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Comment by vivekd | Hacker News Reader

Why was this downvoted? Women tend not to be crazy like men and thus are more likely to choose fulfiling careers that have lower pay, and seek more work life balance. When accounting for these factors, the existence of a gender pay gap becomes more questionable.

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Despite the guideline-flouting/flame-attracting wording, I think there's a kernel of a point here: it's important to consider two seperate pay-gap issues (be it for gender, race, or any other class):

1) equal pay for equal work

2) equal represenatation among (higher paying) jobs

I routinely see these two issues conflated, and occasionally the purported resolution of #1 for gender being trotted as evidence of no more "gap".

Although I can see how that could be characterized as "cherry-picking" a statistic, it doesn't make the statistic any less valid, and it detracts from the real problem of conflation. If it's true, then additional effort at #1 would, indeed, be wasted. It would be better to criticize the notion of just one "gap" rather than any cherry-picking.

How does this relate to the topic at hand? The original commentor suggested a problem of conflation, between "unemployed" and "jobless".

Elsewhere in the thread, it's been discussed whether workforce participation is a more meaningful metric.

Even that risks conflating "employed" with "fully employed" (as opposed to "underemployed", such as part time or working for a lower wage). Real wage growth comes up repeatedly, presumably because of that confounding factor.

not every post has to be completely on topic, it was topical to the issue of unreliable figures skewing economic data which was what the subtopic was about. I admit he was bringing up an inflammatory topic, but really I expect a place like hacker news to have a user base that can handle that objectively

As for equal pay for equal work - I'd be very surprised if women aren't getting that, because that's illegal and you'd expect that to show up in the form of many many lawsuits.

Yes there does seem to be an issue of some workplaces that have a boys club type environment and fail to promote women - but I don't know if that's big enough to explain the dramatic wage gaps that are touted by some people.

If there is a pay gap, I suspect it's at least partially determined by a person's tendency to negotiate salary. There are many articles about how salary negotiation is crucial when applying for a job, yet many women and men often accept the first offer a company makes to them (which is usually a low ball offer).

Negotiating a higher salary requires a bit more drive/aggressiveness than the average person has. Making up numbers here, if you say that only 20% of the population has that personality trait, men seem more likely to have that trait (perhaps 15% of men have it and 5% of women), which would contribute to the equal pay for equal work gap.

To rephrase my above statement, the current job market rewards certain personality types with higher positions & salaries, and men seem to have a higher chance of having that personality.

A completely separate question is: Is the above an acceptable situation? I would say no.

For example, more men are three times more likely to be psychopaths than women [1], and CEOs have a much higher chance of being psychopaths than the general population [2]. There's a strong chance that certain psychopathic tendencies are rewarded in the current corporate structure.

Similarly, there are other stories you hear of there being a lot of backstabbing in certain companies at the higher levels. Personality types that are disinclined to engage in that will be unlikely to climb the corporate ladder there.

It's probably in the best interest of all companies and society in general that these kind of personality traits are not rewarded unless they are actually beneficial.

By fixing the problem at this level we'll not only be solving the gender/pay gap between men and women but also the gender pay/gap between differing personalities within a given gender as well.

[1](https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/mental-disord...) [2](http://www.businessinsider.com/ceos-often-have-psychopathic-...)

> It's probably in the best interest of all companies and society in general that these kind of personality traits are not rewarded unless they are actually beneficial.

I have another theory. Some people are so incompetent that they end up as C-level execs. Incompetent people tend to promote equally or more incompetent people.

First, when you control for everything there is still a gap, it's just smaller. 94 cents on the dollar is nothing to sneeze at.

Second, when you do that you're sort of controlling the problem away. Women don't seek more work/life balance because they're not as crazy as men. They do it because they're expected to carry more of the burden of raising a child. The literature is clear that the wage gap is relatively small until children enter the picture. After that the gap skyrockets.

This is why the main practical goal of every wage gap activist is equalizing the burden of having a child. It's why the number one policy issue is universal mandatory parental leave for both genders.

Well there are other factors you need to control for too, men are more likely to try and choose higher paying jobs because social status and attractiveness to potential mates is impacted by a man's wealth. This is not the case for women, studies show that men are indifferent to a women's economic status when it comes to mate choice and focus more on physical appearance.

There certainly is sexism in the workplace, although the court ruled different I think Ellen Pao was a victim of this. That said, I don't know if it as prevalent and widespread so as to lead to meaningful and statistically significant wage gaps when all the factors are considered. Certainly the evidence for this sort of widespread institutionalized sexism is lacking in my mind.

Still I think the conversation here is more that the wage gap numbers are not as significant as they are often presented in discourse about gender equality

I'm just going to point out that status-chasing is controlled for in what he described. The .95 cents on the dollar figure appears when you compare populations of men and women in similar roles with similar performance. You're confusing wage gap 1 (pay for performance) with gap 2 (seniority/glass ceiling).

Saying you need to control for things that have already been controlled for doesn't leave a particularly good impression.

I assume you're refering to the CONSAD reserach study which found a gap of between 95 to 93 cents on the dollar. That study did not in fact control for status chasing - nor did it compare men and women in similar roles with similar performance, they also found that the wage gap was not statistically significant enough to warrant corrective action

Yes it did. It controlled for hours worked and industry. That is, it controlled for men working harder and choosing higher paying jobs.

What makes “that the wage gap numbers are not as significant as they are often presented” an important conversation for you?

To me it seems like an uninteresting tautology. Like these others:

“False statements about immigration numbers are often presented in discourse about naturalization policies”

“Misleading financial figures are often presented in discourse about what stocks to buy.”

It’s like... yah. So?

All discourse is full of garbage. If you are interested in the truth, you weed through that and evaluate the numbers and, according to best practices, find a good estimate.

When you do that, you find there is a substantial gender-attributable pay gap in many countries in many industries.

Why that is and how we change it seems like a worthy discussion.

I am curious to why you think the existence of people with a poor understanding of the facts is a worthy topic of conversation.

There will always be people in “the discourse” saying wrong things. If that’s all it takes to halt the important conversation about how women get pay equity, then you have yourself a surefire tool to ensure that conversation never happens. Or at least that you never have to participate.

Well in this case the people who are wrong include most of academia, most of the popular media, and the former president of the United States. They were all touting the 77 cents figure I think that's a pretty big deal.

You should read some actual research if you truly think the broad academic consensus is that women make 77 cents on the dollar and that's the end of the story.

I see much more media disputing the 77 percent figure than presuming it. Don’t you?

(And as a side note, the existence of a raw 77% gap is factually true. Media would have to argue that it’s entirely due to sexism for them to step into territory you object to)

>control for everything

The studies do not "control for everything". For example I have never seen

1. Control for the much higher levels of sick days taken by women.

2. Control for the product of hours worked and years worked. Women work fewer hours and spend more years out of the work-force. This has a multiplicative effect on "hours of work experience"

Additionally the power of "controlling for X" is vastly overstated. In reality it is only reliable when the different factors are close to orthogonal, have linear relationships and are not causally related. Typically none of the above are true.

https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/UberPayGap.pdf

"Female Uber drivers make 7% less per hour than their male counterparts—even though the algorithms that determine pay for the ride-hailing service are gender blind, according to a multi-year study."

I remember someone argued that the algorithm must be sexist because it rewards aggressive driving behavior (although in reality the difference in speed was 1-2 mph IIRC) and it should thus pay women more to account for their different driving style.

If you read the study, they find the gap is fully explained by two factors: 1) men drive faster 2) men work more hours, and therefore learn the platform faster.

If their conclusion is accurate, I am puzzled as to what solution can be proposed. Should we lower speed limits or cut mens’ hours?

Wouldn’t driving fast earn you less? Cab drivers for years have been accused of taking intentionally longer routes to inflate their pay. Isn’t taking a long route effectively the same as driving slow?

Apologies if I don’t understand the uber cost structure. Is there not a time component in the service charge similar to cabs?

The biggest component of the price is distance traveled so driving faster means you make the almost fare for a trip and finish the trip in less time so that you can complete more trips in the same amount of time. There is also a time component, but it is pretty small, so it wouldn't be worth the driver's time to take more time without also covering more distance.

Taxis often take this even farther and make the time component only include time where the taxi is going less than fixed, fairly low speed (in NYC it is 12 mph), so slowing down from 25 mph to 20 mph wouldn't gain them any extra money on the fare but would cost them extra time.

It gets downvoted because that topic has long transcended being a discussion about interpretation of available data, and has instead turned into a cultural and moral battle over "liberators of the oppressed" vs "evil misogynists" or "whiny snowflakes" vs "those who pull themselves by their bootstraps".

Almost impossible to make any progress in it without appeal to emotion and in-group/out-group dynamics.

But still there is an actual set of facts here.

Citations needed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

Perhaps you can find the citation yourself and use it to counter the point you are replying to.

I don't follow the connection between your link and your comment. The user you replied to was, themselves, replying to another user making appeals to expertise about what "the literature" says, without actually supplying that literature.

The burden of proof is on the person making the claims. What is freely asserted is freely dismissed. How would the user you replied to even go about searching for the citation, given so little information to go off of?

The link you provided seems to allude to someone announcing their personal preference, which should not have to be defended. Assertions of what scientific literature have established as accepted wisdom are free game for questioning. That's what gives theories their fundamental efficacy, being able to withstand reasonable criticism.

> What is freely asserted is freely dismissed.

Then kindly leave it at that. It is, after all, the nature of friendly and disagreeable conversation. Crying to me about it certainly isn't productive.

You made an assertion that someone was being unreasonable in their requests for citations. You projected some buzzword made up by a webcomic, and then tried to associate it with something else entirely, as if demanding citations is the province of mouth breathers. You then misinterpreted my reply in the worst possible light, to fit the conspiracy that supports your original points. And now you're playing the victim card yourself because you have no further merits to argue.

If simple enumeration of the fallacies contained your arguments is seen as a personal attack, You don't have a lot of ground to stand on when you accuse other people of being trolls.

I think the misunderstanding here is that a conversation is not a contest. There aren't combatants or winners. But, there certainly is potential for harassment, emotion, and aggression of which all are unnecessary.

If you want a citation then go find it. Don't expect other people to do YOUR work for YOU. For more information on trolling: https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/troll/Avoiding_Tro...

Anybody who anticipates a conversation is a thing that can be won, as in a contest or battle, is probably a troll.

work life balance: Men work longer hours

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/06/30/new-repo...

Women tend to choose more fulfilling lower paying careers (last point on fortune and second last on time)

http://fortune.com/2018/04/10/gender-pay-gap-myths/

http://time.com/5230911/equal-pay-day-2018-wage-gap-myths/

I don't have the original studies but I think the news sources here are fairly reliable

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