I'm all for people behaving better. I'm observing that what drives women out of IT in statistically significant numbers is "bad" behaviour because other, comparable fields don't have the same problems, at least not as bad. In other words, it's addressable. It's not "people being people" behaviour that you identify as unchangeable. It's not that a woman leaves IT, therefore a man drove her out. It's that when a bunch of women consistently leave IT and say it's because the environment is a juvenile boys club full of macho posturing and dirty jokes and pornography, then maybe there's a system-wide problem.
So if it is bad behaviour--i.e., something that can be discouraged--why are women "victimization-mongers" for pointing it out and trying to discourage it?
So, why are you so sure the current difference isn't fair, for women as a whole group (i.e. anecdotal evidence is meaningless)?
First, because we have a long and sexist history of unfairly excluding women from most professions. Occam's Razor suggesst that this obvious cause is sufficient to explain the disparity.
Second, as you yourself observe, possible actual differences do not necessarily justify existing differences. A 2% disparity in ability does not justify a 13% disparity in compensation based on ability. I don't think it's impossible that real differences exists that would show up as disparities in participation numbers between the sexes. I think that we can't really discover that until we've basically eliminated the much more obvious cause of institutional and social sexism.
The point about negotiating salaries is a good one, because it's widely demonstrated that women don't negotiate as often or as hard as men do. But that doesn't fully explain the differences.
Your assumption flies in the fact of a multitude of evidence. Mine simply looks at the facts.
Your anecdata is not facts. My assumption is based on widespread evidence of women in fields like law, medicine and accounting (fields of similar intellectual demands as IT), who participate in far greater numbers and whose income gap has been steadily closing.
If you took the average salary of the NBA and then split them out by east and west, and found that east is paid more on average than west, would you conclude that players in the west are better, or have some natural difference that makes them superior and hence worth greater compensation?
No, you'd conclude that the western owners are a bunch of cheap bastards.
If you split them out by religion and found that Muslim players are paid less (assuming sufficient statistical sampling), would you assume that Muslims are somehow worse at basketball, or would you think that there's probably some bigotry going on there?
But I don't think one can blithely assert that women and men are of equal aptitude, on average, in any given profession.
I can and do. Given our history of institutional and social sexism, I think Occam's Razor tells me that the obvious reason for women to be under-represented and underpaid in the workforce is sexism. You're the one working from the assumption that they're different in ways that are professionally significant.
Would you, for example, argue that men, on average, are equally as effective as women in say, elementary school teaching, nursing or mothering children?
I see no reason to think that's not the case, independent of the same circumstantial problems that keep them out. That's not to say that the methods would be identical or the virtues the same, but I see no reason to think that ultimately, a man on average cannot be as effective as an average woman at traditionally female dominated roles.
Here's the thing: You're pointing to very low-level differences in brain structure to explain very complex phenomena that are undoubtedly the result of many different factors. I'm sceptical that such small differences have such an undifferentiated effect at the other end of the spectrum. It's not that I deny they have an effect, it's that I find it difficult to believe that the difference persists so cleanly up the stack, as it were.
Would you happen to know what the percentages of women in law, medicine and accounting are, and what the average pay differences are in those professions?
I'm most familiar with the example of female doctors, where women are now 30% of the doctors currently working and receive comparable pay.
I think neurology has shown the significant difference, on average, between men and women and the corpus callosum, and this difference can make a huge difference in aptitude and predilection to success in IT.
Two problems with your thoughtful comment.
First, the fields of law, medicine, and accounting all have significant and growing representation of women in them, and no apparent disparity in aptitude between the genders. On the contrary, we have a very clear recent history of barriers to female participation in those professions being removed, and women concurrently growing as a proportion of professionals. I would describe those three fields as having at least the same requirement for intellectual rigor and critical thinking as IT.
Second, it's not at all clear the demonstrable neurological differences translate all the way up the stack to differences in aptitude in IT. By analogy, the fact that men have better spatial reasoning abilities than women doesn't translate to women getting lost more when driving--men and women compensate for the deficiencies and exploit their strengths in different ways to achieve the same results. Presumably a neurological difference that prevents women from excelling in IT as a group would also be visible in other comparably intellectual fields (like law, medicine, or accounting), but we don't see that in those fields.
The thing you're neglecting is talent and a natural predilection for technology.
Which is, of course, far more abundant among men, right?
Variability in compensation between individuals due to differing ability is normalized with a sufficiently large sample size. Comparing Michael Jordan in his prime to a benchwarmer nearing retirement is, I agree, meaningless. But taking the average compensation across the NBA can tell you something worthwhile.
You normalize them with a sufficient sample size. Of course there'll be variation in compensation between two people in the same field with comparable experience. If you have 10,000 such individuals, then the variability in competence averages out.
Why do you think it was men who have driven computing since its inception?
Because at the time computing developed, women were systematically excluded from having real jobs and real professions. There were, mostly, only men around to drive computing, so of course it's men who would be driving it.
So why would you expect that by and large women would be as effective in IT as men, on average?
Because in other fields where women have been represented significantly, they've usually demonstrated that, on average, there's little if any difference between them. In law, medicine and accounting, three fields of similar rigor in terms of rational thinking to IT, there are lots of women, and no one seriously argues that they aren't as effective as men.
The better question is why you assume that women would be different from men in ways that are professionally significant in IT, given that women have clearly demonstrated over the last fifty years that they're as capable of men when allowed into the field?
The thing to observe is that many other professions with significant representation of women don't have the problems that IT does. In other words, the behaviours in IT that get singled out by women as the reason they stay away or leave the field don't exist or aren't nearly as bad in other professions--sales, for example, or medicine, or accounting. If it's true that "people are who they are", then IT wouldn't be different from other fields--they'd all show the same low rates of participation by women. That IT is different puts the lie to the idea that this is somehow "natural" behaviour. Other segments of society have discouraged the kind of sexism that's common in IT; why can't IT?
All of your handwaving about "people are who they are" really is just making excuses and protecting bad behaviour by claiming some bogus unchangeability about IT culture. Of course you can discourage it--lots of others have, and quite successfully.
The study compares "comparable experience", meaning that it controls for things like leaving to have babies or take care of children, or differential promotion rates between genders, or geography and whatnot. Saying "women leave to have babies!" does not address the wage disparity.
One item noted below that would seem to also address it is that men try to negotiate salaries far more often than women, a phenomena seen in many other fields.
When studying something like this, there's well-developed statistical methods for controlling for all the disparate factors, like geography and gender and relative sample participation and such. Reporting that women make less than men on average comes after controlling for all the variety of factors and ensuring a sufficient sample size for statistical validity. In other words, when they report "women make less than men", it's after factoring out all the things you mention.
My point is that you clearly identify the problem: making excuses and protecting bad behaviour, which allows toxic environments to persist. You do that right after making excuses and protecting the bad behaviour of the men who create an environment that women avoid.
Boo fricken hoo. Everyone always has to prove they belong in every group. Attitudes, macho or any other kind, are part of humanity. The difference is that you're using it as an excuse and trying to put women in the role of the victim here.... So what? People are who they are. Is anyone being friendly and trying to help these "alpha geek males" in any way? When was anyone nice to them? Do the people who are in "the group" speak up when someone gets put down?
And then you say:
But instead our society makes excuses and protects bad behavior (so we can get away with bad behavior when it's our turn)
It's like your standing on the edge of enlightenment, windmilling your arms to keep from falling over.
This is the cause (and the only cause) of the alleged wage disparity.
Dropping out to have babies is irrelevant. Studies comparing compensation rates are careful to control for such factors by defining "comparable experience", as the FA says.
Yes, it does. The point of the comparison is that, for X and Y, if they have the same schooling and the same number of years at the same job (and controlling for other factors like geography), you'd expect them to receive approximately the same compensation. But when you break it out between men and women, you find that women with comparable experience get paid about 12% less than men.
Individual comparisons can vary widely, but with a statistically sound sample size, you can reliably distinguish between factors like geography or gender.
Time spent on the job at the same tasks. It doesn't matter if X and Y are vastly different productively at an individual level, if you have a sufficient sample size.
Unless you're sure that women are, on average, less productive than men in IT.
Next time, RTFA. The figure is specifically adjusted for "comparable experience", just to factor out time off for maternity leave and childcare. Paying women less for comparable experience is pure sexism.
But there's a nice unexamined assumption in your post: Why the fuck aren't the men taking parental leave or caring for the children?
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I'm all for people behaving better. I'm observing that what drives women out of IT in statistically significant numbers is "bad" behaviour because other, comparable fields don't have the same problems, at least not as bad. In other words, it's addressable. It's not "people being people" behaviour that you identify as unchangeable. It's not that a woman leaves IT, therefore a man drove her out. It's that when a bunch of women consistently leave IT and say it's because the environment is a juvenile boys club full of macho posturing and dirty jokes and pornography, then maybe there's a system-wide problem.
So if it is bad behaviour--i.e., something that can be discouraged--why are women "victimization-mongers" for pointing it out and trying to discourage it?
You assume wrong.
So, why are you so sure the current difference isn't fair, for women as a whole group (i.e. anecdotal evidence is meaningless)?
First, because we have a long and sexist history of unfairly excluding women from most professions. Occam's Razor suggesst that this obvious cause is sufficient to explain the disparity.
Second, as you yourself observe, possible actual differences do not necessarily justify existing differences. A 2% disparity in ability does not justify a 13% disparity in compensation based on ability. I don't think it's impossible that real differences exists that would show up as disparities in participation numbers between the sexes. I think that we can't really discover that until we've basically eliminated the much more obvious cause of institutional and social sexism.
The point about negotiating salaries is a good one, because it's widely demonstrated that women don't negotiate as often or as hard as men do. But that doesn't fully explain the differences.
Your assumption flies in the fact of a multitude of evidence. Mine simply looks at the facts.
Your anecdata is not facts. My assumption is based on widespread evidence of women in fields like law, medicine and accounting (fields of similar intellectual demands as IT), who participate in far greater numbers and whose income gap has been steadily closing.
If you took the average salary of the NBA and then split them out by east and west, and found that east is paid more on average than west, would you conclude that players in the west are better, or have some natural difference that makes them superior and hence worth greater compensation?
No, you'd conclude that the western owners are a bunch of cheap bastards.
If you split them out by religion and found that Muslim players are paid less (assuming sufficient statistical sampling), would you assume that Muslims are somehow worse at basketball, or would you think that there's probably some bigotry going on there?
they are better nerds
Bullshit. Why do you think they're better nerds?
But I don't think one can blithely assert that women and men are of equal aptitude, on average, in any given profession.
I can and do. Given our history of institutional and social sexism, I think Occam's Razor tells me that the obvious reason for women to be under-represented and underpaid in the workforce is sexism. You're the one working from the assumption that they're different in ways that are professionally significant.
Would you, for example, argue that men, on average, are equally as effective as women in say, elementary school teaching, nursing or mothering children?
I see no reason to think that's not the case, independent of the same circumstantial problems that keep them out. That's not to say that the methods would be identical or the virtues the same, but I see no reason to think that ultimately, a man on average cannot be as effective as an average woman at traditionally female dominated roles.
Here's the thing: You're pointing to very low-level differences in brain structure to explain very complex phenomena that are undoubtedly the result of many different factors. I'm sceptical that such small differences have such an undifferentiated effect at the other end of the spectrum. It's not that I deny they have an effect, it's that I find it difficult to believe that the difference persists so cleanly up the stack, as it were.
Would you happen to know what the percentages of women in law, medicine and accounting are, and what the average pay differences are in those professions?
I'm most familiar with the example of female doctors, where women are now 30% of the doctors currently working and receive comparable pay.
When come back, understand how statistical sampling works. Individual variations in ability don't matter if you normalize across enough individuals.
I think neurology has shown the significant difference, on average, between men and women and the corpus callosum, and this difference can make a huge difference in aptitude and predilection to success in IT.
Two problems with your thoughtful comment.
First, the fields of law, medicine, and accounting all have significant and growing representation of women in them, and no apparent disparity in aptitude between the genders. On the contrary, we have a very clear recent history of barriers to female participation in those professions being removed, and women concurrently growing as a proportion of professionals. I would describe those three fields as having at least the same requirement for intellectual rigor and critical thinking as IT.
Second, it's not at all clear the demonstrable neurological differences translate all the way up the stack to differences in aptitude in IT. By analogy, the fact that men have better spatial reasoning abilities than women doesn't translate to women getting lost more when driving--men and women compensate for the deficiencies and exploit their strengths in different ways to achieve the same results. Presumably a neurological difference that prevents women from excelling in IT as a group would also be visible in other comparably intellectual fields (like law, medicine, or accounting), but we don't see that in those fields.
The thing you're neglecting is talent and a natural predilection for technology.
Which is, of course, far more abundant among men, right?
Variability in compensation between individuals due to differing ability is normalized with a sufficiently large sample size. Comparing Michael Jordan in his prime to a benchwarmer nearing retirement is, I agree, meaningless. But taking the average compensation across the NBA can tell you something worthwhile.
You normalize them with a sufficient sample size. Of course there'll be variation in compensation between two people in the same field with comparable experience. If you have 10,000 such individuals, then the variability in competence averages out.
Why do you think it was men who have driven computing since its inception?
Because at the time computing developed, women were systematically excluded from having real jobs and real professions. There were, mostly, only men around to drive computing, so of course it's men who would be driving it.
So why would you expect that by and large women would be as effective in IT as men, on average?
Because in other fields where women have been represented significantly, they've usually demonstrated that, on average, there's little if any difference between them. In law, medicine and accounting, three fields of similar rigor in terms of rational thinking to IT, there are lots of women, and no one seriously argues that they aren't as effective as men.
The better question is why you assume that women would be different from men in ways that are professionally significant in IT, given that women have clearly demonstrated over the last fifty years that they're as capable of men when allowed into the field?
The thing to observe is that many other professions with significant representation of women don't have the problems that IT does. In other words, the behaviours in IT that get singled out by women as the reason they stay away or leave the field don't exist or aren't nearly as bad in other professions--sales, for example, or medicine, or accounting. If it's true that "people are who they are", then IT wouldn't be different from other fields--they'd all show the same low rates of participation by women. That IT is different puts the lie to the idea that this is somehow "natural" behaviour. Other segments of society have discouraged the kind of sexism that's common in IT; why can't IT?
All of your handwaving about "people are who they are" really is just making excuses and protecting bad behaviour by claiming some bogus unchangeability about IT culture. Of course you can discourage it--lots of others have, and quite successfully.
The study compares "comparable experience", meaning that it controls for things like leaving to have babies or take care of children, or differential promotion rates between genders, or geography and whatnot. Saying "women leave to have babies!" does not address the wage disparity.
One item noted below that would seem to also address it is that men try to negotiate salaries far more often than women, a phenomena seen in many other fields.
Did I fail to address you point in my comment above? I said, yes, it does refer to job history and education.
When studying something like this, there's well-developed statistical methods for controlling for all the disparate factors, like geography and gender and relative sample participation and such. Reporting that women make less than men on average comes after controlling for all the variety of factors and ensuring a sufficient sample size for statistical validity. In other words, when they report "women make less than men", it's after factoring out all the things you mention.
My point is that you clearly identify the problem: making excuses and protecting bad behaviour, which allows toxic environments to persist. You do that right after making excuses and protecting the bad behaviour of the men who create an environment that women avoid.
Oh you sweet, benighted AC. You really believe this, don't you?
It's not about being dishonest, it's about clueless, and frequently willfully so.
You say:
And then you say:
It's like your standing on the edge of enlightenment, windmilling your arms to keep from falling over.
Your anecdata is meaningless confirmation bias.
This is the cause (and the only cause) of the alleged wage disparity.
Dropping out to have babies is irrelevant. Studies comparing compensation rates are careful to control for such factors by defining "comparable experience", as the FA says.
In short, this article is absolutely meaningless.
You're a moron.
Yes, it does. The point of the comparison is that, for X and Y, if they have the same schooling and the same number of years at the same job (and controlling for other factors like geography), you'd expect them to receive approximately the same compensation. But when you break it out between men and women, you find that women with comparable experience get paid about 12% less than men.
Individual comparisons can vary widely, but with a statistically sound sample size, you can reliably distinguish between factors like geography or gender.
Time spent on the job at the same tasks. It doesn't matter if X and Y are vastly different productively at an individual level, if you have a sufficient sample size.
Unless you're sure that women are, on average, less productive than men in IT.
Next time, RTFA. The figure is specifically adjusted for "comparable experience", just to factor out time off for maternity leave and childcare. Paying women less for comparable experience is pure sexism.
But there's a nice unexamined assumption in your post: Why the fuck aren't the men taking parental leave or caring for the children?