
No, Women Don’t Make Less Money Than Men - Claudus
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/01/no-women-don-t-make-less-money-than-men.html
======
slvv
This article assumes that there's nothing affecting or constraining people's
career choices besides interest in a particular field. It's not that women
choose careers that pay less - it's that careers dominated by women are
frequently perceived to be less valuable to society and are therefore paid at
a lower rate. Careers in which men historically dominated, but which later
become "female professions", pay less when done by women. "Women make less
remunerative life choices" seems like a fairly ignorant way to explain wage
disparity.

~~~
twic
I am dubious about this "perceived to be less valuable to society and are
therefore paid at a lower rate" idea. Wages are not set according to the
social values of jobs. They are set according to how many people want to do
the job. (supply) and how much money the employer can make by hiring someone
(whence demand).

There are not many people who want to be petroleum engineers, because it is
difficult and boring (i imagine, it's all pipes and oil and whatnot). However,
oil companies make immense amounts of money from the work they do. Hence, they
are paid a lot.

Lots of people want to be early childhood teachers, because it is noble and
rewarding, it is, actually, greatly valued by society, and is not that
academically demanding (it is tremendously personally demanding, of course).
However, primary schools are not exactly profitable. Hence, they are not paid
a lot.

So, i think the claim that "women make less remunerative life choices" does
hold water. But here's the thing: _that 's not the problem_. The problem is
that the choices they happen to make _are_ less remunerative, because of the
operation of the above mechanism. The problem that needs fixing here is that
people who choose to do work that is socially valuable but not directly
connected to a mechanism of profit are not paid as well as those who do. The
solution is something far more radical than just getting more women to take up
engineering.

~~~
vannevar
_They are set according to how many people want to do the job. (supply) and
how much money the employer can make by hiring someone (whence demand)._

Not exactly; they are set by what people are willing to pay. Short-term
profitability is one factor an employer takes into consideration.

 _...primary schools are not exactly profitable._

They are not profitable at all, which would mean teachers would not get paid
at all under your model of supply and demand. I think what critics are getting
at is that even ignoring the effects of sexism when men and women hold the
same jobs, wages in male-dominated professions are driven by simplistic short-
term profit considerations and discount social benefits (which translate
ultimately into long-term profit for everyone). This results in systematic
undervaluation of the kinds of work which tends to attract more women.

~~~
malandrew

       "simplistic short-term profit considerations" --> "direct profit considerations"
    

FTFY. For example, Petroleum engineering is anything but short-term. What
matters is that there is a very direct attribution of profit to work done. The
attribution to profit for work done in all the poorly paid professions is very
very indirect.

~~~
vannevar
I'd agree with this. Good point.

~~~
malandrew
Check out the prediction technique known as scenario planning most recently
championed by Pierre Wack and Peter Schwartz at Royal Dutch Shell. There is a
great case study of its use by Royal Dutch Shell when planning on whether or
not it was a good investment to build an oil platform in the north sea. The
conclusions in that particular case study included a pretty solid argument
predicting the fall of the soviet union and its causes well before anyone else
was predicting such a think.

------
ergoproxy
Fallacy of negation...

The Daily Beast denies Obama's statement A:"Women make 77 cents for every
dollar a man earns" and conclude B:"No, Women Don't Make Less Money Than Men,"
a non sequitur. Unfortunately, A and B aren't mutually exclusive, so not-A
doesn't imply B.

Daily Beast refers to a "correction" printed in the Washington Post which
says: "Women earn 91 cents for every dollar men earn--if you control for life
choices." Source: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/women-
earn...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/women-
earn-91-cents-for-every-dollar-men-earn--if-you-control-for-life-
choices/2012/06/04/gJQAqrHkEV_blog.html)

So, Yes, Women Do Make Less Money Than Men (even after controlling for
different life-choices). It's just that the wage gap isn't nearly as wide as
Obama said. Obama exaggerated the wage gap. But Daily Beast made an invalid
argument and reached a false conclusion.

False dilemma seems to be programmed into the US psyche. For instance, they
seem to think they need to choose between Democrats and Republicans, and
dismiss third parties. This kind of manichean thinking, reinforced by poorly
thought out op-ed pieces like this, make civilized conversation and progress
in the US difficult.

------
malandrew
I really wish we could stop focusing on statistics based on a gender binary
and instead used a continuous measure for masculine/feminine traits like ring
to index finger ratios instead, since that is a pretty solid proxy for the
levels of testosterone present in the womb during gestation.

------
moomin
Hey, apparently patriarchy costs women 23% of their wages. But I want to
ignore 18% of that. That leaves me with 5% which I don't think is a problem.
And I'm a woman, so I can't possibly be perpetuating patriarchy, can I?

------
DanBC
This article is typical of the hateful shit that gets too many HN upvotes. It
starts with a headline saying that women don't get paid less than men, but
then shows that they do, argues that the gap is less than we think (but still
exists) and then argues that it's all the fault of women anyway.

It does have an interesting bit in a tble though:

1\. Petroleum Engineering: 87% male 2\. Pharmacy Pharmaceutical Sciences and
Administration: 48% male 3\. Mathematics and Computer Science: 67% male 4\.
Aerospace Engineering: 88% male 5\. Chemical Engineering: 72% male 6\.
Electrical Engineering: 89% male 7\. Naval Architecture and Marine
Engineering: 97% male 8\. Mechanical Engineering: 90% male 9\. Metallurgical
Engineering: 83% male 10\. Mining and Mineral Engineering: 90% male

Seems like mathematics and computer science are doing reasonably well at
recruitin women. Better than anything but pharmacy. That's good.

~~~
malandrew
This didn't get upvotes because it's "hateful shit", but because it focuses on
facts and statistics (which happen to be pretty hard to argue with in this
case), and the population that is HNers like facts and statistics, especially
when it helps provide clarity to a controversial topic. I don't know about
anyone else, but I upvoted this because those two tables were valuable
information which I did not know previously. I didn't upvote it based on the
prose around the tables.

Can you instead find a factual/statistical counter argument instead of
discounting the entire article because you disagree with the conclusions? Or
at the very least, provide a different constructive conclusion based on the
facts/statistics presented if you happen to disagree with theirs.

This probably also got upvotes because it promotes "less wrong" and it's an
articles correcting someone who was flat out wrong, that someone one is POTUS
and the flat out wrong statement was made during POTUS' most important speech
of the year, the state of the union address. Duty calls.

[http://xkcd.com/386/](http://xkcd.com/386/)

