Topic: Gender Pay Gap

[SVoid]

Okay, let's look at this sceptically. I've seen this discussed in some other threads as a side point and it was a little too heated for my likes.  So here is what I found with a little digging:

1) The RAW gender pay gap is 77%
2) The 5-7% of this is believed to be due to discrimination of some form.
3) There is an important difference between the raw gap and the adjusted gap.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/04/pay_gap_infographic.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap

[Xptical]

Just off the top of my head, I would guess it has more to do with the types of work that people do.

http://www.economicmodeling.com/wp-content/uploads/HighestWages_Infographic_v5a.jpg

It's not that there aren't women doing the high-paying jobs.  It's just that you have more men doing those jobs than women.  Why?  I don't know.  You could argue that women are prevented from being oral surgeons, but I really don't think that's happening.


In my job, men and women all get paid *exactly* the same based on their pay grade.  And the only thing preventing anyone from moving up a pay grade is their own ability.  I would say that we even see a higher percentage of minorities and women at the higher grades to "make up" for past failures or to proactively stop any complaints from women or minorities.


If someone like an IT Manager is making more or less than their counterpart, it is most likely due to negotiating strategies during hiring and pay reviews.  Some people will negotiate/argue/push for higher pay.  Some people may feel compelled to not as for as much.  But that's just the way it's structured.

Personally, I'd like companies to adopt something like the WG/GS scale system.  Stop hiding salaries and compensations.  If everyone knows what everyone makes, then the "pay gap" would disappear.


P.S.  I bet you could find a gap just about anywhere you looked.  How about comparison to married/single?  Kids or no kids?  Pet owners to non-pet owners?  Gay to straight?  Divorced to married to never married?

[Citizen Skeptic]

How does this fit up with the fact that more women are getting better educated than men?

[SVoid]

Just off the top of my head, I would guess it has more to do with the types of work that people do.

You just assume this was not taken in to account?

[Xptical]

Just off the top of my head, I would guess it has more to do with the types of work that people do.

You just assume this was not taken in to account?

Not at all.

http://www.catalyst.org/file/340/pipeline%27s_broken_promise_final_021710.pdf

This study of MBAs supposedly accounts for everything and still shows a wage and promotion gap.  The wage gap can be explained by women accepting more entry-level positions than men.  14% more women than men at the bottom rung.  All the other steps have ~4% more men in a given position than women.

So, if I take this report at face value, there is something going on.

Maybe it's men in HR pushing women to lower-paying jobs.

Maybe it's women undervaluing their skills.


Like I said, I think the solution is to stop hiding what people really make.  Everyone knows exactly what I make based on a simple pay chart.  And all my peers know they make exactly what I make within a *very* small variance.

[khendar]

I posted this video a while ago:

http://www.learnliberty.org/content/do-women-earn-less-men

A lot of the gap is due to the choices that women make with regards to their careers. They work in different fields, they take more time off due to maternity, they tend not to seek high pressure, high paid jobs, they choose to focus more on their families than their careers. This is all a generalisation of course, and there are women who take up CEO-type roles and prioritise their career over having a family, and there is clearly SOME discrimination in some fields/businesses, but it's not as pronounced as is usually perceived.

[Citizen Skeptic]

Just off the top of my head, I would guess it has more to do with the types of work that people do.

You just assume this was not taken in to account?

Not at all.

http://www.catalyst.org/file/340/pipeline%27s_broken_promise_final_021710.pdf

This study of MBAs supposedly accounts for everything and still shows a wage and promotion gap.  The wage gap can be explained by women accepting more entry-level positions than men.  14% more women than men at the bottom rung.  All the other steps have ~4% more men in a given position than women.

So, if I take this report at face value, there is something going on.

Maybe it's men in HR pushing women to lower-paying jobs.

Maybe it's women undervaluing their skills.


Like I said, I think the solution is to stop hiding what people really make.  Everyone knows exactly what I make based on a simple pay chart.  And all my peers know they make exactly what I make within a *very* small variance.

I can honestly say that I have never seen nor allowed a case of salary discrimination based on anything other than experience and skill. I also practiced the open wage scale theory but it also included what got you from one level to the next. It wasn't arbitrary, which is often the case.

[Dirty J. Martini]

I posted this video a while ago:

http://www.learnliberty.org/content/do-women-earn-less-men

A lot of the gap is due to the choices that women make with regards to their careers. They work in different fields, they take more time off due to maternity, they tend not to seek high pressure, high paid jobs, they choose to focus more on their families than their careers. This is all a generalisation of course, and there are women who take up CEO-type roles and prioritise their career over having a family, and there is clearly SOME discrimination in some fields/businesses, but it's not as pronounced as is usually perceived.

Which leads to the question of why women make those choices. Is it because they feel they have no other choice? Is it because they actually have no other choice? Is it because they want to?

[Belgarath]

In my field there is and can be no gender pay gap.  It's based purely on seniority.

[lorryfach]

I'll give a little example here. A lot of programmers  think that good programmers are the kind of people who program in their spare time, for fun, with no particular goal in mind other than having fun with programming. It seems like a reasonable conclusion because they are that way, and perhaps all of their colleagues are that way. I read this book a long time ago, and I don't own it so I can't look in it again, but I think I can remember enough to make this point… generally speaking, women are more likely to be into programming because of an end goal (i.e. "the program I'm working on will accomplish something good, therefore I am motivated to do it", rather than for the sake of programming itself. They may be just as good at it, but they don't sit around dreaming up things to program in their spare time. If you give them a task, or if they happen upon an open source project they care about, then they rock it. But if you ask them in an interview if they spend a lot of spare time programming for fun (a question that I myself have been asked in interviews both for graduate school and for jobs), they're more likely to say no.


The people asking this question aren't intentionally trying to weed out women, and the women answering it aren't intentionally making a choice about what job to take or what graduate school to go to, but little things like this could add up and mean they aren't, in the end, getting the same choices.


I don't have any statistics to show that women who don't program in their spare time are suffering lower pay because of it, or anything like that, but I'm just wondering about all these little subtleties and how they can add up without anyone realizing it.

[SVoid]

Twice in this thread people have said it's because they do different types of work. I see I wasn't clear when I stated that the adjusted pay gap takes that in to account and that when you do all the accounting of you are still left with 5-7% that is assumed to be discrimination down from the 22% of raw gender gap.

So no, you can't explain it by different choices because when you crunch the numbers there is still a gap when you adjust for that.

So Khendar, that doesn't explain the adjusted pay gap.

And Xptical, that doesn't explain the adjusted pay gap.

We are talking about the gap between men and women with the same experience in the same job doing the same work.

[DRmeg378]

Twice in this thread people have said it's because they do different types of work. I see I wasn't clear when I stated that the adjusted pay gap takes that in to account and that when you do all the accounting of you are still left with 5-7% that is assumed to be discrimination down from the 22% of raw gender gap.

So no, you can't explain it by different choices because when you crunch the numbers there is still a gap when you adjust for that.

So Khendar, that doesn't explain the adjusted pay gap.

And Xptical, that doesn't explain the adjusted pay gap.

We are talking about the gap between men and women with the same experience in the same job doing the same work.

That's not entirely true. I'm looking at the Blau and Kahn paper this was based on and the whole point is that wage gaps are not a very good measure of discrimination. In fact, you are not comparing similar men and women, you are controlling for observed characteristics in a regression. That means that things like differences in the composition of each group can lead to "gaps" that are partially an artifact of the choices each group makes, and unless you can fully model these choices (which you can't), you can't say that the gap measures discrimination. Even though economists do.

The one specific case they cite shows that women and men are usually paid the same for equal work, but discrimination comes in at the time of appointing them to different jobs. Again, the wage gap would not capture this. They cite evidence that shows this is in fact the case.

Finally, the 77 cents figure is deceptive even beyond this, since it is not wage, but annual earnings of full time workers, which can include differences in hours worked.

Frankly, the message to me after reading the paper is that we need to focus on changing gender roles, not wage discrimination.

[Citizen Skeptic]

I'll give a little example here. A lot of programmers  think that good programmers are the kind of people who program in their spare time, for fun, with no particular goal in mind other than having fun with programming. It seems like a reasonable conclusion because they are that way, and perhaps all of their colleagues are that way. I read this book a long time ago, and I don't own it so I can't look in it again, but I think I can remember enough to make this point… generally speaking, women are more likely to be into programming because of an end goal (i.e. "the program I'm working on will accomplish something good, therefore I am motivated to do it", rather than for the sake of programming itself. They may be just as good at it, but they don't sit around dreaming up things to program in their spare time. If you give them a task, or if they happen upon an open source project they care about, then they rock it. But if you ask them in an interview if they spend a lot of spare time programming for fun (a question that I myself have been asked in interviews both for graduate school and for jobs), they're more likely to say no.

Not a lot of women in software and I don't think the percentage has changed much, but I could be wrong. And for the record, I'm one of those guys who dreams up software and writes it as a hobby although for a few years out of school it was my profession.

I write code or think about software every day.

[DRmeg378]

I think what lorryfach is saying is that perhaps there are women who don't do that but are just as good, though I think that would counter the idea that the more experience people accrue, the better they get at their craft.

[Citizen Skeptic]

Oh, I took it to mean interest vs. ability.