
The Uber Pay Gap - jseliger
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/uber-pay-gap.html
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nkurz
_Overall, female and male Uber drivers behave remarkably similarly but small
differences aggregated over large samples produce a small but systematic
gender gap in wages of about 7%. The gap, however, is an artifact, a social
construct that has no implications for “social justice,” drivers are treated
equally._

Ouch. To the contrary, I'd say that this study does have significant
implications for "social justice", namely that not all pay gaps are caused by
the issues that fall under heading of "social justice".

There are some interesting thoughts within the comments of that piece. One was
whether the "costs" of male and female drivers were the same. Since the
evidence shows that males drove faster on average than females, one might
guess that they would also receive more speeding tickets. Presumably there
would also be differences in accident rates, and hence differences in
insurance rates. Does the pay gap close further once these increased/reduced
costs are taken into account?

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rossdavidh
Well, one could use this data to claim that a pay gap of on the order of 7% is
plausibly not relevant to "social justice". In other words, if you didn't have
sex discrimination, you'd have a pay gap of something like 7%. Not many
industries, I believe, have gender pay gaps that small. If you have truly
gender-blind, performance only returns to pay, your gender pay gap should be
single-digit.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
"Pay Gap" isn't an accurate term to talk about these phenomena. It's more
accurately a "tradeoff gap". Men tend to work more hours, expose themselves to
more risk of workplace death, compete harder, do less intrinsically rewarding
work, and so forth. Is it fair that men make somewhat more money and make up
90% of workplace deaths? It depends on what you care about, and empirically
speaking, it seems that men care about bottom-line salary more than women do,
and make tradeoffs for it that women don't.

~~~
lykr0n
And I think you hit the dirty secret that people who use the 77% number tend
to ignore. There are fundamental differences in the kinds of work and the
general approach to work that males and females take. Nothing wrong with that,
but to ignore that in the discussion would be a disservice.

What this shows is that at least 7% of a wage gap could be considered normal
and to be expected.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
>There are fundamental differences in the kinds of work and the general
approach to work that males and females take.

Exactly this. There's a reason why most CEOs are men - they had to put in
inordinate amount of work competing in climbing the corporate ladder. I'm not
jealous of them: they have the CEO title, I have an extra thirty to fifty
hours a week over a decade.

~~~
lykr0n
Well, don't discount institutional sexism. I think that general attitudes and
approach is a major factor, but not the only factor.

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oflannabhra
Freakonomics just did an episode[1] on this study, and interviewed 3 of the 5
study authors.

[1] - [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/what-can-uber-teach-us-
about...](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/what-can-uber-teach-us-about-the-
gender-pay-gap/)

------
rayiner
> The gap, however, is an artifact, a social construct that has no
> implications for “social justice,” drivers are treated equally.

That’s not supported by the article. For example, why do men have more
experience with Uber? Is it because women were initially more skeptical of the
idea given possible risks to their physical safety? Why do women drive less
and quit more quickly? Is it because they’re more likely to do Uber as a side
gig to primary domestic duties?

What the author probably meant to say is that the evidence shows _Uber_ isn’t
discriminating. That doesn’t mean the data isn’t relevant to social justice
concerns.

~~~
mantas
It's relevant, because it shows that even if there's no workplace
discrimination, pay gap is still there. Thus there's no point in chasing down
single-digit pay gap.

The only way to remove pay gap is to pay fixed salaries to everybody,
regardless of performance. Which wouldn't be fair either.

~~~
rayiner
> It's relevant, because it shows that even if there's no workplace
> discrimination, pay gap is still there. Thus there's no point in chasing
> down single-digit pay gap.

Your second sentence doesn't follow from your first sentence. The first
sentence just implies that we need to look beyond immediate workplace
discretion to other areas. _E.g._ the societal presumption that women will, by
default, assume a larger share of childcare duties.

~~~
mantas
I'm saying that even if we recreate entire society to handle men-women
differences better, we'll still have gender pay gape either way. I don't
believe it's possible to have 0% pay gap. Even in ideal world. Unless we'd
implement that solution.

