4 ms·

Do you have any evidence of this phenomenon from beginning to end as you describe it? It sounds fascinating.

jimbokun 8y ago
Not motivated enough to research it right now, but last time I read about this I recall different choices made by men and women account for much of the pay gap, but there is still a residual gap even when you account for men and women performing the same job after everything else is taken into account.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  Yes, I’m aware of this evidence. What I’d like is for the parent I was responding to to back up their very strong claims about the goal of feminists and the sorts of long form feminist employment change they’re claiming. I’ve never personally witnessed any study corroborating this phenomenon, but I also am not heavily researched in this area and am therefore welcome to innovative new data.
ThrustVectoring 8y ago
If you take studies that compare the gross earnings of men and women and control for some of the obvious differences in decision-making, the gender gap tends to disappear. For example, I remember hearing of a study that looked at something like "single, childless people aged 25-34 with a college degree and living in an urban environment." In this narrow demographic slice, women made something like 2% more money than men. And then if you look at the US census data on occupations by gender, you can easily notice a trend in which jobs have what gender ratios. Roughly speaking it's something like "if the pay and requirements are equivalent, which is a more preferable job" often lands on female dominated fields. Education, training, and library occupations: 73.1% female Healthcare support occupations: 86.5% Law enforcement workers including supervisors: 19.7% Office and administrative support occupations: 70.8% Natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations: 5.1% Production, transportation, and material moving occupations: 22.8% The one big outlier to this pattern that I noticed was "Computer, engineering, and science occupations" at 25.7%. This also is a considerable category outlier in terms of skill requirements and competitiveness. "Management occupations" seems like it should also have some of this effect but to a lesser degree, and sits at 40.3%. Source: American Community Survey, table S2401 Another interesting tidbit is comparing S2401 with S2402 - comparing all workers with only full-time year-round ones. I haven't done a full look, but one thing that jumped out at me is that excluding part-time or part-year workers drops the overall workforce percentage from 47.5% to 43.1%. It might be confounded somewhat by school teachers being considered "part year" and mostly women, though.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  I’ve read similar studies about the pay gap that states the gender pay gap gets smaller but most notably doesnt disappear except in extremely small examples like you stated. Could you link me to studies that says they disappear entirely or become meaninglessly small? “Roughly speaking it's something like "if the pay and requirements are equivalent, which is a more preferable job" often lands on female dominated fields.” Could you explain what you mean by a preferable job? Because I think an office administrative job probably sucks a ton of dick. Education also broadly sucks as a career, especially given the political climate. Healthcare support super duper sucks, but the only healthcare support I know about is those assistants for the elderly which involves a lot of really unpleasant work, or nursing which is also really unpleasant and involves stuff like cleaning up vomit and shit.
  - ThrustVectoring 8y ago
    Suckier jobs will do things like make you dirty, risk life and limb, be highly stressful and/or competitive, have little to no extrinsic social rewards built in, require extraordinary amounts of training and preparation to enter, or require extended periods of time away from home. >Office Administration It's a desk job that gets you home at a consistent time, and requires little specialized training. It's got sucky aspects, sure, but at that level of candidate competitiveness it beats out a lot of other choices. >Education It's got a ton of extrinsic social reward in it. People like and respect teachers, and you get to see the result of your work when your students do well. >nursing Again, lots of extrinsic social reward. The people you care for get better and appreciate you, and you're part of the mission to help people get better. Keep the unpleasant cleaning and remove the thankfulness and you get janitorial work, which is male dominated.
    - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
      Education and nursing do indeed require high amounts of training and preparation to enter, and education in particular is extremely competitive. Where are you getting this conjecture? Nursing is also dangerous- one risks horrific infection regularly and is exposed to human body fluids! I’m really thinking this might be a bunch of conjecture based on the ideals of these female-majority jobs, and perhaps not the reality of them. I’m also unsure how it reflects the proof of the original claim, that feminists are broadly not claiming they desire equality but something else, and once they achieve employment parity they will make moves towards inequitable employment.

Not motivated enough to research it right now, but last time I read about this I recall different choices made by men and women account for much of the pay gap, but there is still a residual gap even when you account for men and women performing the same job after everything else is taken into account.

SolaceQuantum 8y ago
Yes, I’m aware of this evidence. What I’d like is for the parent I was responding to to back up their very strong claims about the goal of feminists and the sorts of long form feminist employment change they’re claiming. I’ve never personally witnessed any study corroborating this phenomenon, but I also am not heavily researched in this area and am therefore welcome to innovative new data.

ThrustVectoring 8y ago

If you take studies that compare the gross earnings of men and women and control for some of the obvious differences in decision-making, the gender gap tends to disappear. For example, I remember hearing of a study that looked at something like "single, childless people aged 25-34 with a college degree and living in an urban environment." In this narrow demographic slice, women made something like 2% more money than men. And then if you look at the US census data on occupations by gender, you can easily notice a trend in which jobs have what gender ratios. Roughly speaking it's something like "if the pay and requirements are equivalent, which is a more preferable job" often lands on female dominated fields. Education, training, and library occupations: 73.1% female Healthcare support occupations: 86.5% Law enforcement workers including supervisors: 19.7% Office and administrative support occupations: 70.8% Natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations: 5.1% Production, transportation, and material moving occupations: 22.8% The one big outlier to this pattern that I noticed was "Computer, engineering, and science occupations" at 25.7%. This also is a considerable category outlier in terms of skill requirements and competitiveness. "Management occupations" seems like it should also have some of this effect but to a lesser degree, and sits at 40.3%. Source: American Community Survey, table S2401 Another interesting tidbit is comparing S2401 with S2402 - comparing all workers with only full-time year-round ones. I haven't done a full look, but one thing that jumped out at me is that excluding part-time or part-year workers drops the overall workforce percentage from 47.5% to 43.1%. It might be confounded somewhat by school teachers being considered "part year" and mostly women, though.

SolaceQuantum 8y ago
I’ve read similar studies about the pay gap that states the gender pay gap gets smaller but most notably doesnt disappear except in extremely small examples like you stated. Could you link me to studies that says they disappear entirely or become meaninglessly small? “Roughly speaking it's something like "if the pay and requirements are equivalent, which is a more preferable job" often lands on female dominated fields.” Could you explain what you mean by a preferable job? Because I think an office administrative job probably sucks a ton of dick. Education also broadly sucks as a career, especially given the political climate. Healthcare support super duper sucks, but the only healthcare support I know about is those assistants for the elderly which involves a lot of really unpleasant work, or nursing which is also really unpleasant and involves stuff like cleaning up vomit and shit.
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  Suckier jobs will do things like make you dirty, risk life and limb, be highly stressful and/or competitive, have little to no extrinsic social rewards built in, require extraordinary amounts of training and preparation to enter, or require extended periods of time away from home. >Office Administration It's a desk job that gets you home at a consistent time, and requires little specialized training. It's got sucky aspects, sure, but at that level of candidate competitiveness it beats out a lot of other choices. >Education It's got a ton of extrinsic social reward in it. People like and respect teachers, and you get to see the result of your work when your students do well. >nursing Again, lots of extrinsic social reward. The people you care for get better and appreciate you, and you're part of the mission to help people get better. Keep the unpleasant cleaning and remove the thankfulness and you get janitorial work, which is male dominated.
  - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
    Education and nursing do indeed require high amounts of training and preparation to enter, and education in particular is extremely competitive. Where are you getting this conjecture? Nursing is also dangerous- one risks horrific infection regularly and is exposed to human body fluids! I’m really thinking this might be a bunch of conjecture based on the ideals of these female-majority jobs, and perhaps not the reality of them. I’m also unsure how it reflects the proof of the original claim, that feminists are broadly not claiming they desire equality but something else, and once they achieve employment parity they will make moves towards inequitable employment.