>How does that relate to a woman only making 80 cents on the dollar?
Because women don't make 80 cents on the dollar, unless you think brain surgeons and hairdressers ought to make the same amount of money.
Because women don't make 80 cents on the dollar, unless you think brain surgeons and hairdressers ought to make the same amount of money.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/the-pay-gap-is-beca...
"Are women paid less than men because they choose to be, by gravitating to lower-paying jobs like teaching and social work? [...] But a majority of the pay gap between men and women actually comes from differences within occupations, not between them — and widens in the highest-paying ones like business, law and medicine according to data from Claudia Goldin, a Harvard University labor economist and a leading scholar on women and the economy."
"This study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers."
http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20...
It's like entering into a conversation about how to fix the problem of racism within the police by asking "ah yes, but how racist are they?".
Somehow I doubt I'll be able to find a lawyer to take the case if I sue.
> You clearly didn't get my point. For one, I'm not the one that brought up the 80 cents figure. But is it 80 cents? 70? 90? That's not the actual issue. Does sexism exist in tech? If yes, how about talking about that?
> It's like entering into a conversation about how to fix the problem of racism within the police by asking "ah yes, but how racist are they?".
I don't understand how you can speak critically of people asking the most mature, rational and productive question in the situation. You can't make a plan to deal with a problem if you don't have at least some idea of how big it is.
Person A: "The dam is overfilled, we need to drain some of the water."
Person B: "Oh, really? How do you know it's overfilled and how much water do you think we should drain?"
Person A: "OH MY GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU HAVE THE NERVE TO ASK ME THAT! CLEARLY YOU *WANT* THE DAM TO BE OVERFILLED, DON'T YOU?!?"
Person B: "..."> Take doctors and surgeons. Women earn 71 percent of men’s wages — after controlling for age, race, hours and education.
> A pharmacist who works 40 hours a week generally earns double the salary of a pharmacist who works 20 hours a week, and as a result, the pay gap for pharmacists is one of the smallest.
These two quotes reveal that "controlling for hours" means "calculating per-hour wage", i.e. the underlying assumption is that the wage should depend linearly on the number of hours worked.
Which is obviously not true. Take finance, for example. If you're not willing to work 50, 60 hour weeks, you won't just get paid proportionally less; what will happen is that your career will stagnate, you won't get promoted, or might even get fired!
Also, personally I definitely want to be paid "disproportionately" for all the hours I do outside my "normal" working hours - after all, I want some time to enjoy life as well!
The final suggestion in this article is that workers should strive to make themselves as replaceable as possible. But this is, IMO, the worst advice possible; it won't have the effect of "averaging" the wages to make them more equal; instead, the best performer's wages will be pushed down to match the worst performer's wages, as it will no longer be possible to differentiate workers by performance. Brave New World!