
Lyft commits to closing wage gaps across race and gender - gringoDan
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/27/lyft-commits-to-closing-wage-gaps-across-race-and-gender/
======
wu-ikkyu
The central variable that creates the "gender pay gap" is not sexist employer
discrimination. The gap is primarily created by the fact that women, more
typically than men, are the ones who raise children full time.

[https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-
sowell/04/14/statistica...](https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-
sowell/04/14/statistical-frauds)

~~~
cbhl
Yes, we should also be advocating for better paternity leave policies, so that
men can take a bigger role in child care.

However, that does not mean companies shouldn't audit pay across race and
gender, controlling for job role, level and performance.

Nor does it mean companies shouldn't audit performance reviews for inequity.

Nor does it mean companies shouldn't audit job role and level and promotion
processes for inequity.

Nor does it mean companies shouldn't audit hiring processes for inequity.

Different people experience inequity in different ways. Some people experience
it in more than one way. We need systemic solutions to address each of these
failure modes.

~~~
jinushaun
No amount of “better” paternity leave will ever mean that I will be able to
birth and nurse a child myself. (First time dad here of a 5 month old) Nor do
I require extra time off before the birth. Fathers don’t have this issue
because they don’t lose time giving birth and recovering no matter how
involved they are in taking care of the kid after birth. This lost time is
unavoidable for working moms.

Even in countries with generous leave policy, this lost time is unrecoverable
and has a permanent affect on your career. For example, in Italy the mother is
forced to take a year off whether they want to or not. That’s one year less of
a promotion or pay raise.

Time is money and time not working is time not earning money. These are real
obstacles women face in the workforce that drive down their earning potential.
Successful women either choose to not have children, or earn enough to pay
someone else to care for their children full time.

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troupe
I'm curious how they determined that the 1% of cases were gender and race-
based and not something else. With such a small number, it seems like it would
be very easy for the variations to be caused by other factors. It is probably
good PR for them, but the math behind the decision would be pretty
interesting.

~~~
lallysingh
1% of a large number is still a large number.

~~~
troupe
Yes, but with a small enough number you might be able to find that people with
blue eyes are paid more than people with brown eyes. You'd expect some level
of random variation and such a small number makes it seem that it may really
not have anything to do with their gender.

Think of it this way. If you flipped a coin a large number of times and 51% of
the times it came up heads would you assume the coin was biased or would you
suspect that it could just be random variation?

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cbhl
This only covers full-time employees (software engineers, designers, and the
like), right? Not any of their drivers?

~~~
gringoDan
Correct. Some economists from Stanford & Uber actually did a fascinating
analysis of the gender earnings gap for drivers.

tl;dr - Men earn 7% more:

> We find that the entire gender gap is caused by three factors: experience on
> the platform (learning-by-doing), preferences over where/when to work, and
> preferences for driving speed.

[https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/UberPayGap.pdf](https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/UberPayGap.pdf)

Edit - I originally found out about this study from a Freakonomics podcast.
These economists are chomping at the bit to get newer data (which will include
tips). Their hypothesis is that women's earnings will increase, since women's
tips are 10-20% greater than men's. However, they also say tipping increases
the supply of drivers, which will serve to decrease utilization rate and thus
lower hourly pay.

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oh_sigh
How do you close the wage gap? Is it just bulk monetary transfer to people who
identify as women?

~~~
ovao
Presumably Lyft increased pay rates for those they identified as having been
paid unequally due to race or gender.

~~~
oh_sigh
Ah, I see this is for Lyft employees, and not Lyft drivers which I assumed. It
makes sense that Lyft would have much more data regarding sexism or racism
affecting their employees than they would sexism or racism affecting drivers.

------
romanovcode
Why is it that Asian people are earning 2x more than white people yet article
is focusing on "white men"?

Nice journalism. Not biased at all.

[https://i.imgur.com/rjmHYk0.png](https://i.imgur.com/rjmHYk0.png)

~~~
tatotato
This is wrong. The article states Asian males earn 117% as much, which is just
17% more. This is one of the things that turns me off Hacker News, an overly
strong bias in defense of white men.

~~~
ovao
I believe in this case it was a simple misinterpretation of the terminology
rather than nefarious intent.

~~~
s73v3r_
And I believe I've been here long enough to know that is not a very good
assumption to make. Allowances such as yours are usually given in defense of
white men, but hardly ever given for other groups.

~~~
ovao
The HN guidelines[0] encourage users to assume good faith in interpreting the
comments of others, and I think that applies well here.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
s73v3r_
They do, but again, I've been here long enough to know that's not always the
case, especially with topics like this.

