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Comment by njarboe | Hacker News Reader

Employers generally would prefer to pay people less. If you don't ask for a raise you often don't get one. If you ask for a raise, you generally need to consider quitting if you don't get so kind of raise. Men are generally more aggressive about asking for raises. From a certain perspective when one sees a "pay gap" you could think, "Women need to risk more and fight for higher pay. They are bringing wages down for everyone. Let's encourage them to fight for higher pay at the same rate men do." Your mileage may vary.

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Some recruitment firms had some reports that corroborated that. HIRED’s annual report showed that too.

In person, I’ve seen many women colleagues do things at odds with the competition

For example, being worried about how to move up in their organization without coming across as “too bitchy”, as if it was a unique phenomenon to their gender

When the competition is:

- losing opportunities for being too cocky, and they keep trying until they find a different organization “looking for someone to make the hard decisions”

- emphasis on a different organization. the competition is coming in at a higher level by bluffing and trying, not focusing on going up the corporate ladder, or worried about being married to a company

its a widely replicated experience that changing jobs will get you 30% pay bump and the same level of responsibilities, while trying to move up gets you a ton more responsibility and single digit percent compensation increases

if many women are adverse to doing that, it would be a significant factor in some industries

Have you honestly heard any male colleague described as “too bitchy”? How did you listen to your female colleagues’ genuine experience of being unfairly labeled and come away from it thinking it was their fault? And the solution is “don’t be loyal and lie”? Sure you can probably get ahead doing that but yikes maybe it’s the system that’s the problem.

I’ve worked with a bunch of men who were considered ‘assholes’. Mean or difficult women are sometimes called bitches, mean or difficult men are sometimes called assholes. There is no practical difference between the two.

well one is allowed in a corporate setting and the other isn’t. that’s the main practical difference. i have literally sat in meetings where women are complaining about “old white assholes” in the industry (im not white) while my white male colleagues just look around uncomfortably.

amusing, as the competition doesn’t have the privilege of defining whose fault their circumstance is. adapt or exist in mediocre compensation, mediocre abilities to provide security to partners.

act like the competition. you aren’t going to get the satisfaction of an argument about the validity of everyone’s lived experiences.

figure it tf out and don’t worry about how it’s articulated in internet comments. otherwise, you’re probably not pulling your weight on the wage gap for your gender, yikes, because other people are.

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