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Rising graduate joblessness is mainly affecting men

edwardconard.com

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Re: Rising graduate joblessness is mainly affecting men

#41
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it possible though, that if a role is gender stereotyped or if senior managers are a particular gender, that those of the other gender might need to prove themselves more to get the same job? That managers tend to hire people who appear to fit in, which usually means they are more like themselves, or those who already have the job? Also, it seems weird to suggest that only women have the failings you’ve noted,…

> Also, it seems weird to suggest that only women have the failings you’ve noted, as men can also have the same shortcomings. Why would you portray these as “shortcomings?” E.g. my wife is probably counted as part of the income disparity between men and women, because after our third child she decided she didn’t want to keep working. The choice to do that wasn’t unweighted random coin flip as between the two of us. I…

My observation in my 40s is that near-zero of the successful women in my circles "married down" but some ended up remaining single as a result of expectations mismatch. Most who ran the risk of doing so were advised strongly against it by parents. My single-at-40 female friends are by far my most successful female friends.

Quite the opposite amongst my male cohort who universally all had no problem finding a partner, but also had no concern about their patterns income potential.

The one woman we know who makes more than her husband probably only ended up that way because they've been together since they were 19, and at the time their career paths actually would have lead to the husband having higher income expectation.

There were definitely mental health / marital conflicts wrapped up in this, and the fact that she is the primary breadwinner is treated like a shameful embarrassment that she only confessed to my wife after 25 years of friendship.

Re: Rising graduate joblessness is mainly affecting men

#42
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's not an either-or problem, but a mix. Most of the effect does appear to be job choice, which is driven by degree choice, which is driven by earlier education / coaching by teachers, parents, etc. However, In my experience my female colleagues doing similar things are generally under-compensated BUT, and this is a big BUT.. they also are less aggressive in asking for money. I have had this discussion with…

>However, In my experience my female colleagues doing similar things are generally under-compensated BUT, and this is a big BUT.. they also are less aggressive in asking for money. I have had this discussion with my wife, and every few years she does work up the energy to have the "give me more money" discussion with her boss, which is almost always followed by a best-in-years % raise at next compensation cycle. If t…

I agree the effect is tiny, I'd reckon in the 5-10% range.

However it is also worth considering that apples to apples is hard to compare and may have a latent bias you accidentally brought up by adding the adjective "senior". What if, and this is what I've seen, females tend to promoted and said titles slower/later. So a 32 year old female may be stuck at non-senior $180k while the 32 year old male cohort she started with got the senior title 1/2/3 years before and is at 220k.

Some of this is still of the same flavor of "not demanding it" as aggressively as a male might.

Otherwise, yes most of the time people point at far bigger pay differentials in stats that are driven by apple/orange compares like comparing male majority SWE jobs and female majority teaching/nursing jobs, which duh, high %% difference.

Re: Rising graduate joblessness is mainly affecting men

#43
Yet there's a major shortage of Real Men for skilled engineering jobs.[1] The kind of jobs that require a hard hat. Not enough people are going to college and then taking jobs like that.

Read through the titles on Edward Conard's page. Too many college grads, too few going into tough industries, and too many young people collecting disability.

[1] https://www.edwardconard.com/macro-roundup/aging-populations...

Re: Rising graduate joblessness is mainly affecting men

#44
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I have this conversation with women sometimes where it's like "but if I am assertive and ask for money, my boss will judge me" type of societal norm compliance. And look, maybe they will, but are they going to fire you or cut your pay? No. You don't ask, you don't get.. that is the way of the world. If you constantly try to play it safe, you get less. If you clip your own wings you can't point vaguely at "society…

Fire or cut pay - now they might.

At the end of the day if you are getting fired/paycut for asking for a raise, you are either doing a bad job or at a bad company. The sooner it happens / you realize, the better.

This is the most edge of edge cases, and I've literally never heard of such a thing in 20 years working.

Re: Rising graduate joblessness is mainly affecting men

#45
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Women choose less lucrative careers, leave the workforce more often to care for children, and care more about work-life balance. Although the "choose" here needs to put into societal context. Do women naturally prefer less lucrative careers or has society reinforced that some less lucrative careers are in some way feminine while some more lucrative careers are masculine? Do women naturally want to leave the workforc…

Societal pressure and expectations cut both ways, and I think are starting to harm young men more than young women, and is somewhat explanatory of recent machismo populist political turn in youth voting. The stats are saying - women enroll and graduate college at higher rates than men, graduate with lower unemployment, and society has spent the last ~60 years correcting a lot of the wrongs that harmed women's choices…

> For young men, I firmly believe society expectations haven't really changed at all actually. They are still expected to be providers, and to make educational/career choices & sacrifices to facilitate that.

That’s because male-coded fields are still seen and treated as more prestigious. Men aren’t encouraged to go into different fields because that would mean encouraging them to go into historically female-coded fields.

Women being told they can do anything and be anything (which overall is good) is a push to get them into previously male-coded occupations, and not a change in how we look down on women-coded work.

Men who are being failed by culture are being failed because as you say they are being pushed further to the machismo extreme.

Re: Rising graduate joblessness is mainly affecting men

#46
post #43

Yet there's a major shortage of Real Men for skilled engineering jobs.[1] The kind of jobs that require a hard hat. Not enough people are going to college and then taking jobs like that. Read through the titles on Edward Conard's page. Too many college grads, too few going into tough industries, and too many young people collecting disability. [1] https://www.edwardconard.com/macro-roundup/aging-populations...

These "skilled engineering jobs" pay a fraction of what software engineers make - let alone the conditions. Little wonder no one wants to do them.

Re: Rising graduate joblessness is mainly affecting men

#48
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Societal pressure and expectations cut both ways, and I think are starting to harm young men more than young women, and is somewhat explanatory of recent machismo populist political turn in youth voting. The stats are saying - women enroll and graduate college at higher rates than men, graduate with lower unemployment, and society has spent the last ~60 years correcting a lot of the wrongs that harmed women's choices…

> For young men, I firmly believe society expectations haven't really changed at all actually. They are still expected to be providers, and to make educational/career choices & sacrifices to facilitate that. That’s because male-coded fields are still seen and treated as more prestigious. Men aren’t encouraged to go into different fields because that would mean encouraging them to go into historically female -coded fi…

They are being failed because they are raised with the knowledge no one is coming to save them, and told implicitly & explicitly that the lower their compensation the smaller the available dating pool.

Re: Rising graduate joblessness is mainly affecting men

#49
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, women get paid the same as men, within the error of measurement, and have for many years. The trope of women making less than men comes from an apples to oranges comparison. Women choose less lucrative careers, leave the workforce more often to care for children, and care more about work-life balance. The result is that on average across the workforce, women make less. But if you look at an individual car…

Isn’t it possible though, that if a role is gender stereotyped or if senior managers are a particular gender, that those of the other gender might need to prove themselves more to get the same job? That managers tend to hire people who appear to fit in, which usually means they are more like themselves, or those who already have the job? Also, it seems weird to suggest that only women have the failings you’ve noted,…

The commenter was not saying that women do not face discrimination, they were saying that salary (as in hourly cash for a given job) was not one place with sizable discrimination.

To be clear if women faced strong discrimination against being promoted it would not show up in that metric, it debunks only a very specific type of discrimination on average

Re: Rising graduate joblessness is mainly affecting men

#50
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, women get paid the same as men, within the error of measurement, and have for many years. The trope of women making less than men comes from an apples to oranges comparison. Women choose less lucrative careers, leave the workforce more often to care for children, and care more about work-life balance. The result is that on average across the workforce, women make less. But if you look at an individual car…

I think it's not an either-or problem, but a mix. Most of the effect does appear to be job choice, which is driven by degree choice, which is driven by earlier education / coaching by teachers, parents, etc. However, In my experience my female colleagues doing similar things are generally under-compensated BUT, and this is a big BUT.. they also are less aggressive in asking for money. I have had this discussion with…

I rarely win arguments against my wife and anecdotally neither do my male friends. As a manager the most vocal people reporting into me were always the women. Perhaps I have been lucky to be amongst strong women but I find the simingly widely accepted notion that women cannot speak up for themselves in this day is not convincing for me.
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