4 ms·

If you can explain it away, and the explanation is credible you don’t have the problem. Period.

Spivak 5y ago
I put it in scare quotes for a reason because that's the phrasing people use when talking about but saying "we know many of the factors that contribute to the wage gap and when you control for them it mostly disappears" misses the point. One of the factors you control for is job title. When you only compare people with the same title the wage gap shrinks a bit. For some reason people interpret this as "Great! Not a problem. Moving on." when it completely ignores that as a group women holding lower paying job titles is itself indicative of a problem -- career paths that are dominated by women are seen as less valuable and girls are socially pressured away from more lucrative careers (you know like software engineering where every woman in our field including myself can tell you stories of being the only girl in her class) by parents, academic advisors, the school and workplace culture the fields cultivate and pushed into "softer", "more nurturing", "more creative" career paths compared to boys. Which it itself a problem for boys because boys who want to go into things like art, music, design, writing, fashion, social work, are mercilessly pressured away from it where girls are more likely to be encouraged. The patriarchy hurts everyone folks.
- iammisc 5y ago
  Not every person wants to continually climb the ladder. In general men are more likely to value social status because a man with a high career title is more attractive to women, whereas a woman's title does not increase her ability to find a husband. In fact, women by and large prefer men to have a higher career title than themselves. Is it any surprise men want to climb the ladder more.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Do you have a citation for these assertions?
    - iammisc 5y ago
      https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/men-want-beauty-women-want-money-what-people-want-in-a-sexual-partner-20151001-gjyyot.html https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/men-... Just look at the charts. Honestly, failure to understand this simple aspect of human nature is the reason for a lot of social ill, ranging from 'incels' to the disastrous egalitarian social policies.
      - shadowgovt 5y ago
        I'd be careful drawing broad conclusions from that study given the data source (https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/2016-fales.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/2016-fales.pdf): The bulk of the sample data came from an NBC News online poll. Online polls are subject to known biases (https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2020/02/18/assessing-the-risks-to-online-polls-from-bogus-respondents/ https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2020/02/18/assessing-the...). The second study (with a smaller but believed to be more representative sample) asked slightly different questions, and concluded that there was some statistical significance on "Makes at least as much money as I do" and "Has a successful career," which don't by themselves support the hypothesis that "women by and large prefer men to have a higher career title than themselves" (though I can agree that it waggles its eyebrows and points in that direction; perhaps suggesting follow-up studies).
        iammisc 5y ago
        > I can agree that it waggles its eyebrows Most people across the world wouldn't raise their eyebrows, since such claims are pretty much universal throughout most civilizations.
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        I'd also be very careful throwing around a word as heavy as "most" when talking about something as broad and far-ranging as the collective experience of human civilizations. The [citation needed] for that is the stuff of multiple lifetimes of research.

I put it in scare quotes for a reason because that's the phrasing people use when talking about but saying "we know many of the factors that contribute to the wage gap and when you control for them it mostly disappears" misses the point. One of the factors you control for is job title. When you only compare people with the same title the wage gap shrinks a bit. For some reason people interpret this as "Great! Not a problem. Moving on." when it completely ignores that as a group women holding lower paying job titles is itself indicative of a problem -- career paths that are dominated by women are seen as less valuable and girls are socially pressured away from more lucrative careers (you know like software engineering where every woman in our field including myself can tell you stories of being the only girl in her class) by parents, academic advisors, the school and workplace culture the fields cultivate and pushed into "softer", "more nurturing", "more creative" career paths compared to boys. Which it itself a problem for boys because boys who want to go into things like art, music, design, writing, fashion, social work, are mercilessly pressured away from it where girls are more likely to be encouraged. The patriarchy hurts everyone folks.

iammisc 5y ago
Not every person wants to continually climb the ladder. In general men are more likely to value social status because a man with a high career title is more attractive to women, whereas a woman's title does not increase her ability to find a husband. In fact, women by and large prefer men to have a higher career title than themselves. Is it any surprise men want to climb the ladder more.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Do you have a citation for these assertions?
  - iammisc 5y ago
    https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/men-want-beauty-women-want-money-what-people-want-in-a-sexual-partner-20151001-gjyyot.html https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/men-... Just look at the charts. Honestly, failure to understand this simple aspect of human nature is the reason for a lot of social ill, ranging from 'incels' to the disastrous egalitarian social policies.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      I'd be careful drawing broad conclusions from that study given the data source (https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/2016-fales.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/2016-fales.pdf): The bulk of the sample data came from an NBC News online poll. Online polls are subject to known biases (https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2020/02/18/assessing-the-risks-to-online-polls-from-bogus-respondents/ https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2020/02/18/assessing-the...). The second study (with a smaller but believed to be more representative sample) asked slightly different questions, and concluded that there was some statistical significance on "Makes at least as much money as I do" and "Has a successful career," which don't by themselves support the hypothesis that "women by and large prefer men to have a higher career title than themselves" (though I can agree that it waggles its eyebrows and points in that direction; perhaps suggesting follow-up studies).
      - iammisc 5y ago
        > I can agree that it waggles its eyebrows Most people across the world wouldn't raise their eyebrows, since such claims are pretty much universal throughout most civilizations.
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        I'd also be very careful throwing around a word as heavy as "most" when talking about something as broad and far-ranging as the collective experience of human civilizations. The [citation needed] for that is the stuff of multiple lifetimes of research.