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How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

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Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#51

Post by lukeschlather »

morgante wrote: post #39
RodericDay wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pay gap of 77c/$ still matters. Not only does the gap persist to a lower extent when you control for everything, "controlling for everything" is not actually a clarifying approach when discussing the gender gap issue. see: "The problem with controlling for 'all other factors' when looking at pay discrimination" ( https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/49k23i/the_pr... )

I'm sympathetic to the notion that discrimination can include subtler factors of pushing women into lower pay positions. However, the problem with the 77 cent figure is that it's frequently stated like this: "women get paid only 77% of what men do for the same jobs." Which is entirely false. Yet, if you asked most people about the 77 cents figure they'd think it actually meant women got paid much less to do the same…

All the information we have is hourly wage, income, and job title. We can't know if a woman with the lower-paid job title of "Programmer Analyst" is doing the same work as a man with a job title of "Senior Software Engineer."

The "same job" is a subjective distinction, so you can't say it's entirely false; it's really a matter of opinion.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#52

Post by agilebyte »

throwthis wrote: post #22

As an aside, isn't that question inherently just flat out wrong? Q: 'What's your current salary?' A: 'Why does it matter? What am I worth to you?'

It's not wrong if you want to save on salaries of your staff. I suspect that the people that answer with a $ number rather than the way you did, are less likely to assert themselves and thus consistently take lower salaries.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#53

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

disease wrote: post #42
throwthis wrote: post #22

As an aside, isn't that question inherently just flat out wrong? Q: 'What's your current salary?' A: 'Why does it matter? What am I worth to you?'

I'm currently in an underpayed development position and am trying to get to market rate, yet every recruiter and HR person asks this question. Anyone have any idea what would happen if I just refused to answer it and use the 'I'm looking to be paid what I'm worth to the company' line?

Try it and find out!

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#54

Post by electrograv »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #43
mrgoldenbrown wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to account for position, how do you account for the fact that women are often in a lower ranked position, because they are less likely to be promoted? You can't claim there's no pay gap just because it's being obfuscated by bias in job titles.

I'm not going to argue that this accounts for it entirely, but I do think it's worth pointing out that women typically are less interested in higher ranked positions than men tend to be [0]. They are less likely to be promoted because they are less likely to want a promotion. [0] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/40/12354.abstract

> They [women] are less likely to be promoted because they are less likely to want a promotion.

I don't think anyone could ask for a better example of systemic entrenched sexist bias than this quote. "It's okay, don't worry about it; they just don't want to be promoted as much as us men."

This is not that much different from the old "women enjoy being in their husband's kitchen and tending to the house, so it's okay most women are there instead of working independently!" Evidence clearly exists that lot of women used to enjoy being in the kitchen, but that doesn't mean women are less suited to work outside the kitchen -- to make an extreme example.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#55

Post by Chinjut »

Chinjut wrote: post #8
patrickmay wrote: post #2

> Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that women were paid 79 cents for each dollar a man was paid. Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar. This is not supported by the evidence. See, for example, this article by Christina Hoff Sommers ( http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/ ): "No matter…

Oh, ok. So, logically, it must just be that women-associated occupations tend to be lower payed than men, women tend to be slotted into lower positions than men, women aren't encouraged into or supported in higher education the same way as men, women do not receive job tenure as easily as men, and/or gendered pressures cause women to work less hours per week (on careers rather than, e.g., a disproportionate share of…

5 downvotes? Alright, I guess I'm wrong. "The 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure or hours worked per week", but also, it's not accounted for by any of those things, and doesn't exist.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#56

Post by geofft »

throwthis wrote: post #22

As an aside, isn't that question inherently just flat out wrong? Q: 'What's your current salary?' A: 'Why does it matter? What am I worth to you?'

Q: "Sorry, we can't proceed without this information." If you're a highly-competitive candidate with multiple offers, that's fine, you can ignore this company or convince them to give you an offer anyway—but if you're the sort of person who would be strongly hurt by revealing your old salary, that doesn't help you because you're also probably less competitive, at least on paper. So this very response exacerbates the gap.

Alternatively, Q (aside): "She's pretty abrasive, should we really hire her?" There are studies that this sort of self-confidence is often perceived as a positive attribute in men and a negative attribute in women.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#57

Post by kmonsen »

disease wrote: post #42
throwthis wrote: post #22

As an aside, isn't that question inherently just flat out wrong? Q: 'What's your current salary?' A: 'Why does it matter? What am I worth to you?'

I'm currently in an underpayed development position and am trying to get to market rate, yet every recruiter and HR person asks this question. Anyone have any idea what would happen if I just refused to answer it and use the 'I'm looking to be paid what I'm worth to the company' line?

Just tell them what you would like to get. If pressed super hard, give confusing answers in the same way companies give you. Like total compensation, if you add days off, perks etc.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#58

Post by whatok »

RodericDay wrote: post #48
morgante wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to the notion that discrimination can include subtler factors of pushing women into lower pay positions. However, the problem with the 77 cent figure is that it's frequently stated like this: "women get paid only 77% of what men do for the same jobs." Which is entirely false. Yet, if you asked most people about the 77 cents figure they'd think it actually meant women got paid much less to do the same…

There may be some dumb people out there misinterpreting the stat, but there are also an incredible number of people "straw-manning" the ENTIRE opposition as glib. For example, I've seen people cite the White House page as "fallen to the delusion", when in fact it is quite explicit: https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/equal-pay > In 2014, the typical woman working full-time all year in the United States earned only 79 p…

The only thing it is explicit about is that full-time working women as a whole get paid less than men. There is a vague assertion towards the fact that a gap still exists "after factoring in the kind of work people do, or qualifications such as education and experience" but no numbers are provided.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that women as a whole get paid less than men and that minority women even more so. What I have an issue with is that by being purposefully vague, proponents are acting like employers somehow just hate women so much that they become blinded by this hatred and throw all business-sense out the window by deciding to pay men a load more than women. It's completely dishonest, proposed "solutions" only serve as a band-aid fix, and distracts from the actual issues at hand.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#59

Post by nwah1 »

electrograv wrote: post #54
chrisfosterelli wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to argue that this accounts for it entirely, but I do think it's worth pointing out that women typically are less interested in higher ranked positions than men tend to be [0]. They are less likely to be promoted because they are less likely to want a promotion. [0] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/40/12354.abstract

> They [women] are less likely to be promoted because they are less likely to want a promotion. I don't think anyone could ask for a better example of systemic entrenched sexist bias than this quote. "It's okay, don't worry about it; they just don't want to be promoted as much as us men." This is not that much different from the old "women enjoy being in their husband's kitchen and tending to the house, so it's okay…

Hmm more like "those awful males are so competitive in pursuing career advancement. Maybe testosterone has some sort of effect."

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#60

Post by cannam »

disease wrote: post #42
throwthis wrote: post #22

As an aside, isn't that question inherently just flat out wrong? Q: 'What's your current salary?' A: 'Why does it matter? What am I worth to you?'

I'm currently in an underpayed development position and am trying to get to market rate, yet every recruiter and HR person asks this question. Anyone have any idea what would happen if I just refused to answer it and use the 'I'm looking to be paid what I'm worth to the company' line?

My most uncomfortable interview experience (nearly 20 years ago) came about because of this problem.

I was working in a job I enjoyed, but that didn't pay well. The money had started to become a problem and I started looking for something better-paid. (This was London in 1997 -- I was being paid about £25K and I hoped for more like £35K.)

I used a recruiter, I told them my current salary and what I hoped to get, and they got me a promising-looking interview.

Cut to the interview, and one of the first questions they ask is "Why do you think we should pay you ten grand more than you're getting at the moment?"

Hindsight gives me many ways to answer this, but at the time I just sat there with my mouth open. I had no idea the agent had told them my current salary, so I was completely unprepared. I was dimly aware that a proper answer would express something about my value to the company, so I couldn't just say "I need more money". I eventually muttered something about that seeming to be roughly the market rate, and the interview was effectively over.

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