6 ms·

Yes, there is both an adjusted and unadjusted gender pay gap.

dmichulke 9y ago
I always wonder - if there is such a huge gap, why don't folks just employ women, since they're cheaper and do the same work? Isn't that the question to be answered in order to really understand what's going on? Otherwise I bet I can always find, for any company, a subset of people that are underpaid relative to the rest, be it related to age, gender, race, sexual preferences, employment history, ZIP code, whatever.
- falcolas 9y ago
  There isn't a huge gap, not for the same job/title combination (there are cases where the gap does exist for the same job, but it's typically less than 10%). The gap widely most widely reported, the 70% figure, is primarily caused because of the genders holding different jobs, where the average pay for female-dominated jobs is less than the average pay for male-dominated jobs.
  - wrsh07 9y ago
    So... this is light on details into their analysis, but Laszlo Block [formerly of Google - where I work fwiw], claimed "In 2015 we added 8,214 employees to Google. And the women we hired, on average, received a 30 percent bigger salary increase upon joining the company, compared to men." If you accepted his claim that Google does pay genders equitably, then this would indicate a large pay disparity outside of Google. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/04/29/how-the-whats-your-current-salary-question-hurts-the-gender-pay-gap/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/04...
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > If you accepted his claim that Google does pay genders equitably, then this would indicate a large pay disparity outside of Google. Or it would indicate a successful outreach program at Google for women by which they were successful at getting qualified women not currently working in tech to apply; this doesn't necessarily imply a like-duties gender pay gap.
      - collyw 9y ago
        Could it indicate discrimination against men at Google?
    - falcolas 9y ago
      There's a lot of variables which are not being taken into account there. If you hired a person from outside SV, and another from within SV, you immediately have a 40-50% difference in salary increases. Or, if you hire one person out of an advertising company and another out of a software company, the difference will be quite large. It's also a bit of a weasely statement - to quote Penn & Teller, they are lying with numbers - since it doesn't mention the current difference in wages.
  - Brotkrumen 9y ago
    10% adjusted is pretty large. Even sub-10% usually works out to a couple of thousand each year.
    - falcolas 9y ago
      Yes, it's large, but it's also only practically visible when you can see all of the wages for all companies. Pay gaps between individuals in the same company - regardless of gender - can be much larger than 10%, since your wage (in the US) depends more on your wage at your last job than your actual skill level.
- Brotkrumen 9y ago
  The belief that a woman with the same experience, skill, etc. is a worse performer would lead to a lower salary for women. That's the whole point of contention. And we should probably let go of the idea that markets are rational.
  - mafribe 9y ago
    If the gender paygap truly existed, a large amounts of money could be made. Given the prevalence of wealthy left-wing, SJWs, male feministist types on HN and in Silicon Valley, one wonders why none of them leads by example and hires woman only. Action speaks louder than words!
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > one wonders why none of them leads by example and hires woman only. Because that's blatantly, bright-line illegal?
      - protomyth 9y ago
        Daycares in the USA get away with it, and, sadly, a lot of parents are very happy about it. Look at the gender % for daycares and elementary school. This is actually a rather larger problem since we are not properly providing young boys with role models.
        yorwba 9y ago
        You may consider it "improper", but actually young boys are provided with plenty of role models, they just happen to be female.
        protomyth 9y ago
        If you reverse the sexes in your response then there would be outrage. Boys need to see men interacting with men and women to pick up on the social cues.
- karlkeefer 9y ago
  Perhaps it is due to "family costs" being carried disproportionately by women. Leaving early to pick up kids, staying home when kids are sick, etc. Even though typical gender roles are becoming less typical, they may still result in differential output from the perspective of an employer. Thomas Sowell (a while ago) showed a dramatic difference in salary between all women, and women who had never married, suggesting that a huge component of the pay gap was due to household and family expectations. I imagine there is more recent research on this exact theory, but I'm not aware of it.
  - mafribe 9y ago
    Stay-at-home mothers are typically handsomely remunerated -- their food, rent, clothing, hobbies are all paid for, typically by the father(s) of their children. This is part of total compensation, but never factored in. It is also never deduced from the total compensation of the father(s). Any statistic that does not take this into account isn't serious.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      But if a man earns enough to pay for the needs of his wife in addition to his own, that means he is paid much more than her. I wouldn't deduce that from the man's total compensation, since it essentially is an expense like any other.
      - mafribe 9y ago
        Childcare / alimony is not an expense like any other because in many legislations you cannot really decided to stop paying that expense, see e.g. [1]. In the US you typically go to prison pretty swiftly if you refuse to pay. [1] http://www.realworlddivorce.com/ http://www.realworlddivorce.com/
- paperpunk 9y ago
  Perhaps the same biases that might influence career progression/pay-rise discussions could also influence hiring decisions? Though I agree with your secondary assertion.
- T2_t2 9y ago
  No, there isn't. The gap is between different professions, not intra-professional. Where it is intra-professional, men tend to work more hours, and women tend to preference conditions over monetary remuneration (i.e. flexibility over pay, extraneous benefits over direct compensation etc etc). Just to be clear, extra time off is remuneration, as are things like on-site day care centres, but they aren't ever counted in pay gap studies (that I have seen anyway). Add to that that Lesbians make more than straight women[1] - and gay men less than straight men [2][3] - and there is a bit more at play. The problem is that any time there is something men do better than women - like negotiate pay - rather than bring women up to the male standard (teach women to negotiate better), people want to hamstring men (no pay negotiation). Anti-worker policies and pro-gender policies are often indistinguishable, if only to me personally, and in my more cynical moments think this is a business conspiracy to deflate wages to female levels, not increase wages to male levels. [1] http://bigthink.com/dollars-and-sex/what-explains-the-lesbian-wage-premium http://bigthink.com/dollars-and-sex/what-explains-the-lesbia... [2] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-232X.2009.00567.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-232X.2009.... [3] https://joeclark.org/gaymoney/findings/ https://joeclark.org/gaymoney/findings/
  - yomly 9y ago
    It's possible to pay everyone equally - especially when you just pay everyone less. If you disclose what everyone earns at every level, it's easy to then let all your employees pull everyone hold themselves accountable to the same level. A bit like crabs in a bucket...
psychometry 9y ago
You have to be careful, though. It's possible to control for too many variables such that your set of confounders itself is a predictor of sex. This is a technique I've seen used by people who try to deny the existence of a pay gap. It's FUD.
- Anderkent 9y ago
  > set of confounders itself is a predictor of sex. This is a technique I've seen used by people who try to deny the existence of a pay gap. This doesn't seem invalid? If for example 'wanting to spend more time at home'/'cares about team fit more than salary' is a predictor of gender, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be excluded from analysis. What we care about is whether the pay difference is because of people treating women unfairly. If a different trait causes lower salaries in both men and women, but is more common among women, the problem is not a gender pay gap.
  - irpapakons 9y ago
    The unadjusted paygap is still caused by sexism.
    - Anderkent 9y ago
      That needs to be shown. There are many ways an unadjusted paygap might exist without any discrimination being involved - for example simpson's paradox.
  - psychometry 9y ago
    This is what I'm talking about: http://www.separatinghyperplanes.com/2014/12/no-you-cant-control-for-that.html http://www.separatinghyperplanes.com/2014/12/no-you-cant-con... https://www.vox.com/2014/4/9/5597392/fancy-math-cant-erase-the-gender-pay-gap https://www.vox.com/2014/4/9/5597392/fancy-math-cant-erase-t...
    - Anderkent 9y ago
      The second article I vaguely agree with, except that the fact that pay gap exists isn't really interesting - what is interesting is why it exists. For example suppose women on average don't care about money as much as men do, and take jobs with different benefits (like more free time). In such a situation, you would observe a gender pay gap. But the pay gap wouldn't be bad, or something that we need to fix. It would just be a difference in preferences, and a woman who does care about money as much as an average man could expect to earn as much as a man. The article itself talks about how a significant part of the gender pay gap is the higher willingness/better fit of men to take dangerous, difficult, but well paid jobs in natural resource extraction. This... sounds like not a problem to me?

I always wonder - if there is such a huge gap, why don't folks just employ women, since they're cheaper and do the same work? Isn't that the question to be answered in order to really understand what's going on? Otherwise I bet I can always find, for any company, a subset of people that are underpaid relative to the rest, be it related to age, gender, race, sexual preferences, employment history, ZIP code, whatever.

falcolas 9y ago
There isn't a huge gap, not for the same job/title combination (there are cases where the gap does exist for the same job, but it's typically less than 10%). The gap widely most widely reported, the 70% figure, is primarily caused because of the genders holding different jobs, where the average pay for female-dominated jobs is less than the average pay for male-dominated jobs.
- wrsh07 9y ago
  So... this is light on details into their analysis, but Laszlo Block [formerly of Google - where I work fwiw], claimed "In 2015 we added 8,214 employees to Google. And the women we hired, on average, received a 30 percent bigger salary increase upon joining the company, compared to men." If you accepted his claim that Google does pay genders equitably, then this would indicate a large pay disparity outside of Google. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/04/29/how-the-whats-your-current-salary-question-hurts-the-gender-pay-gap/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/04...
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > If you accepted his claim that Google does pay genders equitably, then this would indicate a large pay disparity outside of Google. Or it would indicate a successful outreach program at Google for women by which they were successful at getting qualified women not currently working in tech to apply; this doesn't necessarily imply a like-duties gender pay gap.
    - collyw 9y ago
      Could it indicate discrimination against men at Google?
  - falcolas 9y ago
    There's a lot of variables which are not being taken into account there. If you hired a person from outside SV, and another from within SV, you immediately have a 40-50% difference in salary increases. Or, if you hire one person out of an advertising company and another out of a software company, the difference will be quite large. It's also a bit of a weasely statement - to quote Penn & Teller, they are lying with numbers - since it doesn't mention the current difference in wages.
- Brotkrumen 9y ago
  10% adjusted is pretty large. Even sub-10% usually works out to a couple of thousand each year.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    Yes, it's large, but it's also only practically visible when you can see all of the wages for all companies. Pay gaps between individuals in the same company - regardless of gender - can be much larger than 10%, since your wage (in the US) depends more on your wage at your last job than your actual skill level.
Brotkrumen 9y ago
The belief that a woman with the same experience, skill, etc. is a worse performer would lead to a lower salary for women. That's the whole point of contention. And we should probably let go of the idea that markets are rational.
- mafribe 9y ago
  If the gender paygap truly existed, a large amounts of money could be made. Given the prevalence of wealthy left-wing, SJWs, male feministist types on HN and in Silicon Valley, one wonders why none of them leads by example and hires woman only. Action speaks louder than words!
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > one wonders why none of them leads by example and hires woman only. Because that's blatantly, bright-line illegal?
    - protomyth 9y ago
      Daycares in the USA get away with it, and, sadly, a lot of parents are very happy about it. Look at the gender % for daycares and elementary school. This is actually a rather larger problem since we are not properly providing young boys with role models.
      - yorwba 9y ago
        You may consider it "improper", but actually young boys are provided with plenty of role models, they just happen to be female.
        protomyth 9y ago
        If you reverse the sexes in your response then there would be outrage. Boys need to see men interacting with men and women to pick up on the social cues.
karlkeefer 9y ago
Perhaps it is due to "family costs" being carried disproportionately by women. Leaving early to pick up kids, staying home when kids are sick, etc. Even though typical gender roles are becoming less typical, they may still result in differential output from the perspective of an employer. Thomas Sowell (a while ago) showed a dramatic difference in salary between all women, and women who had never married, suggesting that a huge component of the pay gap was due to household and family expectations. I imagine there is more recent research on this exact theory, but I'm not aware of it.
- mafribe 9y ago
  Stay-at-home mothers are typically handsomely remunerated -- their food, rent, clothing, hobbies are all paid for, typically by the father(s) of their children. This is part of total compensation, but never factored in. It is also never deduced from the total compensation of the father(s). Any statistic that does not take this into account isn't serious.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    But if a man earns enough to pay for the needs of his wife in addition to his own, that means he is paid much more than her. I wouldn't deduce that from the man's total compensation, since it essentially is an expense like any other.
    - mafribe 9y ago
      Childcare / alimony is not an expense like any other because in many legislations you cannot really decided to stop paying that expense, see e.g. [1]. In the US you typically go to prison pretty swiftly if you refuse to pay. [1] http://www.realworlddivorce.com/ http://www.realworlddivorce.com/
paperpunk 9y ago
Perhaps the same biases that might influence career progression/pay-rise discussions could also influence hiring decisions? Though I agree with your secondary assertion.
T2_t2 9y ago
No, there isn't. The gap is between different professions, not intra-professional. Where it is intra-professional, men tend to work more hours, and women tend to preference conditions over monetary remuneration (i.e. flexibility over pay, extraneous benefits over direct compensation etc etc). Just to be clear, extra time off is remuneration, as are things like on-site day care centres, but they aren't ever counted in pay gap studies (that I have seen anyway). Add to that that Lesbians make more than straight women[1] - and gay men less than straight men [2][3] - and there is a bit more at play. The problem is that any time there is something men do better than women - like negotiate pay - rather than bring women up to the male standard (teach women to negotiate better), people want to hamstring men (no pay negotiation). Anti-worker policies and pro-gender policies are often indistinguishable, if only to me personally, and in my more cynical moments think this is a business conspiracy to deflate wages to female levels, not increase wages to male levels. [1] http://bigthink.com/dollars-and-sex/what-explains-the-lesbian-wage-premium http://bigthink.com/dollars-and-sex/what-explains-the-lesbia... [2] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-232X.2009.00567.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-232X.2009.... [3] https://joeclark.org/gaymoney/findings/ https://joeclark.org/gaymoney/findings/
- yomly 9y ago
  It's possible to pay everyone equally - especially when you just pay everyone less. If you disclose what everyone earns at every level, it's easy to then let all your employees pull everyone hold themselves accountable to the same level. A bit like crabs in a bucket...

psychometry 9y ago

You have to be careful, though. It's possible to control for too many variables such that your set of confounders itself is a predictor of sex. This is a technique I've seen used by people who try to deny the existence of a pay gap. It's FUD.

Anderkent 9y ago
> set of confounders itself is a predictor of sex. This is a technique I've seen used by people who try to deny the existence of a pay gap. This doesn't seem invalid? If for example 'wanting to spend more time at home'/'cares about team fit more than salary' is a predictor of gender, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be excluded from analysis. What we care about is whether the pay difference is because of people treating women unfairly. If a different trait causes lower salaries in both men and women, but is more common among women, the problem is not a gender pay gap.
- irpapakons 9y ago
  The unadjusted paygap is still caused by sexism.
  - Anderkent 9y ago
    That needs to be shown. There are many ways an unadjusted paygap might exist without any discrimination being involved - for example simpson's paradox.
- psychometry 9y ago
  This is what I'm talking about: http://www.separatinghyperplanes.com/2014/12/no-you-cant-control-for-that.html http://www.separatinghyperplanes.com/2014/12/no-you-cant-con... https://www.vox.com/2014/4/9/5597392/fancy-math-cant-erase-the-gender-pay-gap https://www.vox.com/2014/4/9/5597392/fancy-math-cant-erase-t...
  - Anderkent 9y ago
    The second article I vaguely agree with, except that the fact that pay gap exists isn't really interesting - what is interesting is why it exists. For example suppose women on average don't care about money as much as men do, and take jobs with different benefits (like more free time). In such a situation, you would observe a gender pay gap. But the pay gap wouldn't be bad, or something that we need to fix. It would just be a difference in preferences, and a woman who does care about money as much as an average man could expect to earn as much as a man. The article itself talks about how a significant part of the gender pay gap is the higher willingness/better fit of men to take dangerous, difficult, but well paid jobs in natural resource extraction. This... sounds like not a problem to me?