Research Suggests 'CS For All' May Mean Lower Pay For All

theodp writes: The NY Times reports that new research suggests as women take over a male-dominated field, the pay drops. "A striking example," writes Claire Cain Miller, "is to be found in the field of recreation — working in parks or leading camps — which went from predominantly male to female from 1950 to 2000. Median hourly wages in this field declined 57 percentage points, accounting for the change in the value of the dollar, according to a complex formula used by Professor Levanon. The job of ticket agent also went from mainly male to female during this period, and wages dropped 43 percentage points. The same thing happened when women in large numbers became designers (wages fell 34 percentage points), housekeepers (wages fell 21 percentage points) and biologists (wages fell 18 percentage points). The reverse was true when a job attracted more men. Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige." Addressing concerns raised about gender pay equity in tech, Amazon recently told the SEC to get off its case, explaining that it's working with organizations such as Code.org, the Anita Borg Institute and Girls Who Code to increase women's involvement in the technology industry. But even if such efforts achieve pay parity, will CS for All result in lower pay for all?

Comments

Supply and Demand

[JBMcB]

You mean when there is a larger supply of something, and demand stays even, the price of that thing goes down? That's crazy talk, it's almost as if this were a field of study or something. It may even involve charts.

Re: D'uh!

[WarJolt]

To add to that an individual decrease for some. A net increase for all. What's not to get?

We're going to automate 50% of the workforce right out of their jobs anyway, so I'd rather have lower pay then people on the streets.

It's been my experience that when you get great software developers together it creates demand for more software developers. I don't think a simple supply and demand model works.

Think about how many software jobs wouldn't exists without the Linux Kernel. Enabling technology creates more jobs than congress could ever hope to.

Competition Is Good - But Sometimes Bad....

[kenwd0elq]

"But even if such efforts achieve pay parity, will CS for All result in lower pay for all?"

Yes. Not because women depress pay scales, but because when more and more people get into a field, competition inevitably causes lower prices. Lowe prices for the things we buy - like groceries or electronics - is good. Competition in the stuff we sell - like our labor - is bad.

I used to be just like you!

[Anonymous Coward]

I woke up one day in my late thirties, alone, burned out and grossly overweight. I spent thousands of dollars on dating services and many dates with obese head cases.

My employer then fired us all and sent the work to India.

I realized I spent the best years of my life in front of a fucking computer allowing myself to be exploited by employers who took advantage of my "passion". And when you get into your 40s, employers don't give a rat's ass about your 'passion' because they want cheap 20 somethings who are stupid enough to spend all their time in front of the computer and training themselves on their own dime and time.

To make a long story short, all of your "passion" will amount to nothing in the end.

And the 6' 3" ballplayer with the square jaw who got his degree in Marketing that we laughed at when we all started? Well, while we were getting kicked out after our jobs were off-shored to India, he was getting kicked up to the executive suite.

Just to put things into perspective for you guys.

Re:SJW crap

[oakgrove]

Reality is rarely politically correct.

Re:D'uh!

[Njorthbiatr]

Nah, because all of this "everyone learns to code" thing is more or less crap.

We also teach everyone how to do math, if you recall. And the vast majority of population /still/ can't do it, despite such a huge educational focus. And despite the efforts of Common Core and other initiatives to improve math literacy, the actual number of people who will end up doing math professionally probably won't change.

The number of competent programmers may increase slightly, but comparing a career in programming to a career of "recreation", it's bullshit. This study is nothing more than some SJW spewed crap and Cornell should be ashamed to even ever put their name on it. It manipulates figures to make itself sound meaningful. Consider:

TFA:
"Consider the discrepancies in jobs requiring similar education and responsibility, or similar skills, but divided by gender. The median earnings of information technology managers (mostly men) are 27 percent higher than human resources managers (mostly women)"

Wow so they compared two different fields with supposedly "similar" education and responsibility and then concluded that because one of female dominated, wages are higher for one than the other. I guess logic isn't something they did well with.

TFA:
"The same thing happened when women in large numbers became designers (wages fell 34 percentage points), housekeepers (wages fell 21 percentage points) and biologists (wages fell 18 percentage points). The reverse was true when a job attracted more men. Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige."

I'm sure this had nothing to do with the apparent increase and demand in computer programming, not to mention how the field has evolved over the past five or six decades at an incredible rate. The focus has shifted from menially making punch cards to writing OOP in a high level language. The actual job changed so dramatically and the skills required to do it increased quite dramatically.

TFA:
"While the pay gap has been closing, it remains wide. Over all, in fields where men are the majority, the median pay is $962 a week — 21 percent higher than in occupations with a majority of women, according to another new study, published Friday by Third Way, a research group that aims to advance centrist policy ideas."

Another failure to do basic statistics. Maybe women simply choose lower-paying jobs due to social expectations of them to choose said jobs. Other factors also play into it, but this statistic is completely meaningless. They even mention this themselves: "Yes, women sometimes voluntarily choose lower-paying occupations because they are drawn to work that happens to pay less, like caregiving or nonprofit jobs, or because they want less demanding jobs because they have more family responsibilities outside of work."

TFA:
"But many social scientists say there are other factors that are often hard to quantify, like gender bias and social pressure, that bring down wages for women’s work."

Then don't fucking try to quantify it until you can.

---

And that's all I can handle of this supposedly "scientific" study. Cornell is shit for publishing it, and so is the author.

It actually goes like this:

[fyngyrz]

Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige

It actually goes like this:

Extremely simplistic computer programming done in the earliest days of trivial computer architectures and largely trivial computing tasks, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by anyone possessed of a week's familiarization and two wet brain cells to rub together. But as computer architectures became more sophisticated, and the programs written under them were both more aggressively complex and able to utilize considerably broader and deeper resources in terms of both hardware and data, the job began paying more and gained prestige. A process that continues to this day.

Re:SJW crap

[superwiz]

"I've never found a woman coworker to be even half as passionate about technology and computers as I am."

+5 for this misogynist crap?

While it does seem like he is implying a sweeping generalization based on his personal experience, he does stop short of actually making such a generalization. So his response is less knee-jerk than yours.