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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)

#171
post #145

Real life stubbornly resists all attempts to make it more fair . An 8% difference in either direction is acceptable to me. It's good enough to tolerate until it's worth revisiting for further improvements. So now that we have the gender pay gap (almost) sorted out, perhaps we should tackle a problem more likely to cause societal problems: the increasing measures of wealth inequality.

Why is wealth inequality a problem? People should be free to pursue maximum compensation for their skills and abilities, not be limited because they are better at somethings than other people.

I think there is academic work done on this: when there is a lot of inequality, it can lead to social incohesion and instability.

I could be mistaken though.

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

#172

Real life stubbornly resists all attempts to make it more fair . An 8% difference in either direction is acceptable to me. It's good enough to tolerate until it's worth revisiting for further improvements. So now that we have the gender pay gap (almost) sorted out, perhaps we should tackle a problem more likely to cause societal problems: the increasing measures of wealth inequality.

Would you be able to explain why wealth inequality is a societal problem and not actually a feature? I've long heard this but never was convinced

Because at our heart we are monkeys and we're trained to feel 'that's not fair!!' when someone else is doing better than us.

But I agree with you that, for the most part, the rising tide of wealth has raised all ships. Inequality is a natural outgrowth of the massive influx of wealth.

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

#173
post #153
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

You're talking about different groups of women. The women who want to help the world don't usually go into accounting or law (except maybe environmental law or criminal defense), they go into teaching, social work, etc., which generally pay poorly, or they go into medicine, where they can make very good money (probably better than programming) and directly save peoples' lives too. The women who want to make money go into law, accounting, and medicine (some overlap here with the help-the-world group obviously).

>What makes you assume that all women want jobs where they can be social?

This has been shown by research. Women are trained from an early age to be more social than men.

>And what makes you say programming isn't a social job? It requires working with other people as part of a team.

I don't think I need to justify myself here. Most programming involves sitting at a computer and typing, and not in a group in real-time. It also certainly has a reputation for being asocial, though that's changed more recently with the "brogrammer" trend, but not for the better as far as women are concerned. It sure as hell isn't social the way medicine is, where the work is all about meeting one-on-one with patients all day long and working hands-on (usually literally) with them.

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

Well, for the med school rejects, I can't imagine what programming would offer them. They obviously want 1) a high-paying career, 2) to help people hands-on, 3) a social job. Programming might offer 1, and that's it. Women like this will probably fall back to nursing school, or maybe some other career that's more social and less technical than programming.

Really, the only good point you bring up here is that a lot of women go into accounting, since that does indeed seem to have a lot of overlap in career traits with programming.

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

#174
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 that are more social and have better advancement potential and job security, such as medicine (doctors, surgeoons), law, finance, etc. Why isn't this true of men?

It is true of many of them, and they do go into those other fields. IMO, however, there's a lot more "nerdy" personality types among men who are interested in the traits that the programming career offers, and that's why there's so many more men in the field. It is changing, however (see the "brogrammer" trend in the last decade or two), but that, if anything, is pushing women out of the field even more.

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can justify your position "these young women were better prepared and organised than their male counterpart in their 20's". You say that women in their 20s are better at something than men in their 20s. I believe you know this is indefensible and if you would say the reverse you would get kicked out of your job.

If it is true, it implies we need help programs for the young men who are being systematically discrminated against or otherwise oppressed by society. That includes new assistance programs to boost the rate of college graduation, since young men are so badly falling behind there (with projections for it to get much worse yet). Victim blaming would be a common response, to proclaim that it's the fault of these young m…

An alternative explanation, given the difference in numbers here, is that discrimination against women means that the only women remaining in the field are those who are the most competent and well prepared for the job, whereas less competent men are given the benefit of the doubt, and allowed into the same positions.

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

#176
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we should mandate is transparency. We all think we are expert negotiators but we are all idiots. We will all be better off if all salary and all compensation information is public and easily accessible. Sadly, a lot of people think they have something to lose and will never support it.

I don't want my salary to be transparent. There is something called privacy. My salary is a private matter. I really don't believe I'm any kind of expert in negotiation.

> I really don't believe I'm any kind of expert in negotiation.

That means that transparency works _for_ you, not against you.

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

#177
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.

I would argue that the analysis of wages based on different groupings is worthwhile; as long as you don't try to predetermine what you're going to get out of them. This analysis doesn't show us that woman make more given equal background/education/etc. However, it does provide the interesting information that women (of that age group) are generally better educated. If we take out of it the desire to find out why they…

> If we take out of it the desire to find out why they're better educated (and ways we can balance it out), we're better off.

I would argue it is because female-dominated professions tend to have schooling requirements, by law. Male-dominated professions are less apt to.

Anecdotally speaking, I was able to start as a software developer, a male-dominated profession, when I was in high school and soon moved into doing it full time after that. As a result, I do not rank well when measured by my schooling. I later started farming and it did not require schooling either. Both jobs only required the desire to do them. In contrast, a female in my cohort interested in nursing, a female-dominated profession, would legally be prevented from doing so until completing many years of post-secondary schooling. And if that person wants to become a teacher, another female dominated career, later in life even more legal schooling requirements are necessary.

On the assumption that females have more schooling because they have to, in order to pursue the careers they want to do. Is the correction in easing the legal requirements for these jobs, or is the correction to enforce more stringent legal requirements on male-dominated jobs?

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

#178
post #62
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? The Clinton-era FMLA grants 12 weeks unpaid maternity leave. 25 states expand on that, and 25 do not. > Many fathers probably avoid taking so much leave precisely because it does harm their career. Some will take it. If utilization rates are not equal, that's not a reason to withhold the opportunity. > I don't see…

>Some will take it. If utilization rates are not equal, that's not a reason to withhold the opportunity.

I never said it was. However, if it's unpaid leave, it's pretty obvious why many would refuse to take it, or not take as much as is available: they can't afford the lack of pay. How are parents supposed to pay their bills if they're both taking a 12-week unpaid vacation? Health insurance doesn't pay your rent. So it seems pretty obvious that for many couples, the woman (who generally earns less, and also usually breastfeeds) will take all/more leave and stay home, while the man will get back to work so their finances don't take too much of a hit.

Of course, for couples where their employers offer equal and paid parental leave, we might see different results.

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

#179
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot dismiss rigorous statistical analysis by arguing it can never encompass the full dimensions of the data. Of course it can't. The map is not the territory; it is a useful way to find our way around it. Ignoring the map is perilous, if not arrogant, even though it is merely a flawed representation of the real truth. You might argue that a specific study or meta-analysis contains a bias or misinterpretation,…

Isn't that why we have 'replication crisis' in fields that 'can never encompass the full dimensions of the data' Doesn't replication crisis prove 'that all studies of complex topics are invalid simply because their topics are complex.'

Science as a whole has developed knowing that it is impossible to encompass the full dimensions of the data, the goal is to find the best explanation given the available evidence.

The replication crisis is a result of the misuse or misunderstanding of the statistics, and the current nature of journals.

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

#180
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.

You are assuming that the equilibrium assuming complete fairness is 50% women in every profession. Which will simply not be the case (doctors is a good example, the female ratio is more like 60% today). And if it is off in any direction from 50% then the gap cannot be measured ignoring the profession.
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