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

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341–350 of 626 posts

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

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe sexual differences cause men and women, on average, to have different interests. edit: thanks for pointing out that I misread which type of pressure is being applied.

That's what the poster meant. She was being pressured to like math; her inherent interest was in animals and babies.

Did you know that men sometimes like babies and animals too? Crazy I know.

What is taught in 4th-5th grade math? Fractions? Decimals? Multiplication and division of larger numbers (maybe the accursed "Long Division")?

These are not exactly the most exciting or interesting things to learn... If I was a parent of this child, I'd take it as a notice that they are falling behind, probably from lousy teaching and parenting. It's not going to get any better by ignoring the problem. They've got another 8+ years of school to go, they aren't even halfway done. You need to show them why they can find it interesting, the same way you would show a student who really loves math why reading/writing is important. Or why history matters... If you just assume a 10 year old can fully decide what their adult self likes/doesn't like and what they need to know, then you are failing as a parent.

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

#342

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...

It's too bad she has to ask what is ok to like.

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

#343

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…

[edited for typos and grammer] Anecdotally, I've run a couple of tech conferences and know others who have as well fairly recently. We've made a point to hold workshops for under represented groups, had the Codes of Conduct, make a lot of extra effort to reach out to women as speakers etc.. In the end, we would get 5 to 10 times as many talk submissions from men, accept nearly all of the talks by women (often turning…

I’ll repeat points that aren’t my original ideas, but are painfully obvious here.

It’s very simple what it’s become: sexist against men.

This is what happens when you aim for equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity.

I believe we’re in a Kantian second stage. We were sexist against women. Now, we’re sexist against men. The hopeful third step

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

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is some data from the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_318.30.a... In 2017 there were 133,761 Bachelor's degrees conferred in Engineering, 20% of which were conferred to women. Computers: 71,420 degrees, 19% women Math: 24,073 degrees, 42% women Physical sciences: 31,268 degrees, 40% women

Physics hardly any more applicable to software development than biology is, especially areas like biostats or neurophysiology that involve directly writing code. But these numbers sure suggest that something is wrong with computer science departments.

Is something wrong with ballet since it's mostly women?

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Biology is not "preventing" women, it's directing their inclination. Right, absolutely, biology is what inclines women to not be programmers. And it's not at all things like lack of parental leave policies in most software firms that would allow their partners to stay at home should a child be born in their household, or a million other workplace and policy matters. It's biology, the conversation is over.

> lack of parental leave policies in most software firms that would allow their partners to stay at home should a child be born in their household, I've never heard of such a policy, or perhaps I'm misunderstanding your comment. Are you suggesting that companies should have policies that affect what the spouses/partners of employees do in terms of caring for children? Why would an employer have any right to say what…

Amazon has exactly such a policy.

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

#346
post #9
post #4

That's why we need salary transparency to really address this. There are a lot underpaid men and a lot of overpaid women. Making this into a male vs. female issue does nothing to address the fact that people are underpaid.

I think it would quite quickly turn into yet another source of conflict between employees. The problem with "equal pay" is direct comparisons only work in jobs that are essentially assembly line work, e.g., person A and person B do exactly the same thing every single day, and their output can be measured in exactly the same way, namely how many widgets each person produces in a given time period. Finding a difference…

In reality, the person fresh out of school is likely being underpaid and would benefit greatly from salary transparency. I.e your example is working against the point you are trying to make.

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

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe sexual differences cause men and women, on average, to have different interests. edit: thanks for pointing out that I misread which type of pressure is being applied.

you're assuming that men and women have sexual differences? it's 2019.

Unfortunately I can no longer tell is this statement is meant in jest or not.

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

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right. E.g.: Google is 70% men. At 100,000 employees: 70,000 Male 30,000 Female If 5% of men are underpaid that's 3,500 men. If 10% of women are underpaid that's 3,000 women. More men are underpaid (3,500 > 3,000). But women are twice as likely to be underpaid (10% > 5%).

The article said disproportionately more underpayment was to men. Therefore your hypothetical scenario (which posits that the difference was measured in absolute terms) is not what Google found.

It wouldn't be the first time a news article had a poor understanding of statistics. But more importantly, you may find men occupy high salary roles in engineering whilst women work in HR - resulting in the salary changes going disproportionately to men, because a % increase in their salary is far higher than the women on lower salaries.

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

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of places with pay transparency and they work just fine. The information imbalance is only to the benefit of the employer.

> There are plenty of places with pay transparency and they work just fine. The information imbalance is only to the benefit of the employer. Citations?

For what? For pay transparency look at Congress staffers, lot of state employees, a lot of CEOs, the military or some tech companies. For the second point I think it's pretty well known that markets can only properly function if all participants have the relevant information.

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

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[edited for typos and grammer] Anecdotally, I've run a couple of tech conferences and know others who have as well fairly recently. We've made a point to hold workshops for under represented groups, had the Codes of Conduct, make a lot of extra effort to reach out to women as speakers etc.. In the end, we would get 5 to 10 times as many talk submissions from men, accept nearly all of the talks by women (often turning…

I’ll repeat points that aren’t my original ideas, but are painfully obvious here. It’s very simple what it’s become: sexist against men. This is what happens when you aim for equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. I believe we’re in a Kantian second stage. We were sexist against women. Now, we’re sexist against men. The hopeful third step

Kantian second stage

For those who slept through the philosophy class, what these stages are?

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