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

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

#151

Post by SaintGhurka » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 3:14 PM UTC

ghettoimp wrote: post #80

magduf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>equalizing parental leave (so that the parental career penalty is distributed more equitably) If you mean giving the same amount of leave to both fathers and mothers, isn't that already the norm? Also, offering this is one thing, but getting parents to use it is quite another. Many fathers probably avoid taking so much leave precisely because it does harm their career. How would you fix that? >decoupling health insu…

If you mean giving the same amount of leave to both fathers and mothers, isn't that already the norm? In the US it's nowhere close. "The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) requires 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for mothers of newborn or newly adopted children... "California is the first state to offer paid paternity leave weeks (six weeks, partial payment). In the rest of the US, paternity pay weeks are…

>>If you mean giving the same amount of leave to both fathers and mothers, isn't that already the norm?

>In the US it's nowhere close.

I think that wikipedia page has misleading or outdated information in the summary. FMLA leave covers both mothers and fathers equally.

From the Department of Labor: "Both mother and father are entitled to FMLA leave for the birth of their child, or placement with the employee of a child for adoption or foster care."

Bringing up California further confuses the issues, since that is about paid leave whereas FMLA is unpaid. I think the 6 weeks of paid leave in CA comes from the employer-paid disability insurance.

https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/fmla/10a1.aspx

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

#152

Post by Mononokay » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 3:14 PM UTC

door3 wrote: post #142

burntwater wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Women (or whomever is the primary caregiver in a family or does more domestic labor at home) should be paid more for fewer hours in the workplace." Why should anyone be compensated anything for routine life-management work? What you're asking is akin to saying everyone should be paid to sleep. Sleeping, bathing, eating, maintaining the home -- these are all parts of functioning as a human. Taking care of children is…

Because unless you’re an antinatalist, some people having children is socially necessary. If the next generation had no children, society would collapse. Also, many women have unplanned pregnancies.

> Because unless you’re an antinatalist, some people having children is socially necessary. If the next generation had no children, society would collapse. Also, many women have unplanned pregnancies.

And that's the fault of the employer . . . how? If they have a child, it shouldn't be subsidized by their employer. Everyone in the West could abstain from having children for three generations and immigrants would make up the numbers - there's no need for most people to have children.

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

#153

Post by nsgi » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 3:16 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #52

visarga wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even so, there will be few women relative to men taking the programmer career, it's a matter of personal choice. Women have many attractive choices that compete with this one.

Exactly. If a woman is smart enough to be a programmer, she's smart enough for other lucrative professions that are more social and have better advancement potential and job security, such as medicine (doctors, surgeoons), law, finance, etc. A lot of women go into programming because it's been hyped up so much, and then either going into management quickly or leaving the industry because they hate the work and how as…

> If a woman is smart enough to be a programmer, she's smart enough for other lucrative professions

Women get rejected from law and med school too. That doesn't explain why they don't go into software.

> better advancement potential

Plenty of women go into fields without much advancement potential. If your argument is that in programming often the only way to advance is management, then that's also true of the vast majority of jobs, including accountancy which attracts a lot of women.

> job security

Programmers have very good job security compared to a lot of people these days. In particular, doing a law degree is a massive risk given how hard it is to land a traineeship, yet plenty of women still do law degrees.

> that are more social

What makes you assume that all women want jobs where they can be social? And what makes you say programming isn't a social job? It requires working with other people as part of a team. There's not much interaction with customers, but that's also true of a lot of accountancy/other office jobs that have an even gender ratio.

> A lot of women go into programming because it's been hyped up so much, and then either going into management quickly or leaving the industry because they hate the work

That's true of both men and women in teaching.

> and also because they feel like they're not really doing anything to help the world (and in the vast majority of programming jobs, it's true, you aren't).

How many lawyers, accountants, personal assistants or managers are directly doing something to help the world?

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

#154

Post by burntwater » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 3:16 PM UTC

door3 wrote: post #142

burntwater wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Women (or whomever is the primary caregiver in a family or does more domestic labor at home) should be paid more for fewer hours in the workplace." Why should anyone be compensated anything for routine life-management work? What you're asking is akin to saying everyone should be paid to sleep. Sleeping, bathing, eating, maintaining the home -- these are all parts of functioning as a human. Taking care of children is…

Because unless you’re an antinatalist, some people having children is socially necessary. If the next generation had no children, society would collapse. Also, many women have unplanned pregnancies.

Society would shrink, it would not collapse.

Pregnancy is a natural consequence of sex. There's no such thing as a truly unexpected pregnancy. Undesired and unplanned perhaps, but not unexpected. In the event it does happen, there are options for either continuing or ending the pregnancy, I still see no reason why anyone should be compensated for voluntarily choosing to continue the pregnancy.

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

#155

Post by defertoreptar » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 3:17 PM UTC

nerdymanchild wrote: post #78

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.

Quoted post unavailable.

I think about this whenever I hear, "teachers don't get paid enough." It's a noble profession, and there's no doubt about the importance of educating our nation's children... but have you ever heard of a thing called "supply and demand"?

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

#156

Post by Mononokay » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

hackerman12345 wrote: post #135

jabot wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Society needs both nurses and engineers. Yes. And if more people want to become engineers, and if becoming an engineer is easier, then engineers will end up getting less money than nurses. I mean... the more fun a job is, the more people will want to do it despite getting little money, right? > In addition, women are usually the primary caregiver and disproportionately spend more time doing domestic labour (raising…

A good manager is expected to give an easier schedule to someone who is caring for a sick family member, why would it be horrible to give an easier schedule to someone who has to spend a lot of time taking care of a new baby? Biology has already discriminated and made her life hard, should we make it worse? Should we make having children as difficult as possible for our fellow citizens? Paternal leave is important to…

> Biology has already discriminated and made her life hard, should we make it worse?

Her choices made her life hard. She could have not had the child. Biology did not discriminate against her, it gave her a choice. In modern society having children is absolutely a choice, for both parties involved.

You can argue that the government should, which, while I don't at all agree with, is reasonable. It's not reasonable, however, to expect employers to subsidize the cost of having children.

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

#157

Post by IshKebab » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 3:19 PM UTC

kristianc wrote: post #16

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...

I agree this is definitely a move in the right direction but sadly the press has already jumped to conclusions that the data doesn't show.

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

#158

Post by tudelo » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 3:19 PM UTC

cdmcmahon wrote: post #110

cm2187 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that most newspaper are jumping to conclusions, saying that there are discriminations, women not getting the same chances, etc. That might be the case but these studies do not allow to establish that.

If women aren’t having the same access to more lucrative positions or fields that men are, then that is discrimination — in education or the workplace or both. Unless you believe that something about women drives them away from such positions/fields or makes them less qualified in such positions/fields, in which case you are in the Damore camp.

Why can't it be a combination of both, ignoring compensation? Why can't one sex have a higher propensity towards a profession than the other, independent of compensation? It seems to me that it is a complex issue that has a lot more factors than simply discrimination.

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

#159

Post by Mononokay » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

nerdymanchild wrote: post #141

cup-of-tea wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredible to me that so many people think that free markets actually exist.

It does... Look at the website you're on. Ycombinator is an entrepreneurer's forum

America doesn't have a free market - there are too many regulations and laws around it for it to be so.

Look at Bell for an example of how it absolutely isn't a free market.

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

#160

Post by humanrebar » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #33

From what I gather from the article, the study doesn't seem to account for the profession, which would make it as meaningless as other gender gap studies I have seen so far. A banker or lawyer is paid significantly more than a professor or a nurse. So at the end all you are measuring is the difference in salaries between professions rather than the actual gender gap between people with the same qualification and prof…

> ...the study doesn't seem to account for the profession, which would make it as meaningless as other gender gap studies I have seen so far.

Why is it meaningless? It used to be unjust that all doctors and lawyers were men. It was just understood that the wage gap then was downstream from career and employment gaps.