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Any external references to back up your 'pay gap shown time[0] and time again[1] to be fiction' claim? FYI I had to read your comment a few times to try to pic

Any external references to back up your 'pay gap shown time[0] and time again[1] to be fiction' claim? FYI I had to read your comment a few times to try to pick out what you're trying to say without getting distracted by the gratuitous vitriol. It might make you feel better but it's not an effective means of actual communication. [0]: ? [1]: ?

simonh 5y ago
It's not fiction, that's hyperbole, but there are factors other than gender by itself that accounts for a lot of the remaining disparity between men and women's pay. Taking a career break to have children, historical 'steering' of women away from STEM subjects in education, some apparent natural tendency for many women to avoid such subjects even when they have a free choice, a tendency for women to not challenge their compensation or push for raises compared to men, women's tendency to avoid overtime compared to men which can affect their advancement prospects. There are a lot of factors that come down to personal choice, and women often make different choices from men. Nevertheless even controlling for all this there is a remaining gap of a few percent at least, which varies greatly depending on the industrial sector and also by region. Since this thread is about the EU, it's reverent to point out that the gap is particularly high in some EU countries. https://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-the-gender-pay-gap-and-is-it-real/ https://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-the-gender-pay-gap-a...
- gjulianm 5y ago
  > Taking a career break to have children, historical 'steering' of women away from STEM subjects in education, some apparent natural tendency for many women to avoid such subjects even when they have a free choice, a tendency for women to not challenge their compensation or push for raises compared to men, women's tendency to avoid overtime compared to men which can affect their advancement prospects. I mean, all of those are heavily related to gender. And while you can frame them as "personal choice", that's only useful when analyzing an individual. When a significant part of the women make these choices that hurt their salaries and work prospects, one maybe should think about how society is influencing those choices, and turns out the vector is gender.
  - tomp 5y ago
    Gender is a made-up concept with no sensible definition. The defining quality is sex. Having children is simply more burdensome and time-consuming for women, no way around it (except artificial wombs in the distant future). I've advocated "child-bonus" before (i.e. paying companies extra when their employees get pregnant and on maternity leave), but I doubt that idea will gain any popularity. When even in the most equal societies the sex-interest gap (which is upstream of career choice) not only persists, but increases, that is additional heavy evidence that it's influenced mainly by biology, not by society.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      I've always thought it's insane that many developed countries' governments fret about their birth rates, then do absolutely nothing to incentivize having children from an individual's career perspective. It's not unreasonable social calculus to just say "We the government are going to pay you your potential lost earnings, if you decide to have a child." In the US at least, existing policy is mostly targeted at family units (via tax credits), which doesn't really bear on an individual's opportunity cost and decision to have children or not.
      - darebak 5y ago
        AFAIK Hungary is trying something like that, I am not sure about the specifics but I think that for every child you have the government lowers your income tax and after your third child you don't pay any income tax. There are some other measures too, all of them were implemented relatively recently, let's say 2015 although I am not sure. As for the results, I guess it's still early to tell: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=HU&start=2000 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...
    - gjulianm 5y ago
      > Having children is simply more burdensome and time-consuming for women, no way around it Pregnancy is 9 months, the children live for many years. For that second part, men and women could take responsibilities in an equal way (save for breastfeeding, but pumps exists), but usually the burden tends to fall on the women and that hurts careers more than pregnancy.
- Levitz 5y ago
  The idea that the average income for men and women isn't the same is not fiction at all, it's completely real. It is also not the idea that is frequently paraded around when talking about a pay gap, since it can actually be argued against in sensible terms, for example, if women simply ask for raises less often than men, is that really unfair? What more often than not happens is that the idea of a pay gap is presented as if women were earning less solely because they are women and their employers simply decided to pay them less for that reason. That is fiction and a whole bunch of us are tired of it, exhausted even.
  - simonh 5y ago
    It depends on where you are talking about and what the jobs are. As I pointed out there are some countries and employment sectors in the EU that do have persistent pay gaps that can't be explained away by life choices, and so it still makes sense for the EU to work on this issue, no matter how tired you might be of haring about it.
  - paganel 5y ago
    > it's completely real. It's also completely real that many women in their 20s and 30s, biologically, tend to not be available for work for maternity reasons. As an employer you have to include that opportunity cost of in the equation. Also, a woman in her late 30s - early 40s with two kids probably has a 2 or 3 year-hiatus when it comes to work experience compared to her male-colleagues.
bloqs 5y ago
The pay gap exists. The cause of the pay gap is not due to oppression, but due to tempermental difference between different types of people, and the impact that has on salary negotiation. (Including, male-female temperamental differences). This is the point of contention.
- JanSt 5y ago
  Maybe pay shouldn't be based on the personal ability to negotiate, which is not a core competency for most jobs, but on a equal compensation for equal work then...
  - Levitz 5y ago
    While we are at it, the cost of a product should depend on its objective value, not what the market pays. My point being that sure, ideally it wouldn't be like that, but any implementation I can possibly think of is not viable at all. Jobs are fairly unique things.
    - gruez 5y ago
      > While we are at it, the cost of a product should depend on its objective value, not what the market pays. "What the market pays" is the objective value.
      - Gareth321 5y ago
        The job market is a market, and if the job market dictates that the wage is set in part by one's ability to sell themselves to potential employers, then the (job) market is currently setting objective value (wages). I'm not making a value judgement of your premise. Just pointing out that your argument works as well against you as it does for you.
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        From a pedantic economist perspective, yes. From a common sense perspective, if a £40 jacket was sold for £200 to someone, then it's still worth £40 even if this person overpaid for it.

simonh 5y ago

It's not fiction, that's hyperbole, but there are factors other than gender by itself that accounts for a lot of the remaining disparity between men and women's pay. Taking a career break to have children, historical 'steering' of women away from STEM subjects in education, some apparent natural tendency for many women to avoid such subjects even when they have a free choice, a tendency for women to not challenge their compensation or push for raises compared to men, women's tendency to avoid overtime compared to men which can affect their advancement prospects. There are a lot of factors that come down to personal choice, and women often make different choices from men. Nevertheless even controlling for all this there is a remaining gap of a few percent at least, which varies greatly depending on the industrial sector and also by region. Since this thread is about the EU, it's reverent to point out that the gap is particularly high in some EU countries. https://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-the-gender-pay-gap-and-is-it-real/ https://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-the-gender-pay-gap-a...

gjulianm 5y ago
> Taking a career break to have children, historical 'steering' of women away from STEM subjects in education, some apparent natural tendency for many women to avoid such subjects even when they have a free choice, a tendency for women to not challenge their compensation or push for raises compared to men, women's tendency to avoid overtime compared to men which can affect their advancement prospects. I mean, all of those are heavily related to gender. And while you can frame them as "personal choice", that's only useful when analyzing an individual. When a significant part of the women make these choices that hurt their salaries and work prospects, one maybe should think about how society is influencing those choices, and turns out the vector is gender.
- tomp 5y ago
  Gender is a made-up concept with no sensible definition. The defining quality is sex. Having children is simply more burdensome and time-consuming for women, no way around it (except artificial wombs in the distant future). I've advocated "child-bonus" before (i.e. paying companies extra when their employees get pregnant and on maternity leave), but I doubt that idea will gain any popularity. When even in the most equal societies the sex-interest gap (which is upstream of career choice) not only persists, but increases, that is additional heavy evidence that it's influenced mainly by biology, not by society.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    I've always thought it's insane that many developed countries' governments fret about their birth rates, then do absolutely nothing to incentivize having children from an individual's career perspective. It's not unreasonable social calculus to just say "We the government are going to pay you your potential lost earnings, if you decide to have a child." In the US at least, existing policy is mostly targeted at family units (via tax credits), which doesn't really bear on an individual's opportunity cost and decision to have children or not.
    - darebak 5y ago
      AFAIK Hungary is trying something like that, I am not sure about the specifics but I think that for every child you have the government lowers your income tax and after your third child you don't pay any income tax. There are some other measures too, all of them were implemented relatively recently, let's say 2015 although I am not sure. As for the results, I guess it's still early to tell: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=HU&start=2000 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...
  - gjulianm 5y ago
    > Having children is simply more burdensome and time-consuming for women, no way around it Pregnancy is 9 months, the children live for many years. For that second part, men and women could take responsibilities in an equal way (save for breastfeeding, but pumps exists), but usually the burden tends to fall on the women and that hurts careers more than pregnancy.
Levitz 5y ago
The idea that the average income for men and women isn't the same is not fiction at all, it's completely real. It is also not the idea that is frequently paraded around when talking about a pay gap, since it can actually be argued against in sensible terms, for example, if women simply ask for raises less often than men, is that really unfair? What more often than not happens is that the idea of a pay gap is presented as if women were earning less solely because they are women and their employers simply decided to pay them less for that reason. That is fiction and a whole bunch of us are tired of it, exhausted even.
- simonh 5y ago
  It depends on where you are talking about and what the jobs are. As I pointed out there are some countries and employment sectors in the EU that do have persistent pay gaps that can't be explained away by life choices, and so it still makes sense for the EU to work on this issue, no matter how tired you might be of haring about it.
- paganel 5y ago
  > it's completely real. It's also completely real that many women in their 20s and 30s, biologically, tend to not be available for work for maternity reasons. As an employer you have to include that opportunity cost of in the equation. Also, a woman in her late 30s - early 40s with two kids probably has a 2 or 3 year-hiatus when it comes to work experience compared to her male-colleagues.

bloqs 5y ago

The pay gap exists. The cause of the pay gap is not due to oppression, but due to tempermental difference between different types of people, and the impact that has on salary negotiation. (Including, male-female temperamental differences). This is the point of contention.

JanSt 5y ago
Maybe pay shouldn't be based on the personal ability to negotiate, which is not a core competency for most jobs, but on a equal compensation for equal work then...
- Levitz 5y ago
  While we are at it, the cost of a product should depend on its objective value, not what the market pays. My point being that sure, ideally it wouldn't be like that, but any implementation I can possibly think of is not viable at all. Jobs are fairly unique things.
  - gruez 5y ago
    > While we are at it, the cost of a product should depend on its objective value, not what the market pays. "What the market pays" is the objective value.
    - Gareth321 5y ago
      The job market is a market, and if the job market dictates that the wage is set in part by one's ability to sell themselves to potential employers, then the (job) market is currently setting objective value (wages). I'm not making a value judgement of your premise. Just pointing out that your argument works as well against you as it does for you.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      From a pedantic economist perspective, yes. From a common sense perspective, if a £40 jacket was sold for £200 to someone, then it's still worth £40 even if this person overpaid for it.