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Can you cite a study that controls for time off, degree type, experience that still shows a large disparity in pay? It's your belief that someone who works a r

Can you cite a study that controls for time off, degree type, experience that still shows a large disparity in pay? It's your belief that someone who works a reasonable sum of hours but then goes to have a child should be paid less. The question isn't whether someone who takes time off to raise a child should be paid less, it is whether someone with more overall work experience should be paid more. My wife took 10 years off to raise kids. Is she entitled to the exact same salary as a co-worker who continuously worked for that time, increasing their skills? What about a 5 year gap? 1 year?

geofft 10y ago
There's this study https://web.archive.org/web/20131008051216/http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20131008051216/http://www.consad... , which Wikipedia summarizes as: > when controllable variables are accounted for, such as job position, total hours worked, number of children, and the frequency at which unpaid leave is taken, in addition to other factors, a United States Department of Labor study, conducted by the CONSAD Research Group, found in 2008 that the gap can be brought down from 23% to between 4.8% and 7.1%. It's not 77 cents on the dollar, but it's still significant. Also, if you want to control for time off and experience, you should also control for the second-order factors of involuntarily taking time off or involuntarily having lower-quality experience. If you leave a company because of harassment and don't immediately find a new job, you'll have a gap on your resume that probably translates to lower long-term salary. If you don't get the job out of college you're qualified for because of bias in the hiring process, you'll be a little bit behind in your whole career. If women are making 77 cents on the dollar because they're more likely to be rejected from higher-paying jobs but making the same as men in lower-paying jobs, or because the glass ceiling is keeping them out of the C-suite but wages are the same if you exclude the C-suite, or whatever, that's still a problem worth fixing! The ways in which you'd fix it are different, so it's important to get this data, but there's still something to fix. This blog post from the Department of Labor has a bunch of links to other research: https://blog.dol.gov/2012/06/07/myth-busting-the-pay-gap https://blog.dol.gov/2012/06/07/myth-busting-the-pay-gap
KirinDave 10y ago
I think the question is, "Can the person do the work and contribute to the environment they're being paid to be a part of." It is not some sort of game where dollars = experience. From that perspective, the answer should be, "Yes they do deserve equal pay for equal work, why is that so challenging?"
- x1798DE 10y ago
  Paying people more for having more experience isn't some weird fetish that companies engage in. It's done that way because people with more relevant experience generally get better at the thing they're experienced in (or have more breadth of knowledge, etc). If you try to pay someone with 10 years experience the salary of someone with 1 years' experience, you will either have a very hard time finding people to hire or you will end up hiring someone who is not very good at their job. So yes, if someone takes 10 years off to raise children or to go yachting around the world or to help sick children, they will probably not command the same salary that their (otherwise identical) co-worker who stayed in the field for those 10 years would command, because they likely won't be capable of "equal work". Anyone doing anything else would be systematically overpaying their workers, and are likely to be out-competed by companies paying market wages.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    > So yes, if someone takes 10 years off to raise children or to go yachting around the world or to help sick children, they will probably not command the same salary that their (otherwise identical) co-worker who stayed in the field for those 10 years would command, because they likely won't be capable of "equal work". Anyone doing anything else would be systematically overpaying their workers, and are likely to be out-competed by companies paying market wages. I'm confused by your patronizing tone. You seem to think I don't know that this is common practice. See, the point of the prior post was: I disagree with this premise. The question should be, "How well does this person do the job" not "how well does this person match my preconceptions about how an expert in this job should look." This is especially the case in the world of software and software products, where we're notoriously bad at identifying talent and educating people. Anyone who's designed tech interviews with a high technical standard can tell you that years worked is at best a weak signal.

geofft 10y ago

There's this study https://web.archive.org/web/20131008051216/http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20131008051216/http://www.consad... , which Wikipedia summarizes as: > when controllable variables are accounted for, such as job position, total hours worked, number of children, and the frequency at which unpaid leave is taken, in addition to other factors, a United States Department of Labor study, conducted by the CONSAD Research Group, found in 2008 that the gap can be brought down from 23% to between 4.8% and 7.1%. It's not 77 cents on the dollar, but it's still significant. Also, if you want to control for time off and experience, you should also control for the second-order factors of involuntarily taking time off or involuntarily having lower-quality experience. If you leave a company because of harassment and don't immediately find a new job, you'll have a gap on your resume that probably translates to lower long-term salary. If you don't get the job out of college you're qualified for because of bias in the hiring process, you'll be a little bit behind in your whole career. If women are making 77 cents on the dollar because they're more likely to be rejected from higher-paying jobs but making the same as men in lower-paying jobs, or because the glass ceiling is keeping them out of the C-suite but wages are the same if you exclude the C-suite, or whatever, that's still a problem worth fixing! The ways in which you'd fix it are different, so it's important to get this data, but there's still something to fix. This blog post from the Department of Labor has a bunch of links to other research: https://blog.dol.gov/2012/06/07/myth-busting-the-pay-gap https://blog.dol.gov/2012/06/07/myth-busting-the-pay-gap

KirinDave 10y ago

I think the question is, "Can the person do the work and contribute to the environment they're being paid to be a part of." It is not some sort of game where dollars = experience. From that perspective, the answer should be, "Yes they do deserve equal pay for equal work, why is that so challenging?"

x1798DE 10y ago
Paying people more for having more experience isn't some weird fetish that companies engage in. It's done that way because people with more relevant experience generally get better at the thing they're experienced in (or have more breadth of knowledge, etc). If you try to pay someone with 10 years experience the salary of someone with 1 years' experience, you will either have a very hard time finding people to hire or you will end up hiring someone who is not very good at their job. So yes, if someone takes 10 years off to raise children or to go yachting around the world or to help sick children, they will probably not command the same salary that their (otherwise identical) co-worker who stayed in the field for those 10 years would command, because they likely won't be capable of "equal work". Anyone doing anything else would be systematically overpaying their workers, and are likely to be out-competed by companies paying market wages.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  > So yes, if someone takes 10 years off to raise children or to go yachting around the world or to help sick children, they will probably not command the same salary that their (otherwise identical) co-worker who stayed in the field for those 10 years would command, because they likely won't be capable of "equal work". Anyone doing anything else would be systematically overpaying their workers, and are likely to be out-competed by companies paying market wages. I'm confused by your patronizing tone. You seem to think I don't know that this is common practice. See, the point of the prior post was: I disagree with this premise. The question should be, "How well does this person do the job" not "how well does this person match my preconceptions about how an expert in this job should look." This is especially the case in the world of software and software products, where we're notoriously bad at identifying talent and educating people. Anyone who's designed tech interviews with a high technical standard can tell you that years worked is at best a weak signal.