Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 362 posts

Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

#221

Post by reefoctopus »

dionidium wrote: post #149
rayiner wrote: post #97

The "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 pr…

"These are four year olds, they have no preferences. It's purely parents projecting gender roles onto their kids." Without litigating this specific case in any detail, I just want to argue more generally that of course 4-year-olds (and much younger) have gender-based preferences and that there is loads of research confirming this. It's remarkable that this is considered even remotely controversial.

This is the monthly thread where everybody pretends that testosterone and estrogen don't exist.

Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

#222

Post by mpweiher »

jxcole wrote: post #62
johnfn wrote: post #17

The 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.

You summarize the exact point of the article perfectly: women are paid less not because they have the same job and are paid less, but because they are offered different jobs which pay less. To address sexism we should focus on making sure women have the same opportunities to do the same job that men do, rather than just trying to make sure everyone in a certain job category is paid the same. What about this is embarr…

> they are offered different jobs

?? How about they choose different jobs?

Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

#223

Post by darawk »

johnfn wrote: post #107
darawk wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. The world doesn't need to be designed to produce equality of outcome. Just equality of opportunity. Women may choose to negotiate less, and that's fine. They'll get paid less. If women want to choose to negotiate more, they can do that too, and be paid more. If you want to argue that it's sexist that we socialize women to negotiate less, i'm all for that, though.

> If you want to argue that it's sexist that we socialize women to negotiate less, i'm all for that, though. If that's the road you feel comfortable walking down, I think it's fine to compromise at that point. Regardless of how it happened, the result - women not negotiating - is still the same.

Yes, but how you get there matters. If society is socializing women to negotiate less, that's society's fault and society should try to correct that. If women are simply biologically predisposed to negotiate less, that's nobody's fault and women can try to correct it if they want, or not. But it's not a social, collective problem.

Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

#224

Post by mpweiher »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #145
oldboyFX wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there are biological differences between genders ? For example, is the fact that men tend to negotiate more a social construct, or is it based in biology? Should society tax men for their behavior and redistribute the wealth to women? I'm not arguing for any side by the way. Not sure what to think of this myself.

I think we discount the behavioral effects of testosterone across the board. T is known to increase status-seeking behavior which surely has an influence in career choices.

And risk taking. Assuming more risk on average yields higher returns. There was a study in Germany where under laboratory conditions, women still chose less risky strategies than men and therefore earned around 20% less in the scenarios they tried.

Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

#225

Post by bentruyman »

abritinthebay wrote: post #160
greenshackle2 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 20% of the workforce in tech is women. Less than 20% of students who take the AP Computer Science test are female. [1] So whatever makes women uninterested in programming happens before college. Men are much more thing-oriented than women, who are more people-oriented. The size of the effect is "very large", larger than any other difference in personality [2]. Programming is obviously a thing-oriented activity.…

I agree. I said basically that? The culture problem in tech is not the cause, it’s just the end symptom of many things - including what you’re taking about.

> it’s just the end symptom of many things

I'm not disagreeing, but "systems" is the reason I've often heard in this discussion without ANY real hard data expanding on what these systems precisely are and how they aren't a reflection merely of, let's say, biology. All I see generally when referring to "systems" are anecdotes and high-level conclusions based purely on personal experiences. None of which helps further the discussion. If you can find these systems, prove them, I'll be right there with ya tearing them down.

Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

#226

Post by DanBC »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #140
johnfn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But there's no reason to think that when you consider that jobs generally considered "women's work" require (relatively) less education, or aren't inherently dangerous or physically demanding. There is a glut of supply so the market value of those jobs drops. Consider nursing which is relatively high paying precisely because of the education requirements, specialization, and difficulty of the work. Wages are even ris…

> Consider nursing

But even in nursing we see men being promoted faster than women.

When we ask why there are so few women tech leaders, or women in tech, we're told it's a pipeline problem: not enough women in STEM education.

But that's not the case for nursing. So why do men get promoted over women?

Here are some numbers from England. I've picked midwifery and ambulance staff, because there's some contrast there.

  	Midwives
  	Payband	 Men	Women	Total	Ratio men:women
  	Band 5	 11	2301	2312	0.00:1.00
  	Band 6	 57	18294	18351	0.00:1.00
  	Band 7	 36	4663	4699	0.01:0.99
  	Band 8a	 2	183	185	0.01:0.99
  	Band 8b	 1	31	32	0.03:0.97
  	Band 8c	 2	15	17	0.12:0.88


        Ambulance staff						
  	Payband	 men	women	total	ratio men:women	
  	Band 4	 2222	1479	3701	0.60:0.40
  	Band 5	 5986	4072	10058	0.60:0.40
  	Band 6	 3553	1889	5442	0.65:0.35
  	Band 7	 610	202	812	0.75:0.25
  	Band 8a	 85	25	110	0.77:0.23
  	Band 8b	 49	10	59	0.83:0.17
  	Band 8c	 14	1	15	0.93:0.07
  	Band 8d	 14	1	15	0.93:0.07
http://content.digital.nhs.uk/article/2021/Website-Search?pr...

Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

#227

Post by vacri »

illuminati1911 wrote: post #139
sgt101 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While I never said societies should implement full 100% free market capitalism, all the problems that you mentioned cannot exists in that system. Free uninterrupted competition will destroy people/companies overpricing their services or force them to compete as well => lower their prices. Basically, offering poor/expensive service in capitalist system will naturally invite competition until the optimal price/value po…

> Basically, offering poor/expensive service in capitalist system will naturally invite competition until the optimal price/value point has been reached.

If all the farmers form a cartel, where does this mythical competitor come from? Farmland is a limited resource. And food doesn't just magically appear the day you start a new farm.

Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

#228

Post by rayiner »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #184
oldboyFX wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that Swedish kindergartens and schools make sure not to force gender roles on children. Isn't that a big thing in Sweden? Perhaps money is still a better motivator than gender equal society.

> I thought that Swedish kindergartens and schools make sure not to force gender roles on children The problem is, even if they didn't do that what about parents who grew up thinking that and then project it on their kids? What about TV and other media consumption that shows stereotypical roles? It's hard to account for and eliminate all types of gender roles because many are more subtle and / or "normal" to most peo…

Watching their moms also has a major influence. My wife works long hours as a lawyer. Our daughter role played the other day having a baby, handing it over to me (the au pair) and going to work.

Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

#229

Post by rayiner »

reefoctopus wrote: post #221
dionidium wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"These are four year olds, they have no preferences. It's purely parents projecting gender roles onto their kids." Without litigating this specific case in any detail, I just want to argue more generally that of course 4-year-olds (and much younger) have gender-based preferences and that there is loads of research confirming this. It's remarkable that this is considered even remotely controversial.

This is the monthly thread where everybody pretends that testosterone and estrogen don't exist.

It's not that testosterone and estrogen don't exist. It's the conceptual leap that testosterone and estrogen explain why women go into one work field versus another. Especially when those proportions vary dramatically across countries. (Do Iranian women, where the majority of STEM majors are women, have different estrogen than American women?).

Re: When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

#230

Post by vacri »

nilkn wrote: post #151
hypersoar wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That graphic assumes that doctors work 59.6 hours per week, which sounds like a number pulled from somewhere, and that teachers work 40 hours per week, which sounds like they're assuming a "standard" work week. But that only makes sense if you assume teachers barely work more than the school day itself, which seems implausible. It also assumes that teachers work 38 weeks per year. That would mean a 3.5-month summer b…

My SO is a high school teacher and it's actually pretty close to reality for her. She has had the entire summer off and still has over two weeks left before she goes back to work. During the school year, she probably does average more than 40 hours per week, but the excess is flexible and often done at her convenience and at home. That's quite a bit better than a 3AM emergency call to the operating room. And it's nev…

> That's quite a bit better than a 3AM emergency call to the operating room.

We need to quit with this idea that all doctors are either emergency physicians or emergency surgeons. Most doctors are not that.

And does anyone really believe that if teachers worked just a few more hours per week, they'd all be driving maseratis?

Post reply on HN