A scientist calculated the cost of not being a straight man, she wants a tax cut

qz.com

7 points·clbrook··3 comments

> women in the US tech industry pay a tax of between $100,000 and $300,000

First, that doesn't sound even remotely plausible. That's a "tax" greater than what most heterosexual white men make. Claiming discrimination based on being transgender is also weird since you don't have to tell anyone that.

But my biggest problem with the article is that it appeals to some magic algorithm, but doesn't tell you much about it. Certainly not well enough to evaluate potential problems with it, which is especially important because the article makes it sound like she was out to reach a certain conclusion and then, surprise, she did. I like data science. Give me the source code, I'm not going to just take your word on it that your methods were theoretically sound and free from arbitrary manipulation.

I've seen several papers that claim to "control for all factors" and still find a gender gap. What they usually mean is that they threw some additive factors into a linear regression model of salary and found that according to that model, gender had an effect.

What they notably don't do is control for all the intersections (which is the only thing that could actually prove that equally qualified and experienced women are paid less for exactly the same job).

E.g. they'll say stuff like "controlling for field women are paid less, e.g. in medicine", while ignoring job titles, like the fact that doctors and nurses are both in medicine, but nurses are paid less and are more likely female.

I wonder what the sum of generations of government hiring discrimination would come to.

The article doesn't delve into a possible legal basis for pursuing redress which I think is a logical next step.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com