Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries • Hacker News Board

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#261

Post by dota_fanatic » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

sheepmullet wrote: post #241

dota_fanatic wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point—the context of both roles in a partnership is important to the discussion. Having said that, what about single parents who now must do "both" jobs? Women are at a systematic disadvantage in this scenario. Bottom line for me is that women are doing more unpaid work than men in all cultures. Melinda Gates talks about this at length in their recent letters for 2016[1], and it's a pretty damning picture that…

> Women are at a systematic disadvantage in this scenario. What? There is a strong systematic bias in favour of single women. A man who is expected to work 60 hour weeks is much less likely to get custody of his kids. A man who takes a significant pay cut so he can spend more time with his kids can also get charged by the courts for being a dead-beat dad etc.

> A man who is expected to work 60 hour weeks is much less likely to get custody of his kids.

We're not comparing custody results, here. We're comparing a full custody woman against a full custody man, across all cultures, not whatever intuition you have about custody battles (in the US, seemingly)?

After doing a bit of reading[1], it's not even clear that any of your statements are true.

"In other words, 91 percent of child custody after divorce is decided with no interference from the family court system. How can there be a bias toward mothers when fewer than 4 percent of custody decisions are made by the Family Court?

What do these statistics tell us?

1. Fathers are less involved in their children's care during the marriage.

2. Fathers are less involved in their children's lives after divorce.

3. Mothers gain custody because the vast majority of fathers choose to give them custody.

4. There is no Family Court bias in favor of mothers because very few fathers seek custody during divorce."

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cathy-meyer/dispelling-the-myt...

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#262

Post by lagadu » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 10:30 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #130

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."

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.

It's already mandatory in multiple european countries and it leads to nothing of the sort.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#263

Post by wahrsagevogel » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 10:30 PM UTC

jfaucett wrote: post #246

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…

"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 disagree. The primary cause is that women can become pregnant - the possibility alone is in most cases enough - in which case they leave the work force for X amount of time. Depending on country, laws, and personal preferences this time period can range from a fe…

> For instance, in Germany the woman's job position must be held open for her until she decides to return to work (possibly years later), not to mention the full salary compensation months before and after giving-birth, when she is no longer working.

The company will be reimbursed for the salary by the health insurance upon filling out a form. A company does not pay a single cent more than the cost of hiring another person for the position.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#264

Post by WalterSear » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 10:31 PM UTC

Vraxx wrote: post #172

WalterSear wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Regularly doubling your hours in the office generally does not even remotely double a person's productivity. Now you've erected a strawmen: no one said anything about doubling your hours. Good luck with your agenda and prejudice.

I think the point he was trying to make still holds without such absurd multipliers as "doubling", it's just an intuitively easy to grasp multiplier. What he's saying is that increasing your number of hours may get more absolute work done, but proportionally a person accomplishes less as more hours are worked. Thus, the correlation between time in office (hours) and productivity (work accomplished per unit time) is a…

You are implying that childcare and other non-work flex time activity isn't work. This is, in the frame of this discussion, in itself implicitly sexist.

Women aren't asking for flex time in order to relax: they want flex time in order to do work that isn't business related, like taking care of their family.

So the same number of hours are being worked - the question is whether using these extra hours to do company business is more beneficial to the company than doing something else.

Quite frankly, it's kind of a ridiculous discussion. I can't see how it isn't driven by implicit benevolent sexist assumptions.

https://www.google.com/search?q=benevolent+sexism

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#265

Post by the_af » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 10:32 PM UTC

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…

It's true some people are very sensitive. This is the cultural/taboo part of the issue. From what I've been told, for some reason this taboo is especially strong in the US (correct me if I'm wrong).

In the end, regardless of the taboo, keeping salaries secret only helps employers. They are playing with a full deck of cards, while you -- the employee -- aren't. Not having access to this information is detrimental. For example, you do not know if you're being short-changed.

In your scenario, Joe's employer will have to explain why Josh deserves more money. The problem here is that employers prefer to avoid confrontation, and that sometimes there just isn't any reason beyond "because Josh asked for it and you didn't" or "because I like Josh more than you". This is why hidden information empowers employers but not you -- because you simply don't know when their decisions are justified or arbitrary. By making this information public, you make it more likely that your employers will be forced to provide non-bullshit justifications.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#266

Post by lagadu » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 10:33 PM UTC

bcheung wrote: post #207

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…

You want to make it illegal for someone to work when they want to work and can work..., and maybe even need to work for the income? That is a horrible idea. What possible reason is there for this? To equalize wages? A family had 2 income earners, then they are down to 1. And you want to take away all their ability to have income?

> and maybe even need to work for the income?

We don't lose the income during parental leave.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#267

Post by chiaro » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

leeleelee wrote: post #134

Nursing is a field dominated by women. And there are very large salary gaps between nurses with 0-10 years of experience and nurses with 10-20 years of experience. I'd also bet that there are much more women with 10-20 years of experience than men. So if you broke it down in the same way as the tech industry and did not control for job title or years of experience, you'd find a reverse gender gap in the same way you…

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/stubborn-pay-gap-is...

Nope. Male nurses still make more, which, with respect to your post, is a strong data point in favor of the discrimination hypothesis.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#268

Post by nickff » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #249

akavi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The framing does make a difference, as it sets the perception of which gender is being "wronged". I think the GP is arguing that one could replace "care for family members... is more often foisted upon women" with "the burden of providing financially... is more often foisted upon men", and thereby shift the focus from injustice against women to injustice against men, while being an equally valid interpretation of the…

Well put. Likewise, you can reframe the difference as 'women are paid less overall than men' or as 'men get less leisure time and less time with their families overall'. It would be interesting to see a campaign for shorter hours for men without changing pay.

I understand that people want a different work-life balance, but I do not understand why they expect higher compensation per unit of output while working less. Increasing the number of workers a company will need to achieve the same product will add overhead and a great deal of ancillary costs; if your goal is to get people to spend less time at work, you should be willing to accept a pay cut (at least proportional to the decrease in output). Labor is the largest cost for most companies, and expecting them to remain in business while dramatically increasing their costs is unrealistic.

To be clear, this is not about being 'fair' to the companies, it is about having realistic expectations of the results of our actions.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#269

Post by adevine » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

panglott wrote: post #185

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…

Most studies about the gender gap in pay find that most of the 77% figure is attibutable to differences in career choices/training/&c., but there remains a rough 5% difference in pay that is not attributable to those things. Ask most men if they would take a roughly 5% pay cut, and they would not say that it insignificant or something that can be ignored. Maybe the tech industry is just immune to this, but this artic…

And that approximately 5% difference can be solely attributed to the fact that men are more likely to negotiate for their salaries than women. I don't remember the study off the top of my head but there was a YouTube video that was investigating the pay gap and referenced the study looking at men's and women's willingness to ask for more pay.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#270

Post by knughit » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 10:35 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #136

stale2002 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are true and both need to be fixed. Yes, men are often pressured to be the breadwinner of the family. That is a problem too, and it should be less stigmatized for the women to be an equal breadwinner.

You are implicitly assuming that there are no differences between male and female preferences (on average). It seems plausible that biologically-originated gender differences may extend beyond genitalia. Is there any reason to believe men and women have the same priorities, abilities, and preferences, and that we should expect them to attain the same outcomes?

You'd need to show that our incredibly complex artificially created environments are built with biological gender differences at their core, or acknowledge that a huge part of human existence is learned behaviors.

The fact is, huge amounts of "gendered culture" have swapped genders over the centuries.

For example, everything you learned from a book, or from spoken language is not part of your innate biology. Only a part of how you gravitate toward that material may be biologically gendered.