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How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap
- patrickmay 10y ago> Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that women were paid 79 cents for each dollar a man was paid. Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar. This is not supported by the evidence. See, for example, this article by Christina Hoff Sommers (http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/ http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/): "No matter how many times this wage gap claim is decisively refuted by economists, it always comes back. The bottom line: the 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure or hours worked per week. When such relevant factors are considered, the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing."
- nsxwolf 10y agoDoesn't matter. They've won this point by repetition. I suspect most of them even know it is wrong. There's no defense against the rhetorical punch of "77 cents on the dollar".
- thiht 10y agoThe usual "So why don't companies hire more women if they're cheaper?" always work. It's also fallacious but at least it shuts some mouths.
- actionwords 10y agofacts do not matter. facts have a well understood cis-white-male bias. facts are oppression. only through doublethink can we have True Equality and a liberation from the factual.
- mehta 10y agoA relevant podcast from sysk that aired recently: http://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/how-the-gender-pay-gap-works/ http://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/how-the-gender-pa... (not affiliated with them. Just a listener) They go into exactly the point you make and talk about how gender gap still does exists (although no so extreme).
- RodericDay 10y agoThe pay gap of 77c/$ still matters. Not only does the gap persist to a lower extent when you control for everything, "controlling for everything" is not actually a clarifying approach when discussing the gender gap issue. see: "The problem with controlling for 'all other factors' when looking at pay discrimination" (https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/49k23i/the_problem_with_controlling_for_all_other/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/49k23i/the_pr...)
- djsumdog 10y agoBut it's not 77cents: > Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar. The 77 cent thing is a myth and the 92cent thing isn't even that massive a gap. I have a hypothesis: if you could measure the confidence of both men and women and relate them to job type and income, I bet you'd have a stronger coloration than gender. It's pretty difficult to test because things like confidence are subjective. There's an article in Salon called "The Confidence Gap" that shows women often don't ask for higher paying positions because they lack confidence in their abilities.
- RodericDay 10y agoWithout controlling for job title, how much does the average man make, and the average woman make? I'm under the impression that the 77c figure is related to this "total" disparity, that better accounts for the separate, but related, issue of "predominantly female" fields paying less than male ones.
- djsumdog 10y agoThat's another issue entirely. Also you need to take into account things like maternity leave as well as women who man chose not to work full time, that bring that number down as well.
- mrgoldenbrown 10y agoThey also don't ask because when they do they are more likely to be shot down, just like they are less likely to be hired in the first place. When women ask for something they are seen as complaining, when men ask for the same thing, it's seen as confidence.
- Chinjut 10y agoOh, ok. So, logically, it must just be that women-associated occupations tend to be lower payed than men, women tend to be slotted into lower positions than men, women aren't encouraged into or supported in higher education the same way as men, women do not receive job tenure as easily as men, and/or gendered pressures cause women to work less hours per week (on careers rather than, e.g., a disproportionate share of domestic responsibilities) than men, resulting in women being paid on average 23% less than men. I guess that's alright, then.
- technocodes 10y agoNo it's like saying most investment bankers are male and make 500k a year, most nurses are female and make 70k a year, Injustice! Look at that pay gap! Outrageous! - It makes zero sense. EDIT: What I meant to say is men go into different careers than woman and for different reasons. Usually men go after higher paying jobs (investment banking). When people compute the pay gap they dont take this into account, so they compare pay across industries (investment banking to nursing) which is meaningless, and likely is propaganda.
- eli 10y agoIs there something about the male gender that makes one a better investment banker? If not, how do you explain why that is in the first place?
- morgante 10y agoThere's abundant evidence that women prefer to work fewer hours than men and working insane hours is (for better or worse) a requirement of investment banking. Whether the preference for fewer hours is innate or learned I don't know.
- technocodes 10y agoWomen flat out don't want to do it. Some do, but not many.
- 10y ago
- rayiner 10y agoThe quoted economists found an 8% gap adjusting for those factors.
- hmmm2 10y agoLooking at the factors quoted they didn't include hours worked per week. Men typically work more overtime.
- Lawtonfogle 10y agoRemoving even more factors have found that gap diminish even more. In some cases, looking at young adults with college educations with out children (with some other factors also made equal), they found that women out earned men.
- geofft 10y agoThat interpretation is misleading for a few reasons. One is that "to the point of vanishing" is still very nonzero. There's a report by Consad Corporation prepared for the Department of Labor that reaches the figure 5-7% after accounting for differences in jobs (their website is down at the moment), even though it concludes that "there may be nothing to correct." That's also the number Sommers herself writes in her HuffPo article she cites in that Time article: "After controlling for several relevant factors (though some were left out, as we shall see), they found that the wage gap narrowed to only 6.6 cents." So the Cornell claim of 8% is basically the same. I don't think there's an argument to be made that a 23% gender pay gap is a scandal but a 5-8% gap is totally fine. The other is that occupations, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked is affected by existing wages. I was unemployed by choice for several months last year, learning Rust and working on a few open-source projects, and I became a more valuable job candidate as a result of that. I could not have done that without the savings to take those months off. If my previous job had paid me anywhere from 8% to 23% less, I would probably not have decided to take those months off, and in return I would have been a less competitive candidate and my job would probably have been one of lower position.
- serge2k 10y agoThey mention that explicity > after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar. 8% is still a lot. I'd like for companies to just show the data.
- whatok 10y ago> I'd like for companies to just show the data. Agreed. If anyone in government was serious about this, they would lobby the SEC to require publicly listed companies to disclose this information on a granular enough level that comparisons inside and outside of industry were possible.
- omonra 10y ago'Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) US Government agency, with the purpose of protecting investors from dangerous or illegal financial practices or fraud, by requiring full and accurate financial disclosure by companies offering stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other securities to the public.' Why should SEC be involved in feminist causes? Their charter mentions nothing about it. I mean we can't go around demanding government to promote our pet causes because we feel like it. I'm short and I wish there was no height discrimination. But I don't think SEC should deal with it :) If this is something you feel strongly about, shouldn't this be dealt with by the legislature?
- eli 10y agoResumes with male names are ranked higher than identical resumes with female names.
- whatok 10y agoCitation please.
- mrgoldenbrown 10y agoThere are lots of them: https://www.google.com/search?q=Resumes+with+male+names+are+ranked+higher+than+identical+resumes+with+female+names&oq=Resumes+with+male+names+are+ranked+higher+than+identical+resumes+with+female+names&aqs=chrome..69i57.783j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=Resumes+with+male+names+are+...
- whatok 10y agoI know that. I take issue when it is stated as an absolute fact when the most well-known study was done in a very specific field and therefore makes it hard to really extrapolate out to the entire workforce.
- eli 10y agoI'd definitely be interested to read any studies of other fields that have failed to show a similar effect.
- eli 10y agoHere are the first two on Google. I'm sure you can find more http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract
- mrgoldenbrown 10y agoIf you are going to account for position, how do you account for the fact that women are often in a lower ranked position, because they are less likely to be promoted? You can't claim there's no pay gap just because it's being obfuscated by bias in job titles.
- chrisfosterelli 10y agoI'm not going to argue that this accounts for it entirely, but I do think it's worth pointing out that women typically are less interested in higher ranked positions than men tend to be [0]. They are less likely to be promoted because they are less likely to want a promotion. [0] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/40/12354.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/112/40/12354.abstract
- electrograv 10y ago> They [women] are less likely to be promoted because they are less likely to want a promotion. I don't think anyone could ask for a better example of systemic entrenched sexist bias than this quote. "It's okay, don't worry about it; they just don't want to be promoted as much as us men." This is not that much different from the old "women enjoy being in their husband's kitchen and tending to the house, so it's okay most women are there instead of working independently!" Evidence clearly exists that lot of women used to enjoy being in the kitchen, but that doesn't mean women are less suited to work outside the kitchen -- to make an extreme example.
- nwah1 10y agoHmm more like "those awful males are so competitive in pursuing career advancement. Maybe testosterone has some sort of effect."
- whatok 10y agoI'd argue it more stems from childhood with the way boys are encouraged to approach situations and how that differs from the treatment girls receive. Boys are encouraged to be more aggressive while girls are supposed to be timid. When it's that deeply ingrained in society, you do not fix the problem through posting infographics on the White House website.
- bobwaycott 10y agoAnd by "the evidence", you mean none of the evidence that demonstrably shows a pay gap, right?
- drcross 10y ago>Study after study demonstrates that women are paid less than men in the United States. I wish some of these studies are cited because if you are telling me that I could hypothetically be able to hire someone who is able to do the same job, for less money (like the fabled 79%), I would gladly take them up on the offer. Unfortunately it doesn't exist except in delusional minds. This is the free market, not some global male conspiracy.
- angelbob 10y agoFrom the article: "Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that..." Here you go, I Googled that for you: http://inequality.stanford.edu/_media/pdf/key_issues/gender_research.pdf http://inequality.stanford.edu/_media/pdf/key_issues/gender_... Now, the study in question is cited.
- dbbk 10y agoI don't understand this 'gender pay gap' concept at all. Whatever figure my compensation is is, to a large extent, quite arbitrary. Sure there's a general sense of what range I should expect my salary to be in, based on my experience/location/etc, but really the final figure comes down to whatever number gets thrown out and accepted in negotiation. So if you poll half a workforce who are male, and poll half a workforce who are female, and discover that their pay doesn't line up... why would you be surprised?
- geofft 10y agoRight, that's not surprising, if you do that poll once. There's a 50% chance of that. If you do that poll repeatedly, over many groups and many industries and many times and many subsets, and in every case the men are paid more (whether 5% or 23%), there is either an actual statistical difference, or Maxwell's social justice demon is out to get you. And if there is an actual statistical difference, the question is why. Are men more valuable to the market?
- revelation 10y agoThat's the meat of the discussion, right, the "why"? If you want to be particularly devil's advocate about it, there was a time when the "gender pay gap" was 90%+ because the majority of women didn't work at all. It's a rather recent invention that everyone should work, and yet more recent that everyone should work all the time and still not be able to make ends meet.
- geofft 10y agoYes, and if you want to be even more particularly devil's advocate about it, there was a time when the race pay gap was approximately 100%. It's a rather recent invention that black laborers should get paid. Which is to say, I'm not sure why advocating for this particular devil is constructive. Do you believe that a well-functioning society should have women being less valuable to the free market than men?
- djrogers 10y ago
- tomphoolery 10y agoInflate your current salary by $20,000 if this question is asked.
- adrr 10y agoLying during interview process is very dangerous for your career. If you don't want to answer, don't answer.
- Balgair 10y agoFirst part: why?
- jimbobimbo 10y agoIt has nothing to do with lying. It's a bullshit answer to a bullshit question. Your current salary is nobody's business (unless they're IRS).
- mordocai 10y agoWhatever your feelings on the existence (or not) of the "gender pay gap" the process the article describes seems perfectly fair. I think people are getting hung up on the gender part and not seeing the "fair pay" system they've apparently setup.
- arprocter 10y agoIsn't the question kind of pointless? I'd imagine most people would exaggerate their current pay
- pekk 10y agoIt is part of trying to bargain people down, so it isn't pointless for the recruiter.
- bdrool 10y ago> Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that women were paid 79 cents for each dollar a man was paid. Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar. What do they mean "even" after controlling for those factors? Why wouldn't you control for those factors -- the comparison is meaningless otherwise.
- geofft 10y agoSuppose, hypothetically, that 10% of all managers are outright sexists and won't promote women. (This is a thought experiment, I'm not making any claim about the real world.) Then, if equally-qualified men and women apply for the same jobs, you'd expect that the "type of job" class is going to include some higher-paying jobs for men about 10% more frequently than for women. If you "control for" those factors, you are eliminating from your sample all women who work for outright sexists. It might be true that the wage gap is (almost) zero once you do that, but your experimental design is flawed.
- mrgoldenbrown 10y agoPlenty of people have done actual experiments and found that many hiring managers are biased, though I don't think anyone is claiming they are outright sexists. Unconcious bias is plenty bad enough to explain current disparities in opportunity for minority genders and races. (https://www.google.com/search?q=Resumes+with+male+names+are+ranked+higher+than+identical+resumes+with+female+names&oq=Resumes+with+male+names+are+ranked+higher+than+identical+resumes+with+female+names&aqs=chrome..69i57.783j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=Resumes+with+male+names+are+...)
- throwthis 10y agoAs an aside, isn't that question inherently just flat out wrong? Q: 'What's your current salary?' A: 'Why does it matter? What am I worth to you?'
- morgante 10y agoOr you can use the anchoring effect mentioned in the article to your advantage. Q: 'What's your current salary?' A: 'I can't disclose my current salary, but I'd be looking for something around $1.5x to come on board.' where x is your preferred salary.
- disease 10y agoI'm currently in an underpayed development position and am trying to get to market rate, yet every recruiter and HR person asks this question. Anyone have any idea what would happen if I just refused to answer it and use the 'I'm looking to be paid what I'm worth to the company' line?
- x3n0ph3n3 10y agoTry it and find out!
- kmonsen 10y agoJust tell them what you would like to get. If pressed super hard, give confusing answers in the same way companies give you. Like total compensation, if you add days off, perks etc.
- cannam 10y agoMy most uncomfortable interview experience (nearly 20 years ago) came about because of this problem. I was working in a job I enjoyed, but that didn't pay well. The money had started to become a problem and I started looking for something better-paid. (This was London in 1997 -- I was being paid about £25K and I hoped for more like £35K.) I used a recruiter, I told them my current salary and what I hoped to get, and they got me a promising-looking interview. Cut to the interview, and one of the first questions they ask is "Why do you think we should pay you ten grand more than you're getting at the moment?" Hindsight gives me many ways to answer this, but at the time I just sat there with my mouth open. I had no idea the agent had told them my current salary, so I was completely unprepared. I was dimly aware that a proper answer would express something about my value to the company, so I couldn't just say "I need more money". I eventually muttered something about that seeming to be roughly the market rate, and the interview was effectively over.
- pekk 10y agoAside from arguing about whether there is some kind of feminist misinformation campaign regarding the size of the pay gap, does anyone want to talk about the effect of "what's your current salary" on the pay gap?
- hubb 10y agothough predictable, it's disappointing to read HN's collective response to posts like this
- kelukelugames 10y agoThe good news is these posts get flagged off the frontpage quickly so we might miss it and not click into the comment section.
- alanh 10y agoI never answer this question. I always answer with my salary expectations and push back if the recruiter is trying to play hardball. Answering gives them leverage over you.
- russelluresti 10y ago> When it comes to making pay decisions, we anchor too much on someone’s current salary instead of what the job is worth. Imagine hiring two accountants. One (call her Eliza) currently makes $50,000 and the other (Alexander) makes $58,000. And let’s say the average accountant in your company makes $60,000. It feels natural to offer Alexander a salary of $60,000, just like everyone else gets. But for most managers, it feels wrong to give Eliza the same salary. After all, that’s a $10,000 raise! Wouldn’t that be unfair to Alexander, who only got a $2,000 raise? And why not save a few bucks by paying people based on their past salaries? What? No. Who thinks this way? The role at your company has a $60k salary. People you hire for that role get $60k, no matter how much they were being paid in the past. Is this really a difficult concept for people?
- bobwaycott 10y agoGiven the comments in this thread, it seems this is an insanely difficult concept to grasp. It's like the notion just bounces off Teflon. But ... but ... but John is working 60 hours a week for his $60K, and Jane puts her foot down and doesn't work more than 40 hours! She's not as committed! She doesn't want it badly enough! She doesn't deserve to be paid $60K when she's working 20 hours less! So Jane gets punished because John is a dumbass who lets the company steal 20 hours of unpaid additional labor. Can't have John thinking about that, though, so Jane gets a pay cut because she's not "working as hard" as John. But ... but ... but John just negotiated better/harder/longer/more successfully! It's Jane's fault she's paid less. She's just poor at negotiations. Bullshit. If ever there was a reason to eliminate salary negotiations, this is one of the stronger cases. Just fucking pay a set wage for each position in the company. Make it known. Enjoy there being no wage tension or envy in the workplace. Be proud you've eliminated any chance that your team members could even entertain the notion you weren't valuing them equally and fairly. Oh, wait. That's stupid. Instead, let's argue about just exactly how much less women are paid—but as a whole, cos it's really nasty when we start breaking the pay gap down by ethnicity. Cos it's so productive to argue about the rules for quantifying the pay gap than it is to just start and stop at the simple rule that there shouldn't fucking be one.
- whatok 10y ago
- brianmcconnell 10y agoI think where a lot of technical people get fleeced in compensation discussions is they let themselves get into a 1:1 personal discussion where they feel compelled to agree on the spot. Most business deals are worked out at a distance once the in person meetings are out of the way. Treat this the same way you might go over a lease for office space. Let them make the initial offer (they have much better data about market rate and what they are willing to pay, you don't and may box yourself into a lowball position). Then take some time to figure out if it works, and take the comp discussion offline. Keep the negotiation about compensation in writing. There are a million ways for an experienced negotiator to manipulate you in a live conversation. Break things down (salary, PTO, equity, 401k match, telework, other hard benefits), and figure out where they'll budge. And remember, it's not about being greedy, you'll be locking in your pay for 1-2 years, and you're doing your job of negotiating a good deal for you and your family. If someone doesn't respect that, that's a big red flag right there.
- drdeadringer 10y agoI'm wondering why people don't respond with something like "My past salary is confidential, my asking salary is XYZ" and//or "What is the budget window for this position".
- dlist 10y agoPresume you were born a slave. Your family had been slaves for 5 centuries. Slaves are taught in early childhood that walking is always the "honourable" thing to do - only free people ride. Slaves also never fight back in an argument, always give way, always put other people's needs first, shrink their own presence as much as possible, etc. Even when you earn your freedom, your instinct when anyone asks for riders would be to walk. You have to unlearn multiple anti-patterns of freedom and it is a conscious effort every single day to keep up your guard. When someone rejects you, you never know if it is because of the specific task you completed, or an anti-pattern, or your past slave roots. 30% of your brain goes towards self-correcting and self-consciousness, leaving only 70% to focus on a task. That means only slaves that sport an IQ of 130 to keep up with a non-inhibited free person. Furthermore, every single one of your elderly and senior Slave relatives scolds you every time you do a free person action, for not honouring your heritage. On top of that, some unknown percentile of free people cannot see themselves taking orders from a former slave in a higher position than them at work. Add insult to injury, because it is very obvious you are a slave (all slaves have an extra body part) a mistake is instantly attributed to your slavehood, further adding to the bias libraries of free people and to your own self-consciousness. Forgot to mention, you still have to do 100% of your slave duties in 50% of your time as a free person. It is a HUGE f-ing hill to climb. However since slaves have carried half of humanity's domestic needs for the past 5 centuries, they've also built up tremendous self-discipline and other valuable muscles required to survive that darn hill. The moment they are able to apply their freedom and start thinking and acting like independent enterprising people is the moment they solve all mundane unnecessary inefficiencies they have been doing to "honor" the heritage of servitude. Humanity gets half of its productivity back, and uses the brainpower to deploy to more important things than walking. Before that point you're feeding 100 people but get the productivity of 50. After that point, you are getting 100 at the productivity of 200 for the same feeding costs. Add the exponential growth of knowledge and tech and developed technology might beat an extinction level event to save itself one day because of the acceleration. Conditioning and history aught to teach us to stop treating other humans as inferior and to build systems that apply the intellect of every one of us. The alternative is a waste.