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Comment by crazy1van | Hacker News Reader

This article seems to basically say its already illegal to prohibit employees from discussing pay (NLRA 1935) and it is certainly illegal to pay someone less based on race or sex (Equal Pay Act, and others) but the solution to wage discrimination is pass more laws that make it illegal-er.

I have a hard time buying this argument. If you are an employer despicable enough to systematically be paying women less just for being women, I don't think another redundant law is going to change your behavior.

This seems like a feel good exercise. People still buy drugs? Pass another law that says trafficking drugs is super duper illegal. Another heinous murder? Make it extra illegal to murder someone. In fact, make it extra illegal to murder someone with a specific type of weapon.

This stuff doesn't seem to matter. Drug dealers know they face stiff penalties if caught. People who have decided to murder another human really don't care if the penalties are higher if they use a gun versus a tire iron. And, misogynist employers aren't going to be swayed by yet another law that says treat all people the same regardless of sex, for reals this time.

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If you are an employer despicable enough to systematically be paying women less just for being women, I don't think another redundant law is going to change your behavior.

Women don't earn about 18% less than men (OECD median, 2008)[0] because a small minority of employers pay women almost nothing, but because the vast majority of employers pay women (or blacks, or handicapped people) slightly less. Just like laws that prohibit killing don't target psychopaths, laws that prohibit discrimination don't target the KKK; they (should) aim to change the societal norms that your average Joe McAverage conforms to. It's the distinction between institutionalized discrimination and the more intimate personal type.

_____

[0] The exact number is not really what's important here, but http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/54/57/40846335.pdf

18% number is bullshit debunked many times. When you control for occupation, working hours, etc between male and female - the difference in pay is only 2-3%

Not that I don't believe you, but could you link to said debunking?

I can't be bothered to find it, but I remember reading the same thing. I'm sure a short search will turn it up if you're interested in reading it.

You can't be bothered to find it, even though you think a short search will turn it up? Interesting.

Here are two blog posts with summaries and good links to various studies (I know these are bad sources, but they make the point and were easy to find).

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

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-ga...

The 77 cents on the dollar myth actively shifts attention away from the real issues with gender roles and western culture in favour of a simple outdated narrative that isn't going to help anyone.

It's a useful shibboleth though, the people using it are either well meaning but uninformed or interested more in attention/marketing than actual equality.

This article[1] links to various sources which cite different values. Of those, this report[2] (research funded by US Department of Labour) states in it's summary (page 35);

"Specifically, variables have been developed to represent career interruption among workers with specific gender, age, and number of children. Statistical analysis that includes those variables has produced results that collectively account for between 65.1 and 76.4 of a raw gender wage gap of 20.4 percent, and thereby leave an adjusted wage gap that is between 4.8 and 7.1 percent."

My personal opinion is that there may be a slight gap, research that conservatively accounts for factors rather than assuming the difference is 100% gender-pay do tend to put it below 10%, however there just isn't enough hard evidence to account for all the variables which may cause such a gap, so finding an accurate value isn't possible. Each side of the debate will always find the most attractive figures to support their agenda, as can be seen by people quoting 20%+ raw wage gap analysis that doesn't account for difference in time worked etc, and others misreading statistics to say that it's lower than reported.

-------------------------- [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-ga...

[2] http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20...

4.8 to 7.1% is quite a bit more significant than your initial claim of 2 to 3%

edit - also, how do you claim to have any kind of confidence in the accuracy of your own estimate, while simultaneously arguing that reaching any sort of accurate value is impossible?

It was someone else who made that initial claim of 2%, however if you read the full summary of my second link, they admit to only accounting for factors they were able to measure. So additional factors they didn't account for, may have influence towards the divide (other than gender-pay), and may account for any number that could further reduce that 4.8-7.1%. I'm not saying it is as low as 2-3%, but its certainly possible.

It was someone else who made that initial claim of 2%

Sorry, complete failure to pay attention on my part.

Though as to your other point, unmeasured factors could push the figure either way, so if you allow the error bars to go as low as 2% purely on a hunch, then you should also consider that it could be up to 9.9%, if trying to work out any sort of reasonable policy.

That's true, I suppose I was too optimistic in my analysis, there will definitely be some unmeasurable factors pushing in each direction.

Here's a heavily sourced study that found that Utah women are paid about 69 cents for every dollar a man in Utah makes:

http://go.nationalpartnership.org/site/DocServer/wf.epd.fact...

It's not a national study, no, and Utah has been cited as being one of the top 5 states in the gender pay gap so this is admittedly higher than many other states. It also states that this gap remains at about the same amount (66 to 72 cents per dollar) regardless of industry, education level, or personal choices (eg, raising children or being married).

I don't believe that study is well controlled. In fact, some of the claims are either contradictory or just don't make sense.

A 2009 study sponsored by the US Department of Labor, which analysed about 50 studies on the gender pay gap, concluded that "The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers."

There are observable differences in the attributes of men and women that account for most of the wage gap. Statistical analysis that includes those variables has produced results that collectively account for between 65.1 and 76.4 percent of a raw gender wage gap of 20.4 percent, and thereby leave an adjusted gender wage gap that is between 4.8 and 7.1 percent.[1]

http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20...

The 69% number is simply a census comparison of all men and women that work full time. It doesn't take into account position, education, experience, or even hours worked beyond 35hrs.

When it later talks about 'the gap' remaining after accounting for other variables. It means a smaller gap and it cites different studies. It just doesn't provide the 'after controlling for choices' value, only that one exists.

Ah, but what if the reason women are in lower paid jobs is because if sexism?

There's a case currently in front of the employment courts here in NZ which is confronting this directly. A group of aged-care nurses (working in retirement homes etc.) have made a claim to the employment court that (a) it's a female-dominated vocation, (b) it's lower paid than other similar vocations (by demands, skills, qualifications etc) and (c) that (a) and (b) are linked.

The case has made it through preliminary hearings and is now proceeding to a higher court; if they win a massive precedent will be set, allowing for claims of gender discrimination at the level of entire industries and vocations.

(I think it's totally a fair claim.)

How is the wage level for an industry segment not related to the simple supply and demand relationship for labor in that segment?

Why is that different from reduced demand? Sexism reduces the amount people are willing to pay for the labor of the supposedly-inferior sex.

So whom should the nurses sue to recover their theoretical damages in that case?

If I decide to groom my dog myself, can I expect a lawsuit down the road for my non-consumption of professional dog grooming services if any dog groomer is a member of any minority class? After all, you can't be sure that I'm just a cheapskate who likes washing my dog; I might be racist/classist/sexist.

In case it's not clear, I view the decision to consume in a free market to be a free choice and not subject to judicial review.

You say that like 2-3% is not completely fucking outrageous.

It's not outrageous if the margin of error is 2-3%.

I know right?! Female here just cracked up reading that. 2-3% is still 2-3% too low.

I have no idea what the right number is. But as the article points out, part of the issue is precisely that traditionally female jobs tend to pay less because they are traditionally female. Here's one apparent example of that in action:

"One of my lecturers at university once presented us with this thought exercise: why are doctors so highly paid, and so well-respected? Our answers were predictable. Because they save lives, their skills are extremely important, and it takes years and years of education to become one. All sound, logical reasons. But these traits that doctors possess are universal. So why is it, she asked, that doctors in Russia are so lowly paid? Making less than £7,500 a year, it is one of the lowest paid professions in Russia, and poorly respected at that. Why is this?"

The answer? It doesn't seem to be a coincidence that in Russia, doctors have been a traditionally female profession, unlike western Europe and the USA. The low pay and low status of medicine in Russia appears to be directly tied to its identity as a "women's career" there.

(Quote from this page: http://cratesandribbons.com/2013/12/13/patriarchys-magic-tri... I don't know whether this site was the first place I heard about this fact, but it's the top hit for it on Google.)

Hmm. It's a bit suspicious that communism/socialism isn't part of the argument here.

Seems pretty obvious to me that in a free market, doctors would always be highly paid as they take years to train and everyone, rich or poor, needs them. But in a non-free market where they can't demand their true price, who would want to be a doctor? I'd expect that is a much bigger factor towards it being low status than the fact that it's female dominated.

Russia hasn't been communist in that sense for decades. There are plenty of professions there that have become exceedingly wealthy in that time, but doctors have not. So to make your case, you'd need to demonstrate 1) that specific ongoing regulatory burdens in Russia have served to suppress physician pay, and 2) that the persistence of those particular burdens in Russia's era of deregulation is not linked to gender bias.

Your "seems pretty obvious to me" is <em>only</em> valid if you assume a priori that there are no distortions to the pure, free market outcome due to irrationality on the part of market participants. Systematic gender bias would be a clear example of irrationality (which I assume you'd agree with even if you didn't believe it were actually at work here). You may not mean it this way, but your phrasing sounds to me like you're assuming your conclusion.

Russia hasn't been communist for a while but almost all the doctors are still state employees. As for distortions, can you think of any other cases where the distortion is massive and the situation doesn't involve government subsidies?

Regardless, I'm not going to go digging around for evidence. My point is that the post above and the linked article did not even address the socialism aspect, which is a huge warning flag.

A solution is to just make everyone's tax reports public. The worst that happens is you get tasteless websites ranking who earns and owns most in your area. Really, that's it. Norway tried it and it got a little too tasteless for our politicians, so now it's a government website thing where anyone you view can see that you've viewed them.

You still get some cool stats, though: http://www.dn.no/skattelister/#!/Norge/2013/

These are the tax statistics for 2013. The table at the bottom is the "top score". Position and name on the left with income, tax and wealth to the right, in that order.

> A solution is to just make everyone's tax reports public.

Hell no.

I don't want to be targeted be advertisers, penalised by insurers, and become a target for robbery because I have my personal information spread around for everyone to see.

There's a lot of personal shit on your tax return. Far more than is even apparent. It can also expose your side business to your employer which could cause issues.

I'm all for salary transparency, but tax returns are pretty private forms that contain an extremely high amount of PI, and can be data mined to expose even more implicit forms of PI.

I totally agree with this. The potential upside of doing this doesn't warrant the massive downside.

Before you know it, you'll be getting bombarded with advertisements.

Besides, in the EU, a society where the average person hates it when someone who is not him is doing well, I'd rather people not know how much I earn.

> EU [...] a society

Don't generalize. The EU has 28 member states, with diverse cultures and social norms. What works in Norway may not work in the southern Italy.

Norway is not a member state of the EU. It has close ties with the EU, but it is not part of the EU.

Criminals and marketers already know how rich you are based on where you live. Published tax forms will have no effect on your probability of being robbed.

It argue tax forms are private, but that's what's at issue here. Many societies think this should be public information. It goes a long way towards preventing graft.

"already know how rich you are based on where you live"

Of course... Because if you live at place X you're rich and Y you're poor

That is naive at best.

"Published tax forms will have no effect on your probability of being robbed."

Of course not, so maybe you can start and put your tax info somewhere public.

State employees in California have their pay published yearly. I've never heard of this being even the least bit controversial.

http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/#req...

Criminals and marketers already know how rich you are based on where you live.

Not true.Read this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising/d...

The fact is that most rich people live without showing off. They enjoy having the freedom to do in their lives what they want but they do not want other people kidnapping their children or blackmailing them. Or just people behaving different with them because of the money.

You know Bill Gates used to park his car like everybody else in MS, until it became impossible for him to park without having 1 or 2 people ask him for money(on the tens of thousand of dollars each time).

Or ask me. I am not Bill Gates, but for people in my environment I have "made it".

Just putting my name in my HN account will significantly change how people react to my comments.

I don't know what Norway's tax system is like, but there's too much detail in a US tax return. For one thing, it would tell my employer things about my family situation and spouse's employment, that might affect my bargaining power.

For another, since I run a small business, it would reveal my sales volume, which is probably the most important piece of information for someone trying to decide whether or not to compete with me.

The tax returns are not public, just a summary of it. Adjusted income, tax paid and net worth.

Do you mean tax reports, or just the taxable income? At least in Finland only your taxable incomes after deductions are public information, which a decent compromise between transparency and privacy.

Wow. How does that mesh with your infamous "Janteloven"? (a common piece of North European culture where people tend to despise others who visibly do better than average - not just money btw)

In Canada, all public sector employees making more than $100,000 have their names and salaries published by the Government. But they don't adjust for inflation. In another decade or two, literally all public employees will have their salaries published.

In the US, all public sector employees have their salaries/income reported regardless of how much they make. My wife is a nurse at a public university hospital and has her salary published for anyone to see.

That's just for Ontario's provincially-funded public sector employees, not all of Canada.

It's not despicable.

As a woman, I'll repeat: paying women less for being women is not despicable.

That doesn't mean it's good. It's bad. But it's normal and there are a lot of social forces at work. Good, well-meaning people have all sorts of logical reasons to pay women or minorities or handicapped people less. You don't have to be evil to participate in a sucky system. We all do, even the virtuous ones. So, open your eyes and work to change things.

As long as we frame bias as something only despicable people have, we will not be able to change anything. After all, we're not despicable, so we can't be biased! Yay. False. Bias is something good people are still steeped in. It's how humans operate.

Transparency in pay is a way in which good people can be confronted by their bias. In any one situation, you can argue that a woman deserves less (rationally and justly -- just change the rules for evaluation so she loses [1]). If via transparency and use of data you notice that women are consistently paid less, and that your evaluation criteria keep changing, you can realize your implicit bias and change your actions.

[1] http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9120783 .

Could you give an example where a good, well-meaning person would have a logical reason to pay a minority less?

Lets say you're hiring a freelancer and you take bids. The lowest bid is from a member of a historically disadvantaged minority, and the reason their bid is lower is because as a member of that group discrimination makes it harder for them to find work. A good, well-meaning person might still accept the bid.

Work that involves in-person meetings with customers who are known to not like minorities. (If they're paid on commission, this will happen even without the employer actively deciding anything.)

If that particular minority is strongly correlated to cultural values that clash strongly with the organizational culture. (And said values clash would likely result in slower career progression even if the minority status is deliberately ignored.)

There exist conceivable situations where minority (or other protected) status could actually directly affect job performance, or be correlated to something that affects job performance.

I believe this sometimes happens because women are less likely to counter-offer and negotiate during the hiring process. It sucks.

So does that mean that companies would favour women as they can be paid less?

Interesting question.

I think many, men and women, are still biased against women because they believe they are catty and dramatic or are afraid of increased legal issues (lawsuits). These are obviously not reality either and it too sucks.

Is "women are less likely to counter-offer and negotiate during the hiring process" obviously not reality also?

(Serious question.)

It is very likely. My wife is a very well respected Engineer in her field and when she was asked to come out of retirement, she retired to start a farm and enjoy the outdoors, they called her back and made what I thought was a very low offer. She was going to accept it because to her it was a work from home gig and was near what she used to make. I said no and helped her negotiate an additional 30% in her rate that she would have simply left on the table because she didn't feel comfortable asking for more.*

*Yes, anecdotal evidence but I hear it from her and her female engineering friends a lot. To the point I've offered to help any of them negotiate their contracts in the future.

You may have found a calling. I hope you consider expanding the scope of your activities beyond your wife's friends. What would make it worth your while?

I agree with squozzer, you should consider expanding your activities beyond folks who know you personally.

I really like my work and I work a lot. I have worked in early-mid stage startup and now am working with a pre-series A stage startup. I have never shied away from asking for more responsibilities or climbing up the management chain. I am generally known as the more assertive person in the organization. But when it comes to compensation, I cannot bring it up. Not sure if it has to do with being a female.

It would be ideal if there was a 'go to' person who can push me more in negotiating for better compensation.

> I hear it from her and her female engineering friends a lot.

Well, the two variables your subjects have in common is being engineers as well as being female. Personally (being a male engineer), I'd say being a bad negotiator has just as much to do with being an engineer as being a woman (except if women engineers are even worse negotiators than I am).

There's also an issue with maternity leave.

Maternity leave means that women effectively cost more than men for the same amount of work, in the long run and on average. This can be mitigated by laws, but cannot be eliminated without addressing the underlying social issues. And no, mandatory paternity leave doesn't eliminate it, as there are more single mothers than single fathers.

The logic is simple. Companies survive by making a profit. In order to do so, they attempt to cut costs for a given amount of work done. Currently, females on average end up spending more time on paid leave. Hence, there ends up being a bias.

And I'm not sure if it is one that can be fixed through legislation. Attempts in that vein tend to be counterproductive at best. It's more of a social issue.

This is less of an issue now than it used to be; most companies offer Paternity leave for the same amount of time these days. This amortizes the cost across all employees.

Maybe to some extent, but not fully: - Not every birth has an active father involved. - The physical effects of pregnancy will will likely require the mother to take more time off. - Not all men will want to take extended paternity leave. You can try to force them, but that has its own issues, and makes single men more attractive employees.

Mandating that companies pay employees not to work puts them in an awkward position where they're incentivized to discriminate. If government wants to encourage people to have kids, then government should pay parents directly.

Yep. Even though I had support from my employer, I took less paternity leave at the time of birth than I thought I would. Many parents find they want a break from the baby after the first few weeks, and enjoy returning to work.

Men take less paternity leave on average than women take maternity leave.

Not to mention that in the case of single births, you'll end up with the women taking maternity leave while the men don't. And with marriage stats the way they are...

Which means that it's still advantageous for the company to hire men over women. Amortizing costs doesn't magically make the cost go away, it just hides it.

Depends on locale. In Quebec, men pretty much always take their paternity leave (at least 3 weeks, up to 5) and most of the maternity leave can be transferred to the father (up to 25-32 weeks, leaving the mother the minimum of 15-18 weeks) as well. That last part is uncommon but it does happen when the mother is the couple's highest earner (say a partner in a legal firm or a doctor) since the mat leave benefits are capped.

Incorrect. Yes, Quebec has less of a split than elsewhere in Canada. However it's 97% of females take paid leave versus 72% of males, and 48.4 weeks paid leave on average versus 5.5 weeks. That's not exactly on par. And I don't know in what universe 76% is considered "pretty much always".

And it doesn't even cover the case when the mother and father split before birth.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2012002/article/11697-...

If women are actually, objectively, less productive workers (if your explanation is correct), why is it wrong for companies to pay them less?

If women stopped getting pregnant then maternity would cease to be a societal cost, however the economy might get a little screwed as the human race dies off.

Parents are your most productive employees. They are the only ones who are making more employees.

That's a good reason for the state to pay for maternity leave instead of individual companies.

If the state pays then the companies are paying anyway, and it is still a spread cost as long as anti-discrimination law is being enforced. The continued existence of the species through childbirth is something that organizations should really factor into their budgets. Is not exactly a difficult cost to foresee as people have been doing it for quite a while now.

>If the state pays then the companies are paying anyway

Yes, but it's better for the state to pay it so that because if companies pay maternity leaves completely, the cost is not distributed evenly.

>The continued existence of the species through childbirth is something that organizations should really factor into their budgets.

I disagree, that should be the responsibility of the state and individual families.

>Is not exactly a difficult cost to foresee as people have been doing it for quite a while now.

It's a cost that is easy to foresee if your company is large. If the company consists of 1-2 employees, the company can go bankrupt from the costs. I've talked to an entrepreneur whose company actually did go bankrupt from maternity leave costs.

I take it that this entrepreneur thought that group insurance wasn't worth bothering with.

edit - I am not against the state picking up the tab, by the way. I just think it is one of those costs that could be paid either way and I have limited sympathy for employers who complain that they couldn't possibly be expected to plan for the eventuality that some of their employees might become parents.

Eh, way in the future though. It's a classic tragedy of the commons. Each individual company is better off discriminating, but ultimately it causes a depletion in resources (i.e. employees) long-term.

Companies regularly last long enough to try and employ the children of their initial employees. 20 years is only getting into medium-scale planning in large amounts of industries.

Women are not objectively less productive workers. Men die earlier--insurance companies have figured this out so why don't companies pay them less as a result? They're going to die sooner, that's a significant risk to the company, they should be paid less than women. Men are more likely to engage in risky behavior, more likely to have anger management issues, more likely to provoke harrassment cases, all reasons to pay them less because they impose a higher risk on the company.

But for some reason you want to conveniently ignore all these facts and instead point to maternity leave and say that's why we should pay women less? Think again.

But further, if your weren't trolling, the answer to your question is that even if the assumption were true, to pay them less would be sociopathic. That's why it's wrong. Again, think.

If disabled people are actually, objectively, less productive workers, a drain on society, why is it wrong for societies to euthanize them?

Men die earlier, yes. You have a point there. [2][3] says that ~90999/100000 males survive to age 60 and ~94194/100000 females survive to age 60. That's a difference of ~3195/100000, or ~3.2%.

However, the question becomes if men retire earlier.

And the answer is no. [1] Women retire earlier than men on average (at least in Canada. Don't have stats handy for anywhere else, unfortunately). And that's measured in years, more than compensating for the above.

Regarding disabled people, a simple answer is that society as a whole would be against it, as there is enough of a chance of any individual person becoming disabled that it is in their best interest to not allow such a law.

And making an argument from an economic as opposed to a moralistic point of view does not make one a sociopath. As you may not have noticed, I never mentioned my moral point of view on the matter, as it's irrelevant.

[1] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/71-222-x/2008001/sectionm/m-age...

[2] http://www.prdh.umontreal.ca/BDLC/data/can/mltper_1x5.txt

[3] http://www.prdh.umontreal.ca/BDLC/data/can/fltper_1x5.txt

[4] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2012002/article/11697-...

Men at all age levels have higher insurance rates than women. This means they are riskier employees than women and if the reason women are being paid less is purely economic then the situation ought to be reversed and men should be paid less because of the higher risk. So clearly the reason is not economic but is a systemic bias.

Yes, making an argument involving decisions that affect the life chances of human beings and hiding behind "economic theory" is sociopathic.

>Men at all age levels have higher insurance rates than women. This means they are riskier employees than women and if the reason women are being paid less is purely economic then the situation ought to be reversed and men should be paid less because of the higher risk.

That assumes that only insurance-based risk affects economics.

How do you objectively measure the productivity of a programmer?

Or of a secretary / office assistant / whatever they're called these days (the person who's job is to make life easier for other people, so that said other people can get more of their own work done)?

If it was possible to objectively measure productivity, there wouldn't be any of these huge arguments about pay fairness.

You don't.

You assume that, innate talents being equal, women are equal to men in terms of productivity. I mean, this is the stated intention of the Feminist movement in a nutshell, yes?

And then you take a look at the other stats (as I mentioned, females take more leave. And females are more likely to have a child and stop working [1]. And there are the liability issues, ironically caused by the Feminist movement.)

And so - equal productivity, but less hours for the amount of money you pay. It's a simple calculation, with the result that, if the above assumptions are true, women should, from an economic point of view, be paid less than men on average.

At which point, if you are still arguing that wage should be equal from economic terms, you've gone beyond saying women are equal to men and saying that women are better then men - and that is an entirely different ball of wax.

[1] http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/.3ndic.1t.4r@-eng.jsp?iid=13#M_7

Can someone respond to these points instead of just downvoting?

Extension of this:

Can someone please respond to these points with actual numbers to back their points?

Given that employees only stay for a couple years on average anyway these days, you're far more likely to lose either a male or female employee to a job switch than to lose a female employee to maternity leave. It's a highly overestimated risk. Not to mention extremely unfair to women who don't have kids.

[Citation needed]

I have been linking the numbers behind my arguments. If you wish to show the numbers behind yours, I would be more than happy to discuss them.

Given that employees only stay for a couple years on average anyway these days

All 8 people on my team have been around longer than that. I've been there 8 years, and the other senior person has been around slightly longer. Our boss has been with the company for I think 17+ years. (And our old boss, who took the other half when the team got split in a reorg, has been with the company for 30+ years.)

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm says: """The median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 4.6 years in January 2014, unchanged from January 2012"""

"""In January 2014, median employee tenure (the point at which half of all workers had more tenure and half had less tenure) for men was 4.7 years, unchanged from January 2012. For women, median tenure in January 2014 was 4.5 years, about unchanged from January 2012. Among men, 30 percent of wage and salary workers had 10 years or more of tenure with their current employer, compared with 28 percent for women. (See tables 1 and 3.)"""

If maternity leave really is a large cost, then the reason not to pay them less is because we all have a stake in the healthy propagation of the species. Women bare the children, but that doesn't mean they ought to bare the entire burden of it.

It also requires a man to make a child, so isn't it reasonable to expect the father to pay rather than the employer?

I don't think individual companies have such a responsibility. It's better to have the state pay for these costs.

Yes, I agree with you. I made the assumption that the state would likely end up collecting through payrolls or something like that. Perhaps a tax credit to businesses for employees losing hours to parenting and a tax increase on the other employees.

In the lifetime of a woman, how many maternity leaves does she take? On average it would be twice and very few women I know have taken more than 8 weeks. The way you put makes it sound like women take 6 months+ time off and everyone else has to pay for it.

The way I put it makes it sound like women take 6+ months time off because, oddly enough, women take 6+ months time off. The average in Canada is 39.6 weeks paid leave. Note that that figure is for children aged 1-3, how many weeks paid leave did their mothers take. The average per women will be higher.

The plural of anecdote is not data, and you are no exception.

StatCan: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2012002/article/11697-...

> And I'm not sure if it is one that can be fixed through legislation

Well, one think the government could do is to cover pay during sick leave, parental leave and child care leave (i.e. when children are sick). This would also benefit startups/new businesses, where employees being sick/pregnant is not just statistics, but can make or break a business.

That will mitigate the issue, but not fix it.

As having an experienced worker go MIA for months is bad for a company in terms of productivity, and substantially more women take maternity leave than men take paternity leave.

A temp worker is seldom as good at their job as an experienced worker.

Personally, I don't think government should cover things like sick leave, but that is another matter entirely. (In general, the larger the system, the less incentive for any one person in the system to keep the system as a whole running smoothly.)

If maternity and paternity leave is leave without pay (unless one elects or has to use available accrued paid time off) then it shouldn't matter. Except having to plan around a short term vacancy can be an undesirable problem for a manager or company No matter the position goes vacant for that period of time or if a temp worker is hired to fill it, you will have a loss in productivity.

If maternity and paternity leave is without pay it's still advantageous for the company to hire men over women, as they will have to hire temps more often on average for maternity leave with a women over a man.

And temps generally are worse productivity-wise than an experienced worker.

Which is in part because both men and women's perceptions of a woman become more negative when she negotiates.

Its even more than that. Our cultural biases lead us to perceive the same traits (e.g. assertive) differently. Assertive males are perceived as confident ans positively while assertive females are perceived as bitchty and negatively.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2012/09/04/gossipy-w...

Just sharing your compensation with your co workers goes a long way toward solving this problem. But it is a social more to not share this information.

There's a very rational economic reason why some people are paid less than others for the same job. Leverage. Since WWII, women entered the work force in large numbers _because they were willing to work for less than their male counterparts._ So what was an opportunity for women once has become discrimination. Rightfully so. But it's important to remember how we actually got here. Equality of opportunity often translates into inequalities of outcome for reasons that are neither good nor efficient. So, yeah, sometimes the law can tip the scales to fix this. And that is not a bad thing.

One of the strongest benefits of salary transparency is the equalizing effect on salaries for women and minorities (and nerds who have trouble aggressively negotiating their salary!)

You can also join an engineering union. They can usually tell you what salary is common for your CV. Some may also negotiate on your behalf. All offer legal counsel. Depends on where you live, of course.

> If you are an employer despicable enough to systematically be paying women less just for being women, I don't think another redundant law is going to change your behavior.

It might if your employees start suing you and costing you money.

Is it that women get underpaid or is there more to it?

Women and men should also tell every woman they know to negotiate their pay. The first offer is not something anyone has to take, and while this may be self evident here, it isnt everywhere.

Women engineers should be encouraged to learn how to negotiate salary themselves, or from a mentor. They should also be encouraged to view salary negotiation as a positive part of their soft skills, rather than a necessary evil.

I think it is women in all fields. I was talking to a lady friend about a job offer she got and advised she negotiate her salary. From her response it sounded as if I was trying to get her to loose the opportunity.

You can't really negotiate effectively unless you are willing to lose the opportunity.

Your friend might be aware that she has fewer opportunities and therefore be less willing to take this risk.

No need to be sexist. This would be useful for all engineers, not just female engineers.

I wasn't being sexist. The context of the parent comment was women negotiating pay.

But how else will politicians get to claim credit for Doing Something About It?

"Don't pay women less for being women" is unenforceable.

Not true: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-20294633

It really is true, because you can say anything you want (or nothing) about the reasons why you did it, and get away with it. You have to be a total moron not to get away with it.

This is terrible and unjustifiable, but that is how it is.

This is entirely a matter of what the law says, and in a discussion about adapting laws, it is a very weak argument.

If the law says you cannot lie about your reasons and that you must have them, then there is a means to enforce it. I mean, I could say I didn't rob a bank and get away with it due to lax laws and inadequate technology, but that doesn't mean it is impossible to protect banks from robbery. It means you reform the processes.

For instance, if employers went through independently regulated agencies to conduct hiring/firing/pay, then they wouldn't be able to make decisions like that and get away with it.

I'd love the processes to be reformed. But the fact remains that the law has no way to know your reasons for firing or not hiring someone as long as you tell them something vaguely plausible. You'd have to be an idiot.

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