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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

#161

Post by rayiner »

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…

> 3. Women tend to choose lower paying jobs, such as teacher, caregiver etc. In general women tend to care about people while men care about things (STEM). Again: biology or social construct

Social construct. Look at Asian countries that by all accounts have less gender quality than the west but have more women science graduates. India is double the U.K. on that metric.

The fact that Sweden has skewed representation doesn't capture what I call the "princesses and fairies" problem. Just because society doesn't explicitly discriminate against women doesn't mean that it's not telling women that they should be interested in princesses and fairies instead of legos. My daughter, four, is the only one of a few girls in the STEM programs I signed her up for at summer camp. This is entirely parents projecting gender norms onto their kids.

My mom grew up in bangladesh in the 1960s. She majored in chemistry as did several of her sisters. The expectation was that an upper class woman would be educated so she could marry well, not for work. But the western gender norm about women being suited for certain professions doesn't exist.

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

#162

Post by oldboyFX »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #104
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" That is not what the article said. 2. "women in general are more agreeable than men" ??? 3. "women tend to care about people while men care about things" ???

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

"For example, women are often found to be more agreeable than men (Feingold, 1994; Costa et al., 2001). This means that women, on average, are more nurturing, tender-minded, and altruistic more often and to a greater extent than men."

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

#163

Post by ashark »

UncleMeat wrote: post #119
darawk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point is that the way society systematically undervalues women-dominated professions is sexism at work. What? Can you explain how that is possible? As far as I know, people value things according to what value they obtain from them. There is no way for that to be 'sexist'. People are paid according to the value they produce. To call that sexist is just completely inconsistent with any reasonable conceptio…

Pay and prestige of educators has diminished as it has become more female dominated. This is a pattern seen across many industries when they shift from male dominated to female dominated. This suggests that there is a relationship between gender distributions in a job and its prestige and value given by society. Not all jobs have direct "money in, money out" relations that you can use to judge value. This opens the d…

Has prestige also dropped for doctors and lawyers? They're not professions dominated by women AFAIK, but women've become quite well represented in them since the ~mid 80s, so one might expect to see this effect there.

I know job prospects aren't as hot for lawyers as they once were[1], but it's still one of very few professions that I'd expect to reliably make someone's parents' eyebrows go up and an "oh!" issue from their mouth on hearing their kid's dating one, ya know? So the prestige is still there, unless I've missed something. And doctors are doctors, so certainly in that category, too. I really doubt "software developer" automatically gains one anywhere near as much social capital, in general company and without further favorable details/context.

[1] as you correctly wrote, "Not all jobs have direct 'money in, money out' relations that you can use to judge value."

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

#164

Post by hackinthebochs »

haikuginger wrote: post #112
darawk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that is an explanation I can get behind. I think that there is a degree to which society socializes women to prefer lower paid jobs. That I think is absolutely legitimate. But the idea that sexism causes us to value those jobs less is, I think, absurd.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over...

That's such a silly article. There are so many confounding factors as to make any attempt at determining causation specious. Women's employment rate grew massively over that time period. This means that jobs requiring no specialized skills would receive an influx of job seekers. If we assume the employment rate of men stayed the same over that period, we would expect all jobs that require no specialized skills or physical demands would reduce in wages as the demand for those jobs increased. As far as computer programming goes, it literally was a clerical job early on. Wages rose as the job started requiring more specialized skills (which apparently women couldn't or didn't want to get).

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

#165

Post by jackmott »

oDot wrote: post #5

Relevant remark by John Carmack (ignore the poor YouTube title): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzmbW4ueGdg

There is apparently a woman working for them now doing some of the hard Vulkan stuff nobody else wants to do, per John's tweets lately.

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

#166

Post by ordu »

darawk wrote: post #22
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.

> The whole point is that the way society systematically undervalues women-dominated professions is sexism at work. What? Can you explain how that is possible? As far as I know, people value things according to what value they obtain from them. There is no way for that to be 'sexist'. People are paid according to the value they produce. To call that sexist is just completely inconsistent with any reasonable conceptio…

> As far as I know, people value things according to what value they obtain from them.

Yes. But I think you miss one point. People are not rational beings (even trained ones are not), and "value they obtained" is a result of some psychological process which is not strictly rational. And if people estimate value obtained from employee by sex of that employee, it would be not surprising at all.

> To call that sexist is just completely inconsistent with any reasonable conception of economics to my understanding.

Conception of economics is a theory. Reality is something different, theory is just simplified description of reality. Theory is much more formal, more simple and more understandable. Theory exists only in human mind as some entity of informational nature, while reality... well, reality is just a reality. Theory offers us laws that works in most cases. Or more precise, that laws works while axioms postulated by theory are fulfilled. But reality just works, it does not follow our laws and rules, it just works somehow.

No absolute truth exists. Every one axiom sometimes is not true. In a case when axioms are not true, theory becomes unreliable. If you think to rely on laws of some theory, then first you should check whether all relevant axioms are fullfilled in your case.

People use word "economics" and mean either theory or reality depending on context. This leads to confusion and inability to see the difference. Train youself to separate theory and reality on every occasion, try every time to use different words for theory and reality and you'll become immune to such mistakes.

As I undestand such a theory as economics, "people value things according to what value they obtain from them" itself is axiom. Here you see some case where axiom is false: its just a matter of fact. So reality and theory are different here substantially. You should choose some other theory to deal with such situation.

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

#167

Post by oldboyFX »

rayiner wrote: post #161
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…

> 3. Women tend to choose lower paying jobs, such as teacher, caregiver etc. In general women tend to care about people while men care about things (STEM). Again: biology or social construct Social construct. Look at Asian countries that by all accounts have less gender quality than the west but have more women science graduates. India is double the U.K. on that metric. The fact that Sweden has skewed representation…

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.

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

#168

Post by greenshackle2 »

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.

You said that:

> The level of drop outs of women in tech due to this is very high.

But if that were true I'd expect women would be underrepresented in tech compared to AP Comp Sci. As it is they are slightly over-represented.

If you have clearer evidence on that point I'd like to see it. I've heard convincing anecdotes of women dropping out because of sexism but I find it hard to reconcile with the data.

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

#169

Post by rch »

abritinthebay wrote: post #122
rch wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should at least consider the possibility that intelligent, charismatic women may not be as willing to pursue 'STEM roles' as equivalently advantaged men. If someone is able to teach occasional yoga classes, do little PR work, and still travel internationally 3 months out of the year... who is to say that is less desirable than a full-time, higher paying job?

I did consider that. It’s directly addressed in my comment.

I read your comment as supporting the idea that women forgo STEM roles due to gender-specific negative pressure (certainly true in some cases), while I'm suggesting (also) that some may be choosing different career paths to achieve more fulfilling lifestyles than STEM offers at its best.

Apologies if I'm interpreting you incorrectly.

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

#170

Post by throwaway2229 »

hacknat wrote: post #131

Personally I think the biggest caveat avoided "when job differences are accounted for" is the care of children. Women, by-and-large, really get hosed with the negative externalities of having children (time off, career halting, etc). Most Western countries are not generous or equitable by half, and the USA is downright savage.

Sure, women who take time off to raise kids will take a hit to income. In a married family, the husband compensates. If the woman is unmarried, she gets child support/alimony to make up the difference. So, either you're arguing that child support/alimony is too low, or that married couples get hosed with the externality of having children. This is recognized in law, and people with children get tax deductions, and if they don't earn enough, they get government provided healthcare, food stamps, WIC, housing assistance, etc. On the other hand, the married couple gets the joy of raising children, the satisfaction of contributing to the next generation, and hopefully someone to look after them when they're old. You can argue that this isn't an equal trade between society and parents, but it's not an issue of male/female discrimination.
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