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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 accou

by ahoy 11y ago

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

ultramancool 11y ago
Here's a really interesting freakonomics radio episode that goes into some good detail here if anyone's curious where these differences really originate: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender-pay-gap-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender...
- shostack 11y ago
  Beat me to it. The episode is basically an interview with Claudia Goldin who is about as qualified a person as you could hope for to speak on this matter. [1] tl;dr women start out with equal pay, but trade pure monetary compensation for flexibility and/or fewer hours when they have kids because society still sucks at gender equality when it comes to enabling parents to equally contribute to certain aspects of parenting due. [1] http://scholar.harvard.edu/goldin/biocv http://scholar.harvard.edu/goldin/biocv
  - tomp 11y ago
    It's not just society, it's also biology. Even if "parenting" roles were completely equal, "childbirth" role would fall only on women, so they would still take more time off for children (and hence get lower pay).
    - FD3SA 11y ago
      Indeed, the crusade against biology is one I watch with great amusement. Don Quixote would be proud of those who hoist their flags in battle against evolution, biology and the laws of the universe itself. Keep up the good fight, dear gender abolitionists, for you truly are against a formidable foe.
      - RUG3Y 11y ago
        Your perspective is quite similar to mine. The hubris of our current society is baffling sometimes.
      - aussieindian 11y ago
        all this is caused by one weakness exhibited by many men. 1. Attempting to fix the problems of the women in their circle and the resulting echo chamber effect. These men feel guilty when they hear/see women getting into a victim complex or when they are uncomfortable with market forces. I keep asking my wife & women I know to demand higher salaries and they are content to take the easy non-confrontational path.
    - mst 11y ago
      Artificial Uterus, or in the Vorkosigan saga, 'Uterine Replicator'
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      Technically correct but irrelevant. Childbirth itself takes a couple weeks. A proportional pay gap from that would be well under one percent, and it could be offset by the fact that women live five years longer.
paganel 11y ago
> 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 Don't have a kid, but I would think that an infant is better off having his mother close to him in his early months of life compared to having his father, for the simple biological reason that the mother can breast-feed, while a father can't. From what I remember reading kids who are breast-fed tend to do better in life in terms of health or being better from a psylogical point of view.
- Leon 11y ago
  There is a lot more to parenting than just breastfeeding (which can be pumped and stored ahead of time - it's not always practical).
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >for the simple biological reason that the mother can breast-feed, while a father can't. While the father normally is unable to do so without effort like a woman is, they do have all the equipment and their are ways to get it functioning. Somehow I don't think people would be for that option.
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    For a reference to that strange fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation
- untog 11y ago
  From what I remember reading kids who are breast-fed tend to do better in life in terms of health or being better from a psylogical point of view. The former (health) is absolutely true, but it's nothing that couldn't also be solved by the mother pumping her breast milk and the father doing the actual feeding by bottle. "bottle vs breast" is about the actual milk being fed, not the delivery method.
  - obrit 11y ago
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>It doesn't account for differences in industry, job title, experience, etc. It's super broad. It also doesn't account for full time covering a wide number of hours worked. Full time can be 37 hours a week or 45 hours a week, can comparing them as both just being 'full time' misses quite a lot. >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. How it is more often foisted upon women? The social pressure on men to take deadly jobs and to work longer hours is equal to the social pressure on women to choose careers where they can take time off and be with their kids. If anything, I rather be with my kid than stuck an extra 20 hours in the office... one of these pressures is for something most people find more desirable than the other. >We need to de-stigmatize flexible schedules. So are we aiming for more men to take flexible schedules or for pay to not suffer when someone takes flexible schedules? Because if you want the former, it is more about the pressure to earn than the stigma on flexible work schedules. And if it is the latter, how is this fair to the people who don't get the flexible work schedules? I think the deeper problem is why are women forced in the child care role and men into the bread winning roles and how to fix that (which you do mention).
- RodericDay 11y ago
  Elsewhere, on a different topic, you posted something along the same lines: > Which gender gets killed most often at work because of a social pressure that your value is determined by having a job, so if the only job options are dangerous, you best take one anyways? Do you like gender roles or not? You've already posted like 5 times in this thread, and I'm not sure if your perspective is "let's do away with gender roles" or "gender roles are there for a reason, and it benefits women".
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    The very last line of the post you just responded to. >I think the deeper problem is why are women forced in the child care role and men into the bread winning roles and how to fix that (which you do mention). I would hope that makes my position on the matter clear enough. But in case it doesn't. Wage disparity is caused by gender roles, not by discrimination. But gender roles are still a problem, especially for the people who are forced into the roles they do not like. But... even if I made posts that completely contradict everything I said (and I do that sometimes when trying out arguments for sides I don't normally support), that does not invalidate anything in the current posts.
RodericDay 11y ago
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.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  That would go a long way to correct for differences resulting from maternal leave, but there would still be issues such as single people, and especially single men, being favored (since it is rare for them to have a child who they must then take mandatory leave to care for).
  - brongondwana 11y ago
    It would definitely favour gay men, though they could still adopt and take paternity leave.
    - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      I remember reading that gay men suffer a penalty to straight men while gay women have a boost compared to straight women. I wonder if that is related child care expectations when they do adopt children.
  - ahoy 11y ago
    No doubt you're correct. It's not a simple issue to fully resolve, but there is some seemingly low-hanging fruit to grab for.
- mrrrgn 11y ago
  We already suffer from declining birthrates in the west. Your solution would make not having a child the best choice for "go-getters."
nxzero 11y ago
"Coming out of uni/grad school, male and female salaries are equal in comparable fields." Given that there's more female that graduate now, there's still bias in the process, just not the bias people hope to find.
- eli 11y ago
  In STEM? Far fewer women graduate with CS degrees than men. I think that percentage is actually declining.
  - nxzero 11y ago
    Have a source? My understanding is that there's been an overall decline in stem degrees; meaning that, if there's a gap, it's not due to gender bias or a lack of opportunities for a given gender. Basically, I don't buy it, but happy to be proven wrong too.
    - eli 11y ago
      I'm on mobile, but I think this is the report I was thinking of https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2015/01/27/women-falling-behind-in-stem-bachelors-degrees/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2015/01/27/wo...
stvswn 11y ago
What if it's the case that preferences are different among men and women? Why do we assume that the women surveyed would prefer to have the higher paying but more demanding career paths? My wife is very smart and capable of making a high salary. She chose a flexible job path and took several years off to be with our children in their younger years. We could certainly afford otherwise; our family would have more money had she decided to go the childcare route. It's just our choice, she has no regrets. It wasn't "foisted" upon her. In fact, it's the happiest she's ever been. Is there something wrong with a woman prioritizing motherhood? Why does it feel to me that these conversations always frame parenting as some kind of tragedy that disrupts an otherwise successful career? By the same token, I am very motivated to make enough money so that she can continue to stay home with our kids as long as she likes. I like seeing her and my kids happy. Should I be forced to slow down because this is unfair to women at my office? This all seems crazy to me. Having kids is a blessing. I totally agree that people shouldn't feel a pressure to do it the "traditional" way or any other way for that matter -- I like when men are given the flexibility to take care of their children in support of their wives' careers. I just don't agree that slowing down one's career in order to prioritize parenthood is a problem that needs to be fixed.
- hnal943 11y ago
  Absolutely! I reject the base assumption of this whole discussion that your salary is a measure of your worth as a person.
- jacalata 11y ago
  Because we are not operating in a vacuum of information with only this single article to go on?
  - force_reboot 11y ago
    Constantly declaring victory doesn't mean you've won an intellectual debate. The left have convinced themselves that gender roles are bad, and the left happen to dominate some academic fields. That doesn't make them the sole arbiters of true and false.
parennoob 11y ago
> 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). Put another way, we need to upend the idea that hazardous and arduous jobs (often involving hard physical labor) are only the domain of men, and encourage more women to participate in industries like mining, firefighting, welding, truck driving, and construction.
- korethr 11y ago
  If you make note of the differences in physiology between the male and female body, you might discover that there is a non-arbitrary reason why industries requiring hard physical labor have traditionally been the domain of men.
  - homonculus1 11y ago
    If you make note of the differences in physiology between the male and female body, you might discover that there is a non-arbitrary reason why industries requiring childcare have traditionally been the domain of women.
  - vkou 11y ago
    If a particular woman, regardless of her physiology, can pass the physical bar necessary to be a firefighter, why in the world should she not work in this domain? As a man, my out-of-shape physiology precludes me from being one - that doesn't mean that my gender should be excluded from it.
    - parennoob 11y ago
      This is correct and I agree with it, but my statement goes a step further. I am saying that women should be strongly encouraged to be part of these occupations, in the same way that men are strongly encouraged to take paternity leave and help with child rearing.
  - onion2k 11y ago
    And before the invention of power tools you'd have had a valid point.
caublestone 11y ago
63% of minimum wage workers are women: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/who-are-the-minimum-wage-workers-of-america/446409/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/who-are-... Increasing minimum wage would effectively increase the 77% number also.
- ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
  It would increase it for the wrong reason, and only in the short-term, you pre-suppose that increasing the minimum wage won't lead to other wage increases. Why would someone who is getting paid more than minimum wage to perform a job which requires a skill be ok with being paid less than they were before, in relative means?
  - frandroid 11y ago
    The increase in minimum wage does cause increases in near-minimum wages as well, but as you go up the salary scale (which is stretched quite longly, thank you very much), the impact of minimum wage increases is reduced, leading to an overall reduction in inequality.
    - ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
      I'm sorry but there will be no reduction in the overall income gap with a raise in minimum wage. You admit the minimum wage increase will cause the jobs near that rate to increase as well as the medium income levels. The high end of the income scale is so far "stretched" as you say and held by so few people that the effect of the minimum wage increase is insignificant. Infinity -1 is still infinity. Of course there will be the resultant unintended consequences such as the price of housing rising due to more people having a little bit more to spend, seeing as housing and healthcare are both increasing much faster than incomes and inflation it is likely these two will see the windfall and end up resulting in the lower classes having even less disposable income.
- adventured 11y ago
  Only 1% of the US civilian labor force earns the minimum wage. So you're talking about a small fraction of the total US pay base. It wouldn't even remotely dent the 77% number, first because the minimum wage affects so relatively few, and second because the wages in the group are so small it won't meaningfully impact the median income that primarily drives the 77%. To put it into perspective, by your 63% number, it comes out to about 1 million women versus 750,000 men. Shifting the pay of those 250,000 minimum wage workers (that represent the sex gap on minimum wage) by $2 or $3 probably will not even move the 77% number to 77.25%.
walshemj 11y ago
Not in one big tech company I worked in for the same role there was a marked difference in male and female mainly due to the problems with PRP
shawn-butler 11y ago
>> 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. >> I see no evidence to support this "funnel" at all in my life/work experience. Workers on "flex" schedules in the tech sector underperform by a wide margin. I see little or no reason why I should prop up someone else's life / work choices with my own labor.
- jonesb6 11y ago
  I believe you were down voted because you disagreed with the generally believed idea of "the funnel for women" and the generally believed idea of "flex schedules increase productivity" without providing any evidence. I would point out that most people supporting both those ideas in this thread don't seem to be providing evidence either. Everybody, I'm pretty sure the down vote is used to bury threads that don't add to the discussion. I think "shawn-butter"'s side deserves to be discussed.
- kchoudhu 11y ago
  > Workers on "flex" schedules in the tech sector underperform by a wide margin. Proof, please.
panglott 11y ago
Most studies about the gender gap in pay find that most of the 77% figure is attibutable to differences in career choices/training/&c., but there remains a rough 5% difference in pay that is not attributable to those things. Ask most men if they would take a roughly 5% pay cut, and they would not say that it insignificant or something that can be ignored. Maybe the tech industry is just immune to this, but this article is basically a press release with no information about data or methodology.
- adevine 11y ago
  And that approximately 5% difference can be solely attributed to the fact that men are more likely to negotiate for their salaries than women. I don't remember the study off the top of my head but there was a YouTube video that was investigating the pay gap and referenced the study looking at men's and women's willingness to ask for more pay.
  - brighteyes 11y ago
    That might be part, but there are even simpler explanations. Taller people make significantly more money per inch. Why that is, who knows, but just by itself it can explain around half the wage gap - before correction. In other words, after correction, if you also correct for height, then women make more than men. Of course no one should make more money just because they are taller, but that's the reality. No one seems interested to try to correct this, though, because it's not obviously tied to any popular political movements.
- BurningFrog 11y ago
  That this ~5% difference is hard to explain doesn't mean it is caused by gender discrimination.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
losteric 11y ago
I fully agree with everything here, especially getting rid of stereotypes around nurturing roles. My question is, what happens if many women and men aren't funneled towards those roles? What if it's a natural preference given our evolutionary history? I'm not saying that's the case, and my parents had no problems reversing nurturing roles over 20 years ago... but given our hyper-"PC" society, I am curious how far society's responsibilities extend. What happens when a particular group innately prefers a certain type of work that the market values lowly? Are they irrational agents suffering by their own hands? Should society subsidize their job? Do we try to re-educate the group into following economically valued jobs? What about other people that have the same job for different reasons?
- cortesoft 11y ago
  Your second question is tricky to answer, so I am going to ignore it. :D For your first question, I always think the key is choice and support for people who make choices that are counter to the norm. Sure, it might be that when given a choice free of social pressures, more women might still choose to be the primary caregiver for children than men will. That is fine, and women and men who make that socially traditional choice should be supported and not judged. The key, however, is to make sure we also support and don't judge the people who choose other arrangements for child caregiving. We should not design laws and social conventions that punish those who choose to go against the norm.
  - losteric 11y ago
    Part of my comment was questioning the meaning of support. Are we talking emotional support, and simply being accepting of other's identity? Are we taxing some roles and subsidizing others to normalize economic freedom? What if the market also has inherent preferences that mirror natural preferences? Do we actively recruit youth and try to get them into under-represented roles? What about undesirable roles? I don't know... maybe this is all moot if we're still working through the "simpler" stuff like balancing laws and getting rid of stereotypes.
    - euyyn 11y ago
mbostleman 11y ago
But work that has flexible hours is not equal to work that has inflexible hours. So theoretically equal pay for equal work stands. I guess it's a matter of whether or not you can truly evaluate work equality.
wisty 11y ago
Alternatively, it's because of benevolent sexism. Women aren't slobs if they want to kick back and watch day-time TV while watching kids, they're doing the hardest job in the world!
- facepalm 11y ago
  It's not actually the hardest job in the world, by a long stretch. For starters, look at jobs that actively put your life at risk. Giving birth is very risky, too, but once the baby is out I think the risks go way down - however, the riskiness of giving birth is part of why women are given the privilege to get the less strenuous stay at home work and not having to go out as lumberjacks to earn a living. On the downside I suspect the riskiness of birth is also a reason why less women get access to education: if you can only afford to send some of your kids to school, it makes more economic sense to send the kids with the higher survival rate. In some countries one in ten women die from pregnancy.
EGreg 11y ago
I think both men and women should stop automatically buying into the idea that your career goals should involve having inflexible hours working some high status position for some corporation. Most pay inequality in our society comes from the assumption that women are better primary caregivers for children than men, so they get custody of the children. Many men complain about this, as well, but as long as it's going to be the norm in most states, women's pay will be lower. Why not have a flexible work schedule for both spouses, so they can raise their children? Better yet, in traditional societies (including Soviet Russia), the grandma often watched the kids instead of some teenage babysitter. The kids grew up with more respect for elders that way. Not only that, but the grandparents weren't shipped off to some nursing home so the adults could work two jobs unimpeded.
jfaucett 11y ago
"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." I disagree. The primary cause is that women can become pregnant - the possibility alone is in most cases enough - in which case they leave the work force for X amount of time. Depending on country, laws, and personal preferences this time period can range from a few weeks to years. In some countries when this hypothetical becomes a reality it can have a large negative impact on the employer. For instance, in Germany the woman's job position must be held open for her until she decides to return to work (possibly years later), not to mention the full salary compensation months before and after giving-birth, when she is no longer working. But to simplify it down to flatland, lets assume a woman were to just take 1 day off before giving birth, have a job that required no movement or lifting, and the employer didn't have to compensate her. Still, in this simplest case, a woman is at a disadvantage compared to a man. Because of this biological disadvantage, I think there will never be the sort of absolute equality we want until people are born in tubes or the capitalistic employer/employee relationship changes.
- ahoy 11y ago
  Seems like you're letting perfect be the enemy of good.
  - jfaucett 11y ago
    No. My observations would just suggest adressing the issue at the employer/employee relationship or market motivator level, whereas yours suggest handling it at a propoganda/media/educational level to remove the social norm of women staying at home. My opinion is that that norm is old and dying if not already long deceased and any future gains in equality will be found in the market motivator domain, in which biology in tandem with govt policy constitute the major factors at play.
- wahrsagevogel 11y ago
  > For instance, in Germany the woman's job position must be held open for her until she decides to return to work (possibly years later), not to mention the full salary compensation months before and after giving-birth, when she is no longer working. The company will be reimbursed for the salary by the health insurance upon filling out a form. A company does not pay a single cent more than the cost of hiring another person for the position.
ecobiker 11y ago
For anyone interested, Freakonomics explored[1] this in detail and their conclusions were pretty similar. It included an interview from Claudia Goldin and her research[2] which was quite in-depth. [1] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender-pay-gap-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender... [2] [PDF] http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/gender_equality.pdf?m=1440439230 http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/gender_equalit...
pavel_lishin 11y ago
New father here. My current employer provides two weeks of paternal leave. I ended up taking a third week of vacation time to extend this, which I'm in now. It still doesn't feel like it's enough. I'm exhausted today, despite taking a mid-day nap. When I go back next week, I will not be at my best, and there's no way of me being at my best short of sleeping in another room with earplugs while my wife does 100% of the (often literal) heavy lifting of child care.
- gedy 11y ago
  Not sure where you live but there's FMLA in the USA for up to 12 weeks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_of_1993 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    I think that covers unpaid leave; three months without pay would put us in a crappy situation.
facepalm 11y ago
"Women tend to find themselves funneled into specific career paths" Why the passive - couldn't they actively be choosing specific career paths? "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." Again, why the "foisted"? Especially for children it doesn't make sense: if it is such an unpleasant task, why not simply choose not to have children? Care for parents might end up in women's hands because they already made the choices for more flexible time (and less income) earlier on. Instead of "foisted", it seems possible that women simply more often get the option to choose (because they were the ones who were pregnant), and men don't.
thescribe 11y ago
>We need to de-stigmatize flexible schedules. Why do we 'need' to do this? Jobs with very rigid shifts should be at a premium shouldn't they?
ownagefool 11y ago
So while we are militarizing against the idea that woman are forced into staying at home, you do need to consider whether family care being the domain of woman is something men have foisted upon them or if it's something they themselves desire. Now I'll admit I don't have kids, but every partner I've had has had the same view that they'd want me to continue going to work whilst they were stay at home. Any argument to the contrary is often met by the simple fact that said child would have been carried to term by them. If you accept that as a possbility then we're starting to look at mens rights issue. Is it fair that men have less parental rights? Overall, I'd say no. Are we going to get support for these issues? Probably not. Obviously in a better world I imagine we'd share a pool of parental leave. People should have the choice but I'd still expect the pool to largely be utilised by females because they want it that way and it's hard to argue otherwise.
zarkov99 11y ago
I am sorry, foisted? Most women have a much higher nurturing instinct and most men have a much higher competitive instinct. Just observe little kids at play for a while. Biology is what it is regardless of the zeitgeist.
toomanybeersies 11y ago
It is all about how you calculate it as to what number you arrive at. Statistics New Zealand calculates the gender wage gap by comparing the hourly earnings, rather than weekly/yearly earnings. This helps to take into account the fact that women tend to work less hours (for various reasons, and is a completely different conversation). [0] Interestingly, the gap when comparing the entire workforce with this measure is 10% in NZ, and comparing full time employment drops to 5.6% (the lowest in the OECD) [1]. One thing that needs to be considered when comparing the wage gap is that >90% of workplace fatalities are men [2], and that men tend to work much more physical jobs, causing of greater rate in workplace injuries and problems later in life, just think of how many older people you know with hearing loss from work, and how the vast majority of them are men. [0]: http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/income-and-work/Income/gender-pay-gap.aspx http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/income-and-work/In... [1]: http://women.govt.nz/our-work/utilising-womens-skills/income/gender-pay-gap http://women.govt.nz/our-work/utilising-womens-skills/income... [2]: https://doe.state.wy.us/lmi/0305/a1.htm https://doe.state.wy.us/lmi/0305/a1.htm
forgetsusername 11y ago
>We need to upend the idea that family care is solely the domain of women "Solely" might be a bit strong, but I don't think this is merely an "idea". It's reality. Women do the majority of child-rearing, pretty much across all species. When it comes to us humans and our bizarre, work-driven lives, their careers suffer for it. I never understood why that is so hard to understand, or why it's controversial. >We need to de-stigmatize flexible schedules Totally agree. But I'd put much of that blame on "us", not our employers. If we weren't such a consumerist, money-driven society, perhaps more people would be willing to work those flex-hours at less pay, but increased happiness.
norea-armozel 11y ago
>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). Don't certain EU countries already have this in some capacity? Honestly, I think the problem with leave benefits here in the States is the fact we treat them as a privilege rather than as some form of non-monetary compensation. IMO, if I could have an comparable set of leave benefits with a lower salary (assuming leave here would have to be set to market rate for my time I would've otherwise been working to make this an equatable exchange) I probably would take it. I like my free time. I'm sure older workers would love it too if it worked well for them if they were more focused on semi-retirement.

by ahoy 11y ago

ultramancool 11y ago

Here's a really interesting freakonomics radio episode that goes into some good detail here if anyone's curious where these differences really originate: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender-pay-gap-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender...

shostack 11y ago
Beat me to it. The episode is basically an interview with Claudia Goldin who is about as qualified a person as you could hope for to speak on this matter. [1] tl;dr women start out with equal pay, but trade pure monetary compensation for flexibility and/or fewer hours when they have kids because society still sucks at gender equality when it comes to enabling parents to equally contribute to certain aspects of parenting due. [1] http://scholar.harvard.edu/goldin/biocv http://scholar.harvard.edu/goldin/biocv
- tomp 11y ago
  It's not just society, it's also biology. Even if "parenting" roles were completely equal, "childbirth" role would fall only on women, so they would still take more time off for children (and hence get lower pay).
  - FD3SA 11y ago
    Indeed, the crusade against biology is one I watch with great amusement. Don Quixote would be proud of those who hoist their flags in battle against evolution, biology and the laws of the universe itself. Keep up the good fight, dear gender abolitionists, for you truly are against a formidable foe.
    - RUG3Y 11y ago
      Your perspective is quite similar to mine. The hubris of our current society is baffling sometimes.
    - aussieindian 11y ago
      all this is caused by one weakness exhibited by many men. 1. Attempting to fix the problems of the women in their circle and the resulting echo chamber effect. These men feel guilty when they hear/see women getting into a victim complex or when they are uncomfortable with market forces. I keep asking my wife & women I know to demand higher salaries and they are content to take the easy non-confrontational path.
  - mst 11y ago
    Artificial Uterus, or in the Vorkosigan saga, 'Uterine Replicator'
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    Technically correct but irrelevant. Childbirth itself takes a couple weeks. A proportional pay gap from that would be well under one percent, and it could be offset by the fact that women live five years longer.

paganel 11y ago

> 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 Don't have a kid, but I would think that an infant is better off having his mother close to him in his early months of life compared to having his father, for the simple biological reason that the mother can breast-feed, while a father can't. From what I remember reading kids who are breast-fed tend to do better in life in terms of health or being better from a psylogical point of view.

Leon 11y ago
There is a lot more to parenting than just breastfeeding (which can be pumped and stored ahead of time - it's not always practical).
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>for the simple biological reason that the mother can breast-feed, while a father can't. While the father normally is unable to do so without effort like a woman is, they do have all the equipment and their are ways to get it functioning. Somehow I don't think people would be for that option.
- ktRolster 11y ago
  For a reference to that strange fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation
untog 11y ago
From what I remember reading kids who are breast-fed tend to do better in life in terms of health or being better from a psylogical point of view. The former (health) is absolutely true, but it's nothing that couldn't also be solved by the mother pumping her breast milk and the father doing the actual feeding by bottle. "bottle vs breast" is about the actual milk being fed, not the delivery method.
- obrit 11y ago

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

>It doesn't account for differences in industry, job title, experience, etc. It's super broad. It also doesn't account for full time covering a wide number of hours worked. Full time can be 37 hours a week or 45 hours a week, can comparing them as both just being 'full time' misses quite a lot. >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. How it is more often foisted upon women? The social pressure on men to take deadly jobs and to work longer hours is equal to the social pressure on women to choose careers where they can take time off and be with their kids. If anything, I rather be with my kid than stuck an extra 20 hours in the office... one of these pressures is for something most people find more desirable than the other. >We need to de-stigmatize flexible schedules. So are we aiming for more men to take flexible schedules or for pay to not suffer when someone takes flexible schedules? Because if you want the former, it is more about the pressure to earn than the stigma on flexible work schedules. And if it is the latter, how is this fair to the people who don't get the flexible work schedules? I think the deeper problem is why are women forced in the child care role and men into the bread winning roles and how to fix that (which you do mention).

RodericDay 11y ago
Elsewhere, on a different topic, you posted something along the same lines: > Which gender gets killed most often at work because of a social pressure that your value is determined by having a job, so if the only job options are dangerous, you best take one anyways? Do you like gender roles or not? You've already posted like 5 times in this thread, and I'm not sure if your perspective is "let's do away with gender roles" or "gender roles are there for a reason, and it benefits women".
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  The very last line of the post you just responded to. >I think the deeper problem is why are women forced in the child care role and men into the bread winning roles and how to fix that (which you do mention). I would hope that makes my position on the matter clear enough. But in case it doesn't. Wage disparity is caused by gender roles, not by discrimination. But gender roles are still a problem, especially for the people who are forced into the roles they do not like. But... even if I made posts that completely contradict everything I said (and I do that sometimes when trying out arguments for sides I don't normally support), that does not invalidate anything in the current posts.

RodericDay 11y ago

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.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
That would go a long way to correct for differences resulting from maternal leave, but there would still be issues such as single people, and especially single men, being favored (since it is rare for them to have a child who they must then take mandatory leave to care for).
- brongondwana 11y ago
  It would definitely favour gay men, though they could still adopt and take paternity leave.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    I remember reading that gay men suffer a penalty to straight men while gay women have a boost compared to straight women. I wonder if that is related child care expectations when they do adopt children.
- ahoy 11y ago
  No doubt you're correct. It's not a simple issue to fully resolve, but there is some seemingly low-hanging fruit to grab for.
mrrrgn 11y ago
We already suffer from declining birthrates in the west. Your solution would make not having a child the best choice for "go-getters."

nxzero 11y ago

"Coming out of uni/grad school, male and female salaries are equal in comparable fields." Given that there's more female that graduate now, there's still bias in the process, just not the bias people hope to find.

eli 11y ago
In STEM? Far fewer women graduate with CS degrees than men. I think that percentage is actually declining.
- nxzero 11y ago
  Have a source? My understanding is that there's been an overall decline in stem degrees; meaning that, if there's a gap, it's not due to gender bias or a lack of opportunities for a given gender. Basically, I don't buy it, but happy to be proven wrong too.
  - eli 11y ago
    I'm on mobile, but I think this is the report I was thinking of https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2015/01/27/women-falling-behind-in-stem-bachelors-degrees/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2015/01/27/wo...

stvswn 11y ago

What if it's the case that preferences are different among men and women? Why do we assume that the women surveyed would prefer to have the higher paying but more demanding career paths? My wife is very smart and capable of making a high salary. She chose a flexible job path and took several years off to be with our children in their younger years. We could certainly afford otherwise; our family would have more money had she decided to go the childcare route. It's just our choice, she has no regrets. It wasn't "foisted" upon her. In fact, it's the happiest she's ever been. Is there something wrong with a woman prioritizing motherhood? Why does it feel to me that these conversations always frame parenting as some kind of tragedy that disrupts an otherwise successful career? By the same token, I am very motivated to make enough money so that she can continue to stay home with our kids as long as she likes. I like seeing her and my kids happy. Should I be forced to slow down because this is unfair to women at my office? This all seems crazy to me. Having kids is a blessing. I totally agree that people shouldn't feel a pressure to do it the "traditional" way or any other way for that matter -- I like when men are given the flexibility to take care of their children in support of their wives' careers. I just don't agree that slowing down one's career in order to prioritize parenthood is a problem that needs to be fixed.

hnal943 11y ago
Absolutely! I reject the base assumption of this whole discussion that your salary is a measure of your worth as a person.
jacalata 11y ago
Because we are not operating in a vacuum of information with only this single article to go on?
- force_reboot 11y ago
  Constantly declaring victory doesn't mean you've won an intellectual debate. The left have convinced themselves that gender roles are bad, and the left happen to dominate some academic fields. That doesn't make them the sole arbiters of true and false.

parennoob 11y ago

> 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). Put another way, we need to upend the idea that hazardous and arduous jobs (often involving hard physical labor) are only the domain of men, and encourage more women to participate in industries like mining, firefighting, welding, truck driving, and construction.

korethr 11y ago
If you make note of the differences in physiology between the male and female body, you might discover that there is a non-arbitrary reason why industries requiring hard physical labor have traditionally been the domain of men.
- homonculus1 11y ago
  If you make note of the differences in physiology between the male and female body, you might discover that there is a non-arbitrary reason why industries requiring childcare have traditionally been the domain of women.
- vkou 11y ago
  If a particular woman, regardless of her physiology, can pass the physical bar necessary to be a firefighter, why in the world should she not work in this domain? As a man, my out-of-shape physiology precludes me from being one - that doesn't mean that my gender should be excluded from it.
  - parennoob 11y ago
    This is correct and I agree with it, but my statement goes a step further. I am saying that women should be strongly encouraged to be part of these occupations, in the same way that men are strongly encouraged to take paternity leave and help with child rearing.
- onion2k 11y ago
  And before the invention of power tools you'd have had a valid point.

caublestone 11y ago

63% of minimum wage workers are women: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/who-are-the-minimum-wage-workers-of-america/446409/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/who-are-... Increasing minimum wage would effectively increase the 77% number also.

ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
It would increase it for the wrong reason, and only in the short-term, you pre-suppose that increasing the minimum wage won't lead to other wage increases. Why would someone who is getting paid more than minimum wage to perform a job which requires a skill be ok with being paid less than they were before, in relative means?
- frandroid 11y ago
  The increase in minimum wage does cause increases in near-minimum wages as well, but as you go up the salary scale (which is stretched quite longly, thank you very much), the impact of minimum wage increases is reduced, leading to an overall reduction in inequality.
  - ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
    I'm sorry but there will be no reduction in the overall income gap with a raise in minimum wage. You admit the minimum wage increase will cause the jobs near that rate to increase as well as the medium income levels. The high end of the income scale is so far "stretched" as you say and held by so few people that the effect of the minimum wage increase is insignificant. Infinity -1 is still infinity. Of course there will be the resultant unintended consequences such as the price of housing rising due to more people having a little bit more to spend, seeing as housing and healthcare are both increasing much faster than incomes and inflation it is likely these two will see the windfall and end up resulting in the lower classes having even less disposable income.
adventured 11y ago
Only 1% of the US civilian labor force earns the minimum wage. So you're talking about a small fraction of the total US pay base. It wouldn't even remotely dent the 77% number, first because the minimum wage affects so relatively few, and second because the wages in the group are so small it won't meaningfully impact the median income that primarily drives the 77%. To put it into perspective, by your 63% number, it comes out to about 1 million women versus 750,000 men. Shifting the pay of those 250,000 minimum wage workers (that represent the sex gap on minimum wage) by $2 or $3 probably will not even move the 77% number to 77.25%.

walshemj 11y ago

Not in one big tech company I worked in for the same role there was a marked difference in male and female mainly due to the problems with PRP

shawn-butler 11y ago

>> 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. >> I see no evidence to support this "funnel" at all in my life/work experience. Workers on "flex" schedules in the tech sector underperform by a wide margin. I see little or no reason why I should prop up someone else's life / work choices with my own labor.

jonesb6 11y ago
I believe you were down voted because you disagreed with the generally believed idea of "the funnel for women" and the generally believed idea of "flex schedules increase productivity" without providing any evidence. I would point out that most people supporting both those ideas in this thread don't seem to be providing evidence either. Everybody, I'm pretty sure the down vote is used to bury threads that don't add to the discussion. I think "shawn-butter"'s side deserves to be discussed.
kchoudhu 11y ago
> Workers on "flex" schedules in the tech sector underperform by a wide margin. Proof, please.

panglott 11y ago

Most studies about the gender gap in pay find that most of the 77% figure is attibutable to differences in career choices/training/&c., but there remains a rough 5% difference in pay that is not attributable to those things. Ask most men if they would take a roughly 5% pay cut, and they would not say that it insignificant or something that can be ignored. Maybe the tech industry is just immune to this, but this article is basically a press release with no information about data or methodology.

adevine 11y ago
And that approximately 5% difference can be solely attributed to the fact that men are more likely to negotiate for their salaries than women. I don't remember the study off the top of my head but there was a YouTube video that was investigating the pay gap and referenced the study looking at men's and women's willingness to ask for more pay.
- brighteyes 11y ago
  That might be part, but there are even simpler explanations. Taller people make significantly more money per inch. Why that is, who knows, but just by itself it can explain around half the wage gap - before correction. In other words, after correction, if you also correct for height, then women make more than men. Of course no one should make more money just because they are taller, but that's the reality. No one seems interested to try to correct this, though, because it's not obviously tied to any popular political movements.
BurningFrog 11y ago
That this ~5% difference is hard to explain doesn't mean it is caused by gender discrimination.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

losteric 11y ago

I fully agree with everything here, especially getting rid of stereotypes around nurturing roles. My question is, what happens if many women and men aren't funneled towards those roles? What if it's a natural preference given our evolutionary history? I'm not saying that's the case, and my parents had no problems reversing nurturing roles over 20 years ago... but given our hyper-"PC" society, I am curious how far society's responsibilities extend. What happens when a particular group innately prefers a certain type of work that the market values lowly? Are they irrational agents suffering by their own hands? Should society subsidize their job? Do we try to re-educate the group into following economically valued jobs? What about other people that have the same job for different reasons?

cortesoft 11y ago
Your second question is tricky to answer, so I am going to ignore it. :D For your first question, I always think the key is choice and support for people who make choices that are counter to the norm. Sure, it might be that when given a choice free of social pressures, more women might still choose to be the primary caregiver for children than men will. That is fine, and women and men who make that socially traditional choice should be supported and not judged. The key, however, is to make sure we also support and don't judge the people who choose other arrangements for child caregiving. We should not design laws and social conventions that punish those who choose to go against the norm.
- losteric 11y ago
  Part of my comment was questioning the meaning of support. Are we talking emotional support, and simply being accepting of other's identity? Are we taxing some roles and subsidizing others to normalize economic freedom? What if the market also has inherent preferences that mirror natural preferences? Do we actively recruit youth and try to get them into under-represented roles? What about undesirable roles? I don't know... maybe this is all moot if we're still working through the "simpler" stuff like balancing laws and getting rid of stereotypes.
  - euyyn 11y ago

mbostleman 11y ago

But work that has flexible hours is not equal to work that has inflexible hours. So theoretically equal pay for equal work stands. I guess it's a matter of whether or not you can truly evaluate work equality.

wisty 11y ago

Alternatively, it's because of benevolent sexism. Women aren't slobs if they want to kick back and watch day-time TV while watching kids, they're doing the hardest job in the world!

facepalm 11y ago
It's not actually the hardest job in the world, by a long stretch. For starters, look at jobs that actively put your life at risk. Giving birth is very risky, too, but once the baby is out I think the risks go way down - however, the riskiness of giving birth is part of why women are given the privilege to get the less strenuous stay at home work and not having to go out as lumberjacks to earn a living. On the downside I suspect the riskiness of birth is also a reason why less women get access to education: if you can only afford to send some of your kids to school, it makes more economic sense to send the kids with the higher survival rate. In some countries one in ten women die from pregnancy.

EGreg 11y ago

I think both men and women should stop automatically buying into the idea that your career goals should involve having inflexible hours working some high status position for some corporation. Most pay inequality in our society comes from the assumption that women are better primary caregivers for children than men, so they get custody of the children. Many men complain about this, as well, but as long as it's going to be the norm in most states, women's pay will be lower. Why not have a flexible work schedule for both spouses, so they can raise their children? Better yet, in traditional societies (including Soviet Russia), the grandma often watched the kids instead of some teenage babysitter. The kids grew up with more respect for elders that way. Not only that, but the grandparents weren't shipped off to some nursing home so the adults could work two jobs unimpeded.

jfaucett 11y ago

"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." I disagree. The primary cause is that women can become pregnant - the possibility alone is in most cases enough - in which case they leave the work force for X amount of time. Depending on country, laws, and personal preferences this time period can range from a few weeks to years. In some countries when this hypothetical becomes a reality it can have a large negative impact on the employer. For instance, in Germany the woman's job position must be held open for her until she decides to return to work (possibly years later), not to mention the full salary compensation months before and after giving-birth, when she is no longer working. But to simplify it down to flatland, lets assume a woman were to just take 1 day off before giving birth, have a job that required no movement or lifting, and the employer didn't have to compensate her. Still, in this simplest case, a woman is at a disadvantage compared to a man. Because of this biological disadvantage, I think there will never be the sort of absolute equality we want until people are born in tubes or the capitalistic employer/employee relationship changes.

ahoy 11y ago
Seems like you're letting perfect be the enemy of good.
- jfaucett 11y ago
  No. My observations would just suggest adressing the issue at the employer/employee relationship or market motivator level, whereas yours suggest handling it at a propoganda/media/educational level to remove the social norm of women staying at home. My opinion is that that norm is old and dying if not already long deceased and any future gains in equality will be found in the market motivator domain, in which biology in tandem with govt policy constitute the major factors at play.
wahrsagevogel 11y ago
> For instance, in Germany the woman's job position must be held open for her until she decides to return to work (possibly years later), not to mention the full salary compensation months before and after giving-birth, when she is no longer working. The company will be reimbursed for the salary by the health insurance upon filling out a form. A company does not pay a single cent more than the cost of hiring another person for the position.

ecobiker 11y ago

For anyone interested, Freakonomics explored[1] this in detail and their conclusions were pretty similar. It included an interview from Claudia Goldin and her research[2] which was quite in-depth. [1] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender-pay-gap-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender... [2] [PDF] http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/gender_equality.pdf?m=1440439230 http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/gender_equalit...

pavel_lishin 11y ago

New father here. My current employer provides two weeks of paternal leave. I ended up taking a third week of vacation time to extend this, which I'm in now. It still doesn't feel like it's enough. I'm exhausted today, despite taking a mid-day nap. When I go back next week, I will not be at my best, and there's no way of me being at my best short of sleeping in another room with earplugs while my wife does 100% of the (often literal) heavy lifting of child care.

gedy 11y ago
Not sure where you live but there's FMLA in the USA for up to 12 weeks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_of_1993 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  I think that covers unpaid leave; three months without pay would put us in a crappy situation.

facepalm 11y ago

"Women tend to find themselves funneled into specific career paths" Why the passive - couldn't they actively be choosing specific career paths? "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." Again, why the "foisted"? Especially for children it doesn't make sense: if it is such an unpleasant task, why not simply choose not to have children? Care for parents might end up in women's hands because they already made the choices for more flexible time (and less income) earlier on. Instead of "foisted", it seems possible that women simply more often get the option to choose (because they were the ones who were pregnant), and men don't.

thescribe 11y ago

>We need to de-stigmatize flexible schedules. Why do we 'need' to do this? Jobs with very rigid shifts should be at a premium shouldn't they?

ownagefool 11y ago

So while we are militarizing against the idea that woman are forced into staying at home, you do need to consider whether family care being the domain of woman is something men have foisted upon them or if it's something they themselves desire. Now I'll admit I don't have kids, but every partner I've had has had the same view that they'd want me to continue going to work whilst they were stay at home. Any argument to the contrary is often met by the simple fact that said child would have been carried to term by them. If you accept that as a possbility then we're starting to look at mens rights issue. Is it fair that men have less parental rights? Overall, I'd say no. Are we going to get support for these issues? Probably not. Obviously in a better world I imagine we'd share a pool of parental leave. People should have the choice but I'd still expect the pool to largely be utilised by females because they want it that way and it's hard to argue otherwise.

zarkov99 11y ago

I am sorry, foisted? Most women have a much higher nurturing instinct and most men have a much higher competitive instinct. Just observe little kids at play for a while. Biology is what it is regardless of the zeitgeist.

toomanybeersies 11y ago

It is all about how you calculate it as to what number you arrive at. Statistics New Zealand calculates the gender wage gap by comparing the hourly earnings, rather than weekly/yearly earnings. This helps to take into account the fact that women tend to work less hours (for various reasons, and is a completely different conversation). [0] Interestingly, the gap when comparing the entire workforce with this measure is 10% in NZ, and comparing full time employment drops to 5.6% (the lowest in the OECD) [1]. One thing that needs to be considered when comparing the wage gap is that >90% of workplace fatalities are men [2], and that men tend to work much more physical jobs, causing of greater rate in workplace injuries and problems later in life, just think of how many older people you know with hearing loss from work, and how the vast majority of them are men. [0]: http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/income-and-work/Income/gender-pay-gap.aspx http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/income-and-work/In... [1]: http://women.govt.nz/our-work/utilising-womens-skills/income/gender-pay-gap http://women.govt.nz/our-work/utilising-womens-skills/income... [2]: https://doe.state.wy.us/lmi/0305/a1.htm https://doe.state.wy.us/lmi/0305/a1.htm

forgetsusername 11y ago

>We need to upend the idea that family care is solely the domain of women "Solely" might be a bit strong, but I don't think this is merely an "idea". It's reality. Women do the majority of child-rearing, pretty much across all species. When it comes to us humans and our bizarre, work-driven lives, their careers suffer for it. I never understood why that is so hard to understand, or why it's controversial. >We need to de-stigmatize flexible schedules Totally agree. But I'd put much of that blame on "us", not our employers. If we weren't such a consumerist, money-driven society, perhaps more people would be willing to work those flex-hours at less pay, but increased happiness.

norea-armozel 11y ago

>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). Don't certain EU countries already have this in some capacity? Honestly, I think the problem with leave benefits here in the States is the fact we treat them as a privilege rather than as some form of non-monetary compensation. IMO, if I could have an comparable set of leave benefits with a lower salary (assuming leave here would have to be set to market rate for my time I would've otherwise been working to make this an equatable exchange) I probably would take it. I like my free time. I'm sure older workers would love it too if it worked well for them if they were more focused on semi-retirement.