6 ms·

>From 2003 to 2008, the gender pay gap at the reporting companies shrank 7 percent, from 18.9 percent down to 17.5 percent Is this really a large enough effect

by ve55 8y ago

>From 2003 to 2008, the gender pay gap at the reporting companies shrank 7 percent, from 18.9 percent down to 17.5 percent Is this really a large enough effect size to justify such a headline? >Our findings suggest that regulatory mandates on pay transparency, as a means to overcome biases against women in the workforce, may be effective in closing the gender pay gap. No, they really do not. A potential reduction from 18.9% to 17.5% does not 'close the gender pay gap', and attempting to close such a gap in this manner to begin with just demonstrates a misunderstanding of what confounding variables cause it to begin with.

dmichulke 8y ago
I once read an interesting thought experiment about this, adapted to this story it goes like this: We assume: - Greedy capitalist bosses (wanting to pay less for more work) - Same productivity of men and women Now if there's an 18.9% pay gap, then women are on average 18.9% cheaper to employ than men. Greedy capitalist bosses should therefore only employ women, closing the gender pay gap by driving womens' wages higher (and those of men lower). Yet this doesn't happen, so one of the assumptions is wrong or the gender pay gap difference (the 18.9%) is not correct.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Another assumption that could be wrong is that greedy bosses can accurately determine productivity. If bosses have biases that cause them to underevaluate women's productivity this would also explain the pay difference.
  - dmichulke 8y ago
    Not sure. Even if you had only 1 out of 10 bosses able to determine productivity, that guy'd only employ women, so he'd cover some of the "losses" of the other 9 bosses. Also, you'd probably see a bimodal pay gap distribution per company.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    That would still give a huge benefit to the greedy boss who can "accurately determine productivity" and hires all women for cheaper, which means it would inevitably be copied in the end.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    Can we assume greedy capitalist bosses aren't to stupid to run (or get someone else to run) A/B tests? Yes I admit. It is leading question. And personally I guess greedy capitalist bosses would happily ditch more than a few biases if that meant they became richer, quicker. Given you agree you have three options that I am aware of (interested to know if there exist more): 1. oppressing women on a large scale is somehow more valuable to greedy bosses than getting a huge competitive advantage over other greedy bosses, or 2. for some reason it wasn't such a huge competitive advantage after all. 3. for some reason it isn't possible to test it. Maybe because women chose another career path from the start. Or maybe women aren't as easy to fool into working for greedy capitalist bosses. Or something else.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >- Greedy capitalist bosses (wanting to pay less for more work) Well, that, for one, is a given.
- pjc50 8y ago
  In any organisation it's only the owners who are ultimately concerned with overall cost - managers can have all sorts of incentives for larger or less efficient staff.
  - chosenbreed37 8y ago
    > In any organisation it's only the owners who are ultimately concerned with overall cost - managers can have all sorts of incentives for larger or less efficient staff. I wonder if that could be accounted for by performance/productivity related bonuses or other perks.
- lucozade 8y ago
  The incorrect assumption is an implicit one: the fungibility of workers. Your argument would work (-ish) if you were arguing against pay inequality. And, in fact, pay inequality is usually a lot lower than the pay gap. But for many large organisations, the pay gap is due to women being more likely to be in lower paid roles while men are more likely to be in higher paid roles. Replacing men with women and vice versa would reduce the pay gap but wouldn't dent the overall wage bill significantly.
  - fastball 8y ago
    You can't just "replace men with women" though, as it's not clear that the reason men are in higher paid positions is because of discrimination. For example, men on average work longer hours than women, which obviously contributes to the pay gap. Men also take less vacation than women, which generally makes them "more reliable". If I have two SysOps people, and they have the same skill level, I'm probably going to promote the one that took less vacation time. The priority should be in curbing the behavior of men who are overzealous in their work to the detriment of their own health. That would probably bring down the pay gap significantly.
    - lucozade 8y ago
      > You can't just "replace men with women" though Indeed. I was just pointing out why the argument was broken. The lack of symmetry in the workforce would also mean that that's not a way to reduce the pay gap even without the assumption of a reducing wage bill. > Men also take less vacation than women Are you sure? Men are statistically likely to take more of their vacation time (in the US at least) than women. If you are correct that implies that men get more vacation time than women but I'm not sure that that's correct.
      - belorn 8y ago
        Taking the first hit on google, men work 42 min more per day when taking into consideration aspects like vacation and sick days. Every second week that almost translate to an whole additional day in difference. "among full-time workers (those usually working 35 hours or more per week), men worked more per day than women—8.4 hours, compared with 7.9 hours. (See table 4.)" https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf The questions we should ask our self is what are the incentives. How does wages, promotions, social status, health, happiness, children and social support look for men who is in the 50% that work longest vs those men who are in the 50% fewest hours at work. Then we do the same question for women.
- Traster 8y ago
  Your assumption in your model is wrong. You aren't assuming the same productivity of men and women, you're assuming the same observed productivity of men and women. If you're in a widget factory and both a man and a woman are producing 10 widgets per hour then your effect would be expected - because the boss would be able to evaluate true performance. In the real world however, no job is that simple. The problem with the gender pay gap partly is that women are assumed to be less productive than men in certain jobs. You don't hire a woman engineer because women are interested in people not things - so your expectation is that a women is 20% less productive than a man because you've decided being interested in people is bad for the job and that influences your expectations when hiring.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Indeed - and we observe that quite a lot of factory line work that doesn't specifically require hefting large parts around is done by women. Especially in clothing and electronics.
  - fastball 8y ago
    The point of the model is that there will be many bosses that are not affected by such biases, who will then employ only women because they recognize that the other bosses have overlooked women due to "liking people not things".

by ve55 8y ago

dmichulke 8y ago

I once read an interesting thought experiment about this, adapted to this story it goes like this: We assume: - Greedy capitalist bosses (wanting to pay less for more work) - Same productivity of men and women Now if there's an 18.9% pay gap, then women are on average 18.9% cheaper to employ than men. Greedy capitalist bosses should therefore only employ women, closing the gender pay gap by driving womens' wages higher (and those of men lower). Yet this doesn't happen, so one of the assumptions is wrong or the gender pay gap difference (the 18.9%) is not correct.

adrianN 8y ago
Another assumption that could be wrong is that greedy bosses can accurately determine productivity. If bosses have biases that cause them to underevaluate women's productivity this would also explain the pay difference.
- dmichulke 8y ago
  Not sure. Even if you had only 1 out of 10 bosses able to determine productivity, that guy'd only employ women, so he'd cover some of the "losses" of the other 9 bosses. Also, you'd probably see a bimodal pay gap distribution per company.
- coldtea 8y ago
  That would still give a huge benefit to the greedy boss who can "accurately determine productivity" and hires all women for cheaper, which means it would inevitably be copied in the end.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  Can we assume greedy capitalist bosses aren't to stupid to run (or get someone else to run) A/B tests? Yes I admit. It is leading question. And personally I guess greedy capitalist bosses would happily ditch more than a few biases if that meant they became richer, quicker. Given you agree you have three options that I am aware of (interested to know if there exist more): 1. oppressing women on a large scale is somehow more valuable to greedy bosses than getting a huge competitive advantage over other greedy bosses, or 2. for some reason it wasn't such a huge competitive advantage after all. 3. for some reason it isn't possible to test it. Maybe because women chose another career path from the start. Or maybe women aren't as easy to fool into working for greedy capitalist bosses. Or something else.
coldtea 8y ago
>- Greedy capitalist bosses (wanting to pay less for more work) Well, that, for one, is a given.
pjc50 8y ago
In any organisation it's only the owners who are ultimately concerned with overall cost - managers can have all sorts of incentives for larger or less efficient staff.
- chosenbreed37 8y ago
  > In any organisation it's only the owners who are ultimately concerned with overall cost - managers can have all sorts of incentives for larger or less efficient staff. I wonder if that could be accounted for by performance/productivity related bonuses or other perks.
lucozade 8y ago
The incorrect assumption is an implicit one: the fungibility of workers. Your argument would work (-ish) if you were arguing against pay inequality. And, in fact, pay inequality is usually a lot lower than the pay gap. But for many large organisations, the pay gap is due to women being more likely to be in lower paid roles while men are more likely to be in higher paid roles. Replacing men with women and vice versa would reduce the pay gap but wouldn't dent the overall wage bill significantly.
- fastball 8y ago
  You can't just "replace men with women" though, as it's not clear that the reason men are in higher paid positions is because of discrimination. For example, men on average work longer hours than women, which obviously contributes to the pay gap. Men also take less vacation than women, which generally makes them "more reliable". If I have two SysOps people, and they have the same skill level, I'm probably going to promote the one that took less vacation time. The priority should be in curbing the behavior of men who are overzealous in their work to the detriment of their own health. That would probably bring down the pay gap significantly.
  - lucozade 8y ago
    > You can't just "replace men with women" though Indeed. I was just pointing out why the argument was broken. The lack of symmetry in the workforce would also mean that that's not a way to reduce the pay gap even without the assumption of a reducing wage bill. > Men also take less vacation than women Are you sure? Men are statistically likely to take more of their vacation time (in the US at least) than women. If you are correct that implies that men get more vacation time than women but I'm not sure that that's correct.
    - belorn 8y ago
      Taking the first hit on google, men work 42 min more per day when taking into consideration aspects like vacation and sick days. Every second week that almost translate to an whole additional day in difference. "among full-time workers (those usually working 35 hours or more per week), men worked more per day than women—8.4 hours, compared with 7.9 hours. (See table 4.)" https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf The questions we should ask our self is what are the incentives. How does wages, promotions, social status, health, happiness, children and social support look for men who is in the 50% that work longest vs those men who are in the 50% fewest hours at work. Then we do the same question for women.
Traster 8y ago
Your assumption in your model is wrong. You aren't assuming the same productivity of men and women, you're assuming the same observed productivity of men and women. If you're in a widget factory and both a man and a woman are producing 10 widgets per hour then your effect would be expected - because the boss would be able to evaluate true performance. In the real world however, no job is that simple. The problem with the gender pay gap partly is that women are assumed to be less productive than men in certain jobs. You don't hire a woman engineer because women are interested in people not things - so your expectation is that a women is 20% less productive than a man because you've decided being interested in people is bad for the job and that influences your expectations when hiring.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Indeed - and we observe that quite a lot of factory line work that doesn't specifically require hefting large parts around is done by women. Especially in clothing and electronics.
- fastball 8y ago
  The point of the model is that there will be many bosses that are not affected by such biases, who will then employ only women because they recognize that the other bosses have overlooked women due to "liking people not things".