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No apparent controls for occupation or education, as is typical for comparing gender incomes. Young women are also having children later in life, and the dispa

No apparent controls for occupation or education, as is typical for comparing gender incomes. Young women are also having children later in life, and the disparity between women and men enrolling in college and completing degrees (more women than men) has been increasing.

oh_sigh 5y ago
The most commonly repeated "stat" about gender incomes(84 cents per dollar) also doesn't control for occupation or education.
OJFord 5y ago
> the disparity between women and men enrolling in college and completing degrees (more women than men) has been increasing. Including in higher paying first job degrees, professions, or however you want to make that adjustment? Not disagreeing, just curious. Many on HN probably studied CS or EE with a very male cohort, for example. Is that balanced by a programme(s) (with well-paid graduates) that skews heavily female? Maybe medicine (not as much as EE/CS though surely)?
- nobodyandproud 5y ago
  You act as if CS and engineering is a great profession. On the medical side, some numbers and research are in order. Nursing is dominated by women; 90% women, though the trend is slowly decreasing. Nursing is a physically demanding job. Pharmacy school grads are over 60% women and the trend is increasing. I had a harder time finding dentistry numbers but 60% of all practitioners under 44 are women. The trend is increasing. Medical school is 51% women and the trend is increasing. These are highly paid professions with far more stability and prestige than software engineering. Even nursing is on par with the average software engineer, but with more stability. With actual compensation for time worked, you’ll have to exceed L5 to get a meaningful jump ahead of registered nurses.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    I'm not claiming it's number one, just that it's one of 'the professions', degree leads to a job, it pays relatively well. A lot of humanities students are studying just to study (which is fine) without a clear job that it leads to, and many inevitably end up in unrelated roles that don't require their degree and don't compensate for it. I only special-cased EE & CS because that happens to be HN's skew, not because there's something more special about them than some other engineering or science.
- toyg 5y ago
  Most well-paid jobs now require a degree, no matter what that might be. I'd argue CS/EE are actually outliers in providing a career that will likely fall in the boundaries set by their programmes; many (most?) other people get degrees in something then find jobs in something else. For example, my brother graduated in sports science and is now a project manager.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> Young women are also having children later in life, and the disparity between women and men enrolling in college and completing degrees (more women than men) has been increasing. I think you’re actually re-explaining the outcome of the report, not pointing out a flaw in their methodology.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  I think there is a tendency to look at outcomes like this and say that one gender is preferred by the workplace to another - e.g. the usual result, where women are underpaid compared to men, is used to support the conclusion that women are discriminated against in the workforce. However, if you don't consider potentially confounding factors then these conclusions are probably unsupported.
farmerstan 5y ago
If the same study previously showed that women were paid less than men, but now show they get paid more, does that not show that things have changed? Are you more inclined to believe it when it showed women earned less and more inclined to not believe when it shows they earned more?
- zdragnar 5y ago
  It shows they earn more by getting more degrees than men, thus fewer are taking lower paying jobs that women typically dominate outside of degreed work. What it doesn't show is that business are treating women better. Maybe they are, maybe they havent treated them as badly as the wage gap politicians want you to think they still are, and maybe things like paternal leave are starting to make a difference. There's nothing actionable, no way to draw any meaningful conclusion, because it is observing the world through a fog of uncontrolled variables.
kemayo 5y ago
It does make sense to not control for that, mind you, since you're trying to compare a broad set of societal factors. You can imagine a society in which people with the same occupation+education receive exactly equal pay, and yet one gender (or race, or whatever else) is widely discouraged from entering certain lucrative occupations or receiving certain levels of education in certain fields, for instance. For what it's worth, my understanding is that the gender pay gap still exists even if you do control for these things, albeit it becomes smaller.
- hackernewds 5y ago
  Here is some nuanced data. It has closed quite a bit https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/the-gender-pay-gap.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/the-gende...
- JaceLightning 5y ago
  > one gender (or race, or whatever else) is widely discouraged from entering certain lucrative occupations or receiving certain levels of education in certain fields, for instance. Has that ever been true? I have heard people say "Men push women out of engineering" but in my experience it's been the opposite--it's been men trying to get women interested in engineering. There are uncountably many WISE, SWE, girls who code, etc. groups that try to encourage women to go into STEM. Women get STEM scholarships that are only available to them.
  - tonguez 5y ago
    "I have heard people say "Men push women out of engineering" but in my experience it's been the opposite--it's been men trying to get women interested in engineering." Of course it's not true. If you majored in CS at a decent university probably 1 or 2 out of 100 students were girls, and in the "labs" the TAs spend the ENTIRE TIME talking to the girls/helping the girls. "Men push women out of engineering" is just a performative statement that means nothing. You will find this in any field where men generally are better at something, like chess. There are plenty of people who whine that "women are pushed out" of chess and so on, and if you ask people to explain that, they can't. It's just pathetic and of course predictable that the same people who can't understand the logical reasons why the demographics of certain groups are the what they are, happen to be bad at activities that require the ability to perform logical operations in their head, like chess, or engineering, etc. All they can do is whine about it emotionally which is the same reason why they can't do engineering or play chess.

oh_sigh 5y ago

The most commonly repeated "stat" about gender incomes(84 cents per dollar) also doesn't control for occupation or education.

OJFord 5y ago

> the disparity between women and men enrolling in college and completing degrees (more women than men) has been increasing. Including in higher paying first job degrees, professions, or however you want to make that adjustment? Not disagreeing, just curious. Many on HN probably studied CS or EE with a very male cohort, for example. Is that balanced by a programme(s) (with well-paid graduates) that skews heavily female? Maybe medicine (not as much as EE/CS though surely)?

nobodyandproud 5y ago
You act as if CS and engineering is a great profession. On the medical side, some numbers and research are in order. Nursing is dominated by women; 90% women, though the trend is slowly decreasing. Nursing is a physically demanding job. Pharmacy school grads are over 60% women and the trend is increasing. I had a harder time finding dentistry numbers but 60% of all practitioners under 44 are women. The trend is increasing. Medical school is 51% women and the trend is increasing. These are highly paid professions with far more stability and prestige than software engineering. Even nursing is on par with the average software engineer, but with more stability. With actual compensation for time worked, you’ll have to exceed L5 to get a meaningful jump ahead of registered nurses.
- OJFord 5y ago
  I'm not claiming it's number one, just that it's one of 'the professions', degree leads to a job, it pays relatively well. A lot of humanities students are studying just to study (which is fine) without a clear job that it leads to, and many inevitably end up in unrelated roles that don't require their degree and don't compensate for it. I only special-cased EE & CS because that happens to be HN's skew, not because there's something more special about them than some other engineering or science.
toyg 5y ago
Most well-paid jobs now require a degree, no matter what that might be. I'd argue CS/EE are actually outliers in providing a career that will likely fall in the boundaries set by their programmes; many (most?) other people get degrees in something then find jobs in something else. For example, my brother graduated in sports science and is now a project manager.

chrisseaton 5y ago

> Young women are also having children later in life, and the disparity between women and men enrolling in college and completing degrees (more women than men) has been increasing. I think you’re actually re-explaining the outcome of the report, not pointing out a flaw in their methodology.

ALittleLight 5y ago
I think there is a tendency to look at outcomes like this and say that one gender is preferred by the workplace to another - e.g. the usual result, where women are underpaid compared to men, is used to support the conclusion that women are discriminated against in the workforce. However, if you don't consider potentially confounding factors then these conclusions are probably unsupported.

farmerstan 5y ago

If the same study previously showed that women were paid less than men, but now show they get paid more, does that not show that things have changed? Are you more inclined to believe it when it showed women earned less and more inclined to not believe when it shows they earned more?

zdragnar 5y ago
It shows they earn more by getting more degrees than men, thus fewer are taking lower paying jobs that women typically dominate outside of degreed work. What it doesn't show is that business are treating women better. Maybe they are, maybe they havent treated them as badly as the wage gap politicians want you to think they still are, and maybe things like paternal leave are starting to make a difference. There's nothing actionable, no way to draw any meaningful conclusion, because it is observing the world through a fog of uncontrolled variables.

kemayo 5y ago

It does make sense to not control for that, mind you, since you're trying to compare a broad set of societal factors. You can imagine a society in which people with the same occupation+education receive exactly equal pay, and yet one gender (or race, or whatever else) is widely discouraged from entering certain lucrative occupations or receiving certain levels of education in certain fields, for instance. For what it's worth, my understanding is that the gender pay gap still exists even if you do control for these things, albeit it becomes smaller.

hackernewds 5y ago
Here is some nuanced data. It has closed quite a bit https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/the-gender-pay-gap.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/the-gende...
JaceLightning 5y ago
> one gender (or race, or whatever else) is widely discouraged from entering certain lucrative occupations or receiving certain levels of education in certain fields, for instance. Has that ever been true? I have heard people say "Men push women out of engineering" but in my experience it's been the opposite--it's been men trying to get women interested in engineering. There are uncountably many WISE, SWE, girls who code, etc. groups that try to encourage women to go into STEM. Women get STEM scholarships that are only available to them.
- tonguez 5y ago
  "I have heard people say "Men push women out of engineering" but in my experience it's been the opposite--it's been men trying to get women interested in engineering." Of course it's not true. If you majored in CS at a decent university probably 1 or 2 out of 100 students were girls, and in the "labs" the TAs spend the ENTIRE TIME talking to the girls/helping the girls. "Men push women out of engineering" is just a performative statement that means nothing. You will find this in any field where men generally are better at something, like chess. There are plenty of people who whine that "women are pushed out" of chess and so on, and if you ask people to explain that, they can't. It's just pathetic and of course predictable that the same people who can't understand the logical reasons why the demographics of certain groups are the what they are, happen to be bad at activities that require the ability to perform logical operations in their head, like chess, or engineering, etc. All they can do is whine about it emotionally which is the same reason why they can't do engineering or play chess.