
Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries - replicatorblog
http://insights.dice.com/2016/03/02/dice-report-gender-plays-no-role-in-tech-pay/
======
ahoy
This is fairly consistent with other studies. The "77%" number is arrived at
by comparing the median wage of full-time male & female employees. It doesn't
account for differences in industry, job title, experience, etc. It's super
broad. That doesn't mean we should ignore it, but it means we need more
granularity.

Coming out of uni/grad school, male and female salaries are equal in
comparable fields. They depart a few years after that. Women tend to find
themselves funneled into specific career paths that prioritize flexible hours
and often pay less. Men face an opposite pressure - toward inflexible hours
but higher pay. This is in large part because care for family members(children
and elderly parents usually) is more often foisted upon women in our society
than on men.

That doesn't mean the "gender gap" doesn't exist, or that it isn't an issue to
address. It means that the way we tackle it isn't as simple as "pass a law
mandating equal pay for equal work".

We need to de-stigmatize flexible schedules. We need to upend the idea that
family care is solely the domain of women (normalizing parental leave for
fathers with newborns is a good start).

*edited for typos

~~~
RodericDay
I like the idea of "mandatory paternity leave", to make up for the biological
asymmetry.

Even if you have a stereotypical breadwinner/housewife relationship, you are
legally mandated to take time off, even if you don't want to. That way you
avoid the "you're _allowed_ to take paternal leave, but _real_ go-getters
don't!" game altogether.

edit: The way I see it, the responses just prove my point. "This would just
make people discriminate against _x_!". That's exactly why it needs to be
mandatory, affecting more people, so the issue doesn't become invisible based
on it affecting only women.

~~~
mrrrgn
We already suffer from declining birthrates in the west. Your solution would
make not having a child the best choice for "go-getters."

~~~
nsxwolf
Similarly it would lead to discrimination against large families (large these
days being anything more than 2 kids). Employers likely won't tolerate someone
having 5 kids over a 5-10 year period and taking all that disruptive and
expensive leave.

~~~
rosser
Because people should totally be making major life decisions on the basis of
what employers will "tolerate".

FFS. We've already ceded enough control over our lives to these companies
whose only agenda is to suck people dry, and then find new ways to wring even
more out of them.

Businesses exist to serve people's needs and interests. People do not exist to
serve businesses.

~~~
CWuestefeld
There are many businesses out there. Make your employment decisions based on
your values.

I don't have children, and won't be having any. You seem to be saying that _I_
have to subsidize your childcare leave.

~~~
mynameisvlad
Yes, because, shockingly, both parents caring for babies helps society as a
whole. Maybe you should stop being selfish instead of making it hard for
others to have families.

There have been studies that have shown fathers are far more involved in their
kid's lives by taking paternal leave. It also means that the parents will both
be far more productive post-leave as they would have developed more balanced
responsibilities, and don't have to juggle waking up in the middle of the
night with a job for at least the first few months, which is arguably the
toughest.

The fact that family leave is not government-mandated and involve both parents
taking a reasonable (several-month) leave for caring for a baby is ludicrous.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Society is helped by having healthy babies, yes.

You haven't provided any support for your argument that _I_ , as someone
without children, must be made to subsidize the family choices of others.

The resources to cover the extended work absence of the parents has to come
from somewhere. In many cases, it'll be one past parent covering a new parent,
and then vice-versa. But those of us who can't have children (a) don't get to
have children, yet (b) are stuck holding the bag having to pay the costs for
others'. Isn't that kind of adding insult to injury for people who can't have
babies?

So how is it that you get to make the decision for all of society, such that
it must be a one-size-fits-all law, and people aren't _allowed_ to negotiate
for the terms that make the most sense for their own personal situation.

~~~
Kluny
I'd say that you came up in the public school system, were raised by a mother
who dropped out of the workforce and stopped her other contributions to
society in order to raise you, received all the cheap or free healthcare that
is available to minors, and took advantage of all the opportunities that
society provides to young people in order to help them be successful and
functional parts of their community. So you've kind of already had your share
and owe it back to us.

I'm sure I won't change your mind, but as a single person with no kids, that's
how I see it. I'm quite happy to make a few sacrifices to make life easier for
today's children.

~~~
thescribe
I doubt any legal scholar would argue that a pre-schooler is able to sign a
contract obliging them to pay back a student loan, so how can you say any
given person owes society for their public school education?

~~~
Kluny
I said that's my point of view. I had no intention of making a legal argument
of it.

------
abraca
I'm surprised. In a technical PM role a few years ago I found out that I
earned 20-40% less than other PM's at the company. There were more than a
dozen PM's and I was the only woman who was mid-level seniority. My male
direct report made almost the same as me, while my female direct reports made
a lot less. In my case it was not due to lack of initial negotiation, but that
at each promotion I didn't get a sufficient bump (and since I was getting a
raise, I felt grateful instead of negotiating in middle of promotion/raise!)
Second reason, was that a lot of the male PM's had threatened to leave in the
past and negotiated their raises that way, whereas I had never done that.
Since then, I have negotiated HARD for every position I've taken and have not
hesitated to turn down jobs if I'm not confident that they are offering me
50th percentile relative to men in the role. I've also encouraged women to
find out salary data for their peers in order to get raises. Often when
someone leaves the company they will openly tell you their salary or if you
are friends they will just tell you. In so many cases, where a woman is one of
only 1-2 women out of 15-20+ men, it turns out that she is making far less
than men who have previously held her role or been in same role. It's strange
to me that HR never seems to pick up on things like this!! Seems like the
first thing you'd check given all the publicity on issue. Anyway I've only
seen negotiation work well (even where a woman is making way less than peers)
where the woman has also gotten a competing offer, so that's number 1 thing I
encourage.

~~~
shostack
So outside of a few large companies and a few types of jobs with fairly
consistent job titles/responsibilities, Glassdoor is fairly poor for employees
conducting their own salary research.

Have you found any services or tools that are more accurate that you'd
recommend?

~~~
abraca
I recommend looking up the company and job title on an h1b jobs database.
There are several sites online that pull from public data. You get both start
date and title information. It only shows base salary but the nice thing is
that it is an accurate number.

~~~
shostack
What about for those of us with jobs with loose titles and widely varying
responsibilities?

------
whiddershins
Obviously it is important to be skeptical when controlling for job title.

If there were an institutional bias against women tech workers, one way it
could manifest is by women receiving less recognition and promotions, or being
hired in to lower positions with the same skills and experience. Which would
mean they might typically have a lower job title than the equivalent male
worker, so controlling for job title could hide the bias.

I'm not saying this is or isn't the case, but it is a rather blatant
possibility that isn't addressed by what is seeming like a naive study.

~~~
reversecs
criticizing a study is fine but in light of how absolutist the mainstream is
about the gender pay gap this increased granularity is very much welcome

------
_jmar777
> they’re getting equal pay for equal equal positions, education, and
> experience

While those are certainly relevant control factors, I would presume that any
conclusions are premature without demonstrating a lack of bias in the actual
positions men vs. women are promoted to, relative to their experience and
education.

I.e., large disparities in salary by gender for "Software Engineer III" within
the same organization are a bit hard to overlook, whereas there are often much
fuzzier criteria involved in who has that title in the first place.

Not looking to necessarily refute the article, but the control factors
themselves are still rather variable.

~~~
13thLetter
> While those are certainly relevant control factors, I would presume that any
> conclusions are premature without demonstrating a lack of bias in the actual
> positions men vs. women are promoted to, relative to their experience and
> education.

I'm wondering why the default assumption is that there is bias, and we're
being expected to prove a negative here.

~~~
whiddershins
I don't know ... have you wandered around the world and actually talked to
real people about how they view gender?

Almost _no one_ will assert they think men and women are exactly the same.

So if everyone starts from the presumption that there is some, poorly defined,
somewhat-conscious, never agreed upon, but certainly real, difference between
men and women ... a bias in treatment would be the default condition, and
would probably require conscious effort and/or policy to overcome.

~~~
tomp
> a bias in treatment would be the default condition, and would probably
> require conscious effort and/or policy to overcome.

Ironically, people usually assume that the unequal treatment benefits men over
women, and completely dismiss the reverse possibility, even though there's no
rational reason for this :)

~~~
tveita
Maybe a priori in a vacuum, but most people are aware of the historical
context where women just recently got the right to vote and attend university,
and are still considered men's property in some parts of the world.

It's well acknowledged that men are discriminated against in some contexts,
but yes, there is no serious debate that the sexism in our society
overwhelmingly targets women, and there's a reason that the movement for
equality between sexes is called "feminism".

~~~
13thLetter
> and there's a reason that the movement for equality between sexes is called
> "feminism".

Except you're going to have a hard time pointing to any of the places where
feminism is fighting against this well-acknowledged discrimination against
men.

 _...And that 's fine!_ Really, it's okay to say "this is the movement for
women's equality meeting here in this room, if you're interested in men's
issues you're going to have to go somewhere else." The NAACP doesn't spend all
its time fighting against anti-Semitism, after all, and that doesn't make the
NAACP bad in any way. I don't understand the weird compulsion to try and crowd
everyone else out of the gender equality mindspace.

------
api_or_ipa
What is interesting is the breakdown of motivations between men and women. It
seems readily apparent that women on the whole prefer flexible work
arrangements because of child raising obligations. This is exactly the same
argument lobbed across the wage gap discussion for years now. Proponents of
the wage-gap point that women have an unfair obligation to child-raising
duties, which puts them at a disadvantage when compared to their male peers.

I'm not a social scientist and nor am I particularly well versed in the
quagmire of social & gender obligations, so I'll keep out of making a
normative judgement on this topic.

Suffice to say, in Tech, the longer you spend at the office, the more you
appear to be motivated and hardworking. I fear that might just be too
ingrained in management psyches for a solution to be readily available.

~~~
marssaxman
I would prefer flexible work arrangements for the very simple reason that
there are lots of things I want to do with my life in addition to my job.
Nobody ever offers this, somehow. It would be a better world if flexible work
hours were a normal thing, not something you have to justify based on
traditional gender roles.

I feel a little bitter when people go on about the importance of "negotiation"
over job offers, because the thing I would want to negotiate for is never on
the table. (And yes, I have tried.)

~~~
softawre
What exactly are you asking for? At ININ, we have core hours of 10-4, and you
can fill out the rest however you want. Seems a decent compromise for a salary
employee gig.

If you want real flexible hours you can always do contract work or start a
business.

~~~
marssaxman
I don't want to do contract work or start a business (again). That would make
the problem worse, not better, because I'd have to spend more of my time on my
job in order to make a living, and the additional time would be spent on tasks
I enjoy less and am not as good at as the work I do which is the focus of my
career. The point is that I have a wide variety of interests and to me a good
life is one where I get to pursue them. Focusing exclusively on a single
activity (coding!) might be better in terms of making money, but what am I
making that money _for_ if I can't use it to live a good life in the other
ways I want to live it?

Your response illustrates the problem I was describing: why, when I suggest
that the standard packages don't suit me, do you think it is helpful to
suggest that I just pick one of them and deal with it? Why shouldn't we
accept, as an industry, that different people have different needs and
different motivations, and consider it normal to work out whatever mix of
time, responsibility, and compensation suits each person?

The paradox of the salaried job is that you can either have money to spend or
time to spend it in, but you can't have both, because nobody will let you
trade some of one for some of the other. Well, why not? If we adopted a
flexible attitude about work hours, as a culture, it would not just make
things better for women who are stuck with traditional family-care tasks, but
for everyone - whether they want to use that flexibility to raise a family or
for something else important to their life happiness.

~~~
LunaSea
Isn't what you are asking for just simply a part-time job?

~~~
marssaxman
It could be, if "part-time job" simply meant an ordinary job which one works
for fewer than ~2000 hours per year; but "part-time" also means "no benefits",
"no stability", and "no respect", and in any case there are no part-time jobs
to be had as a software developer. If there were, I don't imagine they'd be
much good for making a living.

What I want is more about flexibility than about a smaller number of hours.
I'm happy to work 50+ hours in a week when it's called for; I just wish I
could take a month off to go travel, when that's what I want to do, or take
Thursdays and Fridays off for two months because there's some project I want
to work on, or take a week full of half days because we just shipped a release
and I feel like goofing off a bit. I mean, sure, I could probably just _do_
the last one, unofficially, but I'd like it if this were all above board and
OK, instead of just something you try to get away with and hope nobody
complains. And there's just no solving the problem of wanting to travel: only
once in my career have I gotten a month off, after almost seven years at a
single company, a tenure I will probably never repeat. Why is PTO always non-
negotiable? I don't get it.

------
4bpp
Everyone seems to be quick to reduce the gender disparity in
seniority/paygrade of jobs occupied to a childcare/parental leave/homemaking
question, but is there any data for the single, infertile or asexual segment
of the population to back this up?

My impression always has been that long before parenting even starts being
relevant, there is a difference between the genders in terms of readiness to
engage in self-sacrificial or -destructive behaviour for the sake of self-
realisation and status climbing (which is often correlated to pay in one way
or another). Regardless of whether this difference is predominantly biological
or cultural and which gender deserves the "blame" for it if it is the latter,
I think that any attempt to reduce the disparity by policymaking should at
least try to address this.

------
brongondwana
"I have to say, wouldn’t it be nice if these options were in addition to,
instead of a replacement for, higher salaries?"

That was a kind of pointless observation. I too would like a pony.

Obviously the jobs with both flexible work options _and_ high salaries are
going to be very fiercely competed for, since they're the best jobs to have.

------
leeleelee
Nursing is a field dominated by women. And there are very large salary gaps
between nurses with 0-10 years of experience and nurses with 10-20 years of
experience. I'd also bet that there are much more women with 10-20 years of
experience than men. So if you broke it down in the same way as the tech
industry and did not control for job title or years of experience, you'd find
a reverse gender gap in the same way you see in the tech industry. Controlled
for job title and experience, you'd probably find it equal just like this
study shows. I don't think there is any more discrimination in the tech
industry when it comes to salaries than there is in nursing. I think both do
not suffer from gender discrimination.

~~~
chiaro
[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/stubborn-pay-gap-
is...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/stubborn-pay-gap-is-found-in-
nursing/)

Nope. Male nurses still make more, which, with respect to your post, is a
strong data point in favor of the discrimination hypothesis.

~~~
leeleelee
I am happy to be proven wrong if the data supports it. I am also not ashamed
to make speculations which are backed by logic; which is what I have done. If
I am wrong then so be it. But I don't think this supports the discrimination
hypothesis. In fact I think you are the one with subconscious bias, and I'll
explain why. What I essentially state was "hey I have a hunch that this is the
way things are, but I am not certain." You, on the other hand, have jumped to
a concrete conclusion based off of a single NY times article that happens to
align with your preconceived notion. That is the kind of bias that results in
discrimination today. You have jumped to a concrete conclusion based off one
article. Re-read my post and see how I specifically use language like
"probably" and "I'd bet." The difference is I form opinions and hypotheses,
but do not jump to premature conclusions that I think are absolute certainties
(unlike what you have done). I keep my mind open and moldable, never stating
things with 100% certainty unless there is sufficient evidence. You
confidently state "Nope. Male nurses still make more..." \-- which in my
opinion, is premature to conclude based on a single NY times article.

~~~
mdorazio
Ok, then how many studies would you need? Kind of seems like you don't want to
believe the data when presented with it. To control for the "male nurses take
are more likely to be specialized" argument, here's one showing that a
specific Nursing profession (CRNA) has a significant gender pay gap:
[http://www.geeksonfinance.com/info_7850041_average-hourly-
sa...](http://www.geeksonfinance.com/info_7850041_average-hourly-salary-
crna.html)

The reason for the gap is of course up for debate, but it's still there.

~~~
leeleelee
I want the raw data so I can study it for myself.

------
samd
That's good news if true, the women who make it and get promoted earn the same
as their counterparts. Still lots of work to be done removing the barriers
that keep them from getting these jobs and promotions in the first place.

~~~
elbigbad
Do you have any data to provide that goes along with your statement that women
don't get "these jobs and promotions in the first place"?

~~~
samd
Are you being coy? I assume you know about the disparity in engineering jobs
between men and women, particularly in management and executive roles, but are
blaming this on something else. Say what you mean.

~~~
jbmorgado
Do you have any data to stand by that?

------
TazeTSchnitzel
> What does still exist is a position gap as researched in earlier years.

This is key and should probably be mentioned in the title. People of different
genders in the same position have similar salaries. It's the disparity in
positions they attain that creates a wage gap.

------
itsdrewmiller
Controlling for "job title" basically makes this invalid; if men are being
promoted more often at the same experience/education level and consequently
making more that is obviously a gender gap.

Edit: "invalid" is maybe a strong word for the study itself - the headline "no
wage gap exists" is definitely invalid, but the actual results are
interesting.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
If.

That may be happening, if those doing the promoting are biased. (Which means,
in some places, it probably _is_ happening that way.)

Systematically, though? Industry-wide? Is this really happening?

~~~
untog
> Systematically, though? Industry-wide? Is this really happening?

Probably?

The issue as best I see it is that there isn't any one cause here. So when you
look at the roster of Silicon Valley CEOs and see row after row of white, male
faces you could say that it's because tech is racist/sexist and prevents
women/people of color from ascending to management positions in companies.
Then someone might counter and say, no, it's because there are far fewer
women/people of colour entering the industry at the entry level, so it's
understandable that there would be a lack of representation at that level.

In reality, both of those things can be true without contradicting the other.
There is both a pipeline problem going all the way back to elementary schools
that presumes which career a person is going to pursue, _and_ there are
incidents of sexism and racism within the tech industry, but it's next to
impossible to attribute exactly what cause and what effect go together.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>The issue as best I see it is that there isn't any one cause here. So when
you look at the roster of Silicon Valley CEOs and see row after row of white,
male faces you could say that it's because tech is racist/sexist and prevents
women/people of color from ascending to management positions in companies.

Or it could be that CEOs are likely to result from certain factors that were
only open to white men historically, but whose factors have been fixed. Even
if we waved a magic wand and fixed every discrimination problem ever tonight,
tomorrow you'll still see the effects of past discrimination that would have
to work their way out of society. So the question would then be, do we engage
in further discrimination to try to counter act the effects of past
discrimination?

------
robbyking
That's not the issue; the issue is the hiring gap in tech jobs and reasons
behind it.

The film "Code: Debugging the Gender Gap" does an excellent job of documenting
the phenomenon. Nationally, young women taking high school placement tests
score as well or better than their male classmates, but are placed in advanced
math and science classes at a much, much lower rate. Because of this, the
number of female high school graduates who meet academic requirements for
university STEM programs is much lower, and so on though graduate school until
the number of qualified female candidates for jobs in STEM fields has dwindled
to nearly nothing.

------
thekevan
I wish I could find it but I saw a study that said when you take out hazzard
pay for dangerous jobs and the jobs which experience the largest number of
work related deaths, there was no pay gap by gender.

If anyone knows the study I am taking about, I'd love to take a closer look at
it.

------
JoeAltmaier
No gap in _pay for the same position_. But the position gap is still alive and
well. Also called the glass ceiling. So, the average women in tech are paid
less than men. The title is quite misleading.

~~~
mycroft-holmes
> No gap in pay for the same position.

That's the point here and it's worth reiterating when feminists consistently
say they're paid 7X cents on the dollar.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And the glass ceiling means, the average woman is pad 7X cents on the dollar
because they're denied promotion and advancement. So that's the point too -
they're right.

------
rqebmm
If anyone is curious, I created a google doc with the pay gap for each
occupation based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 2015:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15vJGu8IMbvrVz6FqCg3r...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15vJGu8IMbvrVz6FqCg3rKMec0xJ2CiWgvXMRq08OXPo/edit#gid=0)

source:[http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm](http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm)

------
coldtea
Gender Gap obligatory video link (Maddox):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDj_bN0L8XM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDj_bN0L8XM)

~~~
coldtea
Downvotes? I can understand not liking the humor, but it's a well researched
video full of arguments for the subject matter. Better arguments in fact that
several comments.

------
RA_Fisher
No data, no code, no way to verify they didn't fat finger the stats. :(

~~~
kdkooo
Completely agree! Where's the data? How many people were surveyed? These
statements are too strong to evaluate without the proper context.

------
kough
Does anyone have a link to reliable breakdowns of different professions by
race and gender? Tech gets slammed particularly hard for being "white male
cishet scum" and I'd love to see how it compares to other fields. I can't
imagine fields like law or nursing or mining or teaching or policing are much
more equal.

~~~
eli
Here are BLS numbers on profession by gender and age:
[http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat09.htm](http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat09.htm)

The legal profession has actually made significant progress in closing the
gender gap.

Tech has a problem with gender. I'm not sure it's helpful to point out that
other fields also have similar or even worse problems.

~~~
13thLetter
> Tech has a problem with gender. I'm not sure it's helpful to point out that
> other fields also have similar or even worse problems.

It kind of is. When there are other fields which both a) employ more people
and b) have a much larger "problem," it's valid to ask why the laser-like
focus on tech.

~~~
DanBC
>why the laser-like focus on tech

This is a tech site. It's going to focus on tech wages. Other sites are
focussing on the gap in motor repair or restaurant chefs or whatever.

~~~
13thLetter
It's not just tech sites, though, which is what I'm getting at. Major
politicians and newspapers constantly go on at great lengths about alleged
gender problems in tech. Do they talk nearly as much about, say, the imbalance
towards women in education? I'm going to assert that they do not.

~~~
eli
I don't see what you're getting at. Like, is there a conspiracy against the
tech industry? I really doubt it. I think tech jobs are very desirable and the
gender imbalance very pronounced so it's a natural focal point.

~~~
13thLetter
> Like, is there a conspiracy against the tech industry? I really doubt it.

Who said there's a conspiracy? There's no more a conspiracy against the tech
industry than, say, people who vote Democratic are a conspiracy against the
Republican Party. It's just a large number of people with similar opinions and
self-interest. Unfortunately, in this case the emergent result of that large
number of people acting in their own opinion and interest is a lot of unjust
attacks on innocent people, dismantling of valuable concepts such as
meritocracy, and a distorted view of the industry in the popular imagination.

------
elchief
There is also a smaller earnings gap for lesbian women vs straight women (vs
men)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/25/the-s...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/25/the-
surprising-reason-why-lesbians-get-paid-more-than-straight-women/)

And for Asian women vs non-Asian women (vs men):

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/06/why-i...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/06/why-
indian-american-women-make-more-money-than-white-guys/)

------
ianamartin
From my anecdotal data, what I noticed the last few years I worked in Texas
was that I was seeing a pretty remarkable influx of middle eastern women
filling technology roles.

These women were some of the most competent people I've had the opportunity to
work with. If you go out and have a drink and a conversation with some of
them, you'll find out that they: feel like they have two strikes against them
in the U.S. and in technology.

Their response is to work really effing hard to get insanely good at what they
do. And it works for them. Most of the people I'm thinking of right now had
higher titles and salaries than the males they work with.

I'm not arguing that there's _no_ discrimination or anything stupid like that.
But I do think there is some nuance to the situation. For example, the
leadership and culture isn't driven by them, even if they are at the top end
of the individual contributor spectrum.

It's a tough nut to crack. Knowing that you have certain knocks against you
can have different effects for different people. One person can look at a
situation and say, "What's the point? I'm not going to be successful because
of gender/education(or lack of it, in my case)/ethnicity/company
culture/whatever.

Other people look at that as part of the fun in life. Bucking the odds,
overthrowing stereotypes. I don't know that there's a strong gender
correlation with these attitudes.

But in my very non-representative experience, where you get hired and how much
you make in the technology field are not consistently tied to whether you have
boobs or if you have a college degree, or if you're a privileged white male,
or if you're a recent immigrant.

I would not argue that the situation is all roses for women and minorities in
this country. But I don't think it's as bad as is sometimes portrayed.

I think that the real race and gender discrimination start in early life
education. Women are not-so-subtly guided in different directions than men
are. And many minorities just don't have much of a chance because our
education and social mechanisms are mostly just crap.

The imbalances that we do see in the job market are a direct result of our
inadequate and unequal social and educational systems. The market is
reflecting the values that we've decided on.

------
Chefkoochooloo
It is a very interesting article, but I wonder if companies would show the
average Gender hiring when it comes to applicants. Sure, a man with the same
skills could've gotten the job, but what if there were 5 women who also
applied with the same skill set? It just depends on the way that you view the
situation. Different perspective, in my opinion.

------
littletimmy
Even if there is a gender gap, should the state really be intervening to "make
it more fair"?

Personally I am against anti-discrimination laws. If I start a company, and I
want to employ only men (or only women or only bald eagles), that's my
business. Why shouldn't I be free to choose to be productive with whoever I
wish?

------
kaonashi
Note, a gender gap in salaries does not imply an absence of a large
differential in proportional representation.

In fact, given the tech sectors large salaries compared to the population at
large, the presence of proportionate salaries _and_ disproportionate
representation would add to the overall wage gap.

------
LargeCompanies
Get as much money as you can especially while our skill/experience is in high
demand; man or woman!

Use recruiters to your advantage; utilize them to get a higher salary or
hourly rate. I.E. When they message you tell them your making more then you
really are to see how high they can go.

------
ninjakeyboard
Contrast with [http://media.dice.com/report/february-2015-the-position-
gap/](http://media.dice.com/report/february-2015-the-position-gap/)

------
msoad
In our community we share our salaries we make. I am male recently hired by
Google. My package is exactly equal to my friend which has the same amount of
experience and is a female.

------
epx
Even if the 80% thing is true, this is not a difference to lose the sleep
about. It should be fixed, but the statistical noise is too significant to aim
at 100%. The marginal value of money is log(x), and log(0.8) is almost 0.

When women were limited to a couple professions (nun, teacher, nurse) it was a
buyer's market, and even brilliant women would have to give in to minimal
salaries, or opt out of professional work. At that time, the difference was
like 10x, so women made 10% of a man, and log(0.1) is a significant number.
This was successfully resolved (with the help of two world wars and the
invention of washing machine).

------
fapjacks
Well, that throws a wrench in some of the complaint machinery.

------
timwaagh
this is good news of course, although largely irrelevant since almost no women
bother with programming.

------
floor__
This should be spread around.

------
clevernickname
When those gender roles are all but constant across countless independently
developed cultures existent over tens of thousands of years, with distribution
of visible physical traits to match them, it's pretty safe to assume that
they're baked into our DNA and not some random whim of western culture.

Imagine how long a tribe with male caretakers and female warriors (who it
cannot be argued are not on average significantly smaller and weaker than men)
would survive against a tribe of male warriors and female caretakers.

There are species with much less divergence in biology between males and
females. We would not have evolved to have such divergence if it were not
useful for our fitness to have distinct fighter/protector and caretaker roles.
Indeed as K-strategists that take a very long time to mature, having dedicated
caretakers was an extremely useful evolution.

~~~
dang
This turn into generic gender-war predictably degenerated into yet another
tedious spat. Perhaps elsewhere on the Internet there is a spot where people
haven't had enough of such discussions yet, but HN isn't one. Note the
guidelines: "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have
something genuinely new to say about them."

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

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11220975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11220975)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
FD3SA
New HN rules:

Citing science as a defense against the current cultural paradigm is inciting
a flamewar.

How the mighty have fallen.

I actively steer young entrepreneurs away from YC and HN, as it has become
incredibly in tune with the echo chamber of the radical political ideologies
of our time. I don't understand how this behavior encourages clear and logical
thinking or produces successful entrepreneurs.

I would appreciate a response on this topic dang, as I am sincerely amazed by
your response to the parent's comment.

EDIT: In case anyone wants to start asking for citations, it is equivalent to
asking for citations regarding the heliocentric model of the solar system. R/K
selection theory, sexual dimorphism, and sex specialization are such well
understood topics as to be assumed common knowledge among any educated
biologists. It only speaks to the individual's naivete when they bring up the
citation requirement.

Citations are used for new and ground breaking research, not for common
scientific knowledge that has been in the mainstream for a hundred years. I am
constantly amazed by the sheer ignorance of the HN crowd on this extremely
well understood science.

~~~
dang
> _I would appreciate a response on this topic_

I'm always willing to help clarify how HN works, but the first four sentences
of your comment are such wild projections that it's hard for me to read your
request as serious. And then you posted
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11226294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11226294),
which flagrantly violates everything HN stands for.

It takes a lot of energy to post these responses, and it's hard to justify
that investment when you're not making any effort to be civil, and when
instead of open-mindedness you display only a desire to score ideological
points.

~~~
FD3SA
I have a policy to return hostility in kind. The commenter DanBC was being
vulgar without making any points, so I decided to respond in a manner
befitting his tone.

But since you seem to be a levelheaded individual, I would like to seriously
discuss the suppression of critical thought on Hacker News, and why moderators
such as yourself enforce it ruthlessly.

Let's start with the parent comment:

>When those gender roles are all but constant across countless independently
developed cultures existent over tens of thousands of years, with distribution
of visible physical traits to match them, it's pretty safe to assume that
they're baked into our DNA and not some random whim of western culture.
Imagine how long a tribe with male caretakers and female warriors (who it
cannot be argued are not on average significantly smaller and weaker than men)
would survive against a tribe of male warriors and female caretakers. There
are species with much less divergence in biology between males and females. We
would not have evolved to have such divergence if it were not useful for our
fitness to have distinct fighter/protector and caretaker roles. Indeed as
K-strategists that take a very long time to mature, having dedicated
caretakers was an extremely useful evolution.

There is absolutely nothing controversial about this statement to a trained
biologist. In fact, you could not get through an undergraduate degree in
biology if you did not understand sexual dimorphism, r/K selection theory, and
the sexual specialization that results. As such, there is nothing political
about the statement. It is merely a statement of the current scientific
understanding of the evolutionary history of homo sapiens.

Now let's look at your response:

>This turn into generic gender-war predictably degenerated into yet another
tedious spat. Perhaps elsewhere on the Internet there is a spot where people
haven't had enough of these yet, but HN isn't one. Note the guidelines:
"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something
genuinely new to say about them."

So, the statement of scientific consensus stated by the original comment is
labelled by a moderator as "gender-war" which "predictably degenerated into
yet another tedious spat." And you summarise with saying HN has had enough,
and the debate is to be ended.

So I just want to be clear, _which branches of evolutionary biology, and
science in general, are off limits to discuss on HN?_ And how does censoring
known science help critical thought and discussions regarding the current
entrepreneurial markets in tech?

Thank you for your time.

EDIT: to address your final statement:

>It takes a lot of energy to post these responses, and it's hard to justify
the investment when you're not making any effort to be civil, and when instead
of open-mindedness you display only a desire to score ideological points.

It is a bold assertion that stating known science is "a desire to score
ideological points." This line of thinking demonstrates more about the reader,
and less about the material. Evolutionary biology is not an ideology, it is a
science. Stating it does not make one an ideologue, but an empiricist.

~~~
dang
> _I have a policy to return hostility in kind._

In that case you can't comment here. "But he started it" is an acceptable
excuse neither from 5-year-olds nor from Hacker News commenters.

> _I would like to seriously discuss the suppression of critical thought on
> Hacker News, and why moderators such as yourself enforce it ruthlessly_

This is obviously just polemic, and boilerplate at that. We might as well
"discuss" whether I've stopped beating my wife.

Ideological harangues have no place on this site, so please don't post any
more of them.

~~~
FD3SA
You've confirmed all my suspicions regarding HN and YC's ideological
positions.

Thank you, I will not be posting further on this site or directing any
business your way.

~~~
tomhoward
As I pointed out in another comment in this thread, in this past 24 hours Dang
has been attacked in a similar way from someone on the opposite side of this
debate to you.

And as I also said in that comment, if you knew what a decent and thoughtful
person Dang is, and how deeply emotionally invested he is in making HN a place
of civility and intellectually stimulating discussion, you'd be appalled at
how cruel you and others have been to him in this thread.

------
loco5niner
Correct Link: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-
work/tech-c...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-
careers/study-finds-no-gender-gap-in-tech-salaries)

~~~
dang
Thanks. Changed to that from [http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-
valley/at-work/tech-c...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-
work/tech-careers/.Vth23MxmIEA.twitter).

~~~
magicalist
The blog post directly from Dice has slightly more information:
[http://insights.dice.com/2016/03/02/dice-report-gender-
plays...](http://insights.dice.com/2016/03/02/dice-report-gender-plays-no-
role-in-tech-pay/)

It also links to a more in depth look at what they call the "position gap",
which addresses some people's comments about the original article hinging on
controlling for education, experience, and job title:
[http://media.dice.com/report/february-2015-the-position-
gap/](http://media.dice.com/report/february-2015-the-position-gap/)

(I'd call the IEEE post blog spam, personally. It's barely more than a
collection of quotes from elsewhere, and "IEEE" with "Study" in the title
gives this more of an air of credibility than a survey by a job search company
probably deserves)

~~~
dang
Thanks; good catch! We changed the URL from [http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-
from-the-valley/at-work/tech-c...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-
valley/at-work/tech-careers/study-finds-no-gender-gap-in-tech-salaries).

(I agree.)

------
apta
> What if it's a natural preference given

It is known that women tend to be more emotional than men for instance. As
such, they do well in nurturing roles like you described. I'm not saying that
men can't do them, it's just that more women feel "at home" doing that kind of
work.

~~~
st3v3r
Is that a natural thing? Or is it because emotions are considered "unmanly"?

~~~
logfromblammo
You are in the woods. Before you are two black bear cubs. Due to the
circumstances of the hypothetical, you have only two choices for where to
stand. Choice A is between the cubs and their mother, who is feasting on
armyworms. Choice B is between the cubs and their father, who is raiding a
beehive.

Which do you pick?

Choice B, right?

It is illogical to walk away from easy food and then choose to attack the
strong food rather than the weak food. It is somewhat less illogical to run
away from easy food and attack an imminent mortal threat to the most important
things on the entire planet. What makes an adult bear decide that bear cubs
are not food, and also the most important things ever? Emotions, probably.

Most mammals employ liberal doses of hormones to ensure that a mother forms a
powerful emotional bond with her child. Humans are not an exception. Remember
that the placenta allows chemicals to pass directly from mother to child and
vice versa. The emotional bond between father and child has to form in the
same way as it would form with anyone else. I'm not saying that a male _can
't_ be as emotional as a female, but males never experience a 280 day interval
where something is constantly giving them intravenous injections of chemicals
evolved specifically to create an emotional response.

~~~
Kluny
I don't think your analogy holds any water, and I also find it disrespectful
of the typical father's love for his children.

~~~
logfromblammo
My point was that the emotionality of females and males is strongly
biological, has likely existed since the common ancestor of all mammals, and
the notion that it is significantly impacted by human social constructs is not
tremendously plausible in my opinion.

A developing fetus literally injects behavior-changing chemicals directly into
its mother's bloodstream for months before it is born. In species without
strong pair-bonding, a juvenile may never get the chance to push any
evolution-programmed buttons on the father to initiate a parental bond.

So my opinion is that the median human male probably does not experience
emotion as strongly as the median human female, because male emotions do not
affect reproductive success as strongly or as reliably as female emotions.
There's no particular reason to attach any cultural importance to it. Being
more or less emotional than someone else is neither good nor bad. But it does
affect behavior, and therefore relative suitability for specific work roles.

Evolution does not care if you literally cry over spilled milk, or if you can
continue running up the beach even after the hundred men in front of you, to
whom you had grown attached in the weeks prior, get torn to shreds before your
eyes. It only cares about whether you will have living descendants in the
future. But your fellow humans care about that when they are deciding whether
or not to hire you into a vacant position. Your emotional programming will
make you more suitable for some jobs, and less suitable for others.

But that is definitely not the sole reason why some professions have something
other than a 50-50 split between the sexes. It accounts for some of the
difference, but nowhere near all of it.

------
s_dev
Link broken - 404

------
readymade
Wherein a bunch of privileged white men all agree that they were never
privileged all along.

~~~
cbd1984
We don't need this sexism and racism.

~~~
kiproping
Its all the rage now.

------
bobby_9x
Don't let the facts get in the way of a good discussion. These facts have been
out for at least 5 years now and nobody cares.

~~~
rubicon33
I'm confused by your comment. Facts should either support a discussion and
foster it's continuation, or, it should shut down a discussion until new facts
are presented.

We COULD all still be talking about how square the earth is, but I think we've
moved on to more fruitful discussions after the facts shut that one down.

Speaking in an entirely abstract sense, discussions should halt if facts don't
support it. I'm open to hearing something new though....

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>I'm confused by your comment.

I took their comment to be commentary on how there is still an insistence by
many in society that there exists a gender gap even when many studies have
given evidence that the gap is explained by a variety of factors such as work
life balance.

It would be nice if the discussion could move onto issues such as why there is
a gender difference in work life balance desires, in hours of overtime worked,
in work place death rates, etc. But we still seem to be stuck having to
explain that the earth doesn't have four corners.

~~~
ktRolster
This is my favorite recent example of thoughtless discrimination against
women: [http://www.stubbornella.org/content/2014/05/09/sexist-by-
des...](http://www.stubbornella.org/content/2014/05/09/sexist-by-design/)

And you can see it's not a particularly new problem:
[http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/09/glass-staircase-not-
dre...](http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/09/glass-staircase-not-dress-
friendly/comment-page-2/)

------
jonesb6
"No salary gap exists between women and men in tech, says job search firm
Dice, looking at its annual survey of 16,000 tech professionals, as long as
you are comparing people with equal experience, education, and job titles.

That, of course, is a big if. And previous data from Dice found about a
$10,000 pay gap between men and women if not controlled for those factors.

Dice’s president, Bob Melk, in a letter to the media, indicated that, while
generally the men (54 percent) and women (51 percent) surveyed reported being
satisfied with their compensation, cash just doesn’t mean as much to women as
it does to men. Melk indicated that employeers are offering women alternatives
to higher salaries, including flexible work hours and the ability to
telecommute. (I have to say, wouldn’t it be nice if these options were in
addition to, instead of a replacement for, higher salaries?) Dice’s complete
analysis of motivators is in the figure at right."

~~~
dang
Please don't just paste quotes from the article into the thread.

~~~
jonesb6
I saw that it was a very small article and thought it might benefit mobile
readers who think twice before clicking a link, won't happen again.

~~~
dang
Thanks. We appreciate the helpful intent, but it's better to leave the thread
for discussion.

------
PhasmaFelis
> _No salary gap exists between women and men in tech, says job search firm
> Dice, looking at its annual survey of 16,000 tech professionals, as long as
> you are comparing people with equal experience, education, and job titles._

> _That, of course, is a big if. And previous data from Dice found about a
> $10,000 pay gap between men and women if not controlled for those factors._

Annoying that the article itself seems to contradict its title. We don't have
a breakdown of how much effect those different factors have, but from the
summary it's possible that women get equal salaries for the same job titles,
but are less likely to be hired for/promoted into better-paying titles--which
would be the same thing as a gender-based salary gap.

