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Comment by jecjec | Hacker News Reader

The wage gap just doesn't exist. It doesn't exist because different occupations create different amounts of value. Why can't people accept this fact? Why can't people accept that women may want to live their lives differently from men?

Women choose to engage in different productive tasks than men do. It's why you generally don't see women working oil fields or cutting trees or building buildings or being DJs or yes, spending 16 hours straight coding. It's also why you generally don't see men being homemakers, teaching young children, nursing, etc. More power to the people who CHOOSE to go against these norms, if they so desire.

Why tell women to do things they don't want to do? Why imply that what they've chosen to do isn't good enough?

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The gender wage gap does exist. It's simply a fact that women earn less than men. The real question then, is why. Is it because sexist managers pay women less money than men? Are women less likely to negotiate their offers as aggressively as men? Do women on average have to work longer to get promoted (and consequently earn salary raises) and why does this happen? Is it because women are more likely to pursue careers that pay less? Is it because men are seen as more attractive when their income goes up but this doesn't hold true for women? Are women and men just biologically inclined to pursue different career paths? Does the wage gap exist because women are more likely to work part-time? Is it because women are more likely to choose to prioritize child-rearing over their career? Is it because society expects women to prioritize motherhood? Is it because managers pay women less because they assume women will be less committed to their career?

Some of these possible reasons are obviously more concerning than others. If the gender wage gap is 100% due to less concerning reasons, such as women simply making the choice to prioritize motherhood over their career, then you could argue that while the gender gap exists it's not a societal problem that we need to address since it's not caused by institutional discrimination of any sort. The reality is a lot more complicated and nuanced, and it's probable that there are several reasons that can explain the gender gap, that don't necessarily compete with each other.

All of those are important questions, but I think it's also important to prefix "gender wage gap" with the words "adjusted" or "unadjusted" in order to identify which problem you're talking about. All of those questions will fit into one of those two categories, and the arguments for each vary wildly. Unadjusted (~78% [1]) wage gap deals more with society's impact on a woman's wage, or a woman's intrinsic desire to pursue a career in a particular field, whereas adjusted wage gap (5-8% [1]) deals more with factors like sexism and the economic impact of hiring a woman.

In my opinion, it would be worth while to tackle the adjusted wage gap in the short term, and the unadjusted wage gap in the long term, as the latter requires more dramatic changes in society, I think.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap

The problem is that the way the issue is (intentionally, I'm sure) presented is with charged phrases like "for every dollar a man makes, a woman only makes X cents". To a reasonable person, that sounds like it implies "for the same work" -- otherwise, you're comparing apples to oranges, so they must not mean that, the reasonable person thinks. And so the reasonable person gets (rightfully) angry and it becomes a very emotional issue, even though it was based on deception. In that sense, what most people imagine when someone says "wage gap" doesn't exist.

>>The gender wage gap does exist. It's simply a fact that women earn less than men.

Not for the same work it does not.

When you actually look at the data the vast majority of the so called gap is directly attributable to field of work. Right or wrong Teaching, Social Work,Child Care and Nursing pay less than Executives, Programming, STEM Fields, etc.

There is now more than ever more opportunities for women to enter these higher paying fields, many many many still choose not to. Do you advocate for forcing Women into STEM vocation against their will?

> Right or wrong Teaching, Social Work,Child Care and Nursing pay less than Executives, Programming, STEM Fields, etc

But when we only look at nursing we still see a gender pay gap.

When you look at nursing, specifically midwifery (surely the most feminised sector of nursing) we see that at lower pay bands the ratio of men:women is almost no men to almost all women. As we go up the pay bands we see that ratio changing.

We see this for many different types of health care staff. Ambulance workers start with a 60:40 male:female ratio at the lower bands, and end up at band 8d with a 95:5 male female ratio.

So, for the English NHS when we only look at eg midwifery (we see it when we look at other HSCS staff too) we still see a gender pay gap.

Have a look at the English statistics here: http://content.digital.nhs.uk/article/2021/Website-Search?pr...

NHS Workforce Statistics - September 2016, Provisional statistics

Publication date: December 20, 2016

We want this file: HCHS staff in NHS Trusts and CCGs in England, Equality and Diversity, September 2016 [.xlsx]

Hospital and Community Health Services Staff statistics.

  	Midwives
  	Payband	Men	Women	Total	Ratio men:women
  	Band 5	11	2301	2312	0.00:1.00
  	Band 6	57	18294	18351	0.00:1.00
  	Band 7	36	4663	4699	0.01:0.99
  	Band 8a	2	183	185	0.01:0.99
  	Band 8b	1	31	32	0.03:0.97
  	Band 8c	2	15	17	0.12:0.88

Here's the table for Ambulance staff.

  Ambulance staff						
  	payband	men	women	total	ratio men:women	
  	Band 4	2222	1479	3701	0.60:0.40
  	Band 5	5986	4072	10058	0.60:0.40
  	Band 6	3553	1889	5442	0.65:0.35
  	Band 7	610	202	812	0.75:0.25
  	Band 8a	85	25	110	0.77:0.23
  	Band 8b	49	10	59	0.83:0.17
  	Band 8c	14	1	15	0.93:0.07
  	Band 8d	14	1	15	0.93:0.07

> we still see a gender pay gap.

Could you explain the gender pay gap in these midwifery statistics please? I am struggling to find that information.

I see that as people get higher bands (probably get older) they get paid more. I see one or two men in the higher bands which to me raises some statistical significance queries. I see that the Ratio of men to women increase from incredibly small to very small, but that doesn't (to me) indicate a gender pay gap. Unless the "gender pay gap" here is that men are paid less compared to women as there are less men in the profession? Perhaps it's about the definition of "pay gap" - does it just refer to unequal outcome? Does it mean that we should expect the same ratio to occur in all pay bands, equally (e.g. not allow men to have pay grade 8), and if we do not see the same ratio that there is a pay gap by virtue of unequal representation?

For midwifery we see that even though hardly any men enter the profession (just 11 men at band 5) we still see men in the senior positions (2 at band 8a, 1 at 8b, 2 at 8c).

So, if hardly any men enter the profession and very many women enter the profession I'd expect to see no men at band 8x (because the tiny number of men have to compete against a huge number of women at each promotion). Instead we see a higher percentage of men at band 8x than at band 5 or 6. This shows one of the mechanisms of the gender pay gap: men get promoted faster and further than women. This debunks one of the points some people are making in this thread that the gender pay gap disappears if you only look at one profession.

I've added the numbers for ambulance staff.

At the entry level positions we see a split of 60% men to 40% women.

As you go up the paybands you see the percentages changing - you see men being promoted more readily than women, until you get to the band 8ds where we see 95% men to 5% women.

Why are the ratios changing? Why do we see a higher percentage of men in senior roles in health care professions?

Thanks, I see what the point is now. To show how one there is a similar effect or mechanism in play even when looking at another (and you could say non obvious) field. I was confused as I assumed it indicated The Gender Pay Gap in it's own right but I think it has more accuracy in saying that it shows to be evidence of one of the indicators.

I am failing to see how any of this data proves a gender discrimination based pay gap

Men are promoted faster and further than women, even when we only look at a narrow specific profession.

That is at best a correlation, it in no way says that men are promoted faster simply because they are men which is what your are asserting

Correlation does not equal causation

How about a problem of women paid less than men in STEM as well?

I totally reject your frame of "women earn less than men." Mainly because 'earnings' are not the only thing people should be measured by. They should probably be the LAST.

Women do productive things that are harder to account for in standard GDP metrics. Does GDP count the implied value of rearing a child? The years of care that go into motherhood? Does GDP go up $40 when a mom teaches a young child some words for an hour? It would if it was a tutor but it doesn't when it's just a parent.

The frame of "women earn less than men" is used to implicitly degrade the life choices of women. I personally just learned that a friend's mom is a foster mother. That is an incredible level of generosity that is outside of my comprehension. Is her being a foster mother worthless because it isn't in wage statistics? She earns a modest income by accounting standards, but the actual value she creates is much higher. Should we tell her to learn to code instead?

People aren't paid based on how much value they create. They're paid so they agree to work for you, and then so they don't quit working. There is a relationship here -- you're willing to pay more to keep people working on more valuable things -- but there are tons of other factors that affect a person's pay. Previous salaries, other offers, and negotiation skills often affect pay far more than actual created value.

Think about it: if pay were based on how much value a person creates, why do different people on the same team doing the same job sometimes have wildly different salaries? Why do people often get raises after threatening to quit? How can salary negotiation ever work?

On the average of millions of privately arranged employment agreements, the employee's marginal value absolutely (slightly) exceeds their salary. You have to make a strong case that the labor market does not exhibit the properties of close to perfect competition: there are many buyers, and many sellers, of labor.

Sure, there are obviously exceptions to this calculation in both directions: how else can you explain Marissa Mayer's severance package? How else can you explain DHH's wage of $0 for maintaining Ruby on Rails?

If you can make a compelling case on this topic you can probably get published in major academic journals.

> On the average of millions of privately arranged employment agreements, the employee's marginal value absolutely (slightly) exceeds their salary.

Are you saying this based on data? The actual labor market is very different from the abstract, perfectly competitive microeconomics model. It's hard to even figure out what the marginal value of a person's work is, not to mention the lack of perfect information, the difficulty of firing, the expectations around raises and pay cuts, people's varying self-conceptions of their own worth, …

Your comment is confused. The first sentence states flatly that the wage gap doesn't exist, and then in the second paragraph you launch into a reason that explains part of its existence.

Construction is male dominated and pays more than an elementary school teacher. Why is that? Are men pressured to risk their health in order to earn more? Are women expected to earn less than their full potential for some reason? Does society simply devalue "womens work" regardless of it's importance (it's hard to argue educating children is unimportant for society).

None of these explanations are great, we can do better as a culture.

> It doesn't exist because different occupations create different amounts of value.

> It's also why you generally don't see men being homemakers, teaching young children, nursing

You seem to be saying that if you look only at a single profession you'll see men and women being paid the same.

This is incorrect.

You seem to be saying that if we look at, say, nursing, we'll see many more women, but that those women will be paid the same as male nurses.

This is incorrect.

When we look at health care staff by profession, gender, and payband we see that the entry level have a high number of women to men, but that as you go up the pay bands we see the ratio changing. This happens even for midwifery, but is especially marked for ambulance staff which starts at 60:40 male female split at band 5 but ends at a 95:5 male female split at band 8d.

See this comment for a link to a dataset from the English NHS.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14335076

I'm fully in favour of families with one working adult, of whatever sex, or two people working - whatever they choose to do.

But there are clear and obvious corporate drivers for encouraging women into the workplace. Firstly, it broadens the pool of labour as far as possible to depress salaries and lower corporate costs. Secondly, women negotiate less assertively, which tends to lower wages in industries where they're more common.

That's not what the gender pay gap is. It's about inequal pay for the same work.

That has been proven false, negligible or within noise over and over.

The version stubbornly pushed is simply that median_salary(all women) != median_salary(all men).

sitation?

Did you mean "citation"?

You can find a definition on Wikipedia [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap

I'm thankful that the wikipedia entry makes a point of separating the two definitions. While I generally nod along with the sentiment provided by top level comment, it's important to understand that there are different definitions; however irrelevant (IMO) one of the definitions seems to be (for the reasons again mentioned by the top level comment.)

One thing I think jecjec has neglected to consider, at least in writing, is that the history of our society and the roles women have played in it do have an impact on what fields women consider. There are always those who go against the grain (read: against what our culture "expects") -- women in technology, men in early childhood education, but they are outliers. Perhaps there is sound reason for some of these differences, but I suspect their could be a lot more even distribution between genders for many fields if we had the opportunity to hit the reset button. Perhaps that's what the gender pay gap is about.

Confounder: if that were the case (society pressures women into making these choices), you would expect that the countries that are most egalitarian and most free would produce the most equal outcomes in terms of chosen profession. Surprisingly (at least to me!), the exact opposite is the case: the more egalitarian the society, the more the genders self-segregate into different professions. The men into more technical ("systematizing") professions, the women into more people-oriented professions.

For example, a recent BBC article asked "Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?"[1] Fortunately, the article contains the answer: economic necessity.

"Most of the girls we talked to from other countries had a slightly playful approach to Stem, whereas in Russia, even the very youngest were extremely focused on the fact that their future employment opportunities were more likely to be rooted in Stem subjects."

So women in Russia follow the money, women in the west follow their passion.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321

> you would expect that the countries that are most egalitarian and most free would produce the most equal outcomes in terms of chosen profession

I think they will, in time. There are still CEOs around who remember when women were mostly (almost exclusively?) secretaries. I think it's fair to want equality now, but not necessarily fair to expect society to move towards it in such a rapid fashion. Not to mention, even though we're a free society there are still endless reminders that men have these specific jobs, and women have those specific jobs. It's getting better (because people are pushing for it) but films are a usually an example of this: mostly male main characters, most business/finance/tech movies revolve around male characters. Most people to idolize in tech are male. I guess it would be hard to measure, but I'd be surprised to learn this pattern didn't have an impact on a young mind, male or female.

> I think they will, in time.

But they don't, regardless of your beliefs. This isn't about expectations or wishes. That data is in, and the most developed and most egalitarian countries (scandinavian) have the greatest self-segregation. And the less developed and the less egalitarian the country, the less the self-segregation, pretty much linearly.

Incidentally, this also explains the drop in female CS enrollment over time. I think we can all agree that the past was less equal than the present. So if your theory were correct, CS enrollment of women would have increased, compared to the past. However, CS enrollment of women has decreased, and people have been twisting themselves into pretzels trying to explain this via the "oppression" narrative. However, no such pretzel-logic is required if you accept the data: men have, on average, different preferences than women, and as societies get more free, those differences express themselves more. Easy peasy.

> mostly male main characters

But why is that? Is it because people don't want to look at women? Or is it because males tend, strongly, towards riskier behavior that makes for more plausibly interesting story lines? I think you are confusing cause and effect.

> Most people to idolize in tech are male.

Most people in tech are male, because of self-segregation, and therefore the ones that people will idolize will also be predominantly male. Factor in the fact that males tend to be much more prone to risk-taking, and the effect should probably be even larger than it is.

> an impact on a young mind

The "Blank Slate" hypothesis. Please read Pinker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate

According to that article, the 77 cents on the dollar number popularized in political rhetoric is not measuring equal pay for equal work. After controlling for some obvious factors it drops to a single digit percentage. And the authors of the same study point out that even the remainder could be predominantly a result of other uncontrolled factors.

> Noting that the raw wage gap is the result of a number of factors, the report said that the raw gap should not be used to justify corrective action, adding that "Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers."

Yes, that is what it sounds like and how it is presented. But when you look closely, it turns out that the statistics used to support the "gender pay gap" argument are most definitely not about unequal pay for the same work.

Instead, the widely quoted 77 cents to the dollar (now 79) is simply the median earnings of (all) men compared to the median earnings of (all) women, not accounting for any confounders[1], such as hours worked, experience or field. So the name is also a misnomer (almost certainly intentional), because it is not a "pay gap", but an "earnings gap". An actual pay gap is illegal, illogical and grounds for lawsuits.

Why is it illogical (in addition to illegal)? For a lot of companies, pay is their major cost factor. If you could save 20% on that without any other negative consequences, at least some companies would hire all women and make a killing. And if you assume that people's support of "The Patriarchy" trumps their greed...well I don't really know what to think, and I'd also point out that there are female company owners (in fact, women own more than 50% and control an even larger portion of wealth in the US)

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/gende...

Maybe that's what it used to be based on but more recent things I've seen have been talking about the difference for the same work, education and experience, i.e.:

"Even when comparing the sexes with the same job title at the same company and using similar education and experience, the gender pay gap persists: Men earned 2.4 percent more than women on average, down slightly from last year"[1]

"Procurement Leaders recent research shows that female buyers are paid less than male buyers. That is, women are earning less for the same work." [2]

"After accounting for job, industry, education and experience, Blau and Kahn determined that 38 percent of the wage gap comes from factors “unexplained.”" [3]

[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/05/men-still-earn-more-than-wome... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jwebb/2016/03/31/women-are-stil... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/08/its-2...

I find it hard to take a 2.4% difference observed through what seems to be a self reported, necessarily imperfect survey[0] seriously.

[0] http://www.payscale.com/about/methodology

The meta argument I am trying to make is that recent arguments about this have shifted to including accounting for jobs (and usually experience levels), since jecjec was claiming that it's still the antiquated version that does not account for any of those things. If you want to have a discussion about the quality of any of those articles or the studies they're based on, well, that's a different discussion entirely, I present these as evidence that the discussion has moved, not that any of them are correct.

The point is that 2.4% is within the error of such a survey. So effectively the result of the survey is that there is no pay gap.

the point is, you're arguing with the article, not my point.

> arguments about this have shifted

Only in a Motte-Bailey sense [1][2].

PM: "77 cents to the dollar, it's a crime!!"

DO: "That's complete BS".

PM: "Well, you're right, here is more reasonable data"

DO: "But that doesn't actually show a gap"

PM: "Oh my god, 77 cents to the dollar!!"

[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric...

[2] https://philpapers.org/archive/SHATVO-2.pdf

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14335076

This comment links to a rigorous English dataset.

Band 5 staff earn between £21k and £28k. Band 8d staff earn between £65k and £81k.

When we restrict ourselves to a single healthcare profession (in this example I used widwives) that has many more women than men at the entry level jobs we still see men being promoted above women.

Keep on moving the goalposts.

It doesnt change the fact there is no general wage gap when experience and accurate jobs comparison are taken into account.

In 2017, equal work DOES have equal pay.

As others have pointed out, 2.4% is within the margin of error.

The "accounting for job, industry" is very rough, so "social science" lumps together economists (66% male, $70k median income) and social workers (68% female, $40k median income).

"Hours worked" is also almost certainly not accounted for properly, as that is not a linear relationship of you get %x more for %x more hours. Instead, being willing to put in extra hours is seen as a token of submitting to the dominance hierarchy and key factor towards advancement. Saying something like "I structure my work so I get everything done in 40 hours" is not the correct answer when asked about your willingness to put in extra hours, because that's not what this is about. And men are generally more willing to do this than women, and men that are not are shut out of promotion just as much (or probably more) than women.

Also there is risk-taking. A study reported on in the Süddeutsche Zeitung[1][2](German) shows that even in controlled laboratory conditions, women chose low-risk strategies even when the "risk" is almost entirely theoretical and the advantages of a higher risk strategy clear. As the high-risk strategies on average lead to greater rewards (as in real life), the authors report there was a 23% gap in male/female earnings within that study.

Finally, it turns out that the lives of the top earners actually aren't all that great. They more or less suck. Women are more savvy about this, and have more alternatives, whereas men are much more motivated to stay in such negative environments for the status/money rewards[3].

When you put these factors together, they actually appear to over-explain the gender wage gap, and of course that isn't entirely unlikely[4]

[1] https://allesevolution.wordpress.com/2016/04/30/frauen-risik...

[2] http://www.sueddeutsche.de/karriere/gleichberechtigung-das-g...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gddjMm3Q3l0

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Women_are_wonderful%22_effe...

What I don't understand is why your comment is not downvoted and account is not banned yet. In case if you are not troll and just an idiot: when on the same role in the same company two persons with the same experience but different genders have different wage - it's the gap and it exists.

So is it gender discrimination when 2 people with the same experience of the same gender have different wages because that happens all the time.

I have personally seen wide pay discrepancies between 2 people of the same gender for a variety of reasons. Timing in the market, Nepotism/Favortism due to personal connections, better negotiating skills etc

Reply on news.ycombinator.com