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How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

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Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#31

Post by lowmess »

technocodes wrote: post #12
Chinjut wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, ok. So, logically, it must just be that women-associated occupations tend to be lower payed than men, women tend to be slotted into lower positions than men, women aren't encouraged into or supported in higher education the same way as men, women do not receive job tenure as easily as men, and/or gendered pressures cause women to work less hours per week (on careers rather than, e.g., a disproportionate share of…

No it's like saying most investment bankers are male and make 500k a year, most nurses are female and make 70k a year, Injustice! Look at that pay gap! Outrageous! - It makes zero sense. EDIT: What I meant to say is men go into different careers than woman and for different reasons. Usually men go after higher paying jobs (investment banking). When people compute the pay gap they dont take this into account, so they…

Except when you consider that wages rise and fall in fields depending on the gender makeup of those positions [0].

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-...

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#32

Post by revelation »

geofft wrote: post #24
dbbk wrote: post #11

I don't understand this 'gender pay gap' concept at all. Whatever figure my compensation is is, to a large extent, quite arbitrary. Sure there's a general sense of what range I should expect my salary to be in, based on my experience/location/etc, but really the final figure comes down to whatever number gets thrown out and accepted in negotiation. So if you poll half a workforce who are male, and poll half a workfor…

Right, that's not surprising, if you do that poll once . There's a 50% chance of that. If you do that poll repeatedly , over many groups and many industries and many times and many subsets, and in every case the men are paid more (whether 5% or 23%), there is either an actual statistical difference, or Maxwell's social justice demon is out to get you. And if there is an actual statistical difference, the question is…

That's the meat of the discussion, right, the "why"?

If you want to be particularly devil's advocate about it, there was a time when the "gender pay gap" was 90%+ because the majority of women didn't work at all. It's a rather recent invention that everyone should work, and yet more recent that everyone should work all the time and still not be able to make ends meet.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#34

Post by morgante »

eli wrote: post #26
technocodes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's like saying most investment bankers are male and make 500k a year, most nurses are female and make 70k a year, Injustice! Look at that pay gap! Outrageous! - It makes zero sense. EDIT: What I meant to say is men go into different careers than woman and for different reasons. Usually men go after higher paying jobs (investment banking). When people compute the pay gap they dont take this into account, so they…

Is there something about the male gender that makes one a better investment banker? If not, how do you explain why that is in the first place?

There's abundant evidence that women prefer to work fewer hours than men and working insane hours is (for better or worse) a requirement of investment banking.

Whether the preference for fewer hours is innate or learned I don't know.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#35

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

patrickmay wrote: post #2

> Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that women were paid 79 cents for each dollar a man was paid. Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar. This is not supported by the evidence. See, for example, this article by Christina Hoff Sommers ( http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/ ): "No matter…

If you are going to account for position, how do you account for the fact that women are often in a lower ranked position, because they are less likely to be promoted? You can't claim there's no pay gap just because it's being obfuscated by bias in job titles.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#36

Post by geofft »

bdrool wrote: post #21

> Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that women were paid 79 cents for each dollar a man was paid. Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar. What do they mean "even" after controlling for those factors? Why wouldn't you control for those factors -- the comparison is meaningless otherwise.

Suppose, hypothetically, that 10% of all managers are outright sexists and won't promote women. (This is a thought experiment, I'm not making any claim about the real world.) Then, if equally-qualified men and women apply for the same jobs, you'd expect that the "type of job" class is going to include some higher-paying jobs for men about 10% more frequently than for women. If you "control for" those factors, you are eliminating from your sample all women who work for outright sexists. It might be true that the wage gap is (almost) zero once you do that, but your experimental design is flawed.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#37

Post by geofft »

revelation wrote: post #32
geofft wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that's not surprising, if you do that poll once . There's a 50% chance of that. If you do that poll repeatedly , over many groups and many industries and many times and many subsets, and in every case the men are paid more (whether 5% or 23%), there is either an actual statistical difference, or Maxwell's social justice demon is out to get you. And if there is an actual statistical difference, the question is…

That's the meat of the discussion, right, the "why"? If you want to be particularly devil's advocate about it, there was a time when the "gender pay gap" was 90%+ because the majority of women didn't work at all. It's a rather recent invention that everyone should work, and yet more recent that everyone should work all the time and still not be able to make ends meet.

Yes, and if you want to be even more particularly devil's advocate about it, there was a time when the race pay gap was approximately 100%. It's a rather recent invention that black laborers should get paid.

Which is to say, I'm not sure why advocating for this particular devil is constructive. Do you believe that a well-functioning society should have women being less valuable to the free market than men?

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#38

Post by djrogers »

geofft wrote: post #24
dbbk wrote: post #11

I don't understand this 'gender pay gap' concept at all. Whatever figure my compensation is is, to a large extent, quite arbitrary. Sure there's a general sense of what range I should expect my salary to be in, based on my experience/location/etc, but really the final figure comes down to whatever number gets thrown out and accepted in negotiation. So if you poll half a workforce who are male, and poll half a workfor…

Right, that's not surprising, if you do that poll once . There's a 50% chance of that. If you do that poll repeatedly , over many groups and many industries and many times and many subsets, and in every case the men are paid more (whether 5% or 23%), there is either an actual statistical difference, or Maxwell's social justice demon is out to get you. And if there is an actual statistical difference, the question is…

> If you do that poll repeatedly, over many groups and many industries and many times and many subsets, and in every case the men are paid more

That's a great idea! Someone should do that study one of these days instead of just relying on the aggregate BLS statistics that the 77% number is drawn from. Sadly, I doubt it'll happen...

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#39

Post by morgante »

RodericDay wrote: post #7
patrickmay wrote: post #2

> Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that women were paid 79 cents for each dollar a man was paid. Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar. This is not supported by the evidence. See, for example, this article by Christina Hoff Sommers ( http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/ ): "No matter…

The pay gap of 77c/$ still matters. Not only does the gap persist to a lower extent when you control for everything, "controlling for everything" is not actually a clarifying approach when discussing the gender gap issue. see: "The problem with controlling for 'all other factors' when looking at pay discrimination" ( https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/49k23i/the_pr... )

I'm sympathetic to the notion that discrimination can include subtler factors of pushing women into lower pay positions.

However, the problem with the 77 cent figure is that it's frequently stated like this: "women get paid only 77% of what men do for the same jobs." Which is entirely false. Yet, if you asked most people about the 77 cents figure they'd think it actually meant women got paid much less to do the same work.

If a conversation begins with a lie, it's going to be tough to address a systematic issue and to work together. Distorting the facts is manipulative and prevents rational discourse.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#40

Post by whatok »

lowmess wrote: post #31
technocodes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's like saying most investment bankers are male and make 500k a year, most nurses are female and make 70k a year, Injustice! Look at that pay gap! Outrageous! - It makes zero sense. EDIT: What I meant to say is men go into different careers than woman and for different reasons. Usually men go after higher paying jobs (investment banking). When people compute the pay gap they dont take this into account, so they…

Except when you consider that wages rise and fall in fields depending on the gender makeup of those positions [0]. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-...

Consider this. I have a group of 100 people, 50 male and 50 female. Job x is available in industry y. Job x is highly sought after and all 50 men apply for it. Industry y is traditionally male dominated and for whatever reason, none of the 50 women have previously applied for the job. Through the magical powers of the internet, women are now suddenly interested in the field and not only do the 50 men apply for the job but the 50 women do also; doubling the applicant pool.

How will the employer react to the sudden surge in applications?

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