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Comment by rdlecler1 | Hacker News Reader

We see similar outcomes with height. I’ve always wondered how much the gender gap in income—if any—was driven by differences in height. Are people negatively biasing women because they are women or are they biasing against shorter people in general? Meg Whitman was 6’1”. Marissa Meyer is 5’8”. Sheryl Sandberg is 5’8”, Elizabeth Holmes is 5’7” Indra Nooyi is 5’9”.

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I’ve always been taller than average. In school, in a class of ~30 students, I was probably in the tallest 3-4 students.

After joining a large company with a certain cachet of exclusivity, I was surprised to notice that I feel about of average height when walking around the company’s campus.

Almost the same in my experience or when with Scandinavians. Although a Brit friend of mine gives me a feeling of smallness being an entire foot taller (7'5"). He's easily one of the tallest people (though unranked) in the world.

Male income peaks around 6' to 6'1".[1]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/the-fin...

I wonder why there is a penalty for being taller than 6'1"? Are others intimidated and therefore punishing advantages?

There's plenty of data to show taller people get paid more, but interestingly - females are punished for being heavy, and earn more if they are thinner [1]. Males however actually make more money as they weigh more given their height (this could be muscle, fat, or just 'big bone / girth' I recall).

Worth noting that Angela Ahrendts, former VP of Marketing at Apple is 6 foot 4 - that's like the top 99.999th percentile in terms of height. Consider what it means that the highest ranking female at the company was probably also the tallest.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/skinny-women-make-more-money...

When I look at the (male and female) C*O and EVP of my company I would say height definitely plays a big role. The women are around 5'8" or taller and the males are > 6ft. there are exceptions but in a lot of meetings I have seen the highest ranking is the tallest or one of them.

Theres also the hypothesis that genetics for height correlate with genetics for being a strong leader.

Maybe one day an intelligent AI can tell us how our bodys work so we can stop the guessing game.

No, no, we cannot posit any differences in actual ability. It's just not done.

I agree, I believe in this day and age it is nearly impossible to discuss any possible correlation between any sort of innate/genetic differences (and often even early-learned cultural differences) and mental ability without being branded a sexist/racist etc. No matter how many caveats one offers, no matter how strongly one emphasizes that it could be one, even a tiny one, of a number of factors that account for differences in achievement, it is basically not discussable without grave risk to one's profession and reputation. I find this particularly surprising because physical performance obviously has such an enormous genetic component.

I sometimes wonder if cultural sexism runs the other direction and is potentially a cause of the relative petiteness of women.

Petiteness is likely the result of an oversupply of potential partners. In regions with few/no men, petiteness would be counterproductive.

Why?

It isn't, there is an enormous body of evidence demonstrating that the gender pay gap is driven by overt sexism and institutional barriers. This evidence is far more compelling than speculation about height.

I’m very sceptical of this explanation. Sexism probably still plays a role, but not nearly as big a role as population-level average differences in personality/interests.

Some interesting papers: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761774171...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188691...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijop.12529

Even if you assume all this research is correct, why are people with certain characteristics or interests that are disproportionately associated with women get rewarded less economically? Also sexism.

Well if you read the research you would see that it actually boils down to choices people make. So that’s sort of like saying that the choices women make are de facto sexist because... they’re women?

No, I'm saying the economy rewards the choices men make. Women get paid less because employers pay less in female-dominated fields.

Alternatively: Women are free to choose professions without having to concern themselves about making money.

Evidence:

1. Women make these choices more in richer and more egalitarian societies. Your explanation makes the opposite prediction and is therefore contradicted by the data.

2. Women care a lot more about how much a prospective partner earns.

2a. This is not due to women being "unable" to support a partner because they get paid less: the preference gets stronger the more a woman earns, not weaker.

3. Women care a lot more about predictable work, part-time work and no overtime, all of which depress earnings. (see https://scholar.harvard.edu/bolotnyy/publications/why-do-wom... )

Most household purchasing decisions are made by women: https://hbr.org/2009/09/the-female-economy

"The economy" rewards those who produce goods/services that others find valuable. It's pretty bizarre to claim that the economy itself is somehow sexist, particularly when women make many of the purchasing decisions that drive demand.

It is sexism in the other direction. Men who choses jobs that pay less get lower social status, have fewer children, smaller social support network, higher stress, and worse health. Men are punished harshly for choosing low income jobs. Women are not punished if they sacrifice high pay in favor of more personal security, more freedom in the work place, and more meaningfulness in their chosen work.

If you work 7 hrs rather than 8 you get distinct benefits. Physical health goes up. Mental health goes up. Happiness goes up. It does however have a drawback which is lower income. Women on average spends one hour less working than men. Why are men expected to work longer hours then women and severely punished if they don't?

There is also evidence that the gender pay gap is due to other circumstances:

-women not negotiating what they are actually worth in terms of pay -women taking less risks and less demanding jobs after having children.

Well, I've read an enormous body of evidence demonstrating the opposite, and neither of us are providing citations.

I've read that at most a couple percent of the earnings gap is due to gender, and most is due to number of hours worked, chosen profession, etc.

This is strongly stated but that doesn’t really cut it. Height discrimination is well-known and documented. I’m sure there are many short people of all genders here who have experienced it. It’s one of few physical characteristics that American society still openly accepts making fun of. I think it’s serious enough that it really does need to be explicitly accounted for in any study of gender pay gaps.

  >> there is an enormous body of evidence demonstrating 
  >> that the gender pay gap is driven by overt sexism 
  >> and institutional barriers

Now, let's not make things up. Every time this question is seriously examined, it turns out that whatever "pay gap" there is is because women, on average, choose to not negotiate their pay, to work in less demanding jobs than men, and to work less in general. I'm not aware of a single rigorous study that links pay differences to "overt sexism" or anything of that sort.

In fact, recently Google did a study of its own, and found out that at least at Google more _men_ tend to be underpaid: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-...

From the study you mentioned "Company officials acknowledged that it did not address whether women were hired at a lower pay grade than men with similar qualifications."

and

"Kelly Ellis, a former Google engineer and one of the plaintiffs in the gender-pay suit against the company, said in a legal filing that Google had hired her in 2010 as a Level 3 employee — the category for new software engineers who are recent college graduates — despite her four years of experience. Within a few weeks, a male engineer who had also graduated from college four years earlier was hired for Ms. Ellis’s team — as a Level 4 employee. That meant he received a higher salary and had more opportunities for bonuses, raises and stock compensation, according to the suit. Other men on the team whose qualifications were equal to or less than hers were also brought in at Level 4, the suit says.:

At Google your "years of experience" matter not at all. I've seen former VPs and directors elsewhere work at Google as L5 software engineers and not be able to be promoted. L3 pretty much means she didn't do well in her interview. L4 is more common for out of college hires.

Moreover, back in 2010 Google had a system for when the "correct" hiring level is unclear. You'd be hired as a "member of technical staff" (MTS) with a given salary and stock grant, and then over the next 6-12 months prove that you deserve to be "slotted" at the level your compensation is at. If you failed to do so, your comp would remain the same, but you'd be slotted a level below and expected to earn a promo in the near future. Which means the hiring committee (none of the decisions are made directly by the interviewers or the hiring managers) was pretty certain what level was appropriate for her. Nowadays this system is not in place anymore, and if there's any doubt, down a level you go right off the bat.

It is very counterproductive to attribute one's misfortunes in life solely to traits one can't change. It could very well be that Kelly just wasn't that good at her job, many otherwise very smart people at Google are barely scraping by.

But once one starts attributing all misfortune to something like race or gender or another unchangeable trait, that kind of shuts down the feedback loop that could otherwise drive improvements in performance, and therefore, one hopes, also improvement in promotions and therefore compensation.

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