Comment by xiaoma | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xiaoma | Hacker News Reader

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The problem is not that women make less than men on average, they often make less than men when doing the exact same job, for the exact same hours.

Could you share any citations?

Thus far, when trying to research this issue, keep running into the well-debunked The 76 cents (or 72 cents or X cents) on the dollar myth that still enjoys popularity amongst feminists.

Unfortunately, that statistic simply compares the earnings of full-time workers with the same job category. It ignores the hours of work per week, experience, danger, and a host of other factors. It quite literally compares the salary of people with years of experience who are working 60 hours a week directly with new hires of the same job title who are working 40 hours a week. It lumps them all together.

Study after study I've seen which have actually controlled for factors such as experience, hours worked, travel required, etc have found very little pay disparity. This NCPA article is a brief explanation of The Wage Gap Myth:

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba392 http://www.iwf.org/campus/show/18948.html

The Cato institute and others have done more in depth analysis.

Okay, let's go with the GAO: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-35

Unless I'm horribly misreading the study, the claim a figure around 80 cents on the dollar after controlling for external factors, including hours worked, experience, and occupation. It's a lot worse before that.

Did you even read the report? Pages 11-14 deal with factors not controlled for and the summary of the report was this:

In conclusion, while we were able to account for much of the difference in earnings between men and women, we were not able to explain the remaining earnings difference. It is difficult to evaluate this remaining portion without a full understanding of what contributes to this difference. Specifically, an earnings difference that results from individuals’ decisions about how to manage work and family responsibilities may not necessarily indicate a problem unless these decisions are not freely made. On the other hand, an earnings difference may result from discrimination in the workplace or subtler discrimination about what types of career or job choices women can make. Nonetheless, it is difficult, and in some cases, may be impossible, to precisely measure and quantify individual decisions and possible discrimination. Because these factors are not readily measurable, interpreting any remaining earnings difference is problematic.

This was a meta study that looked at data up to the mid-90s. Essentially the conclusion was that not everything can be explained through simply dividing by hours worked, but there are a variety of possible explanations including both discrimination, career choice and work/family balance.

Come on. You can take issue with the methodology of the study, but at least have a little basic respect.

Essentially the conclusion was that not everything can be explained through simply dividing by hours worked,

Which is exactly what you'd expect if there were a pay gap.

but there are a variety of possible explanations including both discrimination, career choice and work/family balance.

Fair enough, there are multiple causes. But if you look at the factors they account for (and which therefore fail to explain the missing 20 cents on the dollar, see pages 2 and 9), many of them are closely tied to work/family balance and career choices: experience, occupation, marital status, hours worked per year, etc. Few, if any, are proxies for discrimination or other social phenomena out of any particular woman's immediate control.

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