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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

#231

Post by Spivak »

kaitai wrote: post #128
mrrrgn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It already is for female go-getters.

Which is why the person you replied to would most likely advocate for eliminating parental leave entirely, and I agree.

No matter how you slice it, government mandated leave that doesn't apply to every single person equally will lead to discrimination. If you mandate maternity leave then companies will prefer young men to young women, and if you mandate paternity leave then companies will prefer the old to the young.

Parental leave is detrimental for every person that has it, but doesn't want it. If you're of child bearing age you're a huge risk to your employer if your resume doesn't come with a sterility test stapled to it.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#232

Post by cortesoft »

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…

As the father of a 10 week old baby girl, it isn't as simple as just society enabling parents to contribute equally.

I am SO into being a dad. I want to do as much caregiving as possible. However, breastfeeding kinda throws a monkey wrench into the "split all the work equally" plan. For newborns, eating is what they do most of the time (when they aren't sleeping). If you breastfeed your child, which all pediatricians say is the best for them, I can't do the most time consuming part of the job. Now, we get around this some of the time by pumping and bottle feeding breast milk, but you can't do that all the time, and even then the mom has to pump as much as you feed in order to keep up her milk supply.

This means mom is going to be the primary care giver for an infant. While this could change once the kid starts eating solid food, by then the pattern is going to be established.

I am not saying we shouldn't work to make it more equal, but it isn't as simple as you make it out to be.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#233

Post by samd »

elbigbad wrote: post #209
samd wrote: post #16

That's good news if true, the women who make it and get promoted earn the same as their counterparts. Still lots of work to be done removing the barriers that keep them from getting these jobs and promotions in the first place.

Do you have any data to provide that goes along with your statement that women don't get "these jobs and promotions in the first place"?

Are you being coy? I assume you know about the disparity in engineering jobs between men and women, particularly in management and executive roles, but are blaming this on something else. Say what you mean.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#234

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #216
losteric wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree with everything here, especially getting rid of stereotypes around nurturing roles. My question is, what happens if many women and men aren't funneled towards those roles? What if it's a natural preference given our evolutionary history? I'm not saying that's the case, and my parents had no problems reversing nurturing roles over 20 years ago... but given our hyper-"PC" society, I am curious how far soc…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#235

Post by 13thLetter »

DanBC wrote: post #176
13thLetter wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tech has a problem with gender. I'm not sure it's helpful to point out that other fields also have similar or even worse problems. It kind of is. When there are other fields which both a) employ more people and b) have a much larger "problem," it's valid to ask why the laser-like focus on tech.

>why the laser-like focus on tech This is a tech site. It's going to focus on tech wages. Other sites are focussing on the gap in motor repair or restaurant chefs or whatever.

It's not just tech sites, though, which is what I'm getting at. Major politicians and newspapers constantly go on at great lengths about alleged gender problems in tech. Do they talk nearly as much about, say, the imbalance towards women in education? I'm going to assert that they do not.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#236

Post by LesZedCB »

gedrap wrote: post #184
the_af wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agreed. In some countries there is a taboo about openly discussing salaries, but keeping them secret only helps employers and hurts the negotiating power of employees.

>>> keeping them secret only helps employers and hurts the negotiating power of employees And saves from a lot of unnecessary drama. This is one of the things that seems great when assuming that everyone's acting rationally but that's not how the world works. It's not rational but a lot of people are very sensitive to what they make in relation to others. For example, Joe thinks he's as good as Josh but Josh makes 25…

I think people get frustrated by salaries of others because people don't feel like they have power to contribute to the decision making process of how much any specific role should make.

DemocracyAtWork [1] is an organization that helps companies with the legal process of collectivizing and democratizing companies. A great way to fix the taboo of sharing salaries while simultaneously equalizing gender and other identity related pay/power disparities would be to democratize the workplace business decisions.

[1] http://www.democracyatwork.info/

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#237

Post by jellicle »

13thLetter wrote: post #99
_jmar777 wrote: post #78

> they’re getting equal pay for equal equal positions, education, and experience 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.e., large disparities in salary by gender for "Software Engineer III" within the same organization…

> 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.

Probably because there have been thousands of studies done showing substantial bias in the amount male and female workers are paid.

No, some social-media guy at DICE looking at a spreadsheet and blithely assuring people (without data or methodology) that there's no bias in tech worker salaries is not sufficient to throw out the mountains of proper methodology, peer-reviewed studies that have been done.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#238

Post by [deleted] »

losteric wrote: post #188
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…

I fully agree with everything here, especially getting rid of stereotypes around nurturing roles. My question is, what happens if many women and men aren't funneled towards those roles? What if it's a natural preference given our evolutionary history? I'm not saying that's the case, and my parents had no problems reversing nurturing roles over 20 years ago... but given our hyper-"PC" society, I am curious how far soc…

[deleted]

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#239

Post by CWuestefeld »

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 are many businesses out there. Make your employment decisions based on your values.

I don't have children, and won't be having any. You seem to be saying that I have to subsidize your childcare leave.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#240

Post by apta »

> What if it's a natural preference given

It is known that women tend to be more emotional than men for instance. As such, they do well in nurturing roles like you described. I'm not saying that men can't do them, it's just that more women feel "at home" doing that kind of work.

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