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Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

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Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#151

Post by tomp »

whiddershins wrote: post #114
13thLetter wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While those are certainly relevant control factors, I would presume that any conclusions are premature without demonstrating a lack of bias in the actual positions men vs. women are promoted to, relative to their experience and education. I'm wondering why the default assumption is that there is bias, and we're being expected to prove a negative here.

I don't know ... have you wandered around the world and actually talked to real people about how they view gender? Almost no one will assert they think men and women are exactly the same. So if everyone starts from the presumption that there is some, poorly defined, somewhat-conscious, never agreed upon, but certainly real, difference between men and women ... a bias in treatment would be the default condition, and w…

> a bias in treatment would be the default condition, and would probably require conscious effort and/or policy to overcome.

Ironically, people usually assume that the unequal treatment benefits men over women, and completely dismiss the reverse possibility, even though there's no rational reason for this :)

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#152

Post by marodox »

shostack wrote: post #64
ultramancool wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a really interesting freakonomics radio episode that goes into some good detail here if anyone's curious where these differences really originate: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender...

Beat me to it. The episode is basically an interview with Claudia Goldin who is about as qualified a person as you could hope for to speak on this matter. [1] tl;dr women start out with equal pay, but trade pure monetary compensation for flexibility and/or fewer hours when they have kids because society still sucks at gender equality when it comes to enabling parents to equally contribute to certain aspects of parent…

I emailed Dr. Goldin to ask her a question about her research when writing a paper on the wage gap for undergrad english.

I did not expect a response, but when I got one, I was ecstatic.

She seems like a awesome person.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#153

Post by dang »

magicalist wrote: post #25
dang wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Changed to that from http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-c... .

The blog post directly from Dice has slightly more information: http://insights.dice.com/2016/03/02/dice-report-gender-plays... It also links to a more in depth look at what they call the "position gap", which addresses some people's comments about the original article hinging on controlling for education, experience, and job title: http://media.dice.com/report/february-2015-the-position-gap/ (I'd call the IEEE post…

Thanks; good catch! We changed the URL from http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-c....

(I agree.)

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#154

Post by nsxwolf »

rosser wrote: post #143
nsxwolf wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly it would lead to discrimination against large families (large these days being anything more than 2 kids). Employers likely won't tolerate someone having 5 kids over a 5-10 year period and taking all that disruptive and expensive leave.

Because people should totally be making major life decisions on the basis of what employers will "tolerate". FFS. We've already ceded enough control over our lives to these companies whose only agenda is to suck people dry, and then find new ways to wring even more out of them. Businesses exist to serve people's needs and interests. People do not exist to serve businesses.

There's not a whole lot you can do about discrimination. Unless the employers are dumb enough talk openly about what they're doing. They can find any subjective reason they like and claim that's the reason for letting you go. You can try to sue, and sometimes you'll even win, but there's no Job Police SWAT Team that will beat down the door and force them to give you your job back in time for your next mortgage payment.

In light of this reality it's good to avoid policies that incentivize even more discrimination.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#155

Post by emidln »

mrrrgn wrote: post #70
RodericDay wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of "mandatory paternity leave", to make up for the biological asymmetry. Even if you have a stereotypical breadwinner/housewife relationship, you are legally mandated to take time off, even if you don't want to. That way you avoid the "you're allowed to take paternal leave, but real go-getters don't!" game altogether. edit: The way I see it, the responses just prove my point. "This would just make peo…

We already suffer from declining birthrates in the west. Your solution would make not having a child the best choice for "go-getters."

Or hiding it.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#156

Post by 4bpp »

Everyone seems to be quick to reduce the gender disparity in seniority/paygrade of jobs occupied to a childcare/parental leave/homemaking question, but is there any data for the single, infertile or asexual segment of the population to back this up?

My impression always has been that long before parenting even starts being relevant, there is a difference between the genders in terms of readiness to engage in self-sacrificial or -destructive behaviour for the sake of self-realisation and status climbing (which is often correlated to pay in one way or another). Regardless of whether this difference is predominantly biological or cultural and which gender deserves the "blame" for it if it is the latter, I think that any attempt to reduce the disparity by policymaking should at least try to address this.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#157

Post by Vraxx »

adventured wrote: post #115
caublestone wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

63% of minimum wage workers are women: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/who-are-... Increasing minimum wage would effectively increase the 77% number also.

Only 1% of the US civilian labor force earns the minimum wage. So you're talking about a small fraction of the total US pay base. It wouldn't even remotely dent the 77% number, first because the minimum wage affects so relatively few, and second because the wages in the group are so small it won't meaningfully impact the median income that primarily drives the 77%. To put it into perspective, by your 63% number, it c…

Close, but I don't think that quite accounts for the whole story. For instance, if minimum wage is raised, it depends on how much it's raised by to determine what % of workers will have increased wages. If we took it up to (purely as an example) $15/hr, then everybody earning less than that would also see a pay raise, but would not be included in the 1%. I don't know where you got your previously cited statistics, so I can't exactly run the numbers to see the impact, but I imagine it could be a sizable effect.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#158

Post by emidln »

rosser wrote: post #118
chongli wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know when a man in the office becomes a father? If you institute "mandatory paternity leave" then he just won't tell you. It's already illegal to ask about marital status during a job interview. Are you suggesting we change that, too? Then you risk further reducing the number of marriages in society. The whole problem with paternity leave is that there's a financial disincentive for companies to offer it a…

How do you know when a man in the office becomes a father? Well, for one thing, there's the bit where, if the new child will be covered under the father's health plan, he kinda has to tell HR about it. So they can, you know, change the coverage ?

You only have to do that when the child of born. Even then, you have quite a bit of leeway as to when you have to notify the insurance company.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#159

Post by shawn-butler »

ahoy wrote: post #15

This is fairly consistent with other studies. The "77%" number is arrived at by comparing the median wage of full-time male & female employees. It doesn't account for differences in industry, job title, experience, etc. It's super broad. That doesn't mean we should ignore it, but it means we need more granularity. Coming out of uni/grad school, male and female salaries are equal in comparable fields. They depart a fe…

>>

Women tend to find themselves funneled into specific career paths that prioritize flexible hours and often pay less. Men face an opposite pressure - toward inflexible hours but higher pay. This is in large part because care for family members(children and elderly parents usually) is more often foisted upon women in our society than on men.

>>

I see no evidence to support this "funnel" at all in my life/work experience.

Workers on "flex" schedules in the tech sector underperform by a wide margin. I see little or no reason why I should prop up someone else's life / work choices with my own labor.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#160

Post by theseatoms »

chongli wrote: post #116
RodericDay wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently there's a penalty for hiring women based on that exact same reasoning.

Right, but that penalty is deeply ingrained into our capitalist society. You can't solve it with just a quick bandaid fix.

Can it be fixed? In the end, pay is linked to productivity. The only fix I see is increased use of paternity leave.
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