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Study shows salaries of young women 8% higher than men in peer group (2010)

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Re: Study shows salaries of young women 8% higher than men in peer group (2010)

#11

Post by adrianN »

camelite wrote: post #6

If we could solve the gender pay gap for working mothers, computer programmers, machine-shop workers, and other jobs where men still earn more, we might finally be able to celebrate equality between the sexes.

The adjusted gender pay gap is only a couple of percent. Maybe that can simply be explained by different behavior between men and women and is not evidence for discrimination. For example male Uber drivers earn 7% more than female drivers even though the algorithm doesn't distinguish by sex [1]. Should we force Uber to pay women 7% more to adjust for this fact?

[1] https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/UberPayGap.pdf

Re: Study shows salaries of young women 8% higher than men in peer group (2010)

#12

Post by J-dawg »

the_grue wrote: post #8
Malarkey73 wrote: post #7

"He attributes the earnings reversal overwhelmingly to one factor: education. For every two guys who graduate from college or get a higher degree, three women do." It's interesting itself that more women graduate than men. But equal pay means equal pay for people with similar qualifications doing similar jobs. This comparison means nothing to me.

Exactly. The word "peers" in the title implies comparison between people with a similar background (education, industry, etc). But it seems the actual study just compares the average salary of all single, young, childless women vs the average salary of all single, young, childless men across the economy.

So it's making exactly the same mistake as studies that compare the average salary of all working-age women with the average salary of all working-age men, and then declare a "gender pay gap" of 20% (or whatever).

Re: Study shows salaries of young women 8% higher than men in peer group (2010)

#13

Post by zingmars »

camelite wrote: post #6

If we could solve the gender pay gap for working mothers, computer programmers, machine-shop workers, and other jobs where men still earn more, we might finally be able to celebrate equality between the sexes.

Do you have actual documentation proving that men in these fields earn more than their female peers in same job function working the same hours?

Re: Study shows salaries of young women 8% higher than men in peer group (2010)

#14

Post by rectang »

adrianN wrote: post #11
camelite wrote: post #6

If we could solve the gender pay gap for working mothers, computer programmers, machine-shop workers, and other jobs where men still earn more, we might finally be able to celebrate equality between the sexes.

The adjusted gender pay gap is only a couple of percent. Maybe that can simply be explained by different behavior between men and women and is not evidence for discrimination. For example male Uber drivers earn 7% more than female drivers even though the algorithm doesn't distinguish by sex [1]. Should we force Uber to pay women 7% more to adjust for this fact? [1] https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/UberPayGap.pdf

> The adjusted gender pay gap is only a couple of percent.

This suggests where the best opportunities for improvement lie: equalizing parental leave (so that the parental career penalty is distributed more equitably), decoupling health insurance from employment (to lower costs on business for parental leave), and so on.

Re: Study shows salaries of young women 8% higher than men in peer group (2010)

#15

Post by nukeop »

There's no perceptible gap in wages between almost any pair of social groups, provided we compare only similar roles. This has been solved by the market years ago.

We still need more wage transparency. Companies should be required to publicly list all wages, because lack of transparency is detrimental to the workers.

Re: Study shows salaries of young women 8% higher than men in peer group (2010)

#16

Post by kristianc »

nukeop wrote: post #15

There's no perceptible gap in wages between almost any pair of social groups, provided we compare only similar roles. This has been solved by the market years ago. We still need more wage transparency. Companies should be required to publicly list all wages, because lack of transparency is detrimental to the workers.

In the UK, that is already in progress - https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/06/gender-pay-g...

Re: Study shows salaries of young women 8% higher than men in peer group (2010)

#17

Post by carlmr »

J-dawg wrote: post #12
the_grue wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The word "peers" in the title implies comparison between people with a similar background (education, industry, etc). But it seems the actual study just compares the average salary of all single, young, childless women vs the average salary of all single, young, childless men across the economy.

So it's making exactly the same mistake as studies that compare the average salary of all working-age women with the average salary of all working-age men, and then declare a "gender pay gap" of 20% (or whatever).

I was thinking the same. The study is stupid, but for the same reason any of the women's pay gap studies in the last few years fall short. Comparing apples and oranges is the new science.

Re: Study shows salaries of young women 8% higher than men in peer group (2010)

#18

Post by vonmoltke »

Malarkey73 wrote: post #7

"He attributes the earnings reversal overwhelmingly to one factor: education. For every two guys who graduate from college or get a higher degree, three women do." It's interesting itself that more women graduate than men. But equal pay means equal pay for people with similar qualifications doing similar jobs. This comparison means nothing to me.

> But equal pay means equal pay for people with similar qualifications doing similar jobs.

Not according to the UK government: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/gender-pay-gap-reporting-overvie...

Re: Study shows salaries of young women 8% higher than men in peer group (2010)

#19

Post by fwdpropaganda »

mrweasel wrote: post #10
Malarkey73 wrote: post #7

"He attributes the earnings reversal overwhelmingly to one factor: education. For every two guys who graduate from college or get a higher degree, three women do." It's interesting itself that more women graduate than men. But equal pay means equal pay for people with similar qualifications doing similar jobs. This comparison means nothing to me.

Sadly "equal pay" means whatever you want it to mean. At some point the nurses union in Denmark argued that their education was roughly the same length as that of an engineer, so they should be paid the same on that basic. Completely ignoring that engineers spend five years at the university vs. the 3.5 years for nursing school and that engineers are pay wildly different salaries bases on their field of work. In my m…

> Sadly "equal pay" means whatever you want it to mean.

Exactly this. At a fundamental level every individual has an infinite number of "dimensions" (in ML parlance) associated with him, and "equal pay" people or groups will try and convince you that expected pay should be the same over a certain subset of dimensions while ignoring all the others. Invariably they will pick the most beneficial to that particular person or influence group. They will give you arguments from moral, while forgetting to mention that like in any midly complex problem, data bias and confounding variables are of paramount importance.

So "equal pay" means whatever you want it to mean because try and you may, you will never have a model with the full infinite set of dimensions that the real world has. Having to pick you pick the ones you want, a choice that others will attack.

Re: Study shows salaries of young women 8% higher than men in peer group (2010)

#20

Post by stdbrouw »

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #19
mrweasel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly "equal pay" means whatever you want it to mean. At some point the nurses union in Denmark argued that their education was roughly the same length as that of an engineer, so they should be paid the same on that basic. Completely ignoring that engineers spend five years at the university vs. the 3.5 years for nursing school and that engineers are pay wildly different salaries bases on their field of work. In my m…

> Sadly "equal pay" means whatever you want it to mean. Exactly this. At a fundamental level every individual has an infinite number of "dimensions" (in ML parlance) associated with him, and "equal pay" people or groups will try and convince you that expected pay should be the same over a certain subset of dimensions while ignoring all the others. Invariably they will pick the most beneficial to that particular perso…

A heuristic in which you refuse to undertake any action without complete information of perfect reliability is always biased towards the status quo. Heck, it's straight from the CIA Simple Sabotage Field Manual. So in the guise of "first needing to understand the complexities of the problem", you are rationalizing away the preponderance of evidence which shows that, yep, any way you cut it, there's a gender wage gap.
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