Topic: Gender Pay Gap

[DG]

(click to show/hide)

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.
[/quote]All the dev classes I've been taking are majority male but not overwhelmingly so. Maybe 60/40. I know it's classically a male-dominated profession but that's closing.
[/quote]

This is an interesting point - I studied law and more than 60% of my colleagues were female. However, nearly 10 years on, the vast majority of those with whom I keep in touch have gone back to university to study teaching (yes, almost exclusively to teaching). The males, however, have stayed in law. In fact only one has left law and he went to work in Human Resources for the law firm he was in as part of a 'corporate strategy' to have lawyers recruiting their lawyers rather than having professional recruiters.

Purely anecdotal and hardly worth the key strokes. But from talking to those who have left the profession not one has said that they felt pushed out or discriminated against. Their motivation appears to be a change in lifestyle (working fewer hours) and actually achieving something worthwhile (as opposed to pushing paper).

From talking to those males (and from my own view) the only reason that we stay in the field is because we feel a duty to earn as much as we can to provide for our partners while they pursue their other interests (i.e their decision to abandon law and take up teaching or, in one case, nursing). There is a chorus of "amen" when I point out that "could I quit my job, and earn the same money doing something else, I would be gone in a heartbeat".

Further, the highest earner in this group of some 50 people who graduated within 3 years of each other, is a woman who takes home nearly twice the income of the next highest earner*. Those who went to teaching are earning about half of the average wage earned by those who stayed in Law.

* She is pregnant and will be leaving the law when she has the baby - and previously had said she'd take a short break and then go back. She has since stated (after falling pregnant) that she has no desire to go back to work at all. Her partner wanted to be a stay at home dad, but she has said (in my presence) that it's her right to be a stay at home mum and, as such, he has no choice but to stay in a job that he hates to pay the bills.

[SVoid]

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

My sociology professor once told said that men's management styles were more likely to be noticed than women. An anecdote or case study was described where two manager (one male, one female) were transitioning from typewriters to computers. The woman brought in a trainer, had the system explained to her staff, and the transition went through without much problem.

The man transitioned to computer, work halted because they couldn't effective use them, he brought in trainers during the lunch hours to train is staff in this crisis, they figured it out, and went on. Lots of problems and lost productivity, ruined lunch breaks, and maybe overtime. He was actually recognized for taking the bull by the horns and solving the problem.

You might have seen this yourself. A co-worker makes a big deal of a problem, and when it's solved as it should by by a competent working or someone who didn't create the problem in the first place they get congratulated. The squeaky wheel.

Sounds like poor management. Women are also more likely to deflect accolades and accept responsibility, on average. Which, if you ask me, sounds like a better manager. But also tend not to be promoted. So they higher up managers also, apparently, suck and building a better organization. Why? Because in all likelihood you'd need an equal number of both.

[Johnny Slick]

(click to show/hide)

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.

All the dev classes I've been taking are majority male but not overwhelmingly so. Maybe 60/40. I know it's classically a male-dominated profession but that's closing.

This is an interesting point - I studied law and more than 60% of my colleagues were female. However, nearly 10 years on, the vast majority of those with whom I keep in touch have gone back to university to study teaching (yes, almost exclusively to teaching). The males, however, have stayed in law. In fact only one has left law and he went to work in Human Resources for the law firm he was in as part of a 'corporate strategy' to have lawyers recruiting their lawyers rather than having professional recruiters.

Purely anecdotal and hardly worth the key strokes. But from talking to those who have left the profession not one has said that they felt pushed out or discriminated against. Their motivation appears to be a change in lifestyle (working fewer hours) and actually achieving something worthwhile (as opposed to pushing paper).

From talking to those males (and from my own view) the only reason that we stay in the field is because we feel a duty to earn as much as we can to provide for our partners while they pursue their other interests (i.e their decision to abandon law and take up teaching or, in one case, nursing). There is a chorus of "amen" when I point out that "could I quit my job, and earn the same money doing something else, I would be gone in a heartbeat".

Further, the highest earner in this group of some 50 people who graduated within 3 years of each other, is a woman who takes home nearly twice the income of the next highest earner*. Those who went to teaching are earning about half of the average wage earned by those who stayed in Law.

* She is pregnant and will be leaving the law when she has the baby - and previously had said she'd take a short break and then go back. She has since stated (after falling pregnant) that she has no desire to go back to work at all. Her partner wanted to be a stay at home dad, but she has said (in my presence) that it's her right to be a stay at home mum and, as such, he has no choice but to stay in a job that he hates to pay the bills.

Sorry for the late post, but... this is still institutional sexism. If teaching is so much more rewarding despite having to work fewer hours (which I'm not sure is true; I have relatives who teach and "low number of hours" is certainly not one of the benefits), why aren't men doing it? You indicate a need for men to become breadwinners, which is nice... but that's a sexist stereotype. Women shouldn't have to face a glass ceiling, but it's just as imperative that men are not faced with a glass floor.

As for the "women don't feel discriminated against" part, that's often true even when sexism exists. For one thing, they may be an active party in promoting the sexism. When you're doing it yourself, it can look like "just a thing". For another, I think of the old anecdote about putting a frog in a pot and slowly bringing the water to boil. IRL I'm pretty sure the frog would in fact leap out at some point but the way the anecdote works it never does because the onset of heat is so gradual in coming. In a similar manner, you can live in a sexist society and have sexism perpetrated against you without ever feeling discriminated against precisely *because* it is so pervasive.

I will say that the time of the mad, cackling sexist boss who chases his secretaries around the couch is probably at an end, and in fact was likely only there as a creature of the transition into the two-sex office that we live in today. I think that in some respects it's damaging to expect *that* to be your benchmark for sexism inasmuch when you don't see that happen, or if you do and see it swiftly dealt with, you will come to the false conclusion that sexism doesn't actually exist anymore.

[DG]

(click to show/hide)

(click to show/hide)

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.

All the dev classes I've been taking are majority male but not overwhelmingly so. Maybe 60/40. I know it's classically a male-dominated profession but that's closing.

This is an interesting point - I studied law and more than 60% of my colleagues were female. However, nearly 10 years on, the vast majority of those with whom I keep in touch have gone back to university to study teaching (yes, almost exclusively to teaching). The males, however, have stayed in law. In fact only one has left law and he went to work in Human Resources for the law firm he was in as part of a 'corporate strategy' to have lawyers recruiting their lawyers rather than having professional recruiters.

Purely anecdotal and hardly worth the key strokes. But from talking to those who have left the profession not one has said that they felt pushed out or discriminated against. Their motivation appears to be a change in lifestyle (working fewer hours) and actually achieving something worthwhile (as opposed to pushing paper).

From talking to those males (and from my own view) the only reason that we stay in the field is because we feel a duty to earn as much as we can to provide for our partners while they pursue their other interests (i.e their decision to abandon law and take up teaching or, in one case, nursing). There is a chorus of "amen" when I point out that "could I quit my job, and earn the same money doing something else, I would be gone in a heartbeat".

Further, the highest earner in this group of some 50 people who graduated within 3 years of each other, is a woman who takes home nearly twice the income of the next highest earner*. Those who went to teaching are earning about half of the average wage earned by those who stayed in Law.

* She is pregnant and will be leaving the law when she has the baby - and previously had said she'd take a short break and then go back. She has since stated (after falling pregnant) that she has no desire to go back to work at all. Her partner wanted to be a stay at home dad, but she has said (in my presence) that it's her right to be a stay at home mum and, as such, he has no choice but to stay in a job that he hates to pay the bills.

Sorry for the late post, but... this is still institutional sexism. If teaching is so much more rewarding despite having to work fewer hours (which I'm not sure is true; I have relatives who teach and "low number of hours" is certainly not one of the benefits), why aren't men doing it? You indicate a need for men to become breadwinners, which is nice... but that's a sexist stereotype. Women shouldn't have to face a glass ceiling, but it's just as imperative that men are not faced with a glass floor.

As for the "women don't feel discriminated against" part, that's often true even when sexism exists. For one thing, they may be an active party in promoting the sexism. When you're doing it yourself, it can look like "just a thing". For another, I think of the old anecdote about putting a frog in a pot and slowly bringing the water to boil. IRL I'm pretty sure the frog would in fact leap out at some point but the way the anecdote works it never does because the onset of heat is so gradual in coming. In a similar manner, you can live in a sexist society and have sexism perpetrated against you without ever feeling discriminated against precisely *because* it is so pervasive.

I will say that the time of the mad, cackling sexist boss who chases his secretaries around the couch is probably at an end, and in fact was likely only there as a creature of the transition into the two-sex office that we live in today. I think that in some respects it's damaging to expect *that* to be your benchmark for sexism inasmuch when you don't see that happen, or if you do and see it swiftly dealt with, you will come to the false conclusion that sexism doesn't actually exist anymore.

This becomes an unfalsifiable claim - sexism exists because the claim of sexism is made. If we claim that women 'choose' to leave 'professional' fields, it's called "institutionalised sexism". When they say that they feel that they have a choice, we reject that on the basis that "we'll they say that anyway, if the sexism were so pervasive that no one really noticed".

What should be the benchmark for demonstrating the existence of sexism? The flaws in wage comparisons have been widely discussed and the dilemma of of work life balance, lifestyle choices and competition (for housing, partners and the likes) have not been quantified in a definitive way.

The claim by my friend that it's her right to be a stay at home mum could well be viewed as sexist, but what do you proposed to do about that. There's no doubt that she will need time off from work recovering from childbirth and so on. Then she says "I'm not going back to work " (I'm sure that you will not claim that she has a "duty" to go back to work). Now her partner has a choice, he can either allow them to go bankrupt, or he can keep working a job he hates to look after his wife and child. Is this sexist? Or is it simply a power imbalance in the relationship combined with a practical reality of the biological process? I would argue that the power comes not from gender, but from inequality in bargaining positions (based on who cares least about the relationship). If he doesn't do what she wants the chances of an ongoing relationship are reduced significantly (IIRC a number of studies show a relationship between divorce and the employment status of husbands, without a similar discrepancy in the employment status of the woman) the alternative is the end of the relationship and a "shared" caring arrangement where he doesn't get what he wants anyway (assuming he wants the relationship to continue). Neither party has "rights" but one party has power (not necessarily based on gender).

You could get the inverse result if the woman wants to work, and the father doesn't want to stop working. The woman has to decide whether she'll hand over the raising of her child to a day care centre or she will give up her desire to pursue her career. The decision isn't cone of gender but one of power in a relationship.

Gender can be swapped in both of the above, or even in same-sex relationships.

[Johnny Slick]

This becomes an unfalsifiable claim - sexism exists because the claim of sexism is made.

No, sexism exists because the evidence is there that it exists, in this case in the form of a pay gap.

[DG]

The pay gap shows that there is a pay gap. It does not show the cause of the pay gap. At best you have correlation between gender and pay, not a causal relationship.

[Johnny Slick]

Well, you've got correlation, time order (vaginas existed even before money) and I've yet to see anything that would lead me to believe that there's something spurious that isn't directly or indirectly caused by sexism, so yes, that's actually causation. FWIW I don't think that women are being held back because of scheming men who are part of some large anti-female conspiracy; at this point the apparatus of society itself is responsible for a lot of this. That, unfortunately, means that we can't just point to one person or one group of people (nope, not even men) as a cause, but an underlying set of biases.

[DG]

Well, you've got correlation, time order (vaginas existed even before money) and I've yet to see anything that would lead me to believe that there's something spurious that isn't directly or indirectly caused by sexism, so yes, that's actually causation. FWIW I don't think that women are being held back because of scheming men who are part of some large anti-female conspiracy; at this point the apparatus of society itself is responsible for a lot of this. That, unfortunately, means that we can't just point to one person or one group of people (nope, not even men) as a cause, but an underlying set of biases.

You don't get to just from "I've yet to see anything that would lead me to believe that there's something spurious that isn't directly or indirectly caused by sexism" therefore sexism. You are starting with the assumption of sexism. Assuming that you define sexism as "Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex." In which case you are claiming that a person or group of persons are demonstrating prejudice, stereotyping or discrimination in a manner that is causing the pay gap. But you don't actually have anything that bridges the gap between the claim and the observed facts.

I'm not saying that sexism is not the cause, I am saying that you haven't provided evidence to support that argument.

You've argued that vaginas existed before money (a good point). But even if sexism existed before money, that doesn't get you across the line of supporting the claim that sexism is the cause of the wage gap.

For example "Women couldn't own property at law, and hence were unable to accumulate the wealth necessary to pursue education and, as such sexism is at the core of wage differences". That would be a reasonable argument. There would be some interesting challenges to that - scholarships, student loans etc.

But "I've yet to see anything that would lead me to believe that there's something spurious that isn't directly or indirectly caused by sexism" therefore sexism, is a "god of the gaps" argument. Making the claim, it's traditional... OK,not traditional, but good form, to provide evidence to support your claim. "I'm making a claim and I don't have any reason to doubt my claim" is the reason that people believe homeopathy and all manner of woo.

Your claim is based on the assumption that, given the choice, women want to do the same jobs and earn the same money as men.

If you go down the path that they make those decisions based on institutionalized sexism, it's an unfalsifiable claim because any person who would be assessing that would be subject to the same bias. It also ignores the gender participation in university studied v involvement in the profession (one would expect to see less women studying law if there were institutionalized sexism keeping them out of the profession - they wouldn't start out on that path at all rather than trying it and saying "that's not for me").

[Johnny Slick]

Rather than lecture me on what constitutes proof and what doesn't, perhaps you could point out some of these spurious causes I'm missing.

[DG]

Johnny,

You aren't trying to shift the burden of proof are you?

[Johnny Slick]

I think I've made my point and why I think there is a causal relationship between the two. I don't know how I can argue "I don't see any spurious correlations" against you when you refuse to provide any potentially spurious correlations in the first place. The fact that I may be ignorant of something doesn't mean my argument is necessarily true, of course, and I'm willing to be persuaded if there's something I'm missing, but given that it is literally impossible to argue against the existence of something, I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to "provide proof" that there isn't some confounding variable at play.

[DG]

There are a number of factors that could foreseeably lead to the gender pay gap that you describe:

One - past sexism - as a result of employment practices some 40 years ago it is forseeable that there will be some legacy disparity in income most notably at the end of ones career when their income is at it's highest.

two - career choices - the fact that women choose to engage in low paid professions that either men choose not to participate in (such as teaching and nursing) is not proof of gender discrimination. In particular the state government of NSW attempted to recruit more men into teaching, the result was mixed. When they paid people to do the study for teaching there was only an increase in people studying teaching, but only a modest increase in the number of teachers. Indicating that it wasn't about the money, it was simply a matter of interest.

three - lifestyle choices - taking a hiatus from full time employment for 1-5 years can have a significant impact on a persons income. Again, the fact that it i ordinarily females that elect to stay at home does not prove sexism. At best it suggests a power imbalance in relationships, but does not suggest whether that is women using their 'power' to get out of the work force for a few years to pursue something that they see as worthwhile, or whether it is males using their 'power' to stay in the workforce. I would expect it to be a combination of both.

four - social stigma - in recent years, women who are 'stay at home' mums are seen, and abused, as being anti feminism. Commonly we hear this referred to as the "duty to be everything". Choosing to be a stay at home mum is seen to be "promoting gender bias" where such claims are unjustified.

five - study patterns - while the participation rate for the so called 'male dominated professions' of accounting and law is heavily in favour of women, at the next stage the number of women is not as great as a proportion of those going on to the profession. This is not a statistic that one would expect to see if gender bias were keeping people out of a particular field. It is however exactly what you would see if people have freedom of choice, start their studies and then say "no this isn't for me".

Sorry, it's 6 in the morning and I've just rolled out of bed. But there are 5 contributing factors that I can think of off the top of my head.

As I said, I don't state that sexism is not a factor in the wage gap, but I do think that the wage gap is misleading as 'proof' of sexism. [Must rush off to work - interestingly, I have to rush off while my wife is still snoring, and she'll be home well before I am... Maybe I should have been a teacher].

[Johnny Slick]

So...

1. Sexism (and also something taken into account in meg's study),
2. Institutionalized sexism (which is exactly what groups of millions of people "choosing to engage in low paid professions" is),
3. Factored in in the study meg cited earlier,
4. I have no idea what point you're trying to make here, and
5. As noted either earlier in this thread or in the other one, this isn't actually answering the question, it's kicking it back up a level. While I don't doubt this has an effect, we should be asking "why do women choose not to engage in these 'male' jobs", not say "welp, that's it! No sexism here!!!".

So, um, congratulations, I guess?

[Ajzzz]

The pay gap is a proxy at best, and whether one exists or not, there could still be sexism or no sexism. It seems as if a correlation between gender and anything else is assumed to be sexism if the difference is unexplained by something else. What's that, sexism of the gaps? Unless there's one massive assumption that if there wasn't sexism there wouldn't be a pay gap or it would be in favour of women. Yeah I think that women choosing jobs that have less hours or are less stressful is the result of institutional sexism, also that some jobs are seen as worth more than others for the same reasons, but a pay gap isn't evidence of that, it doesn't tell me how much or even if it exists.

[Neon Genesis]

two - career choices - the fact that women choose to engage in low paid professions that either men choose not to participate in (such as teaching and nursing) is not proof of gender discrimination. In particular the state government of NSW attempted to recruit more men into teaching, the result was mixed. When they paid people to do the study for teaching there was only an increase in people studying teaching, but only a modest increase in the number of teachers. Indicating that it wasn't about the money, it was simply a matter of interest.

There was a study done on women getting hired by orchestras and they found that when men and women were auditioning for orchestras and the gender of the person auditioning was unknown, more women were hired by orchestras than if the gender of the people auditioning was unknown.  We could debate all day whether this is intentional sexism or unintended cultural bias, but aside from completely ignoring this study, you're making an incredible leap of faith to assuming "women aren't discriminated against when they have lower paying jobs because they chose to do those jobs; after all, teaching kids is wimmens' work!  How I envy my wife for getting to sleep in late!  Harharh!"