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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 techni

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?

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?