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Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#301

Post by esarbe »

fasdetwaew wrote: post #223
NotAnEconomist wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to both discriminate against men, yet have more men in the workforce, if women voluntarily are choosing not to enter a profession. In fact, that seems to be the problem: no amount of discrimination against men resolves that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to what men do, but the only policy lever that can really be utilized is discrimination at various stages of education o…

> that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to what men do Why is that, though? Are women not encouraged to pursue technology careers? Or are they being encouraged to chose other careers instead? Are they driven away from it by a toxic work place culture? Or just the perception of tech as having toxic workplace cultures? Are women moving into roles with more flexibility because they are expec…

You might find this an interesting read.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

Quote:

The upshot of this research is neither especially feminist nor especially sad: It’s not that gender equality discourages girls from pursuing science. It’s that it allows them not to if they’re not interested.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#302

Post by fasdetwaew »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #259
fasdetwaew wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to what men do Why is that, though? Are women not encouraged to pursue technology careers? Or are they being encouraged to chose other careers instead? Are they driven away from it by a toxic work place culture? Or just the perception of tech as having toxic workplace cultures? Are women moving into roles with more flexibility because they are expec…

Or... may I dare to suggest they simply don't like it? I used to work at school. Not for a long time, but enough to make some observations. One of them: school kids are passionate. If they're interested in something, no amount of persuasion, toxicity or whatever else will distract them.

That's certainly a possibility. In fact, maybe most people wouldn't enjoy a career in STEM.

Or, like another commented suggested, maybe something about STEM appeals to men disproportionately.

If I had to guess, it's probably a combination of multiple factors. STEM isn't for everyone. But at a young age, more men are encouraged to pursue it. The high salary of tech jobs might attract men more than women, if men face more pressure to make a lot of money. Now you have a male dominated industry. And that starts to self perpetuate. Young boys see role models and women don't. Women outnumbered in male dominated workplaces become subject to more harassment. STEM starts to become a "man" thing, and less women feel like pursuing the career, especially when there are so many other occupations that seem more interesting. I think that's a plausible explanation for how we got to where we are today.

But nobody knows for sure. My point is, biology shouldn't be the default answer whenever we see gender gaps.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#303

Post by rtkwe »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #263
rdtsc wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace. Yeah, I am not sure what to think of the data. It's not what I would expect. How is US, Canada, Austria having such a large gender wage gap, followed by Canada. Then Greece, Bulgaria and Romania are all the way on the left. Having lived in Eastern Europe, I would not consider it overall a bastion of women's equality…

The explanation is simple. When you provide women the opportunity to become anything they want. They choose the careers that they choose. Which tend to me more social related careers. Teaching or nursing for example does not scale well; therefore salaries are limited. Whereas men pick more "stuff" categories. It's men who work in STEM creating things. A car or an iphone is going to be generally speaking men who desig…

The 'people just choosing different careers' throws a lot of inequality under a rug and calls the problem solved.

1) If we tell women their whole childhood that some jobs are for men and some are for women and vice versa for men then ask them when they turn 18 what job they want we'll get horrendously unequal outcomes even though people are completely free to choose.

2) Valuation of jobs is based partially on the view of the value of the work in addition to the actual value provided. e.g. there's huge amount of societal gain to be reaped by providing better education to our children but various forces keeps the wages to teachers depressed relative to the gains to be had from providing smaller classrooms. In a more solid sense it's much harder to evaluate the value provided by a better elementary school teacher because most of the metrics for success are either years in the future (wages, college graduation rates, etc) or tied up in a huge number of other influences.

These kinds of defuse benefit jobs are a lot of what have been traditionally gendered as women's jobs and in the past were just part of the huge unpaid work that women were expected to do and often are unfairly characterized as easier or less educated/lower skilled jobs. There's a whole gendered history tied up in just how we evaluate these jobs and their benefits.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#304

Post by klipt »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #279
roguecoder wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between 2004 and 2014 women received 50.4% of undergrad degrees in STEM fields.

This figure is higher that those cited elsewhere in the discussion thread. Could you provide a source?

https://ngcproject.org/statistics

> Women earned 57.3% of bachelor’s degrees in all fields in 2013 and 50.3% of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#305

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

>> One effect of the adjustments was to create a pronounced imbalance in compensation among lower-level software engineers, one of Google’s largest job groups, with a large number of men identified as being underpaid compared with their female peers.

The article refers throughout to "numbers" rather than "proportions", or "ratios", "percentages" etc, meaning that it is actually a larger absolute number of men rather than a larger relative number of men who are underpaid, compared to women.

Most of google's engineers are men, so even if equal proportions of men and women were underpaid, the absolute number of men being underpaid would be higher.

Google obviously has people good enough with numbers to know this. However, it's perhaps not surprising to see that there seems no mention of it in the above article. Google is, after all, defending a lawsuit by some of its former female software engineers who allege they were underpaid compared to their male peers. There is a clear incentive to allow a certain lapse from google's usual pride in employing people who understand numbers.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#306

Post by camelNotation »

rdtsc wrote: post #199
sleepysysadmin wrote: post #94

The gender wage gap is real in the sense that there is a gap, but when you analyze it, they are comparing apples to oranges. I'm sure everyone here knows this. https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace. Women in Korea are not treated poorly. The important thing though is the people proposing that the wage gap i…

> The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace. Yeah, I am not sure what to think of the data. It's not what I would expect. How is US, Canada, Austria having such a large gender wage gap, followed by Canada. Then Greece, Bulgaria and Romania are all the way on the left. Having lived in Eastern Europe, I would not consider it overall a bastion of women's equality…

This horse has been beaten to death, beaten again, and is now resembling something less than horse-like, but women that are given equal opportunity to pursue any career path they want will choose paths they enjoy instead of paths that offer raw financial gain. Same is true for men too, actually. It just so happens that more women prefer socially oriented jobs like teaching and nursing than men do. It's not complicated. Freedom doesn't mean everyone is equal in every aspect, it just means that everyone can choose what to be instead of being told what to be and - shockingly - not everyone wants to be the same thing.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#307

Post by Will_Parker »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #247
rhegart wrote: post #154

High school, college, any STEM fields are all overwhelmingly biased in terms of favoring women. 57% of college graduates are women. Men are not only getting the short end of the stick but are being told by every voice that they are privileged, it’s their fault, they are bad whereas women have sooooo many extra programs and positive reinforcement to succeed. No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level…

High school, college, any STEM fields are all overwhelmingly biased in terms of favoring women. My daughter who is finishing the primary school has recently asked me if it's okay if she doesn't like math, but likes animals and babies. Sounds like some pressure is being applied...

> Sounds like some pressure is being applied...

Maybe, rightly so? It doesn't matter if you like reading, you need to learn it. For a toddler in 2019, I think coding and some math is getting close to this level of importance.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#308

Post by fasdetwaew »

razorunreal wrote: post #257
fasdetwaew wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to what men do Why is that, though? Are women not encouraged to pursue technology careers? Or are they being encouraged to chose other careers instead? Are they driven away from it by a toxic work place culture? Or just the perception of tech as having toxic workplace cultures? Are women moving into roles with more flexibility because they are expec…

I think you are asking the wrong questions. Why not ask: Why are there so many men in tech? To answer that I would compare it to a field like finance, where people are well paid and over worked. I think the money comes first, then the men, and with them the bro culture. So my hunch is that men will disproportionately do anything for a dollar. And no-one notices because they are busy wondering where the women are.

That's also a possibility. I think men are pressured more to earn a lot of money. The traditional mindset was that women didn't need to be breadwinners.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#309

Post by sleepysysadmin »

dgzl wrote: post #246
sleepysysadmin wrote: post #94

The gender wage gap is real in the sense that there is a gap, but when you analyze it, they are comparing apples to oranges. I'm sure everyone here knows this. https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace. Women in Korea are not treated poorly. The important thing though is the people proposing that the wage gap i…

> The important thing though is the people proposing that the wage gap is a problem has a solution. They are pushing equality of outcome. That's not a solution, that's another problem.

Exactly my point.

The mcdonalds cashier should not be compensated the same as someone like a neuroscientist.

If we get replicators invented and everyone can have whatever they please like in star trek. We still don't need communism. Capitalism will still work, stuff will just be free but if you want a PERSON to do something you still would need to pay.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#310

Post by kakwa_ »

rhegart wrote: post #154

High school, college, any STEM fields are all overwhelmingly biased in terms of favoring women. 57% of college graduates are women. Men are not only getting the short end of the stick but are being told by every voice that they are privileged, it’s their fault, they are bad whereas women have sooooo many extra programs and positive reinforcement to succeed. No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level…

I'm not talking for the US but for what I experienced in France.

In France there is a dedicated system for engineering studies (Classes preparatoires + Grandes Ecoles).

You do 2 years of intensive Math and Physics (classe preparatoire), than pass a ranking exam, then go to the school of your choice provided you ranked high enough to get into this specific school.

Basically, the ratio was 1/3 women 2/3 men at the "classe preparatoire" stage, and overall it's the ratio for engineer when all specialties are mixed together.

But then you have disparities between fields, CS schools get between 10 to 15% of women while Chemistry is about 50%, other fields like Electronic, Civil Engineering, Applied Physics are roughly in the average of 30%. Only the schools to become a military officer have an higher disparity than CS (and the air branch is actually in the same area).

For those who can read French (or have the courage to decipher) the statistics are available here:

* http://www.scei-concours.fr/stat2018/mp.html (math dominant)

* http://www.scei-concours.fr/stat2018/pc.html (physic dominant)

* http://www.scei-concours.fr/stat2018/psi.html (technic and mechanic dominant)

(Hint: CS == Informatique (often abbreviated to "Info")

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