4 ms·

This study is meaningless without more data to make it an apples to apples comparison. There is no pay gap if you control for occupation and experience. Simil

This study is meaningless without more data to make it an apples to apples comparison. There is no pay gap if you control for occupation and experience. Similarly, my guess is this supposed equity gap would disappear if you control for these factors. The section on founders is interesting, but by making the comparison about the calculated monetary value rather than the equity percentage and without looking at possible differences in the types of companies and associated valuations, it’s also not very meaningful.

slg 8y ago
>There is no pay gap if you control for occupation and experience. The old 75-80 cents on the dollar wage gap that some people still cite (including this article) drops drastically once correcting for occupation and experience, but women still earn less then men even when doing the same job at the same company. You can click through the link in the article to get that data. [1] [1] - https://hired.com/wage-inequality-report https://hired.com/wage-inequality-report
- doctorpangloss 8y ago
  I'm not sure why you're being downvoted here. The reported pay difference is 4% more to men than women for identical roles at identical companies. The pay difference grows to 7% for women in their mid 30s. Wealth compounds, and the increase in the gap over time is a double whammy. Women wind up significantly less wealthy than their male peers by the time they hit 35, for the same jobs. I don't know what's up with all the conspiratorial rejection of these basic stats. We all know very smart women, and we all know they're paid worse than their male colleagues. Surely, if it's right in front of your goddamned eyes, there's a problem!
  - gizmo686 8y ago
    >I don't know what's up with all the conspiratorial rejection of these basic stats. That's an easy one. There is a massive political movement for solving the wage gap; and that political movement is overwhelming dominated by people who insist highly misleading statistics, and call out anyone who questions those statistics as sexist. This is why you don't want to lie in politics. Once people catch on, they won't believe the kernel of truth you were basing the lie on; they'll just assume your still lieing (which is objectivly closer to the truth than believing the original claims being made).
  - tomp 8y ago
    > The reported pay difference is 4% more to men than women for identical roles at identical companies Do they take years of experience, days & hours worked, overtime and salary negotiation into account? The claim is, if controlling for industry/company/position brings down the gap to 4%, then adding more variables will likely bring it down to 0%.
- ummonk 8y ago
  It depends on how many factors you control for. I’ve seen pay gaps of anywhere between +10% and -3% depending on how aggressive they are in controlling for confounding factors (willingness to negotiate being a particularly notable factor). The studies that show men out earning women are probably not controlling as aggressively as they should. It should of course be noted that e.g. controlling for level is not justifiable if women get unfairly denied promotions.
  - slg 8y ago
    Why do you think those that still show a gap are undercorrecting rather than those that are not showing a gap are overcorrecting? I am not sure what corrections should be made to data comparing people with the same job at the same company. If your job has nothing to do with negotiating then your ability and/or willingness to negotiate shouldn't be the deciding factor in what compensation you receive.
    - ummonk 8y ago
      > Why do you think those that still show a gap are undercorrecting rather than those that are not showing a gap are overcorrecting? I didn't say that. I explicitly pointed out that e.g. bias in promotions would result in overcorrecting if one controls for leveling. > I am not sure what corrections should be made to data comparing people with the same job at the same company. There are things like tenure, experience level, work hours, etc. that aren't captured by just job/company (e.g. "software engineer at x" can capture a wide range of employees that shouldn't be and aren't compensated the same). However, most of these studies don't even look at the same company, and usually only control for things like industry, experience, and degree. The Carta study doesn't even control for anything. > If your job has nothing to do with negotiating then your ability and/or willingness to negotiate shouldn't be the deciding factor in what compensation you receive. I agree in principle, but have come to realize that in practice it doesn't work out that way. The problem is that negotiation-willingness tends to be a proxy for how much an employee cares about compensation. Thus, employers have reason to provide higher comp to the employees who negotiate for it (since they will value the higher comp), but not to provide higher comp to employees who don't negotiate (since they are much less likely to value the extra compensation spent on them). In practice, you end up with two sorts of companies. One kind refuses to negotiate or match counter-offers, and tends to have relatively low compensation across the board; these companies typically have mission-driven employees who don't prioritize compensation. You have the other kind that does negotiate, and often offers relatively high compensation to everyone, but particularly those who negotiate for it; this kind of company typically has a mix of mission-driven and compensation-driven employees. In my experience, the distribution of mission-driven vs. compensation-driven people is not equal across the genders. This may very well be due to socialization.
- crimsonalucard 8y ago
  You have to account for female specific choices that women make; like parenting. When you account for that along with experience the difference is negligible. a more readable source: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender-pay-gap-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender...
- bethly 8y ago
  Certainly once you control for mechanisms by which discrimination is enacted some of the effects of discrimination disappear. I don't understand why people think that is exculpatory rather than explanatory, indicating which interventions might effectively address the discrimination.
aklemm 8y ago
But why do those occupations pay less and why are women more often in them? Why do women have less experience? Why do they have less access to economic output after taking on the lion’s share of caregiving needed in society? That is the rest of the question. “There is no pay gap if you control for...” is not an explanation and doesn’t move the needle in terms of creating a more equitable work environment.
- zaarn 8y ago
  Likely, men get low paying jobs very often too. I would argue that this is similar to some other attributes found in studies; there is a higher standard deviation due to higher risk taking on part of men, since the lower limit of income is 0, there is a natural plateau but there is no maximum income to level off on, so the average/median will be skewed towards risk-taking. At least, that seems to be a fairly rational explanation of the data. Men get into a lot of horrible low end paying jobs too but if 1 out of 100 makes 100 million per year, it averages to 1 million per year.
  - tomp 8y ago
    Men also get into a lot of horrible high-paying jobs, like trucker, miner and pretty much anything in the oil industry.
    - zaarn 8y ago
      Sewage cleaners, firefighters, combat pilots (which IIRC are fairly male dominated but also place hefty physical limits like body type and sizes on you), etc. These horrible jobs are all fairly high risk (injury, sickness, death), they can pay well, sometimes they don't. And basically, yeah, as I said, that'll skew you averages and medians around.
- tomp 8y ago
  > Why do they have less access to economic output after taking on the lion’s share of caregiving needed in society? Because they produce less economic value. You can argue that's unfair, but forcing employers to pay less productive employees more is not the answer. There are other society-wide changes you could implement, such as alimony, which is mostly awarded to women, because they miss out on career opportunities taking care of the children. Personally, I'm strongly against alimony (it seems sexist, unfair and the wrong kind of incentive), but I would support initiatives such as paying young parents/families to have children, and longer & better paid parental leave (which would be a cost to society/taxpayers, but assuming that children are valuable to society, that cost is worth paying).

slg 8y ago

>There is no pay gap if you control for occupation and experience. The old 75-80 cents on the dollar wage gap that some people still cite (including this article) drops drastically once correcting for occupation and experience, but women still earn less then men even when doing the same job at the same company. You can click through the link in the article to get that data. [1] [1] - https://hired.com/wage-inequality-report https://hired.com/wage-inequality-report

doctorpangloss 8y ago
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted here. The reported pay difference is 4% more to men than women for identical roles at identical companies. The pay difference grows to 7% for women in their mid 30s. Wealth compounds, and the increase in the gap over time is a double whammy. Women wind up significantly less wealthy than their male peers by the time they hit 35, for the same jobs. I don't know what's up with all the conspiratorial rejection of these basic stats. We all know very smart women, and we all know they're paid worse than their male colleagues. Surely, if it's right in front of your goddamned eyes, there's a problem!
- gizmo686 8y ago
  >I don't know what's up with all the conspiratorial rejection of these basic stats. That's an easy one. There is a massive political movement for solving the wage gap; and that political movement is overwhelming dominated by people who insist highly misleading statistics, and call out anyone who questions those statistics as sexist. This is why you don't want to lie in politics. Once people catch on, they won't believe the kernel of truth you were basing the lie on; they'll just assume your still lieing (which is objectivly closer to the truth than believing the original claims being made).
- tomp 8y ago
  > The reported pay difference is 4% more to men than women for identical roles at identical companies Do they take years of experience, days & hours worked, overtime and salary negotiation into account? The claim is, if controlling for industry/company/position brings down the gap to 4%, then adding more variables will likely bring it down to 0%.
ummonk 8y ago
It depends on how many factors you control for. I’ve seen pay gaps of anywhere between +10% and -3% depending on how aggressive they are in controlling for confounding factors (willingness to negotiate being a particularly notable factor). The studies that show men out earning women are probably not controlling as aggressively as they should. It should of course be noted that e.g. controlling for level is not justifiable if women get unfairly denied promotions.
- slg 8y ago
  Why do you think those that still show a gap are undercorrecting rather than those that are not showing a gap are overcorrecting? I am not sure what corrections should be made to data comparing people with the same job at the same company. If your job has nothing to do with negotiating then your ability and/or willingness to negotiate shouldn't be the deciding factor in what compensation you receive.
  - ummonk 8y ago
    > Why do you think those that still show a gap are undercorrecting rather than those that are not showing a gap are overcorrecting? I didn't say that. I explicitly pointed out that e.g. bias in promotions would result in overcorrecting if one controls for leveling. > I am not sure what corrections should be made to data comparing people with the same job at the same company. There are things like tenure, experience level, work hours, etc. that aren't captured by just job/company (e.g. "software engineer at x" can capture a wide range of employees that shouldn't be and aren't compensated the same). However, most of these studies don't even look at the same company, and usually only control for things like industry, experience, and degree. The Carta study doesn't even control for anything. > If your job has nothing to do with negotiating then your ability and/or willingness to negotiate shouldn't be the deciding factor in what compensation you receive. I agree in principle, but have come to realize that in practice it doesn't work out that way. The problem is that negotiation-willingness tends to be a proxy for how much an employee cares about compensation. Thus, employers have reason to provide higher comp to the employees who negotiate for it (since they will value the higher comp), but not to provide higher comp to employees who don't negotiate (since they are much less likely to value the extra compensation spent on them). In practice, you end up with two sorts of companies. One kind refuses to negotiate or match counter-offers, and tends to have relatively low compensation across the board; these companies typically have mission-driven employees who don't prioritize compensation. You have the other kind that does negotiate, and often offers relatively high compensation to everyone, but particularly those who negotiate for it; this kind of company typically has a mix of mission-driven and compensation-driven employees. In my experience, the distribution of mission-driven vs. compensation-driven people is not equal across the genders. This may very well be due to socialization.
crimsonalucard 8y ago
You have to account for female specific choices that women make; like parenting. When you account for that along with experience the difference is negligible. a more readable source: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender-pay-gap-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender...
bethly 8y ago
Certainly once you control for mechanisms by which discrimination is enacted some of the effects of discrimination disappear. I don't understand why people think that is exculpatory rather than explanatory, indicating which interventions might effectively address the discrimination.

aklemm 8y ago

But why do those occupations pay less and why are women more often in them? Why do women have less experience? Why do they have less access to economic output after taking on the lion’s share of caregiving needed in society? That is the rest of the question. “There is no pay gap if you control for...” is not an explanation and doesn’t move the needle in terms of creating a more equitable work environment.

zaarn 8y ago
Likely, men get low paying jobs very often too. I would argue that this is similar to some other attributes found in studies; there is a higher standard deviation due to higher risk taking on part of men, since the lower limit of income is 0, there is a natural plateau but there is no maximum income to level off on, so the average/median will be skewed towards risk-taking. At least, that seems to be a fairly rational explanation of the data. Men get into a lot of horrible low end paying jobs too but if 1 out of 100 makes 100 million per year, it averages to 1 million per year.
- tomp 8y ago
  Men also get into a lot of horrible high-paying jobs, like trucker, miner and pretty much anything in the oil industry.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    Sewage cleaners, firefighters, combat pilots (which IIRC are fairly male dominated but also place hefty physical limits like body type and sizes on you), etc. These horrible jobs are all fairly high risk (injury, sickness, death), they can pay well, sometimes they don't. And basically, yeah, as I said, that'll skew you averages and medians around.
tomp 8y ago
> Why do they have less access to economic output after taking on the lion’s share of caregiving needed in society? Because they produce less economic value. You can argue that's unfair, but forcing employers to pay less productive employees more is not the answer. There are other society-wide changes you could implement, such as alimony, which is mostly awarded to women, because they miss out on career opportunities taking care of the children. Personally, I'm strongly against alimony (it seems sexist, unfair and the wrong kind of incentive), but I would support initiatives such as paying young parents/families to have children, and longer & better paid parental leave (which would be a cost to society/taxpayers, but assuming that children are valuable to society, that cost is worth paying).