No, it isn't a myth. See the Office for National Statistics.

Any reason I should really believe it?

Ah yes, the use of numbers, how nefarious. Next they'll be doing studies and collecting evidence. The nerve.

Just to support the preset argument? Nefarious, indeed.

So I see you're not really asking a question. Perhaps you should have titled your thread 'I made up my mind that the gender pay gap is a myth, and would like people to agree with me. And if you disagree, why should I believe you? (even if you cite official government statistics?)'.

It comes from a reputable source?

You might as well ask why we should believe anything we read in the news or from the government, so I wonder why you're singling out the gender pay gap specifically.

I'm singling it out in this case because it is connected to the whole movement of victims of so-called discrimination, and current climate that can be observed at universities, in the news, at the workplace etc. You can never say anything wrong about women because they were apparently discriminated against in history, and well, there's this pay gap thing! It's easy to use something like this for purposes of propaganda, so why not question every source on it?

Otherwise, I do agree that, apart from trivial nonsense, what is in the news should not be believed.

You can never say anything wrong about women because they were apparently discriminated against in history, and well, there's this pay gap thing! It's easy to use something like this for purposes of propaganda, so why not question every source on it? — Coldlight

Then I'm not exactly sure what it is you expect. You can either believe it or you can carry out your own studies. Dismissing it out-of-hand is certainly unreasonable, unless you have reasons to believe that you're being lied to.

My working hypothesis is that you've come to this from Jordan Peterson or a related video making an argument that the gender pay gap doesn't exist when including other variables.

To say that it doesn't exist is more than a bit of an exaggeration. It absolutely does, robustly, but to varying degrees in different countries. Even a very equal one like Norway - men make 27 pence extra per pound of woman earnings. The pay gap also exists when you break it down by occupation - though the difference between male and female wages decreases when women and men are employed in equal proportion in a given job (or occupational category). This is to say that controlling for occupation still evinces a pay gap.

If, however, you take the approach where median male earnings and female earnings on a yearly basis are linearly regressed upon a bunch of societal indicators - like occupation, work hours, age, time in current job - you'll probably see that occupation explains the most variance out of any predictor. At least this is how it breaks down in the UK. Nowhere near 100% of the variance (think, the trend of differences between women and men) is explained through the sum total of all predictors. UK analysis puts this somewhere between 30 and 50% of the variance. Which is to say, and Peterson is very fond of this formulation (when applied in other contexts) - at least 50% of the difference between men and women isn't explained by any socioeconomic factor other than gender!

Edit: The first paragraph is absolutely the right analysis for discerning whether there are pay gaps within occupation. It also applies to age and job experience with the same conclusion, go figure.

So, here is a factsheet, and I'll slip in an outright howler that Peterson's army of beta-male epigones seem to forget.
(1) Men tend to make more than women.
(2) Men tend to be in higher paying jobs than women.
(3) Men still make more than women when controlling for occupation (or other socio-economic factors).
(4) There is no personality test approaching common place enough to provide a society wide census of personality traits and earnings. Thus variation due to them cannot currently be modelled precisely in the population at large.

If you want me to provide some references for the UK I can.

Nowhere near 100% of the variance (think, the trend of differences between women and men) is explained through the sum total of all predictors. UK analysis puts this somewhere between 30 and 50% of the variance. Which is to say, and Peterson is very fond of this formulation (when applied in other contexts) - at least 50% of the difference between men and women isn't explained by any socioeconomic factor other than gender! — fdrake

According to the study I linked to above, "the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition results show that 36.1% of the difference in men’s and women’s log hourly pay could be explained by differences in characteristics between men and women included in the model." So unless I'm misunderstanding, that's 63.9% unexplained.

Aye. I've seen a few where it's over 50% when I've looked into it, but wanted to be conservative with the maximum unexplained amount.

My working hypothesis is that you've come to this from Jordan Peterson or a related video making an argument that the gender pay gap doesn't exist when including other variables. — fdrake

No, don't know who that guy is. I do agree, however, that if other variables are included, then there is no gap. The point being that if someone says that women get paid less for doing the same job, it is far from truth for the simple fact that it is close to impossible to do the identical job when it comes to management, marketing, business etc.

And let's be honest for a minute, all that most activists in this area care about is how much they make if they work in an office. I don't believe that anyone truly cares about wages of factory workers. The biggest disputes are in the areas of office hierarchies and salaries in there. To that, a simple answer, it is a competitive environment, so learn to compete. What the current climate looks like is more: you don't know how to compete, so complain and someone will get on it for you. Disgusting. Move into some non-competitive areas if you don't want to have a hassle about money and office politics.

No, don't know who that guy is. I do agree, however, that if other variables are included, then there is no gap. The point being that if someone says that women get paid less for doing the same job, it is far from truth for the simple fact that it is close to impossible to do the identical job when it comes to management, marketing, business etc.

There are two methods in analysis discussed in it. Both include other factors, both still conclude a pay gap. I'm not sure how you obtained this interpretation of what I wrote, but I'll restate it:

There are still unaccounted for differences between gender pay when including relevant social economic indicators.
When directly comparing men in occupation X with women in occupation X, men tend to make more money.*

*this goes for other socioeconomic factors too, age category X, experience category X...

I can tell you it does from personal experience, as well as that of others in my immediate circles, that the pay gap exists. You can call it anecdotal...but it definitely exists.

Does it get smaller as time goes on? Possibly. Could be getting smaller annually as more and more women are owning businesses, running businesses, etc. It could (and does seem) to exist in pockets, especially among smaller, non-publicly traded businesses.

the average gap in mean hourly pay across the organisations was 11%." I honestly have very little idea as to what this is supposed to mean practically — Coldlight

You don't know what that means? Jack up your rent or mortgage by 11% just because.

So, my question is, does a gender pay gap exist? — Coldlight

Yes. Adults that are actually in the workforces can tell you that as a granular detail in the nitty gritty of the landscape, even though it may or may not be lost in varying economist big data visualizations and interpretations from orbital points of view.

If not, who benefits from use of such propaganda? — Coldlight

Since, for most people it does seem to exist as reality, let's look at the idea that it is propaganda for folks who claim that it isn't. Who would, and why would, benefit occur in the claim that it does not exist?

When directly comparing men in occupation X with women in occupation X, men tend to make more money. — fdrake

Occupation does not mean that their work brings the same value to the company, which, ultimately is what is the most important for each company.

Completely inconsistent standards of evidence. If you get to speculate like this without the data, so do those feminazi libtards.

Edit: also, I already said, in cases where men and women have equal experience - men still tend to be payed more.

Completely inconsistent standards of evidence. If you get to speculate like this without the data, so do those feminazi libtards. — fdrake

Are you trying to say that it doesn't matter what value a person brings to the company? Does just the occupation title matter?

Since, for most people it does seem to exist as reality, let's look at the idea that it is propaganda for folks who claim that it isn't. Who would, and why would, benefit occur in the claim that it does not exist? — Uneducated Pleb

Oh, well. It exists for them as a reality so that they have something to complain about. It's easier than competing and trying to improve one's situation, no doubt.

If you want to know who would benefit from no-pay-gap propaganda, then it is quite clear that business who would get away with paying less money. Then again, businesses always find ways to pay less money to their employees, so that's not news, and has been around regardless of whether pay gap exists or not. Take as an example the fact that if a student wants to get some practice in a specific field before getting their degree, chances are, they will have to work a couple of months for free as no one will pay them for their work, and employers know they need to get experience. That's just business.

Occupation does not mean that their work brings the same value to the company, which, ultimately is what is the most important for each company. — Coldlight

Are you trying to say that it doesn't matter what value a person brings to the company? Does just the occupation title matter? — Coldlight

If this explains the gender pay gap then why is it that men bring more "value" than women?

Regardless, it's a gender pay gap all the same.

No, I'm saying that when looked at from a societal level with the most comprehensive data available the wage gap is robust to controlling for occupation, experience, age and other socioeconomic factors. This includes experience/tenure, which is as close as you're going to get to an operationalisation of value added to a company by a worker. The article linked by Michael even has an effect in its equation (ctrl+f for 'interaction term') to account for this in the aggregate analysis (the second one I discussed in my first response to you).*

Do you want to base your opinions on analyses done on the best data with fairly robust research methodologies? Or do you want to engage in the knee-jerk reactionary discourse you're so rightly criticising?

*to account for this = to measure something like 'value added'

There is only one type of pay gap, and that is between the top 1% which owns the majority of the world's wealth and the other 99% that are witnessing a slow erosion in their standard of living and fighting work the other ones in the 99% for a share of their overall decreasing wealth. I guess Bitcoins will leave the day.

Never changes, just read history.

There is only one type of pay gap, and that is between the top 1% which owns the majority of the world's wealth and the other 99% that are witnessing a slow erosion in their standard of living and fighting work the other ones in the 99% for a share of their overall decreasing wealth. — Rich

False. There's also a gender pay gap.

Keep following the misdirection, I'm sure it will get better for the top 1%.

What?

Furthermore, it's a truism that the top 1% wealthiest people have more money than the rest. That's just basic maths. So I don't really understand what you're trying to say.

Just follow the Pied Piper. You want to talk about pay gaps? Let's talk about the slave black labor in prisons created by the Clintons and their allies or maybe the slave Latino population created by the uber-class. Maybe the slave labor in Asia?

There is only one pay-gap.

If this explains the gender pay gap then why is it that men bring more value than women? — Michael

There are many reasons why men bring more value to the company. Oddly enough, these will not be included in your data because no one wants to talk about them, and if they do, they get fired.

Businesses treat their employees as investments. Who would you invest more in? In a guy who is aggressive, and committed to step on someone's neck to achieve the sales target for you? Or a woman who is just doing what's in her job description. Of course, the situation can be reverse, woman can be highly ambitious, and a man can be a lousy worker. Let's, however, not pretend that that is the case for the overall majority of employees out there. Oh, and women who did manage to be competitive, and entrepreneurial, also managed to make more money, so they probably don't have to complain about inequality and pay gap :P.

So now you're accepting that there is a gender pay gap? You just think it justified because men are more valuable to a company than women?

Do you want to base your opinions on analyses done on the best data with fairly robust research methodologies? Or do you want to engage in the knee-jerk reactionary discourse you're so rightly criticising? — fdrake

Does it really take a tremendous genius to understand that companies treat their employees as investments, and have every right to do so? Does it really take so much to get that there are different values delivered to the company by each employee?

If anything else, this so-called gap is a pure nonsense because it states the obvious - ALL employees may earn differently based on the value their bring. Of course that value is assessed by the business, and of course it may appear unfair. Such is life. Rather than to complain about it, action needs to be taken to become more competitive and able in the current market. The gap is certainly not there because someone is a man or a woman. If you being a man/woman leads you to different decisions, approaches, and work in life is your own responsibility. It is not down to businesses to respect such approach.

Does it really take a tremendous genius to understand that companies treat their employees as investments, and have every right to do so? Does it really take so much to get that there are different values delivered to the company by each employee?

It apparently takes a tremendous amount of genius to read an accessibly written government report which addresses your concerns quantitatively and then makes the opposite conclusion from the one you're drawing.

There is only one pay-gap. — Rich

No, there's also a gender pay gap. There are lots of studies.