Comment by dalke | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dalke | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

You are of course free to reject any data points you disagree with.

It is unfair, however, to give no guidelines of what you think might be acceptable.

For example, if "modern" means "occurred within the last six months", then we have to look towards anecdotes and accusations, as court cases and rigorous scientific research take far longer than that.

If "modern" means ten years, then it's easy to find court cases like http://www.tampabay.com/news/tampa-woman-wins-lawsuit-agains... where the wage discrimination happened in 2009, and http://www.startribune.com/norway-asked-to-pay-2-3-million-i... where it happened in 2008.

That said, if you only accept tried court cases as evidence then you've placed a laughably high barrier. Court case 1) have a high burden of proof, 2) are rare, 3) rarely go to completion and are often settled out of court, and 4) make take years to complete. Thus, almost by definition they will not be from discrimination which happened within the last year or two.

If those data points were on topic ("discrimination"), instead of off topic ("difference"), I wouldn't reject them.

Since you don't accept the EEOC as a valid source of information, you are likely to reject statements like http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/4-28-11a.cfm :

> Gender-based wage discrimination remains a problem today and a percentage of the wage discrepancy cannot be explained by non-discriminatory factors, said government and private experts ..

In http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-ga... , in an essay that argues that illegal wage discrimination is minor, I read:

> What the 2009 Labor Department study showed was that when the proper controls are in place, the unexplained (adjusted) wage gap is somewhere between 4.8 and 7 cents. ... The AAUW notes that part of the new 6.6-cent wage-gap may be owed to women's supposedly inferior negotiating skills -- not unscrupulous employers. Furthermore, the AAUW's 6.6 cents includes some large legitimate wage differences masked by over-broad occupational categories. ... Could the gender wage gap turn out to be zero? Probably not. The AAUW correctly notes that there is still evidence of residual bias against women in the workplace. However, with the gap approaching a few cents, there is not a lot of room for discrimination.

If it's 2 cents, out of 23 cents, then that's 9%. While minor compared to indirect societal factors, I don't think it's small enough to dismiss outright.

Neither you nor I can explain the unexplained component. It's true that it may have nothing at all to do with discrimination on the basis of sex. However, that is very doubtful as we see successful lawsuits where there is wage discrimination based on sex and we see settlements for that accusation, so we know there it's still ongoing. And we know that mediated settlements are rare, so they are the tip of the iceberg.

Therefore, I see no reason to reject illegal wage discrimination as one of the factors that goes into the wage gap.

"I see no reason to reject ... as one of the factors"

Such agnostic logic is unassailable. You don't know; the powers that be don't know; the courts & lawsuits don't know. You're right not to reject the possibility.

However, you'd be wrong the assert the certainty "... disparity is also caused by discrimination" with such flimsy evidence.

I am making a different argument.

We know for an incontrovertible fact that a few decades back women faced wage discrimination, even when doing the same job, with the same experience.

We know this from explicit records, with Lilly Ledbetter being one example. There is a reason why the various civil rights laws were enacted.

Therefore, to argue that wage discrimination does not now exist, the proof must be more rigorous than "we can't explain the remaining gap, but it can't be wage discrimination."

I have pointed to recent (within the last 10 years) court cases where the court determined that there was wage discrimination on the basis of sex. Thus, we know for certain that some wage discrimination exists.

If you want to have an argument that it's small - sure, I'll accept that. If you want to say it's hard to measure its magnitude - sure, I'll accept that too. But there's zero justification to state that it does not exist, when we have evidence that it does exist.

I can be wrong. I could have missed some recent study which resolves this more clearly. There may be a report which shows that the court cases I came across happen to be the only ones that have happened i the last 10 years. Such things would be evidence that my position is weak or untenable.

I have not seen such counter-evidence, hence I see no reason to reject my conclusion that wage discrimination on the basis of sex remains an admittedly minor contribution to the wage gap.

"We know this from explicit records, with Lilly Ledbetter being one example."

I'm not tremendously familiar with this case, but according to the gods of wikipedia, the evidence for discrimination consisted of nothing but evidence of difference.

Same old same old.

"It is unfair, however, to give no guidelines of what you think might be acceptable."

If you do not accept a jury's decision that there was pay discrimination on the basis of sex, then you have ridiculously high bar that precludes effectively all evidence.

The same court decision that was thrown out by the SCOTUS? The same jury that used the 51% "more likely than not" standard to assume that the difference in pay was due to discrimination, there being no actual clear evidence?

That one?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com