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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> The gender wage gap is a well-documented, persistent, and worldwide phenomenon wherein women earn, on average, an estimated 9 to 18 percent less than men who have the same job descriptions and equivalent education and experience.

Interesting fact: in the U.S., single, childless, women under age 30 in urban areas earn more (10-20% in cities like New York) than single, childless, men under age 30. See: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.....

This is not to undervalue the statistic presented in the article, but I'm always a bit wary of comparisons involving "equivalent education and experience." In Denmark, for example, 20-30% of women (depending on the study) work part-time, versus 8-10% of men. How do you compute "equivalent" experience with a part-time worker? Is 5 years of working an 80% work-week "equivalent" to 4 years of working full-time? Does a 30-year old woman who took 2 years off after college for childcare reasons have "equivalent" experience to a 28-year old man who did not? Mathematically that works out, but part-time work and time out of the workforce are death-blows to a resume, far out of proportion with the resulting differential in actual amount of experience.

I appreciate the ideas discussed in the article, but as the father of a daughter and the husband of a very ambitious woman, I have as slightly different perspective on the issue. Yes, it is important to avoid bias that results from the perceptions of men higher up in the hierarchy. At the same time, it's crucially important to look at the other irrationalities in the system. I think it's irrational that a women who takes a year off after the birth of a child is viewed by HR managers in a worse light than a man who took a year to backpack across Asia. I think it's irrational that men are never expected to be the ones who downshift their careers for a time to help raise kids. I think it's irrational that a period of downshifting is perceived as such a negative light in the first place.

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"Interesting fact: in the U.S., single, childless, women under age 30 in urban areas earn more (10-20% in cities like New York) than single, childless, men under age 30."

For anyone reading along who is checking facts:

* The number from the "report" is actually 8%, not 10-20%.

* This is not a peer reviewed finding, it is a report by a company called Reach Advisors.

* The report, according to Time, says that in 147 of the 150 largest cities in the U.S the median income is 8% higher for women. That might mean that the differential is lower than 8% in those other 3 cities, or it might mean they filtered out 3 outlier cities, we don't know.

* That's 70 million people, about 22% of the population (I added up the numbers here: http://www.citymayors.com/gratis/uscities_100.html)

* Women age 20-30 comprise about a quarter of the working age women in this country (20-60) ballparked from here: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf

* So when people say "young women in urban areas" we're talking about maybe 5-10% of women.

* And the numbers also only apply to childless women, but I have no way to find out what the child-having rates are amongst 20-something women in those cities. Looking at this map, I'd expect a strong majority of those women to be childless: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5419a5.htm Regardless, any effect of discrimination-based-on-pregnancy-history would be hidden in this population.

* The report in question does not appear to control for educational experience, jobs, etc. So for all we know there are simply more college-educated women in cities than college educated men.

> * The number from the "report" is actually 8%, not 10-20%.

8% is the average for the 147 cities studied. The number was 17% for New York ("But the new study suggests that the gap is bigger than previously thought, with young women in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego making 17%, 12% and 15% more than their male peers, respectively.")

> So when people say "young women in urban areas" we're talking about maybe 5-10% of women.

Right. I noted the qualifiers up front ("single, childless, under 30, in urban areas.") The intent was to look at a sub-set of the population where women do earn more and analyze the implications of the characteristics of the subset to the whole population. Specifically, young single women in cities out-earn men, but their earning power erodes as they get older. That's a very relevant and telling observation.

> Specifically, young single women in cities out-earn men, but their earning power erodes as they get older.

Not necessarily -- you're comparing two different generations. These young women may well continue to out-earn men as they get older.

I don't see why you care what 6 year olds or retired women make, rendering your 5-10% meaningless. So really ~25% of women make more than there male counterparts.

No, there are roughly 20 million women age 20-30 and rougly 60 million aged 30-60, so ~25% of working women are under 30.

That's exactly what he just said.

Yes, nobody ever talks about the fact that 6-year-old women make just as much on average as 6-year-old men.

If you read the full report, and you compare by race men still make more. Childless white men make more than childless white women. Childless Hispanic men make more than childless Hispanic women. Childless black men and women make about the same. White women make more than Hispanic men.

Due to a larger ratio of white women : minority women compared to white men : minority women, it skews the "Women's earnings" up.

There are many reasons why various groups make 'more' or 'less' but it is kinda disingenuous what people try to 'prove' with this report.

An example of Simpson's Paradox[0] (N.B. not really a paradox).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox

Thanks for linking to that. The interesting thing about that paradox is that it makes be doubt the wage gap even more because it is generally given as the most general "women on average". Knowing that the entire sample set could have the opposite leader than the individuals groups of samples, it is entirely possible that a lot of job type have a fairly balanced pay structure (and some jobs even in favor of women) but when lumped all together there is a gap in favor of men.

The part about not controlling for educational experience is probably a pretty critical flaw considering the fact that women outnumber men in colleges. Of course that is itself a tricky problem since men and women tend to choose different majors (for a whole host of reasons, I'm sure, some undesirable and some benign), but just leaving it out of a study is irresponsible.

So when people say "young women in urban areas" we're talking about maybe 5-10% of women.

In the midst of all that fact-checking and debunking, you throw out this wholly unsupported and claim with an invented number?

The fact you point out is a nice illustration of Simpson's paradox.

By education level (subdivided if you wish by educational specialty), women consistently make less than men. But women comprise about 60% of the entering college class, and a similar portion of recent college graduates. The result is that on the whole, women make more.

That's why "equivalent education and experience", as flawed as our attempts to measure them might be, is a very important qualifier.

I'm not disputing that--I'm trying to muddy the issue. I meant to link to the Time article that discusses how the gap increases over time, to segue into my point about child rearing: "While the economic advantage of women sometimes evaporates as they age and have families, Chung believes that women now may have enough leverage that their financial gains may not be completely erased as they get older." (http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00....).

> But women comprise about 60% of the entering college class, and a similar portion of recent college graduates.

Isn't it wonderful how easy it is to ignore that college education is biased towards women and women's needs , and that men are put at a giant disadvantage when it comes to education.

I can imagine how the headlines would read if the numbers would have been 60% men and 40% women in college.

Isn't it wonderful how easy it is to ignore that college education is biased towards women and women's needs

What do you mean by that? (honestly curious)

Boys have never been in more trouble: They earn 70 percent of the D's and F's that teachers dole out. They make up two thirds of students labeled "learning disabled." They are the culprits in a whopping 9 of 10 alcohol and drug violations and the suspected perpetrators in 4 out of 5 crimes that end up in juvenile court. They account for 80 percent of high school dropouts and attention deficit disorder diagnoses. (Mulrine, A. (2001) Are Boys the Weaker Sex? U.S. News & World Report, 131 (4), 40-48.)

>They account for 80 percent of high school dropouts

Bullshit on several levels. First of all, the "never been in more trouble" in the first sentence gives the impression that these are all worsening trends. In fact, school dropout rates have been consistently declining over the last 40 years[0].

Secondly, as of 2009, the dropout rates for males and females were 3.5% and 3.4% respectively, so assuming equal numbers of boys and girls, that's 51% male and 49% female. But that report was published in 2011 and only goes back to 2009. Maybe back in 2001, the most recent year they had data for was 1999. Let's look at what it was then, shall we?

Oh look, the split between male/female was 4.6%/5.4%. In other words a sizable majority of high school dropouts were actually female that year (and the year before). At no point in four decades have dropouts been anywhere close to 80% male.

>and attention deficit disorder diagnoses.

It is likely that the actual rate of ADHD is about equal in males and females[1], and that it is simply more often diagnosed in males. Underdiagnosis of ADHD among girls is a disadvantage for female students, not an advantage.

[0] http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012006.pdf

[1] http://psychcentral.com/lib/2010/adhd-and-gender/

A [dead] replier, after being a douche bag about it, made the valid point that the problem could be overdiagnosis of boys rather than underdiagnosis of girls.

Two things about that. One is that even in that case, it still doesn't put boys at a disadvantage to girls. There's no indication that treating someone for ADHD when they don't have it will be disadvantageous to them.

The second is that contrary to public and media perception, ADHD is probably not overdiagnosed. Hilariously, this commenter supplied the following article: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/adhd/problems-overdiagnosis-... . Apparently s/he did not actually read that article all the way through, or even skip to the concluding paragraph, which begins:

>The public’s fear that ADHD is overdiagnosed and that stimulants are overprescribed is not generally supported by the current scientific research.

That doesn't indicate that collage education is biased against boy, it just indicates that by the time boys are part of that system they are more likely to be little shits who won't be helped.

In my experience (caveat: I'm a man who admits to knowing little of women, haven't been young myself for some time, and don't have kids, so take my suppositions with a grain of salt) boys seem both more inclined to follow bad examples from the "role models" available and less likely to be discouraged from doing so ("boys will be boys!").

There is little the education system can do about this once they get to that age - it needs nipping in the bud earlier than that. I'm not sure who I'd blame for this not happening, probably a mix of the images/sentiments thrown at them by TV/music/whatever and parents not being able/willing to effectively filter that flow - it certain won;t be a single factor answer.

60% of college students being women = "college education is biased towards women and women's needs."

80% of Silicon Valley engineers being men = "men and women choose different career paths based on preferences."

Things that will be said by the same people...

Glibness aside, you'll get no argument from me that the disparity in college education between men and women is a problem. That said, college attainment among white men from higher income families actually outpaces, slightly, college attainment for white women from higher income families. Much of the college gender gap is driven by 2:1 or greater ratios in college attainment, in favor of women, among blacks and hispanics. The increasing gender gap in college is intricately tied up with the country basically abandoning black and hispanic as well as lower-income white men.

The difference is that having a college degree is a more-and-more important requirement for basically everyone not wanting a blue-collar job. Programmer is just one career choice out of many.

So, yes, the first example is an example of discrimination (possibly non-intentional), while the second could be caused by choices (there are probably other industries where there are many more women than there are men).

> The difference is that having a college degree is a more-and-more important requirement for basically everyone not wanting a blue-collar job.

I hesitantly suggest that of the people who choose to go into blue-collar work, most are men.

(Of the people who go into blue-collar work not because that is what they want but rather because that is simply where their life takes them, I would expect more balanced numbers. I don't have any numbers at all to support any of this.)

Not only glib but also a false dichotomy.

Choosing between two careers, say engineering and being a marine zoologist are equivalent in socially attributed worth and both require a similar amount of effort education-wise. Most people wouldn't argue that being an engineer is in an obvious way "better".

Choosing between going to college or not, for most people isn't an equal choice. The vast majority of people view going to college as a better option.

It is fascinating that it is always possible to find a section of the society that has less representation is something than it's percentage in overall population and claim rampant discrimination in our society. Until we make the representation in any area match exactly the population demographics to three decimal places, we'll always find ample evidence we have rampant discrimination, all the affirmative action and "diversity" preferential treatment notwithstanding.

> Isn't it wonderful how easy it is to ignore that college education is biased towards women and women's needs , and that men are put at a giant disadvantage when it comes to education.

[citation needed]

Read The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers. She wrote that bock over 10 years ago and has tons of examples and references.

I have no academic credentials to discredit her writing, and I probably won't read it because I'm not a misguided MRA, but my bullshit alarms are ringing wildly from having read the synopsis. The whole thing seems to be based around a preconceived notion of what a 'boy' should be, and that's flawed in itself.

There are a lot of ways that society is biased in favor of women[1][2], including the education and justice systems. But feminism has taken over all the mainstream institutions and right-thinking minds, so it's un-PC to mention it.

[1] http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/05/13/male-s...

[2] http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/03/20/men-in...

Won't somebody please think of teh menz?

Of course there are individual examples of advantages that women have over men in various areas. That does not equate to women being advantaged overall.

In the world of acting, dwarfs have some advantages over non-dwarfs. For example, a dwarf is far more likely than a non-dwarf to land a role as a dwarf, a christmas elf, a leprechaun, or a villain's creepy little minion. This advantage does not outweigh the disadvantage a dwarf has when trying to find work in any other type of role.

> Won't somebody please think of teh menz?

Do some people not realize how bigoted this sounds?

That is the entire point of the phrase.

That makes no sense. People say that so that everyone will see they are bigots and ignore the rest of what they have to say? If people want to be ignored wouldn't they just not bother posting to begin with? The point of the phrase is to belittle people who dare to suggest that men are not some special privileged class of people who spend their time oppressing women.

> People say that so that everyone will see they are bigots and ignore the rest of what they have to say?

You have it backwards. It's pointing out that the person you're talking to has said something that's quite silly. Fighting for women's rights doesn't mean you don't care about men, and it doesn't mean that men are universally better off.

I don't think I've ever seen it put so succinctly, but that is exactly the sentiment.

If that's what you intended perhaps you should find a more respectful way of putting it

> Fighting for women's rights doesn't mean you don't care about men

How is ridiculing concern for men supposed to express that?

You're missing context. The phrase is used in instances like this:

Person A: "Women have it rough. Patriarchy."

Person B: "No, see, [bad thing happened to this guy one time], so there's no possible way there's systemic bias against women."

Person A: "Yeah, _what about teh menz?_"

Feminists deeply care about men's issues. But they won't tolerate using specific instances of things being bad for men as a means to deny that there is systemic bias against women.

I think you're way off. The phrase could be used in such a way, but even in this thread the person to whom this insult was leveled against did not say "there's no possible way there's systemic bias against women" or deny anything about women or anything like it. The way you're using "context" is a hand-waving, straw person, red herring. You should check the context.

I was speaking about the phrase in the abstract, first of all.

Second, mistercow discusses the context and the reasons it was said in this thread below, you should take it up with them.

I think the phrase is disrespectful in any context and all this talk of context and abstractness and strawpersons thereof are red herrings.

What, exactly, are these abstract phrases of which you speak? Does how the phrase actually gets used matter to you? Or do we all get to invent imaginary conversations for abstract phrases and lilly-white motivations for our (imaginary) protagonists? You accused someone of ignoring context but you're inventing it.

Context is important, but your point that the phrase can be easily misinterpreted is well taken.

The phrase should certainly not be used if someone merely complains about a problem that men have. Rather, it is intended to be used when someone tries to derail a discussion about prejudice against women by talking about how hard it is for men.

Note that the comment I was replying to was in a thread about education, and it immediately started trying to shift the discussion to suicide rates and the judicial system.

> "I was talking about apples, then he tried to derail the discussion by bringing up oranges"

>> "B-but... you were in a restaurant... choosing desert?"

I'm not sure what you mean

Feminism is a Marxist ideology, and it is fundamentally about political power. It is not about truth or fairness or anything that it claims to be about. Rather, it is about furthering the political interests of people that believe in feminism and punishing those who do not. It sees the world in terms of class conflict and it is dedicated to seeing the under-class triumph over the "oppressive" uber-class.

Consider a closely related group, Marxist anti-racists. They claim to be against racism, yet they reject color-blind policies on the part of government agencies or universities. Why would they do this, if they are truly against racism? It is because they seek power.

Feminism _can_ be Marxist, but it's often not. See for example http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2013/04/10-theses-on-ident...

Thanks for the laughs. It is fun to watch different kinds of Marxist argue over who is most oppressed :)

> Won't somebody please think of teh menz?

Stop it. Feminist bigots like you need everyone to view women as the "true victims" in society, so any discussion of men's issues is inevitably and swiftly met with that bullying phrase.

Women in the western world have always been among the safest, most privileged people on Earth. Being a man has sucked throughout history, but modern western feminists furiously point to the men at the top of society as evidence that things were worse for women, completely and conveniently ignoring the men at the middle and bottom of society.

Predictably, modern western feminists fight tooth and nail to preserve female privilege.

Despite their rhetoric, western feminists give hyperagency to men—they try to hold men responsible for the behavior of women. At the extreme, you get posts like this (hopefully satire, but apparently it isn't):

http://i.imgur.com/FkVKqJH.png

It's sickening to witness the absurd mental gymnastics western feminists perform to absolve women of all responsibility for their actions and failures, with the blame almost inevitably falling on a man or on men in general.

On the flip side, to justify their own existence, western feminists do everything they can to make women feel helpless, scared, and powerless. The western world is a warzone for women, if you listened to their rhetoric. And any potentially empowering advice you give women for avoiding dangerous situations is considered "victim blaming".

These attitudes are not only ingrained in our legal system; they're completely ingrained in society at large. If a woman is struggling, men and women (and feminists) eagerly rush to save her and scold the mean men put her in that situation.

If a man is struggling, th—WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ?! Why are we even talking about him?!

>Stop it. Feminist bigots like you need everyone to view women as the "true victims" in society, so any discussion of men's issues is inevitably and swiftly met with that bullying phrase.

Do you need to go to the powder room and have a good cry about it?

But in all seriousness, no I don't need everyone to view women as victims. That's absurd. I also don't think that there's anything wrong with discussing situations where gender inequality harms men. In fact, I think that it is essential to the larger discussion, because there is often an intrinsic connection between harms to women and men caused by gender prejudice.

Would I would like however, is for obscenely privileged morons to stop acting like female privilege is anywhere close to (much less greater than) male privilege.

Yes, there are some feminists who disempower women and men alike by treating women as the frail victims of sex-crazed men who are biologically incapable of showing empathy or controlling their emotions. There are feminists who don't consider valid the intersection of sexism and other forms of oppression. There are feminists who accuse trans women of "objectifying" the female body. Fuck all of those people. They're idiots. But reversed stupidity is not intelligence. If someone thinks that all sex is rape, and that same dipwad thinks that male privilege is a problem, that is not evidence that male privilege isn't a problem.

> Do you need to go to the powder room and have a good cry about it?

In other words: "I'm going to emasculate you by comparing you to a woman and giving you stereotypically weak female traits like crying.

But YOU'RE the one who is a sexist."

That was deliberate irony. The following sentence started "But in all seriousness," which I hoped might tip off astute readers.

More astute readers would notice that you didn't actually provide anything to substantiate your arguments other than an 'ironic' ad hominem.

Take for example this: http://littlemissgeek.com/about

The image it's painting is rather obvious: women aren't just disadvantaged in technology, they have been falling behind over the last 2 decades.

And yet, we find that university gender ratios used to be about 50/50 in 1985, and are now 60/40 skewed in women's favor—that is, 3 women enroll and graduate for every 2 men: http://blogs-images.forbes.com/ccap/files/2012/02/blog-chart...

Little Miss Geek is by the way Belinda Parmar, who has come out and said specifically she will no longer speak or attend women-only events in tech. But somehow she still fails to see the obvious.

"In 1997, Metropolitan Life examined the way boys and girls were treated and concluded that “contrary to the commonly held view that boys are at an advantage over girls in school, girls appear to have an advantage over boys in terms of their future plans, teachers’ expectations, everyday experiences at school, and interactions in the classroom.”[28] You did not read about this study in the media. And it had virtually no impact on the schools.

The impact of our belief in women-as-minority? It takes The New York Times almost two decades after women are exceeding men in college to acknowledge it in a significant story.[29] When they do, they devote more space to how the gap creates problems for the female students (“There aren’t many guys to date”[30] ) and how it turns men into dominant oppressors (“[the guys] have their pick of so many women that they have a tendency to become players”).[31] In contrast, articles about men being in the majority at the Citadel, or in the armed services, never mention men as victims because they have few women to date."

Here's another juicy nugget:

"The Lace Curtain’s power exists even in male-dominated institutions. For example, Dr. Charles McDowell, formerly of the US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, discovered that 27% of Air Force women who claimed they had been raped later admitted making false accusations of rape.[12] The admission usually came when they were asked to take a lie detector test. With these admitted false accusations he was able to develop 35 criteria distinguishing false accusations and those known to be genuine. Three independent judges then examined the remainder of the cases. Only if all three reviewers independently concluded the original rape allegations were false did they rank them as “false.” The total of false allegations became 60%."

You can read the entire book here: http://web.archive.org/web/20031216215957/http://mndnet.com/...

Note that this is the same Warren Farrell who's been protested as a rape apologist and whose talks feminists have boycotted by pulling a fire alarm and blocking the doors, such as a few months ago at the University of Toronto.

Find me a feminist talk being protested in a similar fashion, and then we can talk about male privilege.

The astute readers wrote you off as soon as you said "menz"

Most people who claim to be feminists say that being a feminist means treating both genders equally. Most people who claim to be feminists say that men also have a lot of problems, which are caused by gender biases.

It's a load of shit to say that feminism is all about fighting male privilege. But since these radical "feminists" are the most outspoken people who describe themselves as feminists, they effectively define what feminism means to the public. You can say, if you want, that you think the problems men face aren't as severe, so you think they deserve less attention. That's a value judgement which no-one can argue with. But behaving like only women have problems is simply not honest.

This is really fucking dangerous, if you think that feminism (whether that means gender equality, or women's rights) is a good thing.

Men (at least, the men at the top) are really more powerful than women, and this isn't changing in the foreseeable future. Men put in the hard yards in the high-risk careers, and end up dominating politics, law, and the corporate world. As long as feminism has the moral high ground, that won't be an issue for women, because the small number of men in really high positions still have to do what is seen as the right thing.

But there's no reason why gross gender inequality can't exist in a modern society. Look at most countries outside the US, UK, and some parts of the EU.

Feminism probably happened because women were needed for the war effort. The men were fighting the war, so the women were able to show they could do the work men generally did. There's no real reason that feminism needs to exist in a modern society, it's just path dependence (you can't take a bone out of dog's mouth - people tend to hang onto the rights they have), and the fact that most people (including most men) think that feminism is a "good" thing.

If feminism allows itself to be defined by the radicals (who use some weird Marxist analysis about the class struggle between men and women), that's exactly what they'll get - a class struggle. And if it does stop being about right and wrong (as it has been, up to this point) and simply about men versus women, I have no doubt that the men will gradually try to chip away at the progress feminists have made.

Equality is a great thing. Equality is a thing which most people see as right, and that most people will support. A class struggle is not something everyone agrees with, and it's a war I don't think we really want to have.

If things continue the way they are going, it's not going to be long before a conservative politician can repeat the more reasonable points that men's rights groups are making (not the angry crap about their evil ex, or stuff about sexual assault, but the bits about women having too many advantages in things like the justice system). What will the feminists say? Will they say that they are fighting biases of all kinds, or that feminism is simply about fighting teh menz?

If feminists start fighting against equality, there will no longer be a bright line (equality) which everyone can strive for. It will simply about the two sides trying to push each other around. If you really want to put your money where your mouth is, and bet that women will push harder, that's a matter for you. I'm not really well read on the history of sexism, but I'd bet there's a lot more historical examples of men eroding the rights of women than women eroding the rights of men.

"There's no real reason that feminism needs to exist in a modern society, it's just path dependence (you can't take a bone out of dog's mouth - people tend to hang onto the rights they have), and the fact that most people (including most men) think that feminism is a "good" thing."

Can you clarify your point here? Are you arguing that women shouldn't have equal rights and opportunities?

No, I'm not saying they shouldn't. I'm saying that the reason feminism has won so much isn't because we are in some enlightened society (though it helps), but because we were lucky enough to have two enormous wars which gave women the leverage they needed to demand equal rights, and that feminists have so far been asking for things which they should have (which wins a lot of public support, from both men and women).

The good guys don't always win, especially if they stop being seen as the good guys.

"Won't somebody please think of teh menz?"

Wasn't the whole point of Hacker News to not have inane gibberish like this on it?

If you have a problem with argument, refute it. But acting like a child and mocking it does nothing but raise the blood pressure of everyone else reading the post.

When you say "right-thinking minds", do you mean right-wing? As in conservative? Because to my knowledge and from my experience feminism has traditionally been and continues to be a very left-leaning philosophy and is actually rather heavily scorned and derided by many conservatives I know.

Also, which "mainstream institutions" do you mean? News media? Educational institutions? These are also generally thought to be rather left-thinking, in my experience.

By "right-thinking minds", I mean "correct-thinking minds". It is a fireable offense to say non-feminist or anti-feminist things, even in a dry academic way (look at Larry Summers) - it is politically incorrect. Non-feminist and anti-feminist thought is no longer an acceptable part of the mainstream conversation.

The range of permissible mainstream thought is determined by the left. Essentially, the mainstream follows Harvard with a ~30 year lag. The infrastructure which propagates what Harvard believes to everybody else and determines the constraints of acceptable thought is what Moldbug calls "the Modern Structure"[1] or "the Cathedral"[2].

[1] http://anomalyuk.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-modern-structure.h...

[2] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-...

With Summers, he violated protocol by even asking the question.

Some questions are simply un-askable in a postmodern intellectual framework. Here's a great primer if you're unfamiliar with it: http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/regiftedxmas12.html

That's one way to look at it. A more rational view is that "women skills" or what you might call them, are in higher demand in today's society than traditional male skills such as fighting, being agressive and lifting heavy things. Good riddance.

Sorry, if those are what we are calling the "traditional male skills", what are "women skills" then? Cooking, cleaning, and child rearing?

Hard data: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.pdf Looks like HR departments, insurance underwriters & clerks, lots of healthcare positions, hostesses & waitstaff, and flight attendants. And as you mentioned, child care and teachers.

"Insurance underwriter" doesn't exactly fall under the umbrella of "traditional women's roles". That is, if we're speaking in ancient stereotypes. Hostess and waitress are a bit closer.

Neither does "accountants and auditors" (60% of whom are women).

I get the feeling that the point is being missed here.

> That's why "equivalent education and experience", as flawed as our attempts to measure them might be, is a very important qualifier.

It's important, but how does one really qualify for equivalent education and experience? Usually when I see articles make assertions about the wage gap, the nature of the control for that equivalency is not stated, and the reader is left to assume that Simpson's paradox has been addressed. Never answered are the question about whether they've controlled for, say, two different MD specializations with different earning potential, different courses taken during a single degree program, or degrees from different institutions, or any of the other potential educational backgrounds that might be relevant.

Besides, in a market economy, education and experience are not valued, performance is, where sometimes future performance must be predicted. Education and experience are merely one predictor of performance.

This CEO study is interesting because it sidesteps the equivalent education and experience question. But that still limits its applicability and leaves plenty of unanswered questions about why the differences were found.

> It's important, but how does one really qualify for equivalent education and experience?

It's pretty easy to measure: Take all the men who are "of equivalent education and experience", and find the standard deviation of the plot. If that deviation is greater than the gender earnings gap, then you know your measure of "equivalent education and experience" is hooey.

It could be that the fact that urban single childless women earn more is a sign of things to come - a wave that with time will propogate to all ages and locations.

Now it could also be that this is the point in their lives when society values women the most and this is why they get paid well at that age. Attractive young women are desirable as they make other (especially male) employees happier as well as having advantages in certain roles (e.g. sales). This 'premium' they enjoy is despite the risk of child birth being at its highest.

I know that this is very cynical point of view, but is it unrealistic? I have definitely witnessed it and it could well be a significant factor. Male attitudes to women are an extremely strong force in shaping society, and we might well expect them to go as far as distorting the job market as well. I know it is a little bit sad to undermine female accomplishment in this manner, but it is quite plausible.

This mechanism would also contribute the glass ceiling. It is desireable to have young,attractive women around, but not to promote them to the more senior positions.

I know this will be seen as misogynistic, but it's far from the intention: in at least one latin american country (so it can possibly be just a matter of that society) office drama is kept in check while there is <50% of women in the office (percentage taken out of my posterior). Above that the amount of backstabbing and mean gossiping going around makes the places unbearable to work in. And this is not something I've seen only myself, as my female friends have independently made comments about this.

Of course, I encourage equal opportunities, but there are some weird social interactions depending on the group's composition. This can be seen in male predominating places as well, which can be just as toxic (if not more) to somebody who doesn't look like the rest. I'm just pointing that hiring women is not all happiness all around, because hiring people is not happiness all around.

I guess it comes down to homogeneity, in the same way you can claim there is no racism in countries with low inmigration and no heterogeneous population.

Women in charge are usually much better at playing office politics, and I mean this as one of the highest of praises in an office setting. Being able to navigate through all the bullshit while keeping sane is precisely what somebody in a big company needs. I'm reminded of George Carlin's comment on God: "I'm convinced that if there is a god. It must be a man, because looking at the state of things, no woman would have fucked up so badly."

So no, hiring young, attractive women and not promoting is completely backwards. You hire women that you will promote, because they are so much better at leading.

That being said, all generalisations are wrong. I've met women and men alike that have been backstabbing misanthropes, but believing that men and women are equals is like denying that Dutch people are tall, or that I'm not too short to reach the top drawer at my house. That's why you have specialisation, I won't play basketball and it is unlikely there is a Dutch jockey. If you are hiring and thinking from the beginning in terms of men or women you are missing the real value of that person, which may or may not align with your precognitions.

EDIT: got the joke wrong (first "woman" is "man")

> Now it could also be that this is the point in their lives when society values women the most and this is why they get paid well at that age.

Troubling. Why would this be? What does the System have to gain by valuing women of prime child-bearing age more than women of other ages?

Less cynically:

Women also have a "career option" not available to men: mother, and by extension stay-at-home mom. Is it possible that this group of women self-selects out of the workforce -- or the other way around, the women that achieve high career status tend to select out of stay-at-home motherhood?

Women also have a "career option" not available to men: mother, and by extension stay-at-home mom.

Errr... what? My husband was a stay-at-home dad for a couple years, and he wasn't the only stay-at-home dad in his "mommy" group. Approximately 3.5% of stay-at-home parents in the U.S. are fathers, and that number is growing.

"was" for a "couple years" and 3.5% should tell you why I presented it as a nearly-exclusively female option, but you are correct that the option is available for men.

You are confusing "available" with "frequent". Two different things entirely.

> Is it possible that this group of women self-selects out of the workforce -- or the other way around, the women that achieve high career status tend to select out of stay-at-home motherhood?

Obviously nobody is forcing women to stay at home at the point of a gun. However, I think it can't be discounted the degree to which women are pressured socially to take on primary caregiver roles.

My wife and I (~30, educated professionals) have a 8-month old. My wife as zero interest in staying at home. But from the minute she got pregnant the pressure started. My mom and her mom (both of whom work/ed) suggested that may she should stay at home for a few years when the baby was young. She's constantly bombarded by parenting fads that tell her she's a bad mom if she doesn't breastfeed/wear her baby around in a sling/etc. Those fads are never very compatible with professional working life.

Meanwhile, nobody has any expectations of me. Nobody wonders why I don't take a few years off to raise the kid. None of the parenting fads are aimed at me. Heck, my own mother gets nervous whenever I have responsibility for the kid.

The interesting part of this comment is that the indignant language is not directed at the system that enforces incompatibility between a professional life and family life.

What do you mean? To me, he seems perturbed by society placing expectations on women that are not placed on men. This seems very reasonable.

You might think so, he might even think so, but this is the real conflict:

> Those fads are never very compatible with professional working life.

Otherwise, why would he even say that? He'd say, "my wife isn't convinced by the science" or, "my wife isn't interested in that" but he doesn't -- he says the 'fads' are incompatible with a professional working life (nb: breastfeeding & baby-wearing have been practiced since basically the beginning of humanity; calling them 'fads' is particularly uncharitable).

His (his wife's) conflict is that socially-defined 'good mothering' (of the 2013 variety) is at odds with professional life, and he (his wife) feels understandably insufficient when she's getting blasted with messages like 'breast is best!'. So their defense is to fight against societal gender expectations which is exactly what the system wants you to do because while everyone is arguing about whether men can breastfeed, nobody is arguing about missing the formative years of their child's life because you can only buy a house with two incomes.

> (nb: breastfeeding & baby-wearing have been practiced since basically the beginning of humanity; calling them 'fads' is particularly uncharitable)

Educated, upper-income Americans acting like they're prehistoric villagers is, in fact, the root of several different fads.

You're not wrong, generally, but sometimes the way we first did things really is the best way. Studies show breastfeeding & baby-wearing to be beneficial:

-Breastfed individuals were more likely to be upwardly mobile (http://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2013/04/24/archdischild-201...)

-Breastfeeding improves brain development in infants (http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/06/breastfeeding, journal article here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811913...)

-Increased Carrying Reduces Infant Crying (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/77/5/641.abstr...)

-Baby wearing & co-sleeping decreases crying & GORD (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15780481)

That is not to mention the psychological benefits of physical closeness which I assume you don't need cites for.

Most of those studies suffer from a key flaw: they ignore maternal education/income. Since more educated women from higher-income families are more likely to breastfeed, you would expect breastfed children to score better in areas like brain development.

The bottom-line for my wife and I in making the choice was: is there any improvement in IQ in the long-term? And the answer seems to be no: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-02/breast-feeding-is-n... (study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633819).

The first study I linked accounted for maternal IQ:

> In an ordinal regression model, markers of neurological development (cognitive test scores) and stress (emotional stress scores) accounted for approximately 36% of the relationship between breast feeding and social mobility.

The second looked at white matter and sub-cortical gray matter volume which you can either find significant or not significant.

Your own article says:

> Of course, breast-feeding is a healthy thing to do. It enhances the baby’s immune system, and builds a bond with mom

which I consider positive things. But it also makes bizarre claims, like:

> Working mothers, already strapped by the expenses of new parenthood, cannot necessarily afford to shell out hundreds of dollars for a breast pump and accessories.

...and how much does formula cost?

Ultimately, you've got to just do what you think is best for your kid, and it sounds like you did. As your article says, there is no One True Way. But if having a career makes you compromise on what you think is best for your kid, that's a problem (with the construct of 'careers'), that's my point.

> The first study I linked accounted for maternal IQ: > In an ordinal regression model, markers of neurological development (cognitive test scores) and stress (emotional stress scores) accounted for approximately 36% of the relationship between breast feeding and social mobility.

That quote is referring to the baby's cognitive test scores, not the mother's.

Also: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10224215 ("Significant relations between breastfeeding and Woodcock Reading Achievement scores at 11 years were also reduced to nonsignificant levels after the inclusion of maternal IQ and the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment.")

The incompatibilities between being a professional and raising a child that way (fad or otherwise) are practical problems. An office building is not the place to raise an infant. Not to be crude, but a well trained dog would be less intrusive and lower maintenance but most offices aren't big on even those. This becomes even more clear when you look at workplaces beyond professional office environments. Expecting factories to allow mothers to carry their infants around in slings throughout the workday is unreasonable. Those workplaces are not and cannot be designed with that in mind.

No, I think I agree with rayiner. The real problem is that women are expected to raise their children in that peculiar way. We have infrastructure and social constructs that allow mothers to remain professionals but now society is telling mothers that if they want to be good mothers then they cannot take advantage of those things. "Good" mothers don't take advantage of modern convenience but instead do it the prehistoric way that is fundamentally at odds with maintaining a career. That is the problem.

No, the problem is that a career as we've defined it is required in the first place (desired is a different animal). Why can't a mother co-work with other mothers? Or consult while her partner watches the kid/s? Or choose to do only mothering? Or find some other way to combine career and motherhood in proportions that aren't 90/10? "Well, if she isn't in the office from 9-6 she won't get promoted, or she'll get caught in the next round of downsizing, or we can't collaborate as well", congratulations, you're now part of the problem.

Some offices do reduce the friction with on-premise daycare, breastfeeding/pumping rooms, flexible schedules, work from home, etc. It's not an insurmountable problem.

> society is telling mothers that if they want to be good mothers then they cannot take advantage of those things.

Looking at US society I can't agree with that. Daycare is pervasive. Walking down the halls here I see many women, many of them with pictures of their young children in their cubes. Perhaps it's different here in SV, but I don't think so.

What I do see is a lot of this kind of talk on the part of young professional mothers, and this makes me think it is a defense mechanism -- that the mothers actually would like to spend more time with their kids, maybe not breastfeed or maybe so, but in any case, the current proportion of career and motherhood is not fulfilling to them.

[Since I mentioned the office, I will add the standard disclaimer that this opinion is my own and not that of my employer's. I don't talk about this stuff at work.]

> (desired is a different animal)

Desired is what we are talking about. It seems you would have women choose between their career and their child. Your attitude towards working mothers is an exemplification of the problem.

Mothers can do all of the things you have said... all of those things except continue their careers as other adults without society judging them for it.

Calls of "Or choose to do only mothering?" are the problem, not the solution.

> Desired is what we are talking about.

You have no way of knowing that, and even if you did it's uninteresting to talk about because 'doing what you desire to do' is the universal struggle of humanity. Yawn.

> It seems you would have women choose between their career and their child.

I thought you were getting it and now I see the point has missed you completely. Listen carefully, this is important: women should be free to choose the proportions they desire, whether that's 90% work 10% mothering, 70/30, 50/50, 0/100, x/y. But they can't, because while you can be a 10% mother fairly successfully by using daycare and public school, you can't be a 20% "career woman". Your choices are either to be full-bore into your career at the expense of everything else, part-time somewhere in which case your paycheck doesn't cover daycare so why bother (oh and now you can't afford a house, sorry), or abandon your career aspirations altogether. Actually, some women manage to get pretty close to 90/90, but if you can show me someone who's done that for 18 years I'll be impressed, I can't find any. Having extended family around helps.

> Calls of "Or choose to do only mothering?" are the problem, not the solution.

Completely wrong, but you might have misunderstood what I said above which was that women should feel free to choose only mothering, if that's what they want to do. Surely advocating that women be able to do as they choose isn't the problem?

Note that this doesn't apply exclusively to women, men have the same battle but it's of course socially acceptable (expected) for men to sacrifice family for career, sorry champ, not gonna make it to the big game, daddy's got to bring home the bacon. We did it to ourselves, though. If you still don't get it reread my comment and substitute "women" with "everyone".

> Obviously nobody is forcing women to stay at home at the point of a gun. However, I think it can't be discounted the degree to which women are pressured socially to take on primary caregiver roles.

And the moment we start talking about married women, the wider discussion of the pay gap (assuming it is only due to working less) becomes less of an apples to apples comparison. Your spouse, at least by law, shares your income (as you do hers), and has alimony in the event of a divorce.

I don't know if you were thinking at all about the wider discussion (tangents are of course ok to have), but I thought I should just mention it since it didn't seem to have gotten much mention in this thread.

> Meanwhile, nobody has any expectations of me. Nobody wonders why I don't take a few years off to raise the kid. None of the parenting fads are aimed at me. Heck, my own mother gets nervous whenever I have responsibility for the kid.

I like how you say that nobody has any expectations of you, and then contradict yourself in the last sentence. Clearly your mother has the expectation that you will have less responsibility for your child than your spouse. That is still an expectation. And people in general are probably expecting that you won't take time off for work to look after your child. That kind of expectation a blessing for somebody, and a burden for others. Maybe you have less expectations in the sense that you aren't expected to do more paid labour than your wife, but I doubt it.

What is more controversial: a stay-at-home dad or a mother who works full time? In some ways the expectations put on women are more flexible, or shall I say optional, than the ones put on men.

> Your spouse, at least by law, shares your income (as you do hers), and has alimony in the event of a divorce.

Not anywhere on the east coast (all separate property states). In any case, that's besides the point. I'm as eligible for any property division in case of divorce as she is, but I don't get bombarded from all angles with pressure to be the one to downshift my career to stay at home.

> I like how you say that nobody has any expectations of you.

You're arguing semantics. I'm just saying they don't expect me to sacrifice my career to raise the kid.

> That kind of expectation a blessing for somebody, and a burden for others.

Perhaps, but one thing is much less fuzzy: the things that women are pressured to do are much less financially lucrative. And in a country where money is everything, that's a critically important distinction.

The grass is always greener, especially when you remember someone lifting their leg and peeing on your own grass last month.

I would bet that ~100% of the women with small children who stay at home sometimes get inappropriate suggestions that they are choosing to waste their potential.

I would bet that ~100% of the women with small children who work full time sometimes get inappropriate suggestions that they are choosing to be an inferior mother.

Both sting. And there is no polite response.

FWIW, the biological mother as the default primary care giver for very small children seems to be a cultural universal. (That is not to suggest that the default should be assumed to be automatically superior.)

> FWIW, the biological mother as the default primary care giver for very small children seems to be a cultural universal. (That is not to suggest that the default should be assumed to be automatically superior.)

It's a default that made sense back when men had to go hunt an elk to feed the family.

There was some period of time when our daughter wanted her mother more than me, but at 8 months she seems neutral as between us. It helps that she's bottle fed and I do the night feedings, so we've bonded over that.

This is all something that makes much more sense in 2013 when I don't have to go elk hunting.

Interesting:

"...he found that the cities where women earned more than men had at least one of three characteristics. Some, like New York City or Los Angeles, had primary local industries that were knowledge-based. Others were manufacturing towns whose industries had shrunk, especially smaller ones like Erie, Pa., or Terre Haute, Ind. Still others, like Miami or Monroe, La., had a majority minority population. (Hispanic and black women are twice as likely to graduate from college as their male peers.)"

A hypothesis: all three characteristics seem to rest on a skills difference. Many men prefer non- or semi-skilled jobs and would find limited employment in those situations.

> Interesting fact:

Interesting indeed, do you have any other source for it than the 3 year old report? Perhaps it was an artifact of the crisis... manufacturing imploded and with it men's jobs were hit the hardest.

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