The whole gender wage gap issue tends to set me off, as it is filled with "lies, damned lies and statistics" and half the arguments seem to exist in a fairy tale world, so this may get a little ranty, but I'll try to keep it on the level:
OF COURSE THEY DO! As someone born in the 1980s, the gender norms of the previous generations had already been blown away. Schools are filled with female teachers, administrators and policy makers. The bias inherent in the system is already in favor of females, and yet we pile on extra focus and opportunities for girls at every level from kindergarten through college. We celebrate every female accomplishment while any sign of male over-achievement is viewed as being a manifestation of discrimination.
Today, women are more likely to graduate high school, get a phD, go to law school, go to medical school. Less likely to go to jail. How is anyone surprised when women therefore end up making more money? The horribly flawed, over used statistic about women making less than men has been shown many times to be due to hours worked, aggressiveness in pursuing promotions and raises, and other similar factors.
To compensate for women born before the 1970s getting the short end of the stick, our culture has given girls born in the '80s and later every possible advantage. This news article isn't shocking, surprising, or novel - it was inevitable.
There were always a lot of women in education. Just think, not too long ago the most viable career opportunities for women were homemaker, typist and teacher. Apparently, though, women have taken up an even higher % of teaching positions relative to men in recent years.
I dunno if that statistic you're citing is that horribly flawed. Remember, the top end of the income scale is still operating on prior generation norms, or at the least has only very recently changed. It certainly wasn't operating that way in the 1980s. Given the income inequality, the averages probably still work out in favor of men.
You mean at university? Ok, probably true, but that likely says more about the limited role of women in "real professions" in prior generations than it does about anything else, no?
Not to get too irate about it but I can't stand when people whine about the success of women or claim men have the deck stacked against them somehow. If you're going to extol the virtues of being a man, the least you can do is act like one.
>Not to get too irate about it but I can't stand when people whine about [...]. If you're going to extol the virtues of being a man, the least you can do is act like one.
I hope you see the irony in complaining about perceived sexism towards females by being sexist towards men.
I didn't think I was A) Complaining about sexism towards women, or B) Being sexist towards men. I mean, I'm a man. I know that because I was born in America and had access to a good education, I'm in great shape, good enough to control my own destiny. Whining about someone else having it easier seems like a strategy for losers. I suppose, if you're offended, you could say my tone was sexist. But I was really going more for derisive (of an idea, not a person).
Aside from anything else, saying "act like a man" is sexist.
It's assuming that men should bear burdens that others shouldn't have to. That they should not complain when faced with hardship (whilst others can) that they should take harm and not object because that is just their position in the order of things. It's an extension of men being expendable - http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm (most here have seen that before I'm sure).
FWIW I, at least in part, agree with that sexist position that I've just espoused. But I recognise it as sexist.
Well, I agree with you as far as the attitude, I'd think most men would, and was surprised that on a "build yourself up" board like HN, everybody fainted and was shocked by my sexism. Heh.
Anyways -- on that point -- the different social levers available to men and women VASTLY dwarf any differences in aggregate earning or typical education level. Men have all of those things you mentioned and that enables us to do certain things and act a certain way, women have a very different set of tools.
And those that complain about the situation? Not going to get very far in life.
Depends on the country doesn't it? In some European countries younger women employees are dangerous because they might go off and get pregnant (companies are legally required to keep their job available).
Only some countries in Europe. It is interesting you refuse to generalize over the US but are happy to do that for Europe. For some pretty good numbers see wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave
It's not necessarily good news for women. They've talked a lot about the benefits to higher education levels amongst young women, but how much of it is down to a simple selection effect: women that are intelligent, ambitious and career-minded are more likely [quite possibly through choice] to be single and childless in their twenties? Men that are intelligent, ambitious and career-minded don't necessarily need to make the same sacrifices, hence a male cohort of single, childless twentysomethings being quite possibly less valuable to employers than the male one. It's even conceivable that young, single childless women might be both earning more than their male counterparts and still being underpaid relative to their capabilities.
You seem to have a preconceived notion on the way the world works: Woman get paid less than men. But when encountering data that would imply the contrary, instead of simply correcting your premise, you rework the analysis of the data in a convoluted way, in order that you keep your preconceived notion about how the world works: "Woman should really be earning even more, but because of prejudices they are only earning x more than men."
All the parent comment is really saying is that "young, childless women" aren't an equivalent demographic to "young, childless men." In addition to the arguments already stated, I imagine that more men than women in the relevant age group are childless in the first place (since men are typically older than their wives). This alone means that a young woman's childlessness says more about her than a young man's does about him.
Nowhere does the comment say that women should be earning more than men. It says that if having children wasn't as much of a liability to working women as it currently is, then childlessness in women would be less associated with career-mindedness, which would cause this particular statistic to equalize somewhat.
"How much of it is down to a simple selection effect: women that are intelligent, ambitious and career-minded are more likely to be single and childless in their twenties?"
I don't remember the percentages offhand, but a lot of the reason unmarried women do better is because marriage creates a monopsony for women. Basically employers have to pay less to hire women because their BATNAs are only local instead of national or global.
The pay gap that most people care about is that women earn less than men who do the same job. Because men tend to work different jobs than women, this statistic is not particularly interesting to me.
(For those unfamiliar, this law would have encoded the notion of "comparable worth" into law. Comparable worth is the notion that entire fields/job categories are underpaid due to sexism.)
I don't think the famous "women make 76 cents on the dollar compared to men" statistic was ever for the same job. I would be interested to know a better quality statistic (I seem to remember a study or two that put it at only a couple of cents, controlling for profession, experience, and etc).
"Women managers make 81 cents to a man's buck, according to a report released Tuesday from the Government Accountability Office... Many studies, including the GAO report, control for such factors as job experience and gender preference for different jobs to make a fair comparison of wages." - http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-women-managers-2010092...
"Once you control for factors like education and experience, notes Francine Blau — who, along with fellow Cornell economist Lawrence Kahn, published a study on the 1998 wage gap — women's earnings rise to 81% of men's" - http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1983185,00.ht...
This made me think. Could the pay difference be because men work more hours? There are more woman with children with part time jobs vs men with children. This is just a thought.
Depends on the country, the speaker, the statistics they choose and what they choose to speak about.
A favorite trick though from the radical feminists is to lump all the men into one group and all the women into another group and then compare the two. Always, the men will come out on top simply because of biology. Women stay at home more than men starting with pregnancy, then staying at home with the toddler, a lot of women also choose to work less than 100% in order to be at home with their children, etc.
Similar studies that I'll try to track down have it down to hours worked. Unmarried women in the same profession continued to display the same earnings as men. It may have extended to married women without children, but I can't recall- I'll update when I find the study.
The argument that the data supported is as follows: fewer hours worked (counting the expected or not unpaid overtime) led to smaller raises and fewer promotions. Subsequent raises and promotions are based on the resultant salaries and titles, leading to a snowball effect. Maternal leave puts the whole process on pause and puts a mother behind on the snowball process.
think about it for high paying professions such as top law firm work, or an investment bank -- getting ahead to make partner means working tons of hours which is not a viable option if you have a kid (unless there is a stay at home father).
on NPR they said that only 2 areas still see male dominance - janitorial and computer engineering. Looks like cleaning somebody's mess up is a real macho thing.
Women have a higher average education level, too, though. I wonder what the number is if you normalize for education, say stratify it into male vs female for some college, bachelors, master's, etc. Might be interesting. But probably a way less attractive headline.
Yes, it does. There have been some studies on the black community where the women would rather remain single mothers than to marry. The logic being that men become an expense.There are also studies that show that divorce is much likelier in cases where there are no male children or the woman makes more than the man.
I think they took an even more granular approach. Thats what the 'young, single, childless' stuff was about. They were comparing people who fit all those categories.
"Their research shows that a woman earns 5 percent less the first year out of school than a man who goes to the same college, gets the same grades, has the same major, takes the same kind of job with similar workplace flexibility perks, and has the same personal characteristics, such as marital status, race, and number of children."
It could be that not all of the gap is explained by sexism. The overall educational attainment of women is greater than that of men despite the lack of a difference in average general intelligence between the two groups. It could be that a man who goes to the same college, gets the same grades, and has the same major as a woman is slightly more intelligent than his female counterpart. It's thought that male SAT scores are higher than female SAT scores mainly because fewer males take the test (since fewer males are college-bound).
Naturally I don't argue that there's no discrimination in the workplace. For example, unconscious attitudes on the part of employers that a male worker is "providing for his family" would create a pay gap even if overt sexism is uncommon. My point is that it's misleading to say that this study determines how much of the gap "cannot be explained by anything except the person's gender" as the article writes.
How much of the gender gap in educational attainment can be explained away with incarceration? I know I've seen data with African-Americans that show that most of the gender gap in college graduation is covered by incarceration rates (not all, but a lot).
The article makes a good point about salaries after college but what about the fact that there is a growing gap between men and woman going to college? This is completely glossed over during the article.
When there's a labor market, being male or being female is going to be a factor in your desirability in that market, since it's, at the very least, a marker for other characteristics. Same with race or even height.
It's certainly a problem if the disparities get too large.
Now, the question is, how one can determine what is "too large"?
The title gives nothing away except for the fact that some editor, not possessing the usual unimpeachable standards of his calling, decided to sacrifice meaning for sensation. The first sentence of the article points out that the avg. woman earns 8/10 of the avg. man's wage. Equality is still a ways off. Also, the women in the studied group are being paid more because they are on avg. more highly educated; there is no suggestion that they are getting paid more for the same work.
Temporary overcorrection seems more equitable than a longer time before reaching true equality. I.e. this[1] is OK. Or, even better, in this image[2] we prefer the light blue line to the green line, because it is more equitable overall.
I don't like that either, but when I think about how complicated control systems are, it eases my mind a bit. A system that oscillates towards the goal seems to be reasonable and even expected when you're dealing with something as complex as success in life.
Of course, it SUCKS that anyone is ever on the wrong end of that oscillation.
> But feminists think the top half is men-only, and they want it to be women-only.
Stating this as if it were fact is disingenuous. The feminists that people think of when they think that -- the ones they label "feminazis" -- exist only in their heads as a stereotype. People actually resembling that stereotype of extremity are few and far between and can be safely ignored.
The vast majority of progressively-minded people, even those who call themselves feminists, lobby only for equality/parity, not supremacy.
I'll believe that when I see feminists clamouring for the dirty, dangerous, low-paid jobs too, in the name of "equality". They all look up and see CEOs, they never look down and see miners, meatpackers, refuse collectors... 98% of those killed at work are men.
The unfortunate truth about humans is that nobody looks down unless it serves to further raise their own status, even if only in a subconscious, primal sort of way (consider how working with the poor is likely to increase respect towards you, and how you may unknowingly seek this praise). It's hardly something unique to feminists.
But that wasn't really pertinent to my point in any case -- I was just trying to save you from categorically stating that an entire movement consisting of many millions of people was somehow arguing for a total bias reversal. Or at least they're not lobbying for it visibly. Maybe they really believe that, but you'd have a hard time getting them to admit to it. That said, I haven't seen any evidence that this is the case.
You make this general point (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your argument is that feminists care more about equality at the top end of the scale than the bottom) a couple of times in this thread. I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say.
If you mean that feminists don't pursue discrimination cases when it comes to low-pay/low-prestige/high-risk jobs, that's demonstrably false: There are many examples of "women's lib" folks organizing factories or migrant workers or whatever. Many of the related Supreme Court cases (e.g. Ledbetter, Chrapliwy) were about discrimination in blue collar jobs at factories. It is likely that these groups spend more time and money pursuing discrimination issues in blue-collar and low-wage workplaces than they do in the higher-salary, higher-prestige jobs, not least of which because (a) discrimination is probably more blatant and common there and (b) more people, men and women both, have below average (arithmetic mean) incomes than have above average salaries and (c) more women have low-pay, low-prestige jobs than men.
If you mean that feminists hold up the gender imbalance in high-wage, high-prestige jobs when advocating for their cause, of course they do. Everyone would. What middle class donor is going to pull out their wallet to ensure their daughters can get janitorial jobs? The aspirational jobs are simply more inspiring. Moreover, ensuring a gender balance in the lowest-wage, lowest-prestige job categories while leaving the top end alone isn't really achieving equality, is it?
By the way, I don't think your notion that women are under-represented in low pay/low prestige jobs holds up to scrutiny anyway. Women are over-represented in the lowest end of the scale, and under-represented in the highest end of the scale. Take a look at BLS or Census Bureau data on the highest and lowest paying jobs and the distribution of women and men in each. Here's an interesting table of unemployment rate by occupation and sex: http://www.infoplease.com/business/employment-rate-occupatio.... Note that the unemployment rate pretty closely correlates to what you'd expect from a gender bias: the unemployment rate in traditionally feminine occupations is higher for men than for women, the unemployment rate in traditionally masculine occupations is higher for women than for men.
I think the only claim in your line of thinking that holds up to the least bit of scrutiny is that men are over-represented in dangerous job categories, or more to the point that men account for a disproportionate share of workplace fatalities. This is true (although your numbers are a bit off). The breakdown of hours worked by sex is around 55% men to 45% women. The breakdown of fatal injuries is around 93% men and 7% women. But with only 4,300 workplace fatalities in the United States in 2009, we're talking about one fatality for every 59 million hours worked. Workplace fatalities are not the biggest labor problem in the US, probably not even for the most dangerous occupations.
I don't mean to flog this thread that is fairly dead at this point, but seriously, the level of largely unchallenged inaccuracy, "truthiness", and borderline misogyny in this thread is not only well below HN's typical level of quality, but frankly it is disturbing. This conversation needs some balance.
The parent comment here currently has 15 upvotes. Another comment on this page claiming there hasn't been gender based discrimination "for a very long time" has 3 upvotes. Many of the claims made in these posts are simply demonstrably false. They seem to represent some kind of knee-jerk, well, not misogyny, but something approaching it. Is there a term for "dislike of women" in place of "hatred of women"?
I'm male, but gender inequality and discrimination in the workplace is obvious to me, let alone to the women in my life. Gender isn't the dominant factor in predicting income, rank or career success. It may not even be among the top few factors. But it is certainly a factor, and not a negligible one at that. To be candid I'm both astounded and troubled this isn't obvious to more of the participants in this conversation.
Some extreme stereotypes end up with a disproportionate amount of mindshare - Christine O'Donnell and Sarah Palin seem like reasonable examples of this.
[You could also consider those in charge of the Texas Board of Education rewriting history and science in textbooks that will be used across the whole country, or the particular people who create the often decidedly institutionally sexist terms of e.g., rape victim anonymity or child support.]
> women haven't really been discriminated against in any serious, society wide way for a very long time
Wow, really? Upvotes even? I'm honestly surprised no one has pushed back on that statement yet.
Not to be condescending, but I'll guess that you are a man, and a young one at that.
In the west, there is certainly less officially sanctioned discrimination, although that is a relatively new phenomenon. (Some examples from the US: The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was passed in 2009. The FMLA was passed in 1993. The Tailhook Scandal was 1991. Roberts v. United States Jaycees was 1984. Chrapliwy v. Uniroyal was 1982. Title IX was 1972. The EEOC and The Equal Pay act were 1963. Even 1920 isn't really that long ago.)
But if you honestly believe there is no "serious" or widespread gender based discrimination, you must either be very young, very privileged, or not paying attention. That statement just doesn't reflect the experience of people in the working world, whether white collar or blue. Google "gender discrimination study". Ask some professional women you know. Ask your significant other or women in your family. Look around your workplace and witness how people act toward and talk about women versus the way they act toward and talk about men.
It is getting better, but this isn't controversial: Gender discrimination exists.
There's no conspiracy or collusion (well, rarely, see Tailhook for example, or the wall street folks taking a business lunch at Hooters or taking a client to a strip club). It often isn't even malicious or intentional (I'm thinking of that study that showed people are more comfortable with and most likely to hire people like themselves, but my google fu fails me). But it certainly happens, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, and this certainly has a "serious" impact on women's work life and careers.
(By the way there's also gender discrimination that happens in the other direction: try to become a nanny, day care worker or pre-school teacher as a man, or sue for custody of the children during a divorce.)
Actually there is one big one I can think of: women's fashions vs mens fashions. The fashions and hairdos and whatnot for women just plain require a lot of work to look right. Combined with makeup, it is a big deal. To look decent, most women need to spend 30-60 minutes a day on that stuff. This really adds up, imagine an hour of your day on nothing but preening.
You could argue that "they don't need to" and I call bullshit. Go down to the nearest college and pay attention to the comments made about the female grad students who do eschew the preening hour vs the comments about those who don't. It is absurd. A man who doesn't bother to do his hair right is "eccentric" or "a bit of a slob" but this trangression is quickly overlooked (a fact many geeks take great advantage of). A woman doing the same will forever be looked down on as 'that frumpy chick' or 'she could really be something if she took care of herself'. Do you see the difference in how the value judgement plays out?
But that goes both ways: a woman can wear almost whatever she likes in a situation where a man can't.
True story, a few years ago I was working for a very traditional financial services firm, and the word came down from On High, people were to wear shirts or polo shirts, not t-shirts, in the office (as opposed to, out visiting clients, which you'd wear a suit for). The girls kept on wearing t-shirts. Someone mentioned it and was informed that they weren't t-shirts, they were "women's tops".
Incidentally, women dress up to impress other women. Men simply don't notice eyelashes or nail varnish or whatever.
> a woman can wear almost whatever she likes in a situation where a man can't
I'm not sure that's true. There's a lot more diversity in women's clothing. I think that probably makes it more difficult to dress for the occasion as opposed to less. For instance, a man can wear slacks and a dress shirt to work and then throw on a tie and jacket for a formal dinner. Most any single woman's outfit would be out of place in one environment or the other.
(In fact, men can get by in almost any situation with a pair of dress pants and a button down shirt.)
> Incidentally, women dress up to impress other women. Men simply don't notice eyelashes or nail varnish or whatever.
Agreed. That has been my observation as well. I think there may have even been scientific studies on this point.
I agree that it's not about competing to see who can be the biggest victim. I doubt most women wish to be victimized in any way at all. Nonetheless, considering women have been oppressed by men historically and still are in many countries in the world, it seems like a lot of confidence would be required to assert that we have fully eradicated such systemic oppression here. It would require a level of confidence I do not have.
Young, Single, and Childless I get. But the under 30 part simply seems to suggest that men start off paid slightly less, but then take off over their career. IMO, that appears to be really bad news for women.
BTW, were they comparing all men to young/single/childless/under 30 women or was it men with similar socioeconomic position?
OF COURSE THEY DO! As someone born in the 1980s, the gender norms of the previous generations had already been blown away. Schools are filled with female teachers, administrators and policy makers. The bias inherent in the system is already in favor of females, and yet we pile on extra focus and opportunities for girls at every level from kindergarten through college. We celebrate every female accomplishment while any sign of male over-achievement is viewed as being a manifestation of discrimination.
Today, women are more likely to graduate high school, get a phD, go to law school, go to medical school. Less likely to go to jail. How is anyone surprised when women therefore end up making more money? The horribly flawed, over used statistic about women making less than men has been shown many times to be due to hours worked, aggressiveness in pursuing promotions and raises, and other similar factors.
To compensate for women born before the 1970s getting the short end of the stick, our culture has given girls born in the '80s and later every possible advantage. This news article isn't shocking, surprising, or novel - it was inevitable.
/end rant, goodbye karma