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.

Comments

Obviously

[penguinoid]

Obviously, people check the gender of the merchant before buying from them.

Re:Obviously

[thesupraman]

More to the point, I was under the understanding that the majority of online purchased are now made BY women.
So, women are paying women less for items? Wow, do we need a whole new ism for that? ;)

The usual 'lets make up some numbers and cry from the rooftop' bunk. The gender 'pay gap' has been
solidly debunked (and in fact shown to be slightly pro-women) as soon as you include time in the job as
a factor (which it most certainly needs to be).

However, how about a little focus on something that IS real. The males excluded from teaching gap!
Dont take my word for it, go and have a look at who is teaching our children. Equality? you better not
be wanting any of THAT, men have been forced out in droves by exactly the people who are squealing
for 'equality'. After all, hearts and minds people, get them while they are young!
Over the top hyperbole? of course, but that seems to be the way this is played now, which is a great
pity, but really, men have being actively pushed out of teaching at a huge rate, and no one cares?

And lets not even go near mens health, death rates, the whitewashing of prostate cancer, etc. Lets
just sweep that all under the carpet, what REALLY matters is making sure all CEOs are women! go team!

Re:Obviously

[Austerity Empowers]

I can't even think of a way to check the gender of the merchant.

I can't even be sure of the species of some of them.

Re:Obviously

[ShanghaiBill]

So, women are paying women less for items? Wow, do we need a whole new ism for that? ;)

There is nothing new about this 'ism. Talk to any female manager, and most of them will tell you they have more problems with female subordinates than with male subordinates. If you want to see some real conflict, assign a young woman to manage older women. Groups of men/boys will naturally form hierarchies, and they don't have too much trouble fitting a woman into that system. Women/girls naturally form smaller non-hierarchical egalitarian groups, and they tend to resist any alpha-female trying to dominate.

Re:Obviously

[Tablizer]

I can't even be sure of the species of some [merchants]

I did check, and dogs are paid 43 cents on the dollar compared to human males. That's ruff.

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that representing your gender is 'immaterial' though not necessarily 'stupid' if you want to try to garner support from your gender or otherwise play on the expectation that 'helping women succeed based only on their gender is a good thing'...I just bought a bottle of CLR at Walmart & was surprised to see on the label 'Woman Owned'...when I saw that I thought 'Seriously, you want me to base a decision on that? As a man I'm insulted & I should just put this back to make a point'...given I wanted to try CLR for a while I bought it anyway but since it didn't exactly knock my socks off (nor worse or better than other cleaning products) I'm also just as inclined never to buy it again BECAUSE of that label...you can say I'm discriminating if you want but the company owners shouldn't be trying to use their gender as a means to expect me to buy their product...they want me to 'discriminate for them' and as such I'm perfectly comfortable using that against them.

Re:Obviously

[Ol Olsoc]

There is nothing new about this 'ism. Talk to any female manager, and most of them will tell you they have more problems with female subordinates than with male subordinates.

My wife agrees. The men she supervised were in construction - hardly a bastion of SNAGS (Sensitive New Age Guys) The women? Sneaky, backstabbing and gossipy. The men loved her and did what they were told. The women? Well, one did. And she was another Alpha chick. The rest were more interested in who was supposedly laying who to get ahead, and "I hate that bitch, she's so skinny and pretty!"

As I've noted before, at some point, some how some way, we're going to have to acknowledge that not only men have issues. Many women stand in the way of other women's success. How can that be fixed when we are only allowed to believe it is men.

Re:Vote Hillary Clinton! Women Unite!!

[Archangel Michael]

Hillary pays her male staff more than her female staff. Or does hypocrisy count?

From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Looking at median salaries among full-time, year-round employees, the Free Beacon concluded that women working in Clinton’s Senate office were paid 72 cents for each dollar paid to men.

I am sure that you'll be happy to make excuses or quote methodology (as did HuffPo), but when you're UNWILLING to do the same for studies you agree with then that too is Hypocrisy.

The fact is, if women were a better value at 72 Cents on the dollar, any business would be foolish to hire men.

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:uhh maybe they're pricing their goods lower?

[Anonymous Coward]

The auctions set up by women are in comic sans.

This would need a controlled test

[NotDrWho]

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.

"79 cents" ...but not "for the same job."

[cirby]

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.

Re: uhh maybe they're pricing their goods lower?

[Harlequin80]

And for something so pivotal it isn't particularly thorough.

From TFA "To see whether gender was apparent in an eBay auction, they challenged 400 people to guess the gender of 100 randomly chosen sellers. Just using clues like the names of the sellers and what other items they tended to sell, participants correctly guessed the gender of 56%, declared 35% unguessable, and got less than 9% wrong"

From that they get 44% incorrect. That is a fucking MASSIVE error level to apply to your stats. Particularly once you correct for other things and are claiming only a 3% differential.