
When male CEOs have daughters, relative pay for women at their firms goes up - pessimizer
http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/ideasatwork/feature/7219454/Like+Daughter,+Like+Father
======
rayiner
> The gender wage gap is a well-documented, persistent, and worldwide
> phenomenon wherein women earn, on average, an estimated 9 to 18 percent less
> than men who have the same job descriptions and equivalent education and
> experience.

Interesting fact: in the U.S., single, childless, women under age 30 in urban
areas earn more (10-20% in cities like New York) than single, childless, men
under age 30. See:
[http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00....](http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html).

This is not to undervalue the statistic presented in the article, but I'm
always a bit wary of comparisons involving "equivalent education and
experience." In Denmark, for example, 20-30% of women (depending on the study)
work part-time, versus 8-10% of men. How do you compute "equivalent"
experience with a part-time worker? Is 5 years of working an 80% work-week
"equivalent" to 4 years of working full-time? Does a 30-year old woman who
took 2 years off after college for childcare reasons have "equivalent"
experience to a 28-year old man who did not? Mathematically that works out,
but part-time work and time out of the workforce are death-blows to a resume,
far out of proportion with the resulting differential in actual amount of
experience.

I appreciate the ideas discussed in the article, but as the father of a
daughter and the husband of a very ambitious woman, I have as slightly
different perspective on the issue. Yes, it is important to avoid bias that
results from the perceptions of men higher up in the hierarchy. At the same
time, it's crucially important to look at the other irrationalities in the
system. I think it's irrational that a women who takes a year off after the
birth of a child is viewed by HR managers in a worse light than a man who took
a year to backpack across Asia. I think it's irrational that men are never
expected to be the ones who downshift their careers for a time to help raise
kids. I think it's irrational that a period of downshifting is perceived as
such a negative light in the first place.

~~~
erikpukinskis
"Interesting fact: in the U.S., single, childless, women under age 30 in urban
areas earn more (10-20% in cities like New York) than single, childless, men
under age 30."

For anyone reading along who is checking facts:

* The number from the "report" is actually 8%, not 10-20%.

* This is not a peer reviewed finding, it is a report by a company called Reach Advisors.

* The report, according to Time, says that in 147 of the 150 largest cities in the U.S the median income is 8% higher for women. That might mean that the differential is lower than 8% in those other 3 cities, or it might mean they filtered out 3 outlier cities, we don't know.

* That's 70 million people, about 22% of the population (I added up the numbers here: [http://www.citymayors.com/gratis/uscities_100.html](http://www.citymayors.com/gratis/uscities_100.html))

* Women age 20-30 comprise about a quarter of the working age women in this country (20-60) ballparked from here: [http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf](http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf)

* So when people say "young women in urban areas" we're talking about maybe 5-10% of women.

* And the numbers also only apply to childless women, but I have no way to find out what the child-having rates are amongst 20-something women in those cities. Looking at this map, I'd expect a strong majority of those women to be childless: [http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5419a5.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5419a5.htm) Regardless, any effect of discrimination-based-on-pregnancy-history would be hidden in this population.

* The report in question does not appear to control for educational experience, jobs, etc. So for all we know there are simply more college-educated women in cities than college educated men.

~~~
Retric
I don't see why you care what 6 year olds or retired women make, rendering
your 5-10% meaningless. So really ~25% of women make more than there male
counterparts.

~~~
erikpukinskis
No, there are roughly 20 million women age 20-30 and rougly 60 million aged
30-60, so ~25% of working women are under 30.

~~~
papsosouid
That's exactly what he just said.

------
khawkins
I believe the interpretation is wrong here.

The hard data:

    
    
                             Employee Wages
                                F      M
     Has firstborn sons:      +0.8%  -0.5%
     Has firstborn daughters: +1.1%  +0.6%
    

The story here is that when men have children, in general, female employees
wages go up, by pretty much the same amount. However, when the firstborn is a
boy, they are harder on men, and a little more respectful of women.

I'd personally interpret this as men becoming more respectful of women when
they witness their wives undergoing childbirth. However, the more drastic
effect of child gender can be seen on male employee wages. I suppose the CEO
might be channeling frustration in child-rearing a boy on his male employees.

~~~
bru
I think that you have a very good point. The article should have been
something like "Child Effect: When male CEO wife has a child, relative pay for
women goes up".

More of a "My wife gave birth and that helped me gain respect/comprehension
towards women" than a "I have a daughter and I'm realizing she'll grow up in
biased world, time to fix that beside me".

Not that it is a better or worse conclusion, but quite different IMO.

------
ryguytilidie
I think this is a phenomenon that extends well beyond pay. As members of
congress have shown us, if you have a gay child you will go from a violent
hate toward gays to a complete acceptance. If you need an abortion, abortions
are somehow moral, even though they are the devils tool when used by others.

It's things like this that made me wish that as a society, we were better at
putting ourselves in the other persons shoes and having our viewpoint be based
on something other than our thoughtless, engrained "morality".

~~~
dominik
Do to others as you would have them do to you?

~~~
jamesaguilar
"Do unto others 20% better than you expect them to do to you, to correct for
subjective error." \-- Paraphrased from Linus Pauling, apparently.
[http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/138002-do-unto-
others-20-bet...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/138002-do-unto-
others-20-better-than-you-would-expect-them)

------
sentenza
It is horrifying to read the comments here. In Germany, where I live, on
average, a woman will earn less than a man IF EVERYTHING ELSE IS THE SAME.
Here is the source (PDF, in German):

[https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/Verdiens...](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/VerdiensteArbeitskosten/Verdienstunterschiede/VerdienstunterschiedeMannFrau5621001069004.pdf?__blob=publicationFile)

No, this cannot be easily dismissed, yes they corrected for all the obvious
stuff, no they don't have an agenda. This is a report by the official
statistics bureau for Germany. Maybe the data for other countries is not as
good, but why do so many people here immediately snap into backlash mode
without considering the possibility that this could actually be an existing
pay bias?

~~~
Guvante
I agree with your point that people need to be careful to not dismiss the
gender gap issue (which certainly exists for anyone over a certain age)

I have found on Reddit and here that the top comments are almost always
against the original article if there is any way to view the conclusion
differently.

I do not believe it is a systematic problem, it allows you to quickly get a
hold of two conflicting viewpoints quickly.

I took the top comment to be "It is extremely difficult to mitigate factors
when it comes to the gender gap, especially lost work time due to child care",
he then quoted a study where a differential comparison saw at least one
example of the opposite gender inequality.

Additionally the gender gap is rooted in cultural reasons, so comparing
different countries is different. Specifically the existence of a certain
gender gap in Germany does not mean such a gap exists in the US.

~~~
sentenza
You make good points. I second the last thing you brought up: Germany has one
of the worst gender pay gaps in Europe, so that the situation in the US is
most likely better than here, not worse.

However, I'd like to point out that my criticism was not aimed at the top
comment but at many of the comments here in "the middle". What shocked me was
not so much that people hold a view opposed to mine, but the dismissive tone
of some posts.

------
jccooper
"The study focused exclusively on male CEOs rather than female CEOs: men
account for over 90 percent of the CEOs in the authors’ study and an even
larger proportion of the CEOs of large companies around the world,..."

Fair enough; data set might be too small.

"while female CEOs would presumably already be attuned to possible gender wage
inequity, consciously or not, by virtue of being women."

But this is not a reasonable conclusion. One hopes it's the reporter
interpolating; otherwise the investigators have a rather rosy view of the
world. Gender discrimination, to the extent it exists, seems to be rather
strong in women as well.

They may be measuring a certain effect, but leaving out some interesting data.

------
schoper
> nature randomly determines the gender of each child

Some evidence emerging that this isn't true:
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130710182941.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130710182941.htm)

People that tend to have more female babies: nurses. People that tend to have
more male babies: CEOs.

Could low testosterone (or low "fitness," per article) in a CEO cause him to
have more daughters? Could it also cause relative pay for women to go up in
their company? Why would that be?

------
tokenadult
As with all preliminary research findings, this finding (reported here in a
blog post from early 2011) needs replication before we can be sure it is
reliable fact about the world.

[http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html](http://norvig.com/experiment-
design.html)

As a father of three boys before I had my daughter, I really, truly desired to
have a daughter in part to improve the "consciousness-raising" environment in
my home both for myself and for my three boys. Perhaps I really have had a
little bit of "male chauvinist pig" thinking on my own part counteracted by
observing my daughter grow up at home. (My wife, on her part, grew up with
four older brothers and only one (older) sister in her birth family, and she
finds it very easy to take the male point of view.)

What exactly could be done about this from the public policy point of view?
Family sizes are smaller than ever--which means that some CEOs have only
daughters, and no sons, but other CEOs who have children have only sons, and
will not go out of their way to have daughters just to balance their parenting
experience. Other than differences in family structure, which thus far are
usually haphazard more than planned, it's not completely clear what life
experiences can be provided to the current generation of business leaders or
the next generation of young people growing up to make sure that they have a
balanced view (and what would that be?) about the roles of men and women in
the society of the future.

~~~
bitops
_> it's not completely clear what life experiences can be provided to the
current generation of business leaders or the next generation of young people
growing up to make sure that they have a balanced view (and what would that
be?) about the roles of men and women in the society of the future._

One option could be to seek out education on the topic? I'm thinking of in-
house seminars where speakers are invited to address the topic and provide
coaching, particularly for executives. Of course, that assumes that the
executives are interested and recognize the issue in the first place.

------
lifeisstillgood
This, alongside the recent "I put Mr. on my CV and got a job" is fascinating.
I have had to rethink my own -isms over the years and its amazing just how
prejudiced a right-on liberal has turned out to be - its almost as if I
evolved in a totally different environment.

~~~
smsm42
Note that plural of anecdote is not data. Neither is singular. I.e. how often
do you read articles "I put Mr. on my CV and I still have no job" on the front
page of HN? Clear setup for survivorship bias here[1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)

------
refurb
When was the last time you saw the CEO of a company decide how much they pay
their employees, especially in a huge Fortune 500 company?

Usually that's HRs job. Sure budgets are set high-up, but I think it's
ridiculous to say that CEOs have a big impact in salaries.

~~~
dspeyer
From the article:

> The researchers also found that these effects were strongest at firms with
> 50 or fewer employees, which they attribute to the fact that CEOs at smaller
> firms are typically more directly involved in making decisions that affect
> the pay of individual workers than CEOs at much larger firms.

------
nawitus
The 'wage gap' actually mainly exists because women work less hours per year
(up to ~20% less), and because they they work in different industries, and on
the whole do different jobs. There's no discrimination.

~~~
quandrum
> There's no discrimination.

Or rather that the discrimination is cultural and leads to life choices that
make the wage gap structural.

For example: We live in a culture that devalues young girls who excel in math,
leading to lower achievement in this area[1]. By the time they go to college
they choose differently than men and "work in different industries"

[1]
[http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2096370?uid=3739856&ui...](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2096370?uid=3739856&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102535661477)
for one example

------
imgabe
Is there really a causal link here? They don't say anything about the size of
the firms other than that they excluded very small firms. For medium to large
size companies, how involved is the CEO in setting the salary for each
employee?

~~~
peter-fogg
What's more, it seems that a small wage increase (say, for the next hire after
a CEO's child is born) could have an outsize effect on average pay at the
company.

------
sendos
"Does that reflect an injustice? Many say no, arguing that women earn less
because they take time off to care for children or elderly parents (and thus
have less seniority) or accept lower pay in return for more flexible working
arrangements. Women also tend to go into lower-paying lines of work, shunning
higher-paying technical fields. It's easy to caricature this view (dirndls
versus Visigoths, etc), but there may be some truth in it. Some research
suggests that when women behave as men do--not having babies, mainly--the
income gap largely disappears. If so (I won't claim the matter has been
definitively settled), the question facing women is a stark one: What do you
want, kids or cash?"

[1] [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2411/are-women-
paid...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2411/are-women-paid-less-
than-men-for-the-same-work)

------
dspeyer
I'd be very interested to see the mechanism. I can't imagine any company had a
"pay women less" policy that got revoked. So what happened? Are women being
brought into management more? It seems possible that a single promotion by the
CEO could have major follow-on effects there. Had there been a subconscious
tendency to shut down ideas that had women's names on them? Did the company
culture move away from 60 hour weeks now that the CEO wants to get home early,
allowing women (who are generally less willing to do 60 hours) to thrive?

I'm assuming the study conductors were competent statisticians, so there's a
real effect and it pretty-much has to be causality as indicated.

------
Tichy
Might be worthwhile to point out that even if it should turn out to be true,
this doesn't imply that male CEOs were paying their female employees unfairly
before they had daughter. It would just show that they paid women more
afterwards than before (which could be discriminating against men, for
example). Perhaps they even just paid men less, or earned less themselves
(perhaps daughters require more time spent with family or whatever), thus
dragging down the averages. I have not read the actual PDF yet, though, only
the newspaper summary.

------
mathattack
This study was just Denmark, no?

It would be interesting to see if the data holds elsewhere.

------
koshatnik
Interesting that having a daughter makes CEOs more mindful of equal pay, when
they already had a woman close to them that they should be looking out for -
their wife/partner (I'm assuming gay CEOs with kids don't form a significant
percentage of the sample).

Is there any data on how CEOs and their partners share childcare
responsibilities? I'd guess that most of the load is shouldered by their other
half, given the kind of hours CEOs tend to work (especially in early stage
companies).

------
ChikkaChiChi
Can any CEOs that intentionally pay women less where everything is equal chime
in and explain why?

\---

In my experiences, I believe women are brought in under equal pay but in small
teams and companies they are relied on to handle more responsibilities;
perhaps even sometimes being considered "senior" when they aren't promoted to
that level.

I can't think of a single person who would be dumb enough to consider
someone's genitalia when determining pay rate.

~~~
peter-fogg
Many forms of discrimination are much more subtle than "this candidate is a
woman, so I'll offer her $10,000 less than a man". That's why the authors
chose Denmark as an area of study; since the country is (apparently) a fairly
egalitarian place, any explicit biases should have a small effect, and
anything left over is unconscious discrimination.

------
samstave
Cheney had a gay, female child... why is he still such a cold-hearted bastard?

~~~
jrockway
Is he actually, or is that the persona of the character he plays on TV?

~~~
jbooth
Given that, at this point, there's no incentive for him to be a bastard
besides the pleasure derived from it, it seems like that's actually just who
he is.

------
eeky
_The gender wage gap is a well-documented, persistent, and worldwide
phenomenon wherein women earn, on average, an estimated 9 to 18 percent less
than men who have the same job descriptions and equivalent education and
experience._

If women were 18% more effective then men, then this is a surefire way to get
rich:

Step 1: Start a business and employ only women

Step 2: Crush your competitors by being 18% more efficient

Heck, even if you could find a way to cut costs by 1% in an industry, that's
huge.

~~~
dylandrop
So you're proposing that because women given 18% less in wages that we should
take advantage of that fact, underpay them, and contribute more to gender
inequality in the workplace?

I'd love to see what your female coworkers think of this post.

~~~
mikeash
He is proposing _that it could be done_ , and thus anyone who doesn't care
about the ethical implications and wants to get rich would be doing it. That
nobody is doing it, despite no shortage of unethical people who want to get
rich, suggests that it is not true.

~~~
dylandrop
>suggests that it is not true

I doubt this. See the HN post from a few days ago ("I put Mr. on my CV and got
a job"). It would seem that employers not only pay their females employees
less, but have little faith in them to get the job done, thus they wouldn't
hire them in the first place.

~~~
mikeash
There's no room for doubt, really. It _does_ suggest that. It does not prove,
so you can certainly doubt the _conclusion_ , of course.

There really doesn't seem to be any alternative besides these three:

\- Women are not underpaid or more efficient.

\- There is not a noticeable number of unethical people seeking to get rich.

\- People are getting rich by hiring lots of women and outcompeting everybody
else who prefers men.

The last two don't look true to me, which _suggests_ that the first one is
true. I certainly could be wrong about the assumptions or conclusion, but it
does suggest that.

~~~
dylandrop
These "unethical people seeking to get rich" could also outsource all jobs to
third world countries and get their work done pennies on the dollar -- yet a
lot of them don't. It doesn't look good for your company when you take
advantage of people in plain sight.

~~~
xyzzy123
> yet a lot of them don't

But many of them did...

