
Nearly Half of Men Believe the Pay Gap Is 'Made Up,' Survey Finds - Totoradio
https://time.com/5562171/pay-gap-survey-equal-pay-day/
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mpweiher
The fact it's only "nearly half" is a testament to the amazing level of, er,
"marketing" that has been done on this issue, of which this article is another
example.

First, it's not a "pay gap", but an _earnings differential_. "Pay gap" implies
two people being paid different amounts of money for exactly the same work.
That has been illegal in the US since 1963, and there is very little credible
evidence of it happening.

The earnings differential does not compare individual pay, it takes all the
money earned by all working women and compares it to all the money earned by
all working men, and calls any difference a "pay gap".

This earnings differential, as the article admits, is largely due to things
that rightly _should_ affect earnings, such as hours worked, career choices,
experience etc. All else being equal, the person who works more should earn
more. All else being equal, the person with more experience typically earns
more than the person with less experience etc. All else being equal, there are
some jobs where you can earn more than others. Men tend to flock to these
jobs, at least in part because society values men by what they earn (and
certainly women do!). So motivation is a huge factor.

I am somewhat dubious of the claim that 1/3 of the differential is
unexplained, the figures I have seen are significantly lower than that. But
even if the 1/3 were true, it only means it is unexplained, it does not in any
way show that this small remainder is due to discrimination.

For example, men tend to take greater risks, which on average leads to greater
rewards. In a German study, this factor alone led to an earnings difference
between men and women inside the experiment of around 20%.

What is really telling is that even an obvious advocate can freely admit that
at least 2/3 of the earnings differential is not a "pay gap" (i.e. "made up")
yet unironically lambast those with a more accurate grasp of the facts than
herself as being "incorrect".

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thedevindevops
Yet another website that doesn't work with javascript turned off,
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190715081559/https://time.com/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190715081559/https://time.com/5562171/pay-
gap-survey-equal-pay-day/)

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nabla9
>Research suggests that factors such as experience, hours worked and the
different occupations women and men tend to have help drive discrepancies in
pay. But about a third of the pay gap is “unexplained.”

In other words, there is 6.3% pay gap. The rest can still at least partially
come from gender discrimination but it's not a thing that should be corrected
by increasing wages.

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luckylion
> SurveyMonkey poll

and the article is equally weak. There's plenty of interesting material out
there, but this is just activist crap.

~~~
mpweiher
Yep. Even unironically cites advocates as evidence.

"And advocates say it’s a mistake to think that the rest of the gap isn’t also
impacted by discrimination"

Wow.

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repolfx
Problematic. It should be 100% of men, given that the pay gap _is_ made up for
political purposes (namely, advocating to pay women more money than they've
actually earned).

