Equal Pay Is Not Just a Women’s Issue, It’s a Family and Economic Issue Too | Hacker News Reader

Equal Pay Is Not Just a Women’s Issue, It’s a Family and Economic Issue Too

womenwanttobeontop.com

17 pointswj17 comments

The gender based wage gap is a myth: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-ga...

Another article by the huffington post saying the opposite

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/no-the-gender-pay-gap-is...

FTA:

> But the argument that “life choices” made by women are the real reason behind the gap is, in itself, an absurd oversimplification. Sure, many women choose to stay home or cut back their hours after having children. But many others don’t opt out. They’re forced out because they cannot afford child care, or find a full-time job that affords them any kind of flexibility.

There is no reason to believe that lack of flexibility or not being able to afford day care wouldn't hit men in the same way, too.

The people who call it a myth show that the gap disappears as soon as you control for these variables. Actually, the gap disappears to a large degree by looking at actual hours worked instead of just the yearly salary of jobs with the same description.

There is strong reason to believe the lack of flexibility would hit women much stronger than men.

Census that shows 82.6% of custodial single parents are female in the United States. http://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/p60-237.pdf

Article summarizing studies that show that even in marriages that attempt to be egalitarian both spouses agree the female ends up taking on more of the household responsibilities. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/upshot/millennial-men-find...

Well, but then that simply is a choice, isn't it?

I would not expect to be paid in full if I work part-time - why should that be true if I would be a woman?

So--- we should both encourage flexibility in jobs. But we should also encourage a more equal split in custody. If 82.6% of custodial single parents are female, we're doing something wrong.

Besides the gap myth (or misconception, I would call it) that others have already pointed out, this article contains some other questionable statements.

> Numerous studies have shown that equal pay for women would significantly boost the American economy—in one year, the U.S. would have produced $447.6 billion more income

Surely this income not going to women is going to someone else -- male workers, presumably, or to shareholders. $450B wouldn't just come out of thin air, would it? The linked page doesn't explain how they came to this number. I'm assuming they just took the difference women earn on average times the number of working women.

I know there have been a couple of companies that are making the move to openly discuss employee pay. It's something that surely needs to happen. Twice in my short career I've run into very obvious pay discrimination revealed after an employee on the way out told me their salary. Once to me, once to a fellow female developer. Excited to see both voluntary moves toward this as well as legislation.

What was the nature of the discrimination? How bad was it?

Framing the problem as "benefits gap" as opposed to "pay gap" sounds like a good way forward I think. The article rightly points to the difference in terms of parental leave and other benefits, which are usually not brought up when talking about pay gap.

These studies have been debunked countless times. When all is equal (hours worked, degree, and experience), women get paid pretty much the same amount as men.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wage-gap-myth-that-wont-die-...

Another article by the wsj saying the opposite. http://www.wsj.com/articles/gender-pay-gap-widens-1445389259

I posted the article as an example, but there are many other studies on it coming to the same conclusion.

Was about to post that exact same link.

I'm sure many people were. I've come across many articles that contradict this article. Here are just a few. Mind you, the findings are mixed (but many articles agree that women under 30 are earning more if they aren't written by a feminist).

http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274... http://www.payscale.com/gender-lifetime-earnings-gap http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/12/pf/gender-pay-gap/index.html http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women-in-20s-ea...

I've talked a number of times about the feminising of education and how it disadvantages boys detrimentally. I even saw it in action at some open days at schools where presenters talked as if boys didn't exist. I'm not surprised that this war against boys is having a huge impact in the workforce and disenfranchising a generation of young men.. For what? Political Correctness.

I'm honestly tired of hearing this 20% wage gap figure with no evidence. I'm tired of domestic violence being a man thing (despite the US and Australia both reflecting a 20-25% incidents of mothers being the perpetrators). I was infuriated when my open visit to schools made it clear they openly bias education and especially sciences towards girls. WTF is wrong with today's society? Are people this prejudiced and proud of it?

Until people take a hard stand against feminism, propaganda pieces like this article (from a website educated to sexism) will drive education and law makers to actively discriminate based on gender. It's no accident one on my kids got asked to write an essay again on "can a girl do anything a boy can?" While he's never been asked the reverse.

It's also pretty apparent, when you look at female dominated industries, that discrimination based on gender is an accepted practice.

Even our divorce laws were 100% in women's favor until the 70s or 80s. Alimony was paid out for life.

I want true equality for everyone, but instead we have special interest groups that want to dominate and create lopsided laws on their favor.

Not that I expected greatness from a website called womenwanttobeontop.com but this article is just bad. Not in the sense that the issue isn't important, but that the authors points are flimsy which does more to harm her message more than help it.

> women still make 79 cents to a man’s dollar

If you're opening your article with this line you're already pandering to your base. Nobody who would read this article critically would take that line seriously. Especially since the cited link isn't a study or any kind of evidence, it's another uncited article which simply parrots her statement.

Taking aggregate values is useful in the sense that it signifies that something is probably wrong, but then she assumes that the aggregate data is meaningful on the individual level.

If men and women were paid exactly the same for the same work it's still possible to wind up with a wage gap in aggregate. That doesn't mean that there isn't a problem, but it would mean that the problem isn't wage discrimination.

> For women of color, this gap is even higher.

She linked the exact same useless 'article' for this statement that she did for the previous one. Worse, the linked article doesn't even mention the gap between different races.

The question that's actually interesting is if there's a wage gap between whites and blacks (yes) and if the gap for black women is larger than the combined gap between men and women and whites and blacks. One outcome is more significant than the other.

> Numerous studies have shown that equal pay for women would significantly boost the American economy—in one year, the U.S. would have produced $447.6 billion more income

The "study" (not a study, singular) cited in the paragraph is from the Institute for Women's Policy Research which provides no evidence for her claims and seems to be founded on the completely fallacious economic reasoning that the money required to fill the gap doesn't come from anywhere and will have no other economic effects.

Well no shit the economy will improve if you just magically create 21% more wealth from nowhere.

> The income women bring in is also increasingly critical to the financial security of family units, and when women make less that means less money for groceries, gas, rent, college tuition and other things families need.

This has nothing to do with women. This has to do with the current state of the middle class, job security, and having a functioning social safety net.

> Women in senior leadership positions need to mentor younger women and advocate for their advancement in companies.

The hypocrisy is staggering. Women should be using their positions of power and influence to advantage other women simply because of their sex.

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