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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:

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.
    - tomp 11y ago
      > A proportional pay gap from that would be well under one percent If only pay gap were proportional... I'm afraid that employers penalize time off work disproportionally, probably exponentially; part-time work doesn't have half the salary of full-time work, and when employees take a few weeks off, they don't forgo only those weeks' salary, but also slow down their future learning, progress and promotions. Whether that's fair or not is debatable (I'd say it makes sense from employers' point of view, but they're probably unnecessarily harsh with it for game-theoretical reasons), but it probably affects all employees taking time off equally, not just women.
      - Dylan16807 11y ago
        This is a hypothetical scenario where parenting roles are equal, meaning lots of men are taking off months, and lots of women are taking off months plus a couple weeks. People take off a couple weeks all the time; it's called vacation. I can't see any meaningful pay difference making sense.
  - estefan 11y ago
    Oppressor! youtube.com/watch?v=vAc5JqcBPK8
- marodox 11y ago
  I emailed Dr. Goldin to ask her a question about her research when writing a paper on the wage gap for undergrad english. I did not expect a response, but when I got one, I was ecstatic. She seems like a awesome person.
- hnal943 11y ago
  I don't understand why we want a society where everyone is trying to both parent and work full time. Specialization is a powerful tool. Speaking personally it makes a lot more sense for my wife to stay home and have primary responsibility for raising our kids and managing our household while I focus on my career. Implicit in this discussion is that the woman who choose flexibility and child-rearing options are oppressed or less than and it's not the case in reality.
  - frandroid 11y ago
    The problem is that we're forcing women to specialize in child-rearing, which is not economically valued or rewarded, and men to specialize in earning income, which wields huge social and economic power. And the reason this happens is that men withhold their parenting labour, and women are forced to pick up the slack. It's just like the feminist saying... "If men got pregnant, abortion would be available free of charge and without restriction in every town and city on earth." Women get stuck with this unrewarded and devalued specialized role.
    - mc32 11y ago
      One way to deal with this, is to make it equally viable for men or women to be stay-at-home patents. Viable socially (no stigma) and viable economically, so that the family simply chooses for the higher earner (if income is their determined) to have the job responsibility and the other to say home. So the problem is in the family dynamics. Society has to allow for the family dynamics to fall on either side without side effects.
      - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        >equally viable for men or women to be stay-at-home pa[r]ents // Bio-engineer men to produce breastmilk?
    - johngalt 11y ago
      > we're forcing women to specialize in child-rearing I see no evidence of any force being applied. Women are free to chose their own relationship types same as men. Exceptionally few choose to be breadwinner supporting a stay at home father. Vastly more choose to be stay at home mom married to an income earning dad.
- zeveb 11y ago
  > … because society still sucks at gender equality when it comes to enabling parents to equally contribute to certain aspects of parenting. You're assuming that even if society enabled the sexes to take equal time off that the sexes would, in fact, take equal time off. I suppose we could force people to take equal time off, but that hardly seems fair or right.
- randyrand 11y ago
  > society still sucks at gender equality when it comes to enabling parents to equally contribute With very few exceptions, mammalian females are almost entirely responsible for child-rearing across the board. So all signs point that its also hormones too. We as a society need to start equalizing hormones. Women need to start taking testosterone and men need to take estrogen. We will only be equal once there is a single androgynous gender. This is the equality we are fighting for. This is the equality we deserve. #androgyny2016 Seriously though, there are some gender differences worth leaving to freedom of choice. Propensity to child-rear and hormone levels are among them, IMO.
  - knughit 11y ago
    I suppsoe there is a hormone for washing dishes and doing laundry also.
    - towlejunior 11y ago
      Laundry is the most overrated chore. Clothes in, detergent in, shut the lid, push the button. You can do it in 45 seconds. Regardless, you don't know what other people's chore splits are like. It's not something you can observe.
      - lkbm 11y ago
        > Regardless, you don't know what other people's chore splits are like. It's not something you can observe. Yes, you definitely can. Easiest solution is to ask them, but you could also do observational studies if you had the funds. Here's one example where we asked: http://www.gallup.com/poll/106249/wives-still-laundry-men-yard-work.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/106249/wives-still-laundry-men-ya...
- cortesoft 11y ago
  As the father of a 10 week old baby girl, it isn't as simple as just society enabling parents to contribute equally. I am SO into being a dad. I want to do as much caregiving as possible. However, breastfeeding kinda throws a monkey wrench into the "split all the work equally" plan. For newborns, eating is what they do most of the time (when they aren't sleeping). If you breastfeed your child, which all pediatricians say is the best for them, I can't do the most time consuming part of the job. Now, we get around this some of the time by pumping and bottle feeding breast milk, but you can't do that all the time, and even then the mom has to pump as much as you feed in order to keep up her milk supply. This means mom is going to be the primary care giver for an infant. While this could change once the kid starts eating solid food, by then the pattern is going to be established. I am not saying we shouldn't work to make it more equal, but it isn't as simple as you make it out to be.
  - sien 11y ago
    True. But from about 9 months you could both work say 3 days a week if you wanted. Mind you if you have another child you'd have to do that again. But good luck getting well paid 3 days a week work for both of you.
    - cortesoft 11y ago
      Yeah, we are going to do some of those work schedule things as we go forward (we are also going to do daycare). It is just hard because the caregiving pattern is already established.
    - T2_t2 11y ago
      > But from about 9 months you could both work say 3 days a week if you wanted. TERRIBLE advice. In all things gender and money, Penelope Trunk is a goto: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2013/01/07/how-to-pick-a-husband-if-you-want-to-have-kids/ http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2013/01/07/how-to-pick-a-husba... > Don’t tell me that you want your husband to work part-time, because aiming for the impossible 50/50 split leads to divorce. First, because it’s the road to eternal poverty; part-time jobs are low pay, without advancement, and they are the first to go when it’s time to cut jobs. So you create massive financial instability by having two people work part-time.
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  I would expect no less for the majority of companies. If you put in X hours for Y salary/wage I don't doubt they'd give the same amount as compensation regardless of sex, age, race, etc. Money is money and work is work. Social norms are the real culprit in terms of inequalities in society. Sometimes businesses do push back against these norms since more often than not it hurts their bottom line (ex. racial segregation laws hurt the private bus companies). So, if a social norm can be toppled to boost revenues or productivity I always expect a business to wave their progressive banner.

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.
  - tomp 11y ago
    > A proportional pay gap from that would be well under one percent If only pay gap were proportional... I'm afraid that employers penalize time off work disproportionally, probably exponentially; part-time work doesn't have half the salary of full-time work, and when employees take a few weeks off, they don't forgo only those weeks' salary, but also slow down their future learning, progress and promotions. Whether that's fair or not is debatable (I'd say it makes sense from employers' point of view, but they're probably unnecessarily harsh with it for game-theoretical reasons), but it probably affects all employees taking time off equally, not just women.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      This is a hypothetical scenario where parenting roles are equal, meaning lots of men are taking off months, and lots of women are taking off months plus a couple weeks. People take off a couple weeks all the time; it's called vacation. I can't see any meaningful pay difference making sense.
- estefan 11y ago
  Oppressor! youtube.com/watch?v=vAc5JqcBPK8
marodox 11y ago
I emailed Dr. Goldin to ask her a question about her research when writing a paper on the wage gap for undergrad english. I did not expect a response, but when I got one, I was ecstatic. She seems like a awesome person.
hnal943 11y ago
I don't understand why we want a society where everyone is trying to both parent and work full time. Specialization is a powerful tool. Speaking personally it makes a lot more sense for my wife to stay home and have primary responsibility for raising our kids and managing our household while I focus on my career. Implicit in this discussion is that the woman who choose flexibility and child-rearing options are oppressed or less than and it's not the case in reality.
- frandroid 11y ago
  The problem is that we're forcing women to specialize in child-rearing, which is not economically valued or rewarded, and men to specialize in earning income, which wields huge social and economic power. And the reason this happens is that men withhold their parenting labour, and women are forced to pick up the slack. It's just like the feminist saying... "If men got pregnant, abortion would be available free of charge and without restriction in every town and city on earth." Women get stuck with this unrewarded and devalued specialized role.
  - mc32 11y ago
    One way to deal with this, is to make it equally viable for men or women to be stay-at-home patents. Viable socially (no stigma) and viable economically, so that the family simply chooses for the higher earner (if income is their determined) to have the job responsibility and the other to say home. So the problem is in the family dynamics. Society has to allow for the family dynamics to fall on either side without side effects.
    - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
      >equally viable for men or women to be stay-at-home pa[r]ents // Bio-engineer men to produce breastmilk?
  - johngalt 11y ago
    > we're forcing women to specialize in child-rearing I see no evidence of any force being applied. Women are free to chose their own relationship types same as men. Exceptionally few choose to be breadwinner supporting a stay at home father. Vastly more choose to be stay at home mom married to an income earning dad.
zeveb 11y ago
> … because society still sucks at gender equality when it comes to enabling parents to equally contribute to certain aspects of parenting. You're assuming that even if society enabled the sexes to take equal time off that the sexes would, in fact, take equal time off. I suppose we could force people to take equal time off, but that hardly seems fair or right.
randyrand 11y ago
> society still sucks at gender equality when it comes to enabling parents to equally contribute With very few exceptions, mammalian females are almost entirely responsible for child-rearing across the board. So all signs point that its also hormones too. We as a society need to start equalizing hormones. Women need to start taking testosterone and men need to take estrogen. We will only be equal once there is a single androgynous gender. This is the equality we are fighting for. This is the equality we deserve. #androgyny2016 Seriously though, there are some gender differences worth leaving to freedom of choice. Propensity to child-rear and hormone levels are among them, IMO.
- knughit 11y ago
  I suppsoe there is a hormone for washing dishes and doing laundry also.
  - towlejunior 11y ago
    Laundry is the most overrated chore. Clothes in, detergent in, shut the lid, push the button. You can do it in 45 seconds. Regardless, you don't know what other people's chore splits are like. It's not something you can observe.
    - lkbm 11y ago
      > Regardless, you don't know what other people's chore splits are like. It's not something you can observe. Yes, you definitely can. Easiest solution is to ask them, but you could also do observational studies if you had the funds. Here's one example where we asked: http://www.gallup.com/poll/106249/wives-still-laundry-men-yard-work.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/106249/wives-still-laundry-men-ya...
cortesoft 11y ago
As the father of a 10 week old baby girl, it isn't as simple as just society enabling parents to contribute equally. I am SO into being a dad. I want to do as much caregiving as possible. However, breastfeeding kinda throws a monkey wrench into the "split all the work equally" plan. For newborns, eating is what they do most of the time (when they aren't sleeping). If you breastfeed your child, which all pediatricians say is the best for them, I can't do the most time consuming part of the job. Now, we get around this some of the time by pumping and bottle feeding breast milk, but you can't do that all the time, and even then the mom has to pump as much as you feed in order to keep up her milk supply. This means mom is going to be the primary care giver for an infant. While this could change once the kid starts eating solid food, by then the pattern is going to be established. I am not saying we shouldn't work to make it more equal, but it isn't as simple as you make it out to be.
- sien 11y ago
  True. But from about 9 months you could both work say 3 days a week if you wanted. Mind you if you have another child you'd have to do that again. But good luck getting well paid 3 days a week work for both of you.
  - cortesoft 11y ago
    Yeah, we are going to do some of those work schedule things as we go forward (we are also going to do daycare). It is just hard because the caregiving pattern is already established.
  - T2_t2 11y ago
    > But from about 9 months you could both work say 3 days a week if you wanted. TERRIBLE advice. In all things gender and money, Penelope Trunk is a goto: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2013/01/07/how-to-pick-a-husband-if-you-want-to-have-kids/ http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2013/01/07/how-to-pick-a-husba... > Don’t tell me that you want your husband to work part-time, because aiming for the impossible 50/50 split leads to divorce. First, because it’s the road to eternal poverty; part-time jobs are low pay, without advancement, and they are the first to go when it’s time to cut jobs. So you create massive financial instability by having two people work part-time.
norea-armozel 11y ago
I would expect no less for the majority of companies. If you put in X hours for Y salary/wage I don't doubt they'd give the same amount as compensation regardless of sex, age, race, etc. Money is money and work is work. Social norms are the real culprit in terms of inequalities in society. Sometimes businesses do push back against these norms since more often than not it hurts their bottom line (ex. racial segregation laws hurt the private bus companies). So, if a social norm can be toppled to boost revenues or productivity I always expect a business to wave their progressive banner.