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

economist.com

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

#231

Post by forapurpose »

soneca wrote: post #202
oldboyFX wrote: post #11

Still not sure what to believe on this issue. Some points of discussion are (unrelated to article): 1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? 2. Women are less likely to negotiate salary and assert themselves, as women in general are more agreeable than men. Is this behavior based in biology or is…

> 1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? I believe this is a very weird ponderation. The whole point is that capitalists don't do that because there is sexism among them. They are ignoring rational evidence because they have a preconceived idea that women are worse employees. If capitalists were…

Great point. I'd add:

> they werent because they were racists

It's more complex than that, and it's important to understand the mechanisms: My poor understanding is that racism was (and is to a great degree) a social norm, and as social science and life experience will tell you, humans are hardwired to follow social norms. Think of the common phenomenon of large numbers believing the same erroneous fact (as an easy example, in matters of science) - did they all coincidentally reach the same conclusion, or just follow the norm of their social networks. We unconsciously accept and assume norms, we hardly notice them (they are the everyday 'normal', after all), and to challenge them is to make yourself an outcast, which is dangerous and against human nature. Who even wants to be the only one going against the group in a meeting, much less challenging centuries of culture and your entire community?

I'm not excusing the actions of those team owners at all. But I would guess that there were a few advocates of racial discrimination and many who went along with the established norm. To veer OT: IMHO, standing up to those norms is a responsibility of all of us - if you silently acquiesce, you support them as norms in everyone else's eyes. By speaking you may not change the world by yourself, but consider how it looks from someone else who is questioning the 'norm' in their mind but afraid to speak up, just like you: Seeing one other person speaking out may look insufficient, but it's leaves a far stronger impression than if nobody says a thing, and that one person is more likely to yield two or three speaking out next time.

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

#232

Post by Quanttek »

ringaroundthetx wrote: post #53
oldboyFX wrote: post #11

Still not sure what to believe on this issue. Some points of discussion are (unrelated to article): 1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? 2. Women are less likely to negotiate salary and assert themselves, as women in general are more agreeable than men. Is this behavior based in biology or is…

HIRED has a report out which reveals demographics on what the employees themselves ask for, and what employers offered them. It reveals, as in a piece of data that wasn't typically part of the conversation, that some groups ask for less to begin with while the employer offers them more. But this 'more' amount is still less than employees that asked for more than that to begin with. The average of black candidates, an…

> Much of the discussion seems to place a blame squarely on employers, describing a cabal of shadowy prejudiced men in the board room ensuring someone gets 30% less or 30% more just because

Nobody says that. It's the larger society, which also teaches black people and women to ask for less

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

#233

Post by darawk »

prostoalex wrote: post #200
bllguo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goodness, man. Stating facts is not sexist. > Some are inclined and some are not. That is what "generally" implies, yes. There is an argument that women are generally less inclined to negotiate due to the effects of sexism.

http://news.ufl.edu/archive/2015/04/why-everything-youve-hea... "Miller and Douglas discovered that women who had experience with successful negotiation were superior negotiators to men, even when they rated themselves as only average negotiators."

What's being discussed is not skill at negotiating, but predilection for it.

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

#234

Post by civilian »

deno wrote: post #220
soneca wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? I believe this is a very weird ponderation. The whole point is that capitalists don't do that because there is sexism among them. They are ignoring rational evidence because they have a preconceived idea that women are worse employees. If capitalists were…

And your model only requires that all men are equally sexist. There are, believe it or not, women entrepreneurs (and btw the very conservative Poland is leading the rankings[1]), so even if all male employers were in fact equally sexist, that would just mean female-led companies would out-compete them. [1] http://wbj.pl/poland-high-in-global-women-entrepreneur-leade...

As long as we're playing with thought-experiments, soneca could just say: "oh no, women have internalize misogyny too". Which is kind of backed up by research? (I remember reading an article about how female Principal Investigators tended to be biased against female grad student applicants? Couldn't find it in a few minutes of googling.)

But you're right, there should be _some_ data-driven company with an analyst that would say something like: "Oh hey. We're getting as much productivity out of men and women, but the women are cheaper. Let's keep one guy on to manage and interrupt them and fire the rest."

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

#235

Post by micahbright »

soneca wrote: post #202
oldboyFX wrote: post #11

Still not sure what to believe on this issue. Some points of discussion are (unrelated to article): 1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? 2. Women are less likely to negotiate salary and assert themselves, as women in general are more agreeable than men. Is this behavior based in biology or is…

> 1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? I believe this is a very weird ponderation. The whole point is that capitalists don't do that because there is sexism among them. They are ignoring rational evidence because they have a preconceived idea that women are worse employees. If capitalists were…

You didn't consider that men who are less sexist, or not sexist, would have an advantage in the market. Your mental model requires you to generalize all men as equally and utterly sexist in order to work. Does that seem realistic?

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

#236

Post by siliconc0w »

oldboyFX wrote: post #11

Still not sure what to believe on this issue. Some points of discussion are (unrelated to article): 1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? 2. Women are less likely to negotiate salary and assert themselves, as women in general are more agreeable than men. Is this behavior based in biology or is…

"The logical solution would be to increase pay in women dominated professions. But this kind of thing spits in the face of capitalism."

The problem is that "thing" work often scales better than linearly while "people" work does not. You can't really socially engineer yourself out of that reality.

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

#237

Post by reefoctopus »

rayiner wrote: post #229
reefoctopus wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?).

It sounds like Iran is suffering from a terrible gender imbalance in STEM majors. Is anything being done to correct this problem?

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

#238

Post by Quanttek »

deno wrote: post #217
Quanttek wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? THis is not how it works. at all. There's not some cabal taht decided they should pay women less. Instead, the larger culture prootes behaviors and attitudes and devalues others that, as a consequence, lead to women getting paid less. Those are unconscious b…

> I find it useful to adapt to other people, and I believe my cultural background is not as important in my work > I find it useful to be different than other people, I believe I can make use of my unique cultural background in my work So the recruiters in that study decided candidates that make an explicit issue of their ethnicity in their CL would not be the perfect fit for a team (they were asked to select for coh…

If you read the study they show that not only is their social/cultural fit assessed more negatively but also their pure performance assessment.

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

#239

Post by Quanttek »

randyrand wrote: post #141
Quanttek wrote: post #135

I hate these kinds of statistics because all they say is "If we discount all the things creating the pay gap, basically no pay gap exists". Industries typically inhabited by women getting paid less? Predominantly male/female industries suddnely decreasing/increasing in average pay when women/men enter it? Women having a lesser likelihood of getting promoted? Women having a lower likelihood of getting hired for higher…

>"If we discount all the things creating the pay gap, basically no pay gap exists" It's called a meritocracy. And its what most people want. People will always want to play the victim card regardless.

So you're saying that women are just worse in everything?

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

#240

Post by rhizome »

oldboyFX wrote: post #11

Still not sure what to believe on this issue. Some points of discussion are (unrelated to article): 1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? 2. Women are less likely to negotiate salary and assert themselves, as women in general are more agreeable than men. Is this behavior based in biology or is…

If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits?

Invert this: what explains capitalists paying women 25% less for the same skills? Why aren't the salaries of men decreased in light of actual proof that the work can be done for less?

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