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Nevertheless, She Coded

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Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#261
post #208

I really wish they would quit promulgating this because it's actually counterproductive: "women face continued pay disparity" Seeing this statement tells me immediately that the author is grinding an ax. In some fields of engineering (EE, for example), women actually get paid more (104% last I checked). And, when you control for experience, time off for family, etc., pay disparities in most tech fields almost disappe…

I'd be curious where you got that 104% number. Here's a source saying woman make 1-6% less in tech[0]. Here's one saying ~28%[1] among programmers.

Based on my casual research, the correct answer to "what's the gender pay gap" is to sidetrack into a half-hour discussion on what you're controlling for and whether it's appropriate to control for that.

For example, professions where flexible schedules are rare see the wage gap grow for women between their 20s and 30s (compared to professions where flexible schedules are more common). This is likely because that's around the age where people have children and women are expected to handle a disproportionate measure of childrearing duties.

Is that something you try to control for? If you're looking for direct, hiring-manager-discriminating-against-you sexism, then yes, you control for it. If you're looking for the wide variety of subtle ways women are discriminated against, you don't.

From what I've found, if you're looking for the sort of direct sexism of hiring managers paying less to _exactly_ the same person for _exactly_ the same work, you come out with a 3-10% wage gap.

If, on the other hand, you're looking for the wide variety of systematic ways women are prevented from getting equal pay, you get 10-30%. Some of those ways can be addressed at the individual level, some at the company level, and some at the societal level.

[0] http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/gender-pay-gap/women-i... [1] http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-0323-pay...

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#262
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If men become doctors and women become nurses, or if men become Software Engineers and women become Test Engineers, then there's still something wrong with the world. "Adjusting for profession" ignores the cultural context of terms like "pay gap" -- we come from a world where women couldn't work certain jobs at all.

> If men become doctors and women become nurses, or if men become Software Engineers and women become Test Engineers, then there's still something wrong with the world. Imagine that doctors and nurses were paid the same. Would you still think that? Other than salary, neither being a doctor or a nurse is "better". One is more technical, the other involves more personal contact, but neither of those is better, just dif…

This is sarcasm, right?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#263
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... your response to finding an uncorrected variable in the study (which I don't see the value of, honestly, given that tech workers are near-uniformly salaried in this country) is to go out and cherry pick a "correction" from an entirely unrelated study that confirms your worldview? Who's quoting misleading statistics now? Yeah, I've gone through and scanned that BLS report you linked to (actually you didn't, you…

> Which is to say: Women are more likely to work part time jobs. Please stop trying to mislead people. From your link on the very first page: > However, even among full-time workers (those usually working 35 hours or more per week), men worked longer than women—8.2 hours compared with 7.8 hours. (See table 4.) Like I said this is an ~5% difference. If you don't like this particular study the results have been replica…

Can someone start a "no overtime for equality" campaign?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#264
post #173

If ever I had a notion that an expression of solidarity for women in tech was unnecessary or quixotic, the response to this article on this very forum would be sufficient to dispel it.

From what I've seen, there are less African-American and non-white hispanic men in tech than there are white and Asian women, yet I never see this discussed. Is this not an important issue as well? Will skewed racial ratios only be handled after gender parity has been achieved? Or do they not matter at all?

Sure, it's important.

In the meantime, I note that you could have chosen, in response to a post on International Women's Day, to show appreciation to black _women_ and latina _women_ in tech, and recognize the issues that they face on all of these fronts. You chose not to do so. Hence it seems to me like your purpose here might be to draw attention away from those women, because you don't think they need your support or solidarity. Was that your intent?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#265

The grandstanding is corny at best. Take the first example: > Despite continued assaults on the credibility of her contributions to modern computer science as the world’s first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace coded. Yet in reality she was very much respected in her day, and despite her challenges received widespread support. The first "assaults" on her scope of her contributions came over 100 after her death, and n…

Because it's somewhat a cross cultural and cross racial issue --that is women don't only get the lower hand among white men (in given industries, sectors), but also non-white women are also disincentivized within/among other "races" and cultures, so it's a pan-human issue. women are ~50% of the pop across all races and cultures (sometimes less so due to active pop. suppression).

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has to "attempt to divide the genders." Women have already been subjected to this in colonial and imperial countries for at least thousands of years. What you see as an "attempt at dividing" is more accurately the article showing you reality while you dismiss it.

Yea, reading this comment just a week after Susan Fowler's post on her experiences at Uber is surreal. It's not the ones complaining about this stuff who are "dividing the genders".

People who claim that 'women earn 77 cents on the dollar as compared to men' - when studies overwhelmingly show that this is false when taking into consideration roles and hour etc. - are definitely 'dividing genders'.

Pay equity debates require nuance. Most of those promoting the issue seem to fail to grasp that.

That there are some sexist pigs in the world (ie. some guy at Uber), does not make the world full of sexist pigs. It doesn't necessarily even make Uber full of them, although it's more plausible.

Almost all politicians involved in the issue are divisive, because that's what gets them attention, and riles up the base.

Watch some of the 'not popular' politicians do interviews on the news. They are refreshingly reasonable. On all sides.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#267
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're building a strawman. No one is calling for "a Utopia-esque society where there is perfect freedom of choice [and] perfectly equal distributions of any sort." One does not need to call for that in order to find the current representation of women in engineering/CS lower than desirable. Continuing on the theme of using the sources presented in this thread: do you find it more likely that Google's worldwide tech…

oh please, google did their own study. They want to hire more females than any company but the conclusion was that there aren't enough women in the engineering pipeline. So yea, the more likely reason is C) Women don't want to become engineers as much as men do, for whatever (social/biological/cultural) reason

And they hate being doctors too. Except they don't. And deconstruction of what was a frankly pervasive culture of sexism in medicine and law has resulted in much higher participation of the second sex in these fields.

Willful blindness is what it is.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>pay disparities in most tech fields almost disappear. So what you're saying is there are pay disparities in most tech fields. Aka, women face continued pay disparity.

It's a hard sell to say someone "faces" something when they're on the better end of it.

>In some fields of engineering (EE, for example), women actually get paid more (104% last I checked).

As you can see, you disagree with the commenter I was responding to. They think women only get paid more in "some" fields, not most.

The original comment is both inconsistent with itself, and your comment.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#269

Don't recruiters keep stats on the offers and demographics that people get? I had heard wage gap wasn't an accurate disparity in software engineering jobs. Like there isnt a cabal of people at every company conspiring against equally qualified candidates based on gender. In HIRED's report it seemed more common that people underbid themselves, and more often than not the company still gave people higher offers if they…

> In HIRED's report it seemed more common that people underbid themselves, and more often than not the company still gave people higher offers if they had underbid but these were still lower offers than for people that bid higher or overbid.

It's not PC to suggest that the source of the problem may be with women themselves and their interests.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If men become doctors and women become nurses, or if men become Software Engineers and women become Test Engineers, then there's still something wrong with the world. Imagine that doctors and nurses were paid the same. Would you still think that? Other than salary, neither being a doctor or a nurse is "better". One is more technical, the other involves more personal contact, but neither of those is better, just dif…

This is sarcasm, right?

"Higher skill" would be a better description, although I'd say the gap is a lot smaller with test engineers than nurses.
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