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When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears
91–100 of 362 posts
Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The whole point is that the way society systematically undervalues women-dominated professions is sexism at work. What? Can you explain how that is possible? As far as I know, people value things according to what value they obtain from them. There is no way for that to be 'sexist'. People are paid according to the value they produce. To call that sexist is just completely inconsistent with any reasonable conceptio…
The problem is gender roles. Women are taught by society to think that, as women, they should go into certain careers. These careers, like teaching, tend to be lower paid than the careers men are encouraged to go into.
It is not taught by society, it is genetics.
In such traditional, Catholic society as Poland women often choose the same careers as men: IT specialists, managers, business owners. In a progressive such as Norway they much more often choose careers such as nurse or teacher.
The reason behind this is economics: in Norway teacher or nurse salary guarantees pretty decent standard of living. In Poland these are very low pay jobs. So, women when given a choice will choose traditional women professions because that's their nature.
In fact I think women are more hurt by the opposite: the feminist movement that teaches them that they should want the same things men want. And the one thing that is virtually guaranteed to make women happy, that is having a child is discouraged as being "relict of patriarchal oppression" or something like that.
Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears
#93The whole point is that society systematically undervaluing women-dominated professions is sexism. It makes sense that the pay gap disappears when the job differences go away, because the job differences are the pay gap. A good example is teaching. Teaching is an incredibly valuable job. It's also dominated by women. It also happens to be way, way underpaid. It embarrasses me to see this on HN.
Then what do you say to all the men who either die or lose their health doing difficult and dangerous jobs, often for peanuts? If you can't prove me men teachers are being paid more, your argument is invalid. Women choose very different careers and that's fine, but the choice is there.
> If you can't prove me men teachers are being paid more, your argument is invalid.
Teaching as a profession is underpaid, and I don't think that teaching being dominated by women is a coincidence.
Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears
#94The whole point is that society systematically undervaluing women-dominated professions is sexism. It makes sense that the pay gap disappears when the job differences go away, because the job differences are the pay gap. A good example is teaching. Teaching is an incredibly valuable job. It's also dominated by women. It also happens to be way, way underpaid. It embarrasses me to see this on HN.
Maybe it is sexism. But I'm not convinced its sexism against women.
In our society men are mostly valued for their profession and how much they make. Women generally aren't. So of course men try to get into higher paying and higher status careers. They spend more effort to move up the ladder. Women don't have that same pressure. And I'm not sure that's a bad thing, for them.
Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The whole point is that the way society systematically undervalues women-dominated professions is sexism at work. What? Can you explain how that is possible? As far as I know, people value things according to what value they obtain from them. There is no way for that to be 'sexist'. People are paid according to the value they produce. To call that sexist is just completely inconsistent with any reasonable conceptio…
The problem is gender roles. Women are taught by society to think that, as women, they should go into certain careers. These careers, like teaching, tend to be lower paid than the careers men are encouraged to go into.
In some countries. China, India, Romania, Ukraine and a few others seem to have no shortage of women going into STEM.
Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears
#96The whole point is that society systematically undervaluing women-dominated professions is sexism. It makes sense that the pay gap disappears when the job differences go away, because the job differences are the pay gap. A good example is teaching. Teaching is an incredibly valuable job. It's also dominated by women. It also happens to be way, way underpaid. It embarrasses me to see this on HN.
> Teaching is an incredibly valuable job.
Almost no job is paid the full value it produces. There's always a split between the buyer of the job (whoever is paying the wage) and the seller of the job (who is receiving the wage). If the job-buyer didn't get any value, why would they buy it?
The question is: How is the split determined? Basically it's about negotiating leverage. Someone who is nearly irreplaceable (like Koby Bryant or Paul Buchheit) has a lot of leverage and can demand a lot. Someone who can be replaced easily has little leverage and gets a lower wage.
The problem with teaching isn't that it's female dominated. It's that too many people want to be teachers, because they enjoy teaching. Also because teaching doesn't measure the output of workers it's harder for the great ones to demand higher wages; they just get the average, like the bad teachers.
Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears
#97The "for the same work" piece of it rings hollow and is fighting a battle that didn't need to be won. It's enough to get across the point that women are socialized into lower paying roles and held back professionally because of child care obligations.
My daughter is four. Her summer camp has all sorts of course choices every week. So I signed her up for "little engineers," "little scientists," etc. (There was also princess and fairy-related options.) Fast forward a couple of weeks and she's the only girl in "tech machines." I had to flip out at my wife, au pair, mother in law, etc. not to let anyone hint to her that there might be anything unusual or undesirable about this.
These are four year olds, they have no preferences. It's purely parents projecting gender roles onto their kids. My kid is super into princesses and fairies, but also comes home every day with a new project and says it was "the best day ever" because she learned about buoyancy or whatever.
Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears
#98The whole point is that society systematically undervaluing women-dominated professions is sexism. It makes sense that the pay gap disappears when the job differences go away, because the job differences are the pay gap. A good example is teaching. Teaching is an incredibly valuable job. It's also dominated by women. It also happens to be way, way underpaid. It embarrasses me to see this on HN.
I don't see how it's "embarrassing" for this article to be on HN. It addresses your point exactly in the first few paragraphs: "These numbers do not show that the labour market is free of sex discrimination. However, they do suggest that the main problem today is not unequal pay for equal work, but whatever it is that leads women to be in lower-ranking jobs at lower-paying organisations."
That's not my point, though.
My essential argument is that sexism creeps in when you say that women select lower-ranking jobs by default. I don't think that's actually true. I think it's more that society views the jobs women work as lower-ranking.
Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears
#99The whole point is that society systematically undervaluing women-dominated professions is sexism. It makes sense that the pay gap disappears when the job differences go away, because the job differences are the pay gap. A good example is teaching. Teaching is an incredibly valuable job. It's also dominated by women. It also happens to be way, way underpaid. It embarrasses me to see this on HN.
And job differences are individual decisions. We can finally stop the "women are being paid less/discriminated ...yadayada..." -horseshit. Teaching is done/funded by the society in most cases and paid with tax dollars. Some jobs being "underpaid" or paid too much are problems that come from the lack of real capitalism where everybody would be paid their actual market value and we could remove the whole word "underpai…
Isn't capitalism about the use of capital to control and manage markets? If I will £5m on the lottery and then set up a company investing that money am I worth the 4% a year I should (probably would) make?
The value of your teachers (or lack of value) will only become apparent over time - a long time. The value of your doctor may become absolute to you, several times over your life. God forbid that you or yours fall sick, but should your doctor be able to demand all of your worldly goods to heal you? What about farmers - should they gang together and refuse to supply food until starvation set in would that allow them to demand all of the cities wealth? If no then what is needed - is it a rule of law that enforces particular norms of behaviour?
Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears
#100Generally speaking the problem isn't that individuals get paid less. It's systemic issues - which are harder to fix. For example: women as a whole are less likely to be in higher paying jobs in STEM roles. Or CEOs. Or high level Politicians. Why? Multiple reasons but the overall point is there is institutional and social pressure (mostly unconscious or learned) for women to avoid those fields. So the average gets low…
Why should the differences in attraction for jobs with a stronger or weaker human communication component necessarily be institutional and social ? It might be genetic as well. In that case, good luck "fixing" the situation because it requires tweaking the human genome.
That's could explain why even decades of public policy in countries like Sweden didn't even come close to a situation of near 50% STEM workers.