6 ms·

The fun part of these articles is reading all the comments that literally post proximate causes for the gender wage gap and somehow conclude from that that the

• great_psy 9y ago
  I don't understand how just giving a group of people more money will solve the problem. That's is an artificial way of addressing it, it's just a band aid. Let's look at the causes , and address those. I think that's how you solve it. It is pretty sexist to say , "give someone more money because they are a women"
  • bandrami 9y ago
    Ummm... you realize band-aids solve the problem of bleeding, right? Similarly, giving women more money solves the problem of women getting paid less money.
    • solotronics 9y ago
      why isn't everyone paid exactly the same? because that would suck for all of us here and be great for everyone that doesn't work as hard. I was messing with strange *nix distros for years and teaching myself programming before I got a tech job. I would be seriously pissed if someone that didn't know as much got my same job and pay just because they were a _____
      • bandrami 9y ago
        I could understand getting mad if your pay was lowered, but how are you harmed if the other person's pay is increased? We make all sorts of incredibly bizarre (from an outside perspective) decisions about who gets paid what; the fact that we've fooled ourselves into thinking that it's because of supply and demand curves may be comforting but is completely unfounded in any data.
        • RepressedEmu 9y ago
          Where does all this "equalizing" money come from? Does it just pop into existence because you want it to?
          • bandrami 9y ago
            Yes, in fact, for some value of "you" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money
            • RepressedEmu 9y ago
              You can't create the amount of money you are talking about without severe economic consequences. That should be obvious.
    • AlexCoventry 9y ago
      The same logic would mandate that everyone gets paid the same amount of money, which I personally would be sort of OK with, depending on the details, but it is generally considered such a radical idea that it suggests there's something missing from your argument.
    • avenoir 9y ago
      Giving preferential treatment to anyone based on their skin color, gender or sexual orientation instead of the value they provide or the skills they posses is exactly how not to address diversity issues. This line of thinking only fuels more outrage from other minority groups.
    • Chris2048 9y ago
      A band aid is a temporary solution to a problem that fixes itself. Do you expect this problem to fix itself?
      • bandrami 9y ago
        Actually I do imagine that more gender parity in management and boardrooms would probably organically fix the problem, eventually. This is, ultimately, an outcome of culture(s), and cultural problems are situations where you can fake it until you make it (though it can take a generation).
        • Chris2048 9y ago
          But isn't the context here "women in tech"? As in, SWE/STEM positions, as opposed to upper management?
• apk-d 9y ago
  The confusion here is between "women get paid less on average" and "women get paid less on average because of sexist treatment/assumptions". If the latter, more specific statement is true, then we have a problem. However, if women are paid less because of less career-oriented personal life choices, maybe making an issue out of it is an overreaction. Left-handed people earn less on average than righties. Tall people earn more. With a sufficiently large sample you'll probably find a correlation between salary and hair color, hand size, skin pigmentation, freckle density and a million other arbitrary factors that we've long decided are not worth fighting about.
  • bandrami 9y ago
    Why are the motivations of the people paying women important to you? The gap is an outcome of a complex system, and the outcome is what is problematic.
    • Eridrus 9y ago
      Mandating equality in outcome is probably a stance on fairness that the vast majority of Western society disagrees with. It cuts to the core of what we see as fairness. It's entirely unsurprising that this gets people riled up, though most of it is as the GP said about whether the cause is discrimination or women's own choices. Personally I think the left in general need to grapple with the fact that we're not all equal, rather than saying that idea is tabboo because it has lead to horrible places before. The fact that the left has largely focussed on suppressing this idea that many people believe (and on an individual level is self evident) rather than tackling it head on is what leads to the backlash against political correctness because people feel like the emperor has no clothes, but they can't say so.
    • apk-d 9y ago
      Not to discriminate isn't to treat everyone equally, but based on merit. If I hire/fire an employee because they're black/male/straight/christian, I'm discriminating. If I hire/fire a person because of their work performance, I'm being fair. I don't care about the motivations of the people paying women. I care about their employee utility function, in which gender shouldn't be a factor.
• nikcub 9y ago
  > it has the easiest solution in the world: give women more money I don't understand why this is so difficult to understand or controversial - especially in an industry with such a skills shortage. If you want more and better employees start hiring more women and paying them. That is a market solution - consider it an investment. Pay them now, pay them more, have a larger hiring pool later.
  • mutatedspleen 9y ago
    Jesus christ, no. Scroll up.
• fordwert 9y ago
  There are plenty of data-driven studies that demonstrate empirically that there is no gender gap in pay. For example, in Google's case, they take many precautions to ensure that compensation decisions are made without knowledge of an individual's gender: https://www.blog.google/topics/diversity/our-focus-pay-equity/ https://www.blog.google/topics/diversity/our-focus-pay-equit... They even remove names from resumes for hiring decisions to avoid unconscious bias from the decision makers. This is about as close as you can get to a completely fair system and is far above and beyond what can be reasonably expected from a business. It seems that your solution is to simply increase bias in the labor market rather than try to make it more efficient. Over time, marketplaces tend to abhor inefficiencies and seek equilibrium, so not only would "give women more money" inevitably have unforeseen adverse side effects, but it also runs counter to our fundamental social and economic principles.
  • bandrami 9y ago
    Seriously, the fact that otherwise intelligent people claim this with a straight face is kind of crazy. The "data" here are looking at numbers and seeing which one is smaller and which one is larger, and the wages of women are smaller.
    • bitlax 9y ago
      I should have tried this when I took Regression Analysis.
    • slavak 9y ago
      Welp, that's the whole field of statistics down the drain! Who needs complex analysis and accounting for confounding variables when the answer is simply "Big number good, small number not good!"
      • bandrami 9y ago
        What does a confounding variable have to do with anything here? The question is "do women make lower wages than men"? You are adding confounding variables I assume because you are uncomfortable with the fact that the answer is "yes", but are less uncomfortable if there's some reason that it's yes other than "people deliberately pay women less". Of course there are reasons women make lower wages than men. That doesn't really matter, though: if the gap is itself a problem as an outcome, the fix is very simple, and the reasons don't particularly matter. If I asked which of the two of us is taller, all that takes is a measuring tape. The fact that one of us might have gotten better nutrition as a child, while possibly interesting, doesn't actually do much about the fact that one of us is really taller than the other.
• learningram 9y ago
  Nah, the fun part if reading comments like yours that passive aggressively attack other posters for having a different opinion, but somehow assume a superior moral position. >If we believe it's a problem (I do; you may not), it has the easiest solution in the world: give women more money. Seriously, I just solved the gender pay gap, right there: give women more money. This is mind numbingly pretentious, shot sighted and stupid. Equality is not a straight line. Maybe you should go about thinking a couple more lines about on how you can implement it as a policy in any company