
Female Computer Scientists Make the Same Salary as Their Male Counterparts - selmnoo
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/female-computer-scientists-make-same-salary-their-male-counterparts-180949965/?no-ist
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lazyjeff
This article seems to have fallen into a common misinterpretation of the
results of the study. They assume that failing to reject the null hypothesis
automatically accepts the null hypothesis.

The article says "The study authors did find that, on average, women in fields
like programming earn 6.6 percent less than men (a Bureau of Labor Statistics
study showed that women actually earn 11 percent more, however). But that
difference is not statistically significant."

But that the difference is not statistically significant does not mean there
is no difference. To show there is no difference, you'd need to show that the
power used to run the study was sufficiently high to be confident.

The correct interpretation would be "the study failed to find a significant
difference in salaries between men and women, but that does not mean there
isn't one." Not as exciting of a headline I guess.

Update: I skimmed the study pdf and the study does not make the mistake as the
article. In fact, I applaud the study for using two-tailed tests that gave
them less power but more neutrality (so they were checking for gender
differences in pay rather than if men were paid more than women). The study
shows significant differences in pay in several professions but not
engineering or math/CS.

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a_bonobo
This is a really, really bad article, the author clearly didn't bother to read
the study.

I just skimmed it, 64 pages is a bit much right now, but from first look:

First of all, the study [1] just checked graduates one year after graduation -
i.e., absolute entry-level. This may say some things but doesn't say anything
about female computer scientists in general.

Second of all, the study checked many, many differences in pay - some of which
are statistically significant, some are not. The author of OP's article just
listed one of these comparisons. To quote from the text:

>All gender differences reported in the text and shown in the figures are
statistically significant (p < 0.05, two-tailed t-test) unless otherwise
indicated

Moneyquote: >Women working full time earned $35,296 on average, while men
working full time earned $42,918

and

>In fact, the pay gap exists within nearly every category of institution and
level of selectivity. Among public and private college graduates, women earned
81 percent and 86 percent, respectively, of what men earned one year after
graduation. Women who graduated from public universities earned 86 percent of
what their male peers earned. The pay gap was largest among graduates of
private universities, where women earned just 75 percent of what men earned

And yes, that's a statistically significant difference. It's the very first
two figures. (Edit: And depending at which paygroup you look, OP's 6.6% is
really low - it goes up to 25% difference!)

tl;dr: There is a pay gap and it's statistically significant.

[1] [http://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/graduating-to-a-pay-gap-
th...](http://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/graduating-to-a-pay-gap-the-earnings-
of-women-and-men-one-year-after-college-graduation.pdf)

Edit: The only thing I can find that is _not_ statistically significant is the
pooled pay for women in "Biological, physicial sciences, science technology,
mathematics and agricultural sciences" and "Business" \- i.e., something
different than what OP claims, especially since the average of these jobs is
likely to be different from the average of each job itself.

Edit2: I finally found OP's 6.6% pay difference, which is a complete
misunderstanding of the article they copied from here [2].

>According to the study, there are seven professions with pay equity. When
controlled for all factors other than gender, the earnings difference between
men and women is about 6.6%, something most people don’t know.

So the 6.6% are _not the pay gap in computer science_ , but the pay gap for
_all_ jobs clustered together! Then it's no wonder that the 6.6% are not
statistically significant, several different populations with different means
are merged, and since t-tests compare the means, you get no significance.

[2] [http://qz.com/182977/there-is-no-gender-gap-in-tech-
salaries...](http://qz.com/182977/there-is-no-gender-gap-in-tech-salaries/)

~~~
doorhammer
Thanks for linking the study. I find these articles interesting, but I always
end up skipping them, instead of looking for the core data. For some reason my
brain is too lazy to skim the two page article to find the source, but is
interested enough to skim and potentially read the 40 page source when found
directly.

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yeukhon
The thing is, salary is so arbitrary. People make up the number. How many tech
companies out there actually says "all junior level developers make $80K,
level 2 makes $85K"? Some people are paid more. If you are a frontend
developer, you are likely getting less than a backend developer or a full
stack. Sometimes fullstack engineers get the same salary as a frontend/backend
but does two people's job. And I was told by people that asking other people's
salary in American culture is rude. How can I find out what my co-workers are
making. And even if I knew, how would I know my salary, as a male engineer, is
too high? How do we judge? When we do an average on salary, we need several
categories: companies (you can't compare Google to a local small business IT
firm), location (NYC vs Portland), education, job performance (this is also
quite arbitrary).

~~~
doorhammer
Assuming you're not american, by the way you reference it. Thought I'd throw
in a few things I've experienced in America, that I think are pretty common.

Almost every job I've had with a company that's of any decent size (e.g. ten
years ago when I worked for a five man moving company) has made it pretty
clear that sharing compensation numbers with a coworker was an immediately
fireable offense. I never really considered whether or not that would be
typical outside of the US. Anyone care to comment? I'd be interested to know.

You're still right though, that in my experience there's a social pressure not
to share as well.

I also definitely agree that saying "a junior programmer makes x dollars a
year" or "a senior programmer makes y dollars a year" has been pretty
meaningless at the major corps I've worked with. They're typically had some
kind of pay band where "junior" meant x to y, and the closer you got to y, or
if you crossed y, meant getting approval from higher levels of management. I'd
be interested to know if this has been other peoples experience as well.

As an example, I know a guy (not in programming) who went from being in a
realtime data monitor to a supervisor in a call center, and jumped his salary
probably 15%, then went back to being the data monitor a year later, and
retained the salary increase, which was way larger an increase than the
company at the time would have allowed, had he stayed the data monitor.

~~~
vonmoltke
> Almost every job I've had with a company that's of any decent size (e.g. ten
> years ago when I worked for a five man moving company) has made it pretty
> clear that sharing compensation numbers with a coworker was an immediately
> fireable offense. I never really considered whether or not that would be
> typical outside of the US. Anyone care to comment? I'd be interested to
> know.

Almost every job may say that, but in almost every case that provision is
illegal[1] and grounds for a lawsuit if they actually carried it out.

[1]
[http://www.twc.state.tx.us/news/efte/salary_discussions.html](http://www.twc.state.tx.us/news/efte/salary_discussions.html)

~~~
doorhammer
Interesting; thanks for the link. I'm going to read it over in a little bit
(making food).

I'm not beyond believing that it's mostly just common lore, and I'm definitely
going to look into it.

An unrelated instance of something like this would be how most hourly workers
think they're legally obligated to get a lunch break and a paid break if they
work x hours, when in the states I've lived in there's no legal requirement,
except under specific circumstances (I think missouri was for employees under
16 working in certain kinds of service industries).

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JustinBlaird
Please stop reposting this.

~~~
chadillac
I hadn't seen this article... and it's actually quite surprising seeing as
every other mention of this issue seems to say women aren't treated fairly in
this industry and are belittled by their peers and paid half as much.

If you've seen it, ignore it.

~~~
marquis
>belittled by their peers and paid half as much

That is rarely said because those of us working know it's not true. We're just
concerned for the low gender ratio. I haven't felt belittled for years (mostly
due to older men retiring).

~~~
jstrate
Nice ageist stereotype. But that's alright for you to do right?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
If it's her personal experience, then yes, she can say that.

------
argumentum
This is the kind of "science journalism" that I strongly dislike (and is
promulgated by _both sides_ in politically tinged debates like this one).
Basically the author has a point of view, and sees in the study some numbers
that support said point of view.

That aside, I think the biggest problem is not understanding _where_ (the
obvious) disparity in tech comes from. It's not discrimination, and least
conscious discrimination. And I don't even think it's unconscious
discrimination or side effects of so called "privilege".

It's simply that when tech startups _are small_ , for various reasons (I'll
get to this), they have a lot more males than females.* If the startup does
well, early hires rise in rank by virtue of being there longer. If/when the
reach the size where they are recognized by name, _it 's too late_, most of
the top roles (both engineering and management) are filled by males. _Even if
there was zero discrimination_ (or feelings of isolation), you would get the
topsy turvy industry we see now.

Most studies focus on _income_ but the far bigger disparity is _wealth_ (both
in this case and generally). The earlier employees in successful startups are
phenomenally more _wealthy_ than latecomers. These people are the ones who go
on to start and fund more startups, and the cycle continues.

This is why PG's now infamous remarks about there being few female _hackers_
(as opposed to CS students/engineers) are really insightful. Having Sheryl
Sandberg or Marissa Mayer as visible leaders in large companies won't really
change much (or anything when it comes to tiny startups). When these large
companies hire, it's quite likely they do so scrupulously fairly. But even
though the disparity is _much_ better when it comes to new hires, the females
amongst them (just as the males) start at the bottom.

Having more female _founders_ is a start, _perhaps_ , but it doesn't really
solve the problem of too few female hackers. What you need are more female
_technical founders_. I'm not saying that the non-technical founder role is
less important (in fact it can often be a lot _more_ important). But the
technical founders are responsible for building the technical team from the
ground up. Males tend to have more male friends, just as women tend to have
more female friends. And the first people you try to hire are friends.

But even more than just _technical founders_ , if you want to reduce the
disparity at the source, there need to be more female "Mark Zuckerbergs" who
come up with the idea and hack version 0 when everyone else is out partying
(and, importantly, _before fundraising is even a thought_ ). This is when a
founder has most leverage: when he/she has built the kernel of something that
people want and everybody else wants in. Think of the scene from The Social
Network (admittedly a hollywood movie) where Zuckerberg assigns roles and
equity to his co-founders and basically brushes of the girls' offers to help.

This is a _very difficult problem_ to have, if you want to increase the
presence of women in this industry. It's difficult because there's _nothing_
you can do to future "Mark Zuckerbergs" to force him to pick a more diverse
set of co-founders. There can _be no law_ , because this is almost like
choosing your friends or significant others. A not insignificant percentage of
startups with female founders in fact have their significant others as co-
founders. This could be great for the startup (I know many great teams like
this, obviously pg/jessica being one), but it again points to how difficult it
is for females to find co-founders _the way males do_.

The only thing that would really work is for "these girls" to have been
hacking since they were children and think that this is the coolest thing they
could be doing. _And_ there needs to be a critical mass of them so they can
make friends _with each other_ , because if you think that telling adult male
developers to "play nice" is hard, try forcing 10 year old boys to invite 10
year old girls into their crew, (cooties and all).

* It would be cool if there was data to track the ratio of male engineers to female engineers as a successful startup grows. My hunch is the ratio improves steadily along with company size.

------
jheriko
is it so hard to believe that women don't enjoy stem fields as much as men?

that men and women are actually different and that it implies different
behaviour?

that actually you know what... the more freedom women get the /less likely/
they are to work in a stem field?

maybe we should pay them more in our naive quest to make the unequal equal -
because it is 'politcally correct' \- which ever kind of correct that is
because it certainly isn't 'true'

~~~
alukima
As a female developer, yes, those things are hard to believe.

This is a great example of why I was hesitant of entering the field. You feel
totally comfortable saying this when your profile links to your blog with your
real name and place of employment. If you're that comfortable in this belief
you can't expect me to believe that you don't treat women in your work place
differently and with less respect.

Gender roles still very much exist. If something biological were keeping women
from entering the IT industry it wouldn't vary so much from culture to
culture.
[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/gsf/12220332.0001.103?rgn=main;v...](http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/gsf/12220332.0001.103?rgn=main;view=fulltext)

~~~
jheriko
i'm not ashamed to speak my opinion, nor associate it with my name. i don't
think i'm making especially ridiculous or unbackable claims...

it shouldn't be offensive to women imo. i am not offended by the many
opportunities that women have and i don't - that they are /generally/ more
socially adept, need to make significantly less investment to find a mate /in
general/, and are constantly treated with special care an attention in
particular areas (e.g. violence against women is constantly considered
especially distasteful even though 90%+ of violent crimes are between men
exclusively, there are more illnesses and disabilities specific to men - but
most research focuses on those specific to women etc...)

i don't think my opinion that women and men are measurably different should
imply that i will treat women with less respect... why should it? i'm not
saying women are somehow distatsteful or undesirable in some moral or value
sense - just that they are different, measurably so and that claiming we are
all equal in the sense of political correctness, and shoehorning every
possible behaviour into that ideal is ignorant - it does disservice to
humanity - not just men or women as a sex.

i've had a look at that article, but it is authored with a tremendous bias
imo... the fact that its hosted on an openly feminist website does of course
skew me but the wording itself is highly presumptuous (perhaps iam too?). i
will not deny that their data does show a large variation... but i will gladly
deny your conclusion because reorganising that graph shows a reasonable
correlation between those countries we consider 'most free' and those we do
not... with outliers and natural variation as you would expect.

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jMyles
Woo! Let the back patting begin! We ended sexism!

------
Borogove
Where "the same" is 6.6% less.

