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Even On eBay, Women Get Paid Less For Their Labor (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: Women in the United States are paid only 79 cents on the dollar compared with men doing the same job. But at least gender melts away in the digital economy of the Internet, right? Nope. A study of more than 1 million auctions on the online commerce site eBay finds that women receive consistently less money than men for selling the very same products. T: The oft-cited "cents on the dollar" claims, though, ought perhaps be taken with a grain of salt; it depends who's counting, and what.
We women need to stick together and vote for a female president who will fix all our issues!
New owner, same third wave feminist bull.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Obviously, people check the gender of the merchant before buying from them.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Yay, weekend's here.
Why are we not done with this SJW tripe?
Why is this story even on Slashdot? Meet the new management, same as the old management.
For one, how do you know the sex of an ebay seller?
For two, are we sure it's a significant difference?
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
As an almighty man I ensure I only purchase from other almighty men.
-Dick Masterson
Let me try and understand this - are they suggesting that bidders go 'Gosh, that stuff is being sold by ILIKEPINKKITTENS who is probably female so therefore I'll bid less as I'm a pig and hate women'?
Reads article: Hmmm, apparently they're not sure why, but think it's something to do with how men and women describe things.
Damn those Mansellers and their unfair use of words.
This is a study looking at sale prices by gender. Which turns out to be an utter waste of time as the study notes a less than 3% (well within the margin of error) difference. How did this make Slashdot?
"Women in the United States are paid only 79 cents on the dollar compared with men doing the same job" is just an outright lie. It's not even "take with a grain of salt".
From the most Leftist source available:
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/wage-gap_b_2073804.html
Wage gap dissappear when you controll for job type and hours worked.
Just looking at raw ebay data doesn't cut it. You would need a controlled test using the exact same product description, the exact same seller feedback for both the man and woman sellers, exact same reserve price, etc. with the only difference being the name of the seller (male or female sounding).
Otherwise the discrepancy could just be something as simple as a difference in how men and women describe their product.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The summary doesn't really reflect the articles findings. Yes female identified sellers received less money that sellers identified as male but once it was corrected for various things the difference was down to 97c per dollar. So the difference is no where near the level the summary, or even the opening part of the article claims.
There are also huge windows of error in their statistical sampling. They analysed 1.1m records but only had 400 sellers names assessed for expected gender. From those 35% couldn't be guessed an 9% got it wrong. So to apply that level of inaccuracy and then claim 3% as a significant difference is a bit of a stretch.
Labor is a good, but not all goods are labor. So to say they're not being paid as much for their labor is a little silly, even for identical goods. If for no other reason, the article says that men and women have different styles in their descriptions; do women perhaps take more time to write them, or less time for that matter? "Pay per unit of labor" isn't as easy as it sounds. The only high-volume eBay sellers who I happen to personally know are women, and they've put a lot of time into relatively low-markup sales --- but that's such a small sample size it doesn't really matter.
That, aside from the uncritically-repeated but highly suspect statistic here; the implication is that businesses all over the U.S. are either accidentally or intentionally overpaying (and overpaying a lot!) for labor. Maybe that's true, but it seems an extraordinary claim of the variety that demands extraordinary evidence, especially since it's been dissected so many times and found to be (at least mostly) bullshit.
Is there discrimination based on sex, or gender, or height, or weight, or (most obviously and most talked about) racial group membership? Sure. Is it both invidious and prevalent in the way blandly portayed? Eh, that seems hard to sustain.
That said, I don't know why (just like it sounds like the researchers don't) the difference they found exists; maybe their metholology sucks. Maybe buyers infer something different about asking prices when buying from women. (One thing I wonder about is whether there is also a trend in sex of the purchasers -- i.e. do women buy more from women and less from men?)
Walmart gets a lot less money for selling the exact same things I do.
Perhaps we should help them out :O
Besides, WTF! 90% of the ones I looked at are gender neutral. Which gender do I assign to: buybuybuy ? 1st page of 25 items on watch list had 2 (presumably) male names.
This study is offensive and neglects legal persons .
This is a new low in ridiculousness. There are so many holes in this "study" that is is not even funny.
The women are setting their own prices here with things like Buy It Now. So I guess women are intentionally setting their starting prices lower to earn less money?
Also a billion factors could account for this "result" such as how the pages look, what is the appeal of the color scheme, how is it written, how are the photos taken, what language is used to describe it, etc, etc. I am guessing that if you found every buyer here and asked them if the thought "that's a woman, I won't buy from her and/or I will bid less because she is a woman" was not considered even ONE TIME by ANY of the buyers in this "study."
All of those surveys they keep touting do NOT compare same (or even similar) jobs and experience. They usually compare anything BUT the same job, with the same hours. Sure, the headlines claim that, but when you look at the surveys, it's just not true.
When they do get around to comparing similar jobs, women get the same pay (or even slightly more), right up until they start having children. Then, they either leave the job market completely (not as common nowadays) or work fewer hours. I have never worked at any place where the women generally worked more hours than the men. I've worked a lot at places where the men worked many, many more hours than the women.
Here's the kicker: if women really were paid 20% less for the same work, who would hire men? Any company that hired only women at that rate would have a huge price differential over their competitors.
The gender pay gap in today advance societies can largely be attributed to men generally being more aggressive when it comes to negotiations, be it the pricing of wares on ebay or negotiations on salary, raises or contracts. Aggressive tactics do come with risk and women seems to be more averse to risk then men. Youtube videos of people hurting themselves with ill-advised acts are largely men. As the saying goes No Guts, No Glory, thou much of the time the quest for Glory end with a rather painful punch to the gut
The answer is actually extremely obvious- on average, men are better at selling on Ebay than women. The paper even did an analysis that showed there were differences between how men and women tended to structure their language in the bids.
I see it as a very nice study, just not for the reasons the authors state; as anyone who has ever bought on Ebay knows, you have no idea the gender of the seller, therefore the finding is not being driven by the consumer, but rather the seller.
Hilarious the authors didn't seem to grasp this obvious point though..
All verifiable studies conclude no such wage gap exists. Women make $0.98 per dollar of their male counterparts with far more women making more than men above the median mark. Plus more female out-layers making substantially more than males. The average wage difference is directly attributed to a number of sociological issues which have absolutely nothing to do with misogyny. To the contrary, the slant which benefits many more women than men is believed to be men actively assisting women beyond their male counterparts as well as many vocations which discriminate against men.
Sorry, but anyone who says there is a gap gap is an idiot.
Want to buy a jump to conclusions mat, too?
Stuff sells on ebay for at least the minimum price the seller puts on their auction, or whatever lower offer they themselves choose to accept.
You get my point? Its the seller not the buyer that completely determines the minimum price they will accept.
If women are on average getting less money than men for the exact same products, that clearly means women are either setting their minimum price too low or are more prepared to accept lowball offers.
The only possible valid conclusion from this report is that on average, women are actually worse at business than men.
Of course they're not going to get much for their labor there. They should be posting on eBaby, obviously.
Wow that's two leftist bullshit stories in just a few minutes. This must be a record. Apparently Slashdot is now "news for feminazis and climatechange terrorists, stuff that doesn't matter to anyone with common sense."
They are making the same invalid assumption as the Github study, namely that sellers that identify their gender are statistically the same as those that don't. In fact, the Github study itself showed that they don't. The difference is probably something harmless; for example, it is possible (even likely) that older people tend to use their first names more frequently, and are more likely to have first names that can be classified by gender.
Not this tired old meme again.
They don't get paid less for "The same job", they get paid less because they take different jobs and, on average, work less hours than men.
It's like people forgot about the Equal Pay Act of 1963.
But hey, controversy sells and gets ad revenue. It doesn't matter if it's true or not.
about women, blacks, whatever not this and not that. I'm a college-educated white male working in IT in his forties who doesn't give a rat's ass about:
- Women's pay;
- How many blacks are in tech;
- How many women in tech;
and neither should you. What people make is none of your business. I truly miss the patriarchal days of my youth, when my father could and did support us on his income. My mother stayed home and raised us kids. She was happy. I've asked. So were most of the women then. Things were simpler, arguably better for families, and we didn't have these fucking feminist assclowns, homosexuals, and "diversity" numbnuts spouting off at the mouth.
I hear this kind of stuff being said all the time like it is some sort of general rule but the reality it seems that this is not actually happening in most companies. With most places, any pay discrepancies that might exist between two people of any gender who work for the same employer can almost always be accounted for by the fact that the people whose salaries are being compared are doing different jobs, or have else have differing responsibilities at work.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
All our times have Prefeerably with an
Reads article: Hmmm, apparently they're not sure why, but think it's something to do with how men and women describe things.
The researchers determined that 44% of the user names could be easily determined, and that 9% of the user names where usually guessed wrong. So what I would like to see is the results for user names that looked male but were actually run by a female, and vice versa. That should have been done long before running imperfect sentiment analysis.
If the user name Mike1923 was actually a woman, did that seller also make 80% of what the actually male user Tom8463 made? If not, the study might be on to something with their SJW claims. Otherwise the research just shows their sentiment analysis isn't good enough., or they didn't do a good enough job controlling for other factors.
Considering they missed this obvious method of determining if the results were valid, I'm voting they didn't do a good enough job controlling factors.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
If women are selling products for lower cost it may be because this is right price to earn the most money. On e-bay commonly the lowest priced item is the dominant seller. For hihg volume sellers the e-bay fees can become fixed costs. As a result the more you sell the lower your overhead and the higher the profit margin. So women may be higher volume sellers, getting more revenue and likely more profits as well.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Maybe it's because men are selling stolen goods and they want compensation for their labor.
But they are also greedy and will do anything for profit, except hire all women and raise profits significantly.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Women, on average, do earn less money, that is a fact. Women are paid the same or slightly more for the same work though. Also a fact. Several several recent studies found that, go look them up. If women seek employment conditions that pay less, than that is not any discrimination, it is them using their freedoms in a different way than men. Again, on average. And there is certainly nothing here that needs fixing if they earn the same for the same work. Which they do.
As to Ebay, it is not possible to identify the gender of a seller, unless they advertise it. Hence maybe the problem is again that this is not the same thing being sold or that making it about gender and not the product decreases the profit?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
someone is going to realize it is because women are willing to accept .79 on the $1 less than men for the same job / product / anything and it had nothing to do with evil men trying to oppress anyone.
I was looking at the 34 most embarrassing photos on the internet.
The link under #8 said a woman near where I live was earning $430/day online. The link under #19 said that a man nearby was earning $590/day.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
The REASON women get paid less is because they LET people pay them less. The reason women pay more is because they LET people charge them more.
The only people who can solve the problem with women is women. If you don't like the fact that a pink bicycle costs more than a blue one, then...and I know this is going to be hard to comprehend...
DON'T BUY THE PINK BICYCLE!
The fact that you keep buying the overpriced pink shit or working for substandard pay just ENCOURAGES THOSE THINGS TO KEEP HAPPENING!
It's a very repeated lie. ... into account.
If it was true, companies would only hire women.
Women actually earn more than men, when you take work hours, seniority productivity
Heck, in some cases they earn insanely more (super models : females earns hundreds of times more than males)
Testosterone! So obviously people can detect the sex of merchants on ebay via the hormonal fluxes of the interwebs.
Meanwhile in the more vacuous corners of blatherspace some "progressives" have decided that this weeks agenda is that there is really no such thing as male or female and you can't tell from looking at a person's brain. I think they are using the term Sexual Fluidity, or Fluid Sexuality, either way it is some combination of sex and fluids.
The obvious conclusion is that women's work just isn't worth as much.
It all comes down to personal decisions It has absolutely nothing to do with gender.
Your personal decisions affect your earning potentials. Women typically made different personal decisions than men. And I say this as a stay at home dad that has earned 80% of what my peers have because of my own personal decisions
2) Product choice might also affect it. I could easily see men choosing to only sell something if it is worth it, while women might be making things for the pleasure and thinking, why not sell it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Women belong in the kitchen taking care of the kids and cooking and cleaning for her husband.
Male-to-female transsexuals often look like dudes in a dress.
Female-to-male transsexuals often look like short dudes, especially if they rock some facial hair.
People see a short dude with a higher pitched voice, well, it's a short dude.
People see someone in a dress with a voice like Barry White and a jawline that even the Greek gods might envy, and they're gonna be weirded out.
Appearance matters, like it or not. It shouldn't, but it does, and can and will affect the amount of money you can make by virtue of who will hire you and for what.
Since when can you know the gender of a seller on e-bay ? Ah yes : it seems it's possible to advertise your gender (and not lie about it ?). I didn't know. Then again I only care about reputation and the pristine state of what I'm buying. (Is it just me ?)
The title would be reason enough to discard the article.
If it was "Women get less money for their items" it would already have a bad smell.
How do you compare items sold in eBay ? It's either shops, either second hand stuff in various states.
Did the study found sellers for the exact same product in the same general state ?
It suggests (and "found") men would describe the article differently. But, maybe the descriptions are actually accurate ? (yes, I actually read the article)
It says the users seem to be accurate at guessing the sex of the seller from his nickname about 56% of the time! (What ? You mean like if there was 50% chances to guess it wrong ?) And goes on about unconscious gender bias. (And me thinking it was simply basic heads/tails statistics)
And this heap of dung "findings" is presented as "because they are women".
If all the above had the modicum of credibility, one could expect a title in the vein of "on eBay, women suck at sales". Not very politically correct but since when feelings are relevant presenting data ?
But the title starts with "Even", implying a trend. (Do you feel the rot?) And, naturally, it's repeating that old lie about women earning less. Going up to finding a 0.80 on the dollar close to the usual 0.79 (or so) repeated by the lie. This casts yet more doubt on the "study". (If it was still needed)
Who said "bias" ? Who said "doctored numbers" ? Who said "agenda" ?
I just looked-up the first writer (Tamar Kricheli-Katz) on google and was not too surprised it's a woman with a page on "The Clayman institute for gender research" where you can find equally illuminating studies. Still, I thought it was funny (and a bit sad also).
And this gets published in a "science" magazine, then reported on the news for nerds. Is this the worthless "social science" I heard about ?
What's up next ? "We actually use 9% of our brain, not 10 as previously believed (by other morons)" ?
Oh, wait, don't tell me. I know : "Everything is sexist" ?
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
If you hired a man only because they were a man, or a white person only because they were white, you would be breaking the law and almost surely face a lawsuit for discrimination. There are laws on the books to protect people from discrimination, and more often than not the benefit of the doubt goes to the plaintiff.
In other words, people living in society face economic sanctions if they break the law. You can attempt to imply that laws don't exist all you want. You can further attempt to imply that laws are not enforced. Facts prove you wrong on both accounts.
I believe it is because female sellers sell their product at a more reasonable price, therefore, receiving less money for the same item. This may explain the conundrum. This is what I noticed from my purchases. Assuming the usernames reflect gender. Don't worry ladies you can gain it back with volume. Keep selling and I'll keep buying from you. Deal.
I have always wondered if benefits are included in the calculation. Women often get benefits that men do not, for example paid maternity leave, contraceptives, etc. I would be willing to bet that if benefits were included the gap would be a lot closer to equal.
You're a fucking feminist idiot
and if a transexual has sex with a man without telling them, the tranny should be charged with rape.
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I've been pleased with the improved stories from last week versus a few months ago. Thank goodness for the change in ownership. Mediocrity is a fact of life, especially for a free website.
Obviously so false as to elicit moral outrage from the male sex, this is a poor post even by current Slashdot standards.
The headline could also read: "Men better at selling stuff than women on eBay."
Because that is what selling stuff is all about: getting the highest revenue out of your products.
It's a headline you could easily be chastised for, but only by those who consider 'selling stuff' a skill of the light side. Personally, I believe trying to sell stuff to people can bring out the worst in people. Bluffing, exaggerating and positively misrepresenting in general are (alas) skills that aid sales. I would not at all be surprised if men on average tend to be more trained in these skills.
I think the answer you are looking for is institutionalised sexism. Lots of posts here on Slashdot have confirmed that women aren't deemed worthy, when customers wanted to talk to someone. Either be it "the boss" or someone who knows stuff. We are living in the service industry. Upwards of 80% of people work in the service industry. It doesn't matter how good your product/service is or how high your labor costs are. If you aren't selling your services your business fails. Because of institutionalised sexism, customers demand is for male services. Thus women get paid less and businesses that pay men more for essentially the same work still thrive.
and again I say, *yawn
So you're going for the conclusion that the woman was too stupid to realize she would be reflected on the TV (or see it)?
The claim "Women in the United States are paid only 79 cents on the dollar compared with men doing the same job." has been dismissed by any number of studies. Women's collective average pay is about 80% of men's collective average pay, but that is a different notion altogether and is explained largely by women's self-selection in traditionally low-paying jobs, albeit jobs with generally higher flexibility.
Men and women with the same experience, education, and job *and* who put in the same number of work hours per week tend to make virtually identical the same earnings. When the former is true, but the later is not, even among same-gender groups, any difference is strongly tied to the fewer number of hours worked. I.e., men who work fewer hours than other men get paid less and those men are paid at commensurate with the wages of similarly situated women.
This is all true even in industries where women outnumber men by large margins and where the barriers are almost all self-imposed. For example, women real-estate brokers running their own business tend to earn less than men in the same situation.
Use your brain for something other than a hat-rack.
/thread for all time
eBay is a digital medium. The sex of the business owner/seller is not known. Ergo, you must assume that it is not a result of society, BUT THE FUCKING PERSON DOING THE WORK.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Dude....I think you just won the internet
"Women in the United States are paid only 79 cents on the dollar compared with men doing the same job"
Are you even awake, editors? Why are blatant lies allowed in submissions? Why is sciencehabit not banned for being a lying moron?
I guess I need to become a subscriber to demand these types of "news" begone from /.
Women might just be willing to accept less?
Waiting a while before repeating the same old bu11$#1+ statistic doesn't make it true.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Why doesn't anyone do a study on women in coal mining or women in garbage collection?
"Women in the United States are paid only 79 cents on the dollar compared with men doing the same job"
No. Women in the United States are paid only 79 cents on the dollar compared with men doing different jobs. For equal work, women are paid equally, within the margin of error, in most categories, and equally overall. The reason they only earn 79% as much is because they only do 79% as much work in the paid economy.
From a paleo perspective, genetically, men who get more, get more, if you know what I mean... and women who give more get more. Maybe it's just how we are wired?