "gender pay gap" was 90%+ because the majority of women didn't work at all. It's a rather recent invention that everyone should work, and yet more recent that everyone should work all the time and still not be able to make ends meet.
Yes, and if you want to be even more particularly devil's advocate about it, there was a time when the race pay gap was approximately 100%. It's a rather recent invention that black laborers should get paid.
Which is to say, I'm not sure why advocating for this particular devil is constructive. Do you believe that a well-functioning society should have women being less valuable to the free market than men?
This is not supported by the evidence. See, for example, this article by Christina Hoff Sommers (http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/):
"No matter how many times this wage gap claim is decisively refuted by economists, it always comes back. The bottom line: the 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure or hours worked per week. When such relevant factors are considered, the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing."