Slashdot Mirror
All Else Being Equal: Disputing Claims of a Gender Pay Gap In Tech
An anonymous reader writes "Synthia Tan writes that when you investigate the actual data, controlling for non-gender factors (like number of hours worked) the gender pay gap seems to disappear. 'A longitudinal study of female engineers in the 1980s showed a wage penalty of essentially zero.' In some cases women make more than men: women who work between 30 and 39 hours a week make 111% of what their male counterparts make." The researchers were studying more recent data, too; what are things like on this front where you work?
I haven't even heard of a study that says there is a significant wage gap for at least a decade. When accounting for career, hours worked, experience, etc. the worst I have heard is a 3% wage gap. When you factor in that women are known to negotiate less for salary the gap probably disappears completely.
The focus now needs to be on why women don't enter as many high paying fields (and whether that is even a problem at all). Focusing on the wage gap is pretty silly now.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I've been discriminated against because of both my gender and my religion, but I have NEVER been paid less than my male colleagues. I may not have had the opportunities to grow given to me, but I've always made good money. In my current job I'm one of the highest paid people on my contract. My personal experience is that there's no pay gap - do your job and get paid accordingly,.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
I have 2 junior engineers and 2 engineers-in-training working for me. One of each sex (like Noah's Ark really) and men and women in each job class are paid the same. I have one senior guy who is paid more, but he has 25 years in the field and a lot more knowledge and skills.
I may get accused of being a sexist and all for saying this, but it's been my experience that a feminist vision of "equality" is very different from my definition. "Equality" in their mind is getting all the perks of being a woman (men fawning over you and buying you free food and drinks, sexual power, the taboo on physically attacking you, etc.) while simultaneously also getting all the perks of being a man (higher breadwinner pay, political power, etc.)--and all without having to suffer ANY of the downsides of either gender.
In short, they want it ALL, they want it NOW, and they want it all for FREE.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I was under the impression that one of the issue was that women are less likely to get offered exciting projects, overtime, etc. etc. so they wind up stuck in relatively junior positions doing limited hours.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Facts can be very annoying to people with strong convictions. Generally, they solve this by denying them and questioning the inetegrity of the messengers.
They could also solve it by attacking the methodology. Is it really fair to correct for "hours worked" rather than "work done"? So the guys get paid more, but it is okay because they stick around till 9pm playing Minecraft and reading Slashdot.
Why would employers be hiring so many overpriced men?
Even if the wife has a full time job, she still has to do the majority of the work at home.
Says who?
I remember when I first read about these issues, 30 years ago, one of the surveys claiming that women did the majority of work at home, counted exterior house maintenance, yard maintenance, and car maintenance as mens' hobbies instead of work at thome.
Jeesuz.. are you indoctrinated with political correctness or are you just prematurely trying to fend off flames? I've worked with many female engineers and scientists, and was married to one for nearly 20 years.
Three biggest factors I see:
1. Women stop to have children, and the *may* come back to the work force. Many never do, so there aren't as many females in senior paying positions.
The next two are anecdotes I've noticed over my own career that seem to be a constant theme (e.g. I legitimately think there's a trend):
2. Women are weaker negotiators during the hiring and raise/evaluation phases. While there are some monster bitches out there, they're not called the 'fairer sex' for nothing. Men are much more likely to take a stand and risk their job for what they deem to be 'fair'.
3. Women get sick of the engineering work environment, the lack of personal fulfillment, and say 'to hell with this, I'm out of here".
I applaud the author for trying to keep things even and dig into the numbers, but she missed two rather critical things.
The first thing she touched on was women staying in STEM. She dismisses this as personal choice and finding something 'more fulfilling', but most women I have talked to that dropped out of STEM did so more because of problems they encountered with coworkers and managers. They did not really want to leave the industry in order to take a lower paying job in another field, but they found treatment to be pretty bad and opportunities to be fairly restricted.
And that brings us to the second point, opportunities. While it is true that actual pay for the same job tends to be fairly even, advancement opportunities for women still tend to be pretty limited. The same quality of work is often praised more for a male then a female and men are generally seen more as 'management material' and 'leaders', while the same leadership behaviors in women are often dismissed as being 'bitchy'. Dominance is often rewarded in men and punished for women, which results in fewer women getting those higher paying jobs within the same organization.