3 ms·

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

by 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.
    - craigie 5y ago
      In most places maternity leave is a lot longer than paternity leave so that's society influence.
- simonh 5y ago
  Yes that's fair enough, it's a bigger issue than just a pay gap. That's a symptom.
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.

by simonh 5y ago

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.
  - craigie 5y ago
    In most places maternity leave is a lot longer than paternity leave so that's society influence.
simonh 5y ago
Yes that's fair enough, it's a bigger issue than just a pay gap. That's a symptom.

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.