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From your own link[1]: >multiple studies find that pay rates between men and women varied by 5–6.6% or, women earning 94 cents to every dollar earned by their

From your own link[1]: >multiple studies find that pay rates between men and women varied by 5–6.6% or, women earning 94 cents to every dollar earned by their male counterparts. The remaining 6% of the gap has been speculated to originate from other unmeasured differences, a greater value placed on non-wage benefits, gender discrimination and a difference in willingness and/or skills to negotiate salaries. >The extent to which discrimination plays a role in explaining gender wage disparities is somewhat difficult to quantify, due to a number of potentially confounding variables. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_the_United_S... That seems to suggest that right now there's not enough evidence to suggest the POSSIBLE 5-6% gap is directly attributable to gender without accounting for other variables. This doesn't run COUNTER to what you said, but it also doesn't fully back you up.

dahart 7y ago
I’m not sure what parts you feel like aren’t aligning with what I said, I read the parts you quote and it seems to match what I intended. But, FWIW, here are a few things to consider: 1- the 5-6% gap / 94 cents per dollar number is an adjusted number that takes career choices into account. The unadjusted raw data number is around 80 cents on the dollar. Your emphasis on the word possible is missing the fact that the evidence of a gap is absolutely clear. What’s missing is unassailable proof of the causes, especially when you remove some of them by adjusting the data. 2- Adjusting for career choices is intentionally removing something that we know is currently different between men and women, and career choices are driven partially by cultural norms, which in the past are known to have been caused by discrimination. Adjusting that way might be the right thing to do, but that’s not entirely clear, it might also be rose-tinted glasses. 3- You’re picking only on today’s data point in the US, and my point was explicitly that yesterday’s data and data for other countries is even more conclusive, even after adjusting for career choices. The unadjusted data has risen 20% in the last 50 years, but it still potentially has 20% further to go. https://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html https://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html 4- Yes, quantifying discrimination is absolutely difficult. Please note that my comment claimed the existence of a pay gap, not that the cause was discrimination. Many kinds of bias and discrimination are extremely difficult to detect. Lots of evidence that biases are unconscious and sometimes act against someone’s conscious & stated goals. That said, given that discrimination has absolutely occurred in the last century, and that the pay gap is only recently closing, and that women’s choices are currently fluctuating and not fixed, it would be a pretty bad bet to assume that all bias has been eradicated from our society already.

dahart 7y ago

I’m not sure what parts you feel like aren’t aligning with what I said, I read the parts you quote and it seems to match what I intended. But, FWIW, here are a few things to consider: 1- the 5-6% gap / 94 cents per dollar number is an adjusted number that takes career choices into account. The unadjusted raw data number is around 80 cents on the dollar. Your emphasis on the word possible is missing the fact that the evidence of a gap is absolutely clear. What’s missing is unassailable proof of the causes, especially when you remove some of them by adjusting the data. 2- Adjusting for career choices is intentionally removing something that we know is currently different between men and women, and career choices are driven partially by cultural norms, which in the past are known to have been caused by discrimination. Adjusting that way might be the right thing to do, but that’s not entirely clear, it might also be rose-tinted glasses. 3- You’re picking only on today’s data point in the US, and my point was explicitly that yesterday’s data and data for other countries is even more conclusive, even after adjusting for career choices. The unadjusted data has risen 20% in the last 50 years, but it still potentially has 20% further to go. https://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html https://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html 4- Yes, quantifying discrimination is absolutely difficult. Please note that my comment claimed the existence of a pay gap, not that the cause was discrimination. Many kinds of bias and discrimination are extremely difficult to detect. Lots of evidence that biases are unconscious and sometimes act against someone’s conscious & stated goals. That said, given that discrimination has absolutely occurred in the last century, and that the pay gap is only recently closing, and that women’s choices are currently fluctuating and not fixed, it would be a pretty bad bet to assume that all bias has been eradicated from our society already.