Gender Pay Gap - Not Actually that Big?

[JonA]

I suppose it depends on how you measure it.

New Gender Pay-Gap Studies are Challenging Conventional Wisdom

Using median pay for all workers, women make 21% less than men

Adjusted for factors such as hours, gap may be as little as 3%
...

Taking into account several factors, the difference could be just pennies, the studies, from think tanks on different places on the political spectrum, found.
...

Government can play a role, she said, because the difference grows as women advance in their careers, probably due to child-care duties that disproportionately limit their options and thus their pay.

Interesting.

What are the best options?

 

[dismal]

Doesn't everyone know this by now?

Maybe we need to get the attorney general prosecuting these people who keep repeating this misleading anti-science idea there is a large gender pay gap.

 

[bigfield]

One factor that government can even out a little is the impact of parenting upon people career advancement.

By offering government-funded parental leave equally to both mothers and fathers, parents can take equal amounts of parental leave. Mothers can return to the workforce sooner than they otherwise would and reduce the impact on their career advancement, and vice versa for fathers.

 

[Achwienichtig]

Freakonomics did a really good podcast on the gender wage gap. It's definitely worth listening to.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/true-story-gender-pay-gap/

 

[ronburgundy]

We have gone over this multiple times. Economic analysis that enter all kinds of control variables for correlational data are of valid causal attributions for the observed pay gap difference. They cannot tell us that the gap is due to something other than discrimination. They can only tell us that the data that is available does not allow us to attribute it to discrimination or to other causes.

The problem is that the people who do such research so frequently ignore the massive biases they are imposing on their interpretations via their presumed causal relationships.
In this case, a major presumption is that time in the workforce can only be a cause of pay differential and not an effect of pay differential. If women are discriminated against for being women by getting lower pay they are more likely to leave a particular job, a field of work, or either reduce their work hours or the workforce altogether and let their husband who get more because he is a man work while she raises the kids. All of these factors, which can be effects of getting lower pay, would wind up manifesting themselves as "less hours per week" and "less time on the job", which are the primary variables that the researchers are attributing the wage gap to.
Their economic analyses are incapable of distinguishing this causal pattern from these researchers assume is possible, which is that the women are paid equal but choose for their own various reasons to work less, switch jobs, leave the work force etc.. When you enter these variables as "controls" in the analyses and the most of the wage gap "goes away", that is what would happen for both of these causal scenarios.

BTW, this abuse of multivariate correlational analysis is not limited to those trying to discount gender discrimination in pay. It is a rampant problem in the social sciences where researchers, who were never trained in actual experimental scientific methods which allow for causal inference, learn complex statistical approaches to correlational data and get deluded into thinking they can use them to "reveal" the true causal relations among factors, which they cannot.
All these methods can do is show you patterns of shared and unshared variance that you then must interpret in terms of its consistency with the patterns predicted by various possible causal models. The number of and reasonableness of the possible causal models you consider will determine the validity of your causal inferences, which in most cases of non-experimental data can never be made with more than modest confidence.

In sum, what the OP and the Feakonomics data show is that the wage gap is AS consistent (not more consistent) with the cause being hours and time on job versus discrimination with those variables being effects of discrimination and partial mediators of discrimination.

 

[JonA]

By offering government-funded parental leave equally to both mothers and fathers, parents can take equal amounts of parental leave. Mothers can return to the workforce sooner than they otherwise would and reduce the impact on their career advancement, and vice versa for fathers.

Bingo!

 

[dismal]

In sum, what the OP and the Feakonomics data show is that the wage gap is AS consistent (not more consistent) with the cause being hours and time on job versus discrimination with those variables being effects of discrimination and partial mediators of discrimination.

Why would you assume women and men would choose to work equal hours on the job if it were not for discrimination?

Given observable reality.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In sum, what the OP and the Feakonomics data show is that the wage gap is AS consistent (not more consistent) with the cause being hours and time on job versus discrimination with those variables being effects of discrimination and partial mediators of discrimination.

But why do you assume it's discrimination?

What you're referring to is mommy track--women who spend less time working to have more time with their children. Of course their income suffers for it. That's not discrimination.

 

[dismal]

This article hits a few of the high points:

One study by the American Association for University Women looked at women who graduated from college in 1992-93 and found that 23% of those who had become mothers were out of the workforce in 2003; another 17% were working part-time. Fewer than 2% of fathers fell into those categories. Another study, of M.B.A. graduates from Chicago's Booth School, discovered that only half of women with children were working full-time 10 years after graduation, compared with 95% of men.

Women, in fact, make up two-thirds of America's part-time workforce. A just-released report from the New York Federal Reserve has even found that "opting-out" by midcareer college-educated wives, especially those with wealthy husbands, has been increasing over the past 20 years.

Note this appears to be by choice:

All over the developed world women make up the large majority of the part-time workforce, and surveys suggest they want it that way. According to the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, in 2008 only 4% of the 70% of Dutch women who worked part-time wished they had a full-time job. A British Household Panel Survey interviewing 3,800 couples discovered that among British women, the happiest were those working part-time.

A 2007 Pew Research survey came up with similar results for American women: Among working mothers with minor children, 60% said they would prefer to work part-time, while only 21% wanted to be in the office full-time (and 19% said they'd like to give up their job altogether). How about working fathers? Only 12% would choose part-time and 70% wanted to be full-time.

And finally, lest someone say that's all due to discrimination, there's this:

Today, childless 20-something women do earn more than their male peers. But most are likely to cut back their hours after they have kids, giving men the hours, and income, advantage.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303592404577361883019414296

 

[ronburgundy]

This article hits a few of the high points:



Note this appears to be by choice:

All over the developed world women make up the large majority of the part-time workforce, and surveys suggest they want it that way. According to the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, in 2008 only 4% of the 70% of Dutch women who worked part-time wished they had a full-time job. A British Household Panel Survey interviewing 3,800 couples discovered that among British women, the happiest were those working part-time.

A 2007 Pew Research survey came up with similar results for American women: Among working mothers with minor children, 60% said they would prefer to work part-time, while only 21% wanted to be in the office full-time (and 19% said they'd like to give up their job altogether). How about working fathers? Only 12% would choose part-time and 70% wanted to be full-time.

And finally, lest someone say that's all due to discrimination, there's this:

Today, childless 20-something women do earn more than their male peers. But most are likely to cut back their hours after they have kids, giving men the hours, and income, advantage.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303592404577361883019414296

Childless 20 something women are more educated and better qualified as indicated by their higher college GPA than their male peers. IOW, they are being compared to men who are not actually their peers but men who are inferior in their job relevant skills. They could easily still be getting discriminated against for their gender but their higher qualifications would mean that would manifest itself only as getting more then the men but not as much more as their higher skills would predict.

In addition, people in their 20's disproportionately work in restaurant service where most of their earnings comes directly from the customer for the "quality of service" and is not dependent upon the gender biases of an employer. Women get bigger tips. In such service industries the same notion about women that gets them bigger tips (women are good for fucking) is what would likely get them lower wages in every other area where they aren't being paid for their sexuality and their net wages are subject more to the biases of an employer. And women that do not transition to those other job areas they will lose any advantage and become disadvantaged in the service areas as they get older and less men want to hump them. Its crude but factual and supported by plenty of evidence.

In sum, the data are perfectly consistent with a causal model by which women in skilled and trained professions start out with more qualifications and get some extra but get less additional pay than those qualifications would get them as a man, and they get less raises over time such that the men pass them. This discourages their ambitions at such jobs, so they do more job changing and put in less hours, and volunteer to be the one who take off more time for kids than their better paid husband. For young women in service type jobs were men wanting to fuck you gets you more money, they do better than men even without being more "qualified" (unless you count customers wanted to screw you as a qualification, which free market ideology would). These are the only women with an advantage due to their gender itself and they rapidly lose it with age.

As for the silly notion of "choice" that means nothing other than that they were not formally banned form the workplace. Since no theory of sexist discrimination presumes that, it fails to differentiate between the competing accounts. Men of parenting age who make less their their wife and have less upward mobility also "choose" to work part-time, because it is a pragmatic choice of optimizing family income while reduces expenses like childcare which often costs more than many people make.

 

[Kusa]

If women make less than men for the same job, then why doesn't everyone want to hire women?

 

[ronburgundy]

In sum, what the OP and the Feakonomics data show is that the wage gap is AS consistent (not more consistent) with the cause being hours and time on job versus discrimination with those variables being effects of discrimination and partial mediators of discrimination.

Why would you assume women and men would choose to work equal hours on the job if it were not for discrimination?

Given observable reality.

But why do you assume it's discrimination?

What you're referring to is mommy track--women who spend less time working to have more time with their children. Of course their income suffers for it. That's not discrimination.

You both make the same error, so I'll give one reply.

You have presented zero observable reality that women would choose the work less in the absence of discrimination. That would require data from a non-existent world in which it has been proven that there is no discrimination. You cannot get to that conclusion based on the observed data from the real world. You are making an assumption as or greater than the one you claim I am making. And I am not actually making any assumption because I, unlike you, am not arguing that one causal model is true and the other false. I am merely pointing out the the presented data is incapable of discerning between the causal alternatives, because they are equally consistent with the differences and co variances observed and your preferred interpretation is as assumption-laden as any.

 

[dismal]

Why would you assume women and men would choose to work equal hours on the job if it were not for discrimination?

Given observable reality.

But why do you assume it's discrimination?

What you're referring to is mommy track--women who spend less time working to have more time with their children. Of course their income suffers for it. That's not discrimination.

You both make the same error, so I'll give one reply.

You have presented zero observable reality that women would choose the work less in the absence of discrimination. That would require data from a non-existent world in which it has been proven that there is no discrimination. You cannot get to that conclusion based on the observed data from the real world. You are making an assumption as or greater than the one you claim I am making. And I am not actually making any assumption because I, unlike you, am not arguing that one causal model is true and the other false. I am merely pointing out the the presented data is incapable of discerning between the causal alternatives, because they are equally consistent with the differences and co variances observed and your preferred interpretation is as assumption-laden as any.

Unfortunately your man-splaining ignores the basic reality that women are more likely to want to and choose to stay at home with kids.

There is about zero evidence this has anything to do with workplace gender discrimination and claiming it does is an abjectly unsupportable absurdity.

 

[ronburgundy]

If women make less than men for the same job, then why doesn't everyone want to hire women?

Because they presume women are less competent,and they don't want to work with women. Many men have little interest in women they can't screw or at least would like to screw.
And yes, employers are human beings, most of them men, whose cognition does not follow the patterns of an emotionless robot whose sole directive is economic utility.

Don't buy into the religion accepted by conservative economists that all market participants engage in perfectly rational decision making to optimize their sole goal of increasing the economic gain. That faith was long ago falsified by behavioral science showing all people are highly prone to rampant irrationality.

 

[dismal]

If women make less than men for the same job, then why doesn't everyone want to hire women?

Because they presume women are less competent,and they don't want to work with women. Many men have little interest in women they can't screw or at least would like to screw.
And yes, employers are human beings, most of them men, whose cognition does not follow the patterns of an emotionless robot whose sole directive is economic utility.

Don't buy into the religion accepted by conservative economists that all market participants engage in perfectly rational decision making to optimize their sole goal of increasing the economic gain. That faith was long ago falsified by behavioral science showing all people are highly prone to rampant irrationality.

Have you ever set foot in a workplace?

 

[Trausti]

If women make less than men for the same job, then why doesn't everyone want to hire women?

Because these employers would rather be sued for gender discrimination. I mean, with the supposed prevalence of gender-wage discrimination, plaintiff lawyers must have a bumper crop of cases to pursue. Everyone's happy.

 

[dismal]

If women make less than men for the same job, then why doesn't everyone want to hire women?

Because these employers would rather be sued for gender discrimination. I mean, with the supposed prevalence of gender-wage discrimination, plaintiff lawyers must have a bumper crop of cases to pursue. Everyone's happy.

Ah, but the science shows they cleverly avoid getting sued by paying the same to women when adjusted for hours worked while simultaneously inducing them to work fewer hours by applying only that special sort of discrimination that manifests itself in women wanting to take more time off to be with their kids.

 

[ksen]

We have gone over this multiple times. Economic analysis that enter all kinds of control variables for correlational data are of valid causal attributions for the observed pay gap difference. They cannot tell us that the gap is due to something other than discrimination. They can only tell us that the data that is available does not allow us to attribute it to discrimination or to other causes.

The problem is that the people who do such research so frequently ignore the massive biases they are imposing on their interpretations via their presumed causal relationships.
In this case, a major presumption is that time in the workforce can only be a cause of pay differential and not an effect of pay differential. If women are discriminated against for being women by getting lower pay they are more likely to leave a particular job, a field of work, or either reduce their work hours or the workforce altogether and let their husband who get more because he is a man work while she raises the kids. All of these factors, which can be effects of getting lower pay, would wind up manifesting themselves as "less hours per week" and "less time on the job", which are the primary variables that the researchers are attributing the wage gap to.
Their economic analyses are incapable of distinguishing this causal pattern from these researchers assume is possible, which is that the women are paid equal but choose for their own various reasons to work less, switch jobs, leave the work force etc.. When you enter these variables as "controls" in the analyses and the most of the wage gap "goes away", that is what would happen for both of these causal scenarios.

BTW, this abuse of multivariate correlational analysis is not limited to those trying to discount gender discrimination in pay. It is a rampant problem in the social sciences where researchers, who were never trained in actual experimental scientific methods which allow for causal inference, learn complex statistical approaches to correlational data and get deluded into thinking they can use them to "reveal" the true causal relations among factors, which they cannot.
All these methods can do is show you patterns of shared and unshared variance that you then must interpret in terms of its consistency with the patterns predicted by various possible causal models. The number of and reasonableness of the possible causal models you consider will determine the validity of your causal inferences, which in most cases of non-experimental data can never be made with more than modest confidence.

In sum, what the OP and the Feakonomics data show is that the wage gap is AS consistent (not more consistent) with the cause being hours and time on job versus discrimination with those variables being effects of discrimination and partial mediators of discrimination.

Some sort of feedback loop seems to be involved. Most couples, when they have a kid, would expect the one making less money to take time away from their career since the sting of losing the lower amount of income would sting less. So women make less than men because they take more time off work to raise families and they opt to be the ones to stay home and raise families because they make less than their partner.

Hell, if my wife made more than me I'd be her house husband in a NY minute.

 

[dismal]

We have gone over this multiple times. Economic analysis that enter all kinds of control variables for correlational data are of valid causal attributions for the observed pay gap difference. They cannot tell us that the gap is due to something other than discrimination. They can only tell us that the data that is available does not allow us to attribute it to discrimination or to other causes.

The problem is that the people who do such research so frequently ignore the massive biases they are imposing on their interpretations via their presumed causal relationships.
In this case, a major presumption is that time in the workforce can only be a cause of pay differential and not an effect of pay differential. If women are discriminated against for being women by getting lower pay they are more likely to leave a particular job, a field of work, or either reduce their work hours or the workforce altogether and let their husband who get more because he is a man work while she raises the kids. All of these factors, which can be effects of getting lower pay, would wind up manifesting themselves as "less hours per week" and "less time on the job", which are the primary variables that the researchers are attributing the wage gap to.
Their economic analyses are incapable of distinguishing this causal pattern from these researchers assume is possible, which is that the women are paid equal but choose for their own various reasons to work less, switch jobs, leave the work force etc.. When you enter these variables as "controls" in the analyses and the most of the wage gap "goes away", that is what would happen for both of these causal scenarios.

BTW, this abuse of multivariate correlational analysis is not limited to those trying to discount gender discrimination in pay. It is a rampant problem in the social sciences where researchers, who were never trained in actual experimental scientific methods which allow for causal inference, learn complex statistical approaches to correlational data and get deluded into thinking they can use them to "reveal" the true causal relations among factors, which they cannot.
All these methods can do is show you patterns of shared and unshared variance that you then must interpret in terms of its consistency with the patterns predicted by various possible causal models. The number of and reasonableness of the possible causal models you consider will determine the validity of your causal inferences, which in most cases of non-experimental data can never be made with more than modest confidence.

In sum, what the OP and the Feakonomics data show is that the wage gap is AS consistent (not more consistent) with the cause being hours and time on job versus discrimination with those variables being effects of discrimination and partial mediators of discrimination.

Some sort of feedback loop seems to be involved. Most couples, when they have a kid, would expect the one making less money to take time away from their career since the sting of losing the lower amount of income would sting less. So women make less than men because they take more time off work to raise families and they opt to be the ones to stay home and raise families because they make less than their partner.

Hell, if my wife made more than me I'd be her house husband in a NY minute.

Gonna be tough to reconcile that with the data that say young single women make more than men.

 

[ronburgundy]

But why do you assume it's discrimination?

What you're referring to is mommy track--women who spend less time working to have more time with their children. Of course their income suffers for it. That's not discrimination.

You both make the same error, so I'll give one reply.

You have presented zero observable reality that women would choose the work less in the absence of discrimination. That would require data from a non-existent world in which it has been proven that there is no discrimination. You cannot get to that conclusion based on the observed data from the real world. You are making an assumption as or greater than the one you claim I am making. And I am not actually making any assumption because I, unlike you, am not arguing that one causal model is true and the other false. I am merely pointing out the the presented data is incapable of discerning between the causal alternatives, because they are equally consistent with the differences and co variances observed and your preferred interpretation is as assumption-laden as any.

Unfortunately your man-splaining ignores the basic reality that women are more likely to want to and choose to stay at home with kids.

There you go again with your mystical religious notions that wants and choices are free-floating undetermined entities. Is it beyond your intellectual capacity to grasp that because for every century since "work" away from the kids existed women have been discriminated against from doing such work and whole ideologies created to reinforce this that it would cause women to choose to perform their expect role that others have been chastised and punished for departing from?
Also, the immediate factor of women having fewer higher paying opportunities that could support a one-worker family feeds into that "choice". And like far more valid science than you've presented shows, they, like all people, will find reasons to make a choice "ideal" even if the real basis for it was a pragmatic one contrained by factors outside their control.
It is your baseless and data-free assumption that any of these women would "choose" this if they thought their current and future earnings potential was as great as their husbands, and thought they would not suffer any sexist discrimination at work that makes that option less appealing. What we do know is that when women do get paid similar or more than men it strongly predicts the likelihood of the man taking equal or more time off work and the women less. This data suggest that a significant % of women only are the ones to take more time off because of their lower pay. It is data that your faith is incapable of explaining.

So, even if a portion of the gap is due to women choosing less work for reason with zero relation to gender discrimination, we know that a portion of the staying at home is not a cause of lower pay but an effect of it. This kicks the door your trying to close wide open for discrimination to be the causal factor.

There is about zero evidence this has anything to do with workplace gender discrimination and claiming it does is an abjectly unsupportable absurdity.

There is more evidence of discrimination than any alternative you've argued for. All the data you presented (purely correlational data) is fully predictable from model that includes discrimination. In addition, there is tons of data predicted by the same discrimination model the your preferred causal model is incapable of accounting for. This data includes controlled experimental studies showing a definitive causal impact of anti-female bias on hiring, pay, and promotion decisions. Then there is data showing that this increase in men choosing to be equal or primary child care providers by reducing work hours is predicted by a reduced wage gap, and that those men today most likely to do so are those where the pay gap with their wife is either smaller or reversed. Thus a model that includes discrimination accounts for far more disparate types of data than a model that does not. Thus, the rational scientific position is to favor a model that includes discrimination.