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? — Michael

No. There is no gap. There is simply different amount of many being paid for different work that brings different value. Is it so hard to get out of: so every your statement leads to the fact that there is a gender pay gap? I've heard that one before. If we had two women working as managers and two men working as managers in the same company. Two men earn an x amount of money more than the two women because they deliver different value and work on different projects. How is that a gap?

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. — fdrake

I don't take the report seriously, so.. Will the report still be held with the same respect in 20 years? I doubt it. If all the nonsense with the "gap" vanishes, these reports will become just as worthless. So, no, I'm not going to be impressed by the amount of quantitative data anyone throws at me. Just because there is difference in numbers doesn't mean it's a gap :-} That's what I am addressing.

As a university student, it is the case that someone's constantly trying to convince me that there is an ongoing issue with discrimination against any and all minorities. — Coldlight

Coldlight, as a university student you are in a milieu of maximum exposure to the various ideological debates going on in society. Once you leave university and get a job in business, read the newspaper (or website) of your choice, associate mostly with people like yourself, you will hear less about all of this discrimination and pay equity stuff.

Pay rates have not been equalized across the board in the U.S. but it is far better than it was 50 years ago, before inequality began to be challenged. Pay in public employment covered by civil service rules achieves better equality because pay rates are public. In private employment they are not public, so there is greater inequality, even if it is less than it used to be.

Over the last 50 years the reason for women being in the workforce has changed as well. In the post WWII boom it was possible for a head-of-household to work one job and support his or her family--at least if he or she was working full time in a reasonably well paid job. Once the boom ended, it became necessary for both partners to work to maintain a given lifestyle (whatever that was). But women entered the workforce later than men, and this is one piece o the inequality picture.

The boom ended in the 1970s, and with it came inflation, slower wage growth, or for many people, no wage growth. Some areas of employment (managerial, technical, highly skilled labor, etc.) did very well, and continue to do very well.

It's quite possible (don't have a data set to reference) that women who were entering the labor force out of necessity after the 1970s missed the gravy boat of the post-war boom. It was difficult, if not impossible for them to catch up, just because they hadn't been in the work force earlier.

All that is water over the dam at this point, but the problem of inequality still exist, even if they aren't as extreme as they were in the past.

Just because there is difference in numbers doesn't mean it's a gap :-} — Coldlight

What, exactly, does it mean for there to be a "gap", then? You seem to just be defining the term "gender pay gap" in such a way that your claim is a truism; each person is paid exactly what the company is willing to pay them (minimum wage laws notwithstanding).

That's not what these studies mean by the term at all. There's the unadjusted pay gap that is defined (at least by the EU), as the relative difference in the average gross hourly earnings of women and men within the economy as a whole, and the adjusted pay gap which takes into account differences in hours worked, occupations chosen, education and job experience.

Coldlight, as a university student you are in a milieu of maximum exposure to the various ideological debates going on in society. Once you leave university and get a job in business, read the newspaper (or website) of your choice, associate mostly with people like yourself, you will hear less about all of this discrimination and pay equity stuff. — Bitter Crank

Agree. It is just the current climate that I am in, and there is undeniably a reason why that climate is the way it is.

Over the last 50 years the reason for women being in the workforce has changed as well. — Bitter Crank

This is closely tied to it, but my comment would be off topic. All I'm going to say for now is that roles have changed, and it is now okay for women to be as ambitious as men when it comes to careers, work, business etc.

All that is water over the dam at this point, but the problem of inequality still exist, even if they aren't as extreme as they were in the past. — Bitter Crank

Why is inequality a problem? Was equality in the USSR any better, for example?

What, exactly, does it mean for there to be a "gap", then? — Michael

A gap would exist if:

I work in a factory making an x amount of components.
You make the same amount of components in the same time.
We get paid differently.

That's is completely inapplicable to managerial, and other business roles. And as I said before, no one gives much of a thing for factory workers anyway. They only care about how to complain their way into earning more in their offices :P.

There are millions of pay gaps but only one counts.

All manufactured political distraction.

It exists, but it isn't due to evil, patriarchal, sexist males, as the common media and feminist narrative asserts.

d as I said before, no one gives much of a thing for factory workers anyway. — Coldlight

Or the slave labor in Africa, Latin America or Asia.

I doubt it. If all the nonsense with the "gap" vanishes, these reports will become just as worthless. So, no, I'm not going to be impressed by the amount of quantitative data anyone throws at me. Just because there is difference in numbers doesn't mean it's a gap :-} That's what I am addressing.

The demographic data it's based on will still be the same in 20 years. IE, it will still be true of 2017. Studies have been done either looking back into the past - still a gender pay gap. Studies done at those times also find gender pay gaps. I really have no idea what you're talking about.

A gap would exist if:

I work in a factory making an x amount of components.
You make the same amount of components in the same time.
We get paid differently.

Is exactly what happens - the pay gap remains when you control for work hours, tenure/experience and their interaction.

There are millions of pay gaps but only one counts. — Rich

They count to the people who are being paid less than their peers.

Why is inequality a problem? Was equality in the USSR any better, for example? — Coldlight

I have not idea what conditions in the USSR were with respect to pay rates, though soviet women were far more commonly employed in professional and technical fields than in the United States, at least.

One reason that pay inequality is a problem is that people don't like getting the short end of the stick, whether they are male, female, black, white, or what have you. Another reason it is a problem is that western societies SAY that everyone should be treated equally, and unequal pay for equal work flies in the face of that ideal. Pay inequality adds to the amount of social friction (which is the reason you are hearing so much about this).

IF women are as productive as men in a given job, everything else being equal (like time on the job) then they should be rewarded in the same way that men are.

IF women are as productive as men in a given job, everything else being equal (like time on the job) then they should be rewarded in the same way that men are. — Bitter Crank

But they aren't.

Starting from the obvious fact that people behave differently with men or women. Besides, it's unlikely that in any work organization someone does exactly the same work, so those in denial can allways talk about different career paths even if it's the same job. Things like job performance, getting promoted at work aren't as simply things people depict them to be.

Last year there was a telling example when two co-workers, man and woman, swapped their emails for two weeks. Now their job was basically interact by mail, so the swap was possible. The women absolutely loved it, the man hated it.

All those kind of little things do add up.

Gender pay gap is both real and exaggerated for political use. It's a complex phenomenon that surely includes some degree of actual discrimination. Discrimination is the part that should be addressed - not the statistically correlated symptom.

Personally, I think the gender freedom gap should be a bigger concern. 93% of inmates are men. If we're going to target equality of outcome, we should address that first.

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. — Coldlight

Forgive me for saying so, but that's pretty arrogant and spoken with authority that you haven't earned yourself, especially if you do not share knowledge about, or the particulars of, others' experience. You also make some broad projections on whether it can or can't still happen to women even if they do "compete and try to improve their situation".

When I state it exists as a "reality for them", I think you misunderstand the context and equivocate the conclusions. It is a not a "relativism" of what is true for one may not be true for another. When I state it is a "reality" for me - it is not because I just think that is true because I heard it somewhere or someone told me or I read it in a textbook. It is a "reality" because of actually occuring events and dollar amounts, in my directly lived experience, within an existing business, and with actual living people.

So yes, for those who were paid less (at the time of my experience with the situation anyway), it is "true for them", because it actually happened to them, and was witnessed by me. That, by the way made it true for them as well as for me - because it actually happens, even though it may not be "true for you", because you just think they must have been lazy, or not worth as much to the business, or whatever.

There is a gender pay gap as is clear from empirical data and statistics.
The real discussion is how much of that pay gap is due to discrimination by employers.
I think the answer is not as much as just posting the statistics sometimes implies.
Women doctors for instance on average make less than their male colleagues in the same specialty.
This is not because insurers pay women doctors less than men on a fee for service schedule.
It is because in general women see fewer patients, work fewer hours and do fewer procedures.
They spend more time with their patients and try to achieve better balance between family, children relationships and their professional life.
In many ways this makes them both better doctors and better people but the overall result is less pay.
I think one would find similar factors to account for much of the pay difference in many fields.

I'm curious as to what moral code you're using where "a guy who is aggressive, and committed to step on someone's neck to achieve the sales target for you" is seen as honourable competitive behaviour, but appealing to the power of your government to equalise pay is somehow 'cheating'. What rulebook are you using exactly?

Yes, in many regards it is probably a myth. For example, for web development jobs, in my experience 9/10 applicants are male. Chances are, of course, that you'll hire a male. It's not really my concern though, this is a competitive world. If you're a woman nobody will discriminate against you just because you're a woman (that would be irrational), but they might discriminate against you if you don't maximise their productivity. I would find it absurd if we had a woman who was, say, 50% more productive than her male colleagues not being paid more (unless of course she did not demand to be paid more, threaten to leave otherwise, etc.). One naturally tries to pay people as little as possible, it's their fault for accepting. In fact, I'd say that, for example, women are really wanted in jobs like web development where there aren't many women (they would even be privileged in such occupations), but you just don't find them. Women seem not to want to do those jobs. And this isn't just me being a nut job, contrary to what people like SLX think:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorikozlowski/2012/03/22/women-in-tech-female-developers-by-the-numbers/

And even if it's not a myth, it's not something that we should actively seek to eliminate (I don't see why women should, on average, have equal pay with men - women don't do the same jobs, on average, as men, and even if they did, it's again a question of value added). By all means this equality shouldn't be centrally planned, if it arises naturally, no problem.

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. — Coldlight

It's not that they won't pay them, it's simply that they have a lot of learning to do, and they're not willing to pay people to learn. Most students at that age go in a company and they don't even know what's what - you need someone to babysit them, they are expensive, they don't really know how things go, etc. etc. It's more of a hassle than anything else - that's why small businesses, for the most part, don't accept students.

Things like job performance, getting promoted at work aren't as simply things people depict them to be. — ssu

A lot of it is politics it seems to me. Which is why I dislike working in that kind of environment.

I have not idea what conditions in the USSR were with respect to pay rates, though soviet women were far more commonly employed in professional and technical fields than in the United States, at least. — Bitter Crank

I can confirm that this was definitely true - though I'm not sure how true it is nowadays.

If you're a woman nobody will discriminate against you just because you're a woman (that would be irrational) — Agustino

What world are you living in! Since when does anyone behave entirely rationally, have you ever even picked up a psychology textbook?

What world are you living in! Since when does anyone behave entirely rationally, have you ever even picked up a psychology textbook? — Pseudonym

People who don't have skin in the game don't behave rationally, that's true. So middle-level managers who have no stake in the company, etc. don't (always) behave rationally.

But the entrepreneurial types do behave rationally, and that's almost a given (it's simply what it takes to succeed).

93% of inmates are men. If we're going to target equality of outcome, we should address that first. — Roke

What percentage of crimes (punishable by jail) are committed by men?

Here's an article by Forbes outlining the main biases in business leaders - https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/09/13/the-impact-of-unconscious-bias-on-leadership-decision-making/#bbdcc525b3f4

The economist Sanjit Dahmi "It is likely that the top levels of management in firms (henceforth, CEOs) exhibit several behavioural biases."

Greg Filbeck - "Evidence indicates that CEOs tend to be optimistic, overconfident, risk averse, and self-interested. Optimistic and overconfident CEOs overestimate future earnings growth and underestimate the earnings' risk, thereby perceiving a larger cost for issuing equity than debt."

Kiseo Chung - "We find that CEOs are significantly more likely to purchase targets near their birth place, consistent with either informational advantages or familiarity bias."

But don't let me interrupt your neat little world view with actual data from experts in the field.

What percentage of crimes (punishable by jail) are committed by men?

Whatever the percentage, surely it's due to systematized social constructions and not that men are inherently more criminal than women, right?

My point is only that engineering equality of outcome is a misguided, neverending pursuit. But IF we get to a point where we're taking it seriously, being imprisoned is a much bigger deal than making a bit less money.

"Evidence indicates that CEOs tend to be optimistic, overconfident, risk averse, and self-interested. Optimistic and overconfident CEOs overestimate future earnings growth and underestimate the earnings' risk, thereby perceiving a larger cost for issuing equity than debt." — Pseudonym

Yeah of course, because the better the performance is on paper, the more they get paid. So if they can make the performance seem better, and if they can make the company seem like it is going in a great direction (even if it isn't), they stand to profit from it. It's not like they overestimate future earnings because they're idiots - no, they do it on purpose.

"We find that CEOs are significantly more likely to purchase targets near their birth place, consistent with either informational advantages or familiarity bias." — Pseudonym

That's not a bias, that's normal. I tend to work with what I know too, everyone does that. You have better performance that way.

I believe the difference is that people choose to commit crimes; they don't (usually) choose to be paid less than someone with a comparable job.

Woosh.

As I said, if you're just going to cherry pick the bits that suit your world view and ignore the rest, I will leave you to it.

As I said, if you're just going to cherry pick the bits that suit your world view and ignore the rest, I will leave you to it. — Pseudonym

Thank you.

Whatever the percentage, surely it's due to systematized social constructions and not that men are inherently more criminal than women, right? — Roke

>:O