Wage gap? Or Performance gap?

EricAllonde · 2016-09-20T01:26:50+00:00

I saw an interesting documentary on the rise of Italian coffee culture in other western countries. The program was arguing that coffee culture is sexist, because all the top baristas are men.

It said something like this, "When coffee was simple, cheap, unskilled and served in diners, then the people serving it were almost all women. But once coffee shops came along and coffee became sophisticated, expensive and complex... Once the role of the barista was created and lots of money flowed into the industry, well all that money attracted men and they completely took over".

The video quoted stats saying that a majority of all baristas are now men, but almost all of the top baristas are men. The video went to a recent international barista competition, where the 6 winners of the 6 categories of competition were all men.

The video was making a very simplistic argument: "look at this industry that used to be dominated by women, now the top performers are nearly all men. It must be sexism".

Of course that sounds completely bogus to me. Male baristas are winning these competitions by beating everyone else, other men and women alike. Since there is a lot of money in coffee, as the video points out, the people who invest in coffee shops, coffee supply companies and all the rest are not going to put their money at risk by hiring weaker-performing baristas just because they're men. They live or die on the quality of their coffee, so they're going to want the best barista they can hire - because their whole business depends on that role - regardless of whether that barista is male or female.

The video adhered to feminist principles in that it simply assumed women baristas were equally as good as men, that there are no differences between the genders, and it avoided exploring the question of why male baristas keep winning all the competitions. Just like with the "wage gap" itself, feminists ignore the facts, fail to properly investigate what's going on and just shout "Sexism!" like it's the end of all rational inquiry.

xNOM · 2016-09-19T21:46:02+00:00

This is a real effect. Usually wage gap studies try to control for this by using position or rank as a proxy for performance.

But at an economic level, male doctors see more patients and perform more services per patient. They also work more hours.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/doctor-salary-gender-pay-gap/

So I guess that's financial performance, and leads to a wage gap. But you don't even have to take this into account to get the wage gap down to 5 or 6%. Also assumed to be in this "residual unexplained gap" are believed to be negotiation skills and any possible discrimination.

The performance issue has been studied in depth by academics. It's kind of interesting where the measured biases lie.

The Paradox of Meritocracy

Juan_Golt · 2016-09-20T20:00:39+00:00

I subscribe to the "greater variation" theory of the gender divide. Men simply have a larger deviation from the human average. Looking at almost any outlier traits and you find male predominance. Not just in high performing traits.

Geniuses are mostly men. People with learning disabilities are mostly men.

Professional athletes are mostly men. Physically handicapped are mostly men.

CEOs are mostly men. Homeless people are mostly men.

World's tallest human? Male. World's shortest human? Male.

You see this over and over with male predominance at both sides of the spectrum. This is how you end up with the feminist dichotomy of viewing men as defective because most criminals are men, but also brilliantly evil because most CEOs are men.

IMHO the greater variation theory has more explanatory power than patriarchy theory. Examples

School performance is generally capped at the top, but not at the bottom. The high performing male outliers can't get a higher A. Yet all the lower performing outliers can still drag down the averages. Ergo women get better grades than men on average. If you graded on a curve with only the top performers getting the higher marks the averages would shift towards parity as the high achieving men brought up the averages.

Wage earning power has a floor on the bottom (minimum wage) but is uncapped at the top. The job market pays a large premium for high performing outliers. Pulling the male average up.

Any competition to find the 'best' -or- 'worst' will probably find a male, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the average man is any better than the average woman. Obviously this view is oversimplified. There are biological differences on average between men and women beyond outliers. Athletics are the main example, but imho it still fits better than the patriarchilluminaty.

lporiginalg · 2016-09-19T19:36:05+00:00

This is right. The way the wage gap is usually presented is that men and women do the same wok but women get paid less for it. What's really happening is that men are simply earning more since they're more productive than women.

As a simple example imagine a man and woman working in a factory. The woman makes 100 widgets a day while the man makes 130. It's fair and understandable why the man would get a 30 percent higher wage than the woman.

The same principle applies all across the economy. Men don't simply get PAID more, they EARN more because they're more productive than women.

Edit: This graph shows how much more men contribute to the economy than women. Overall women take more then they give. If it wasn't for the productivity of men civilisation would implode.

http://i.imgur.com/K0DD9jH.jpg

2016-09-19T20:24:04+00:00

Behold: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a56687/inequality-sexism-racism/ Feminist somewhat acknowledging the truth, then appears to think poverty is only bad if it affects people who aren't white men. Then performs mental gymnastics to complain about 'unconscious bias' and how 'wage gap' is still real Hillary will fix it. Thanks but no thanks. I don't want the government anywhere in my unconscious/subconscious.

MagicTampon · 2016-09-20T09:47:11+00:00

No, it's not cruel for men to compete with women or women to compete with men.

In most areas of employment, women are just as capable as men; however, ultimately the difference often comes down to effort and how valuable an employee makes herself / himself to the employer.

There is good evidence supporting the idea that men advance further in their salaries and promotions, not always because they are more competent, but more often because they are more are willing to put their personal priorities in life to the side in order to advance the cause of their employer.

http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-economist-explains-the-gender-wage-gap-2016-3

Companies place a premium on employees who will never turn down work, who will never turn down challenges, and who will "always be there" for the employer when something is needed. They will always value more an employee who fills in for others who are away from work, than they will value employees who create staffing problems by insisting on taking time away when staffing is short. They will always value more the employee who works late hours over the Christmas season to cover for others who are off, than they will value the employee who is extremely insistent on taking the entire holiday season off every year when staffing is already short. Employers will always place a premium on employees who they know will always be for them in an emergency when the shit hits the fan and there is work to be done but too few people left to do it.

I have seen this personally in my line of work, where we have had to hire contractors on short notice for jobs. We had one contractor in particular who would never say no to doing a job, even if it meant coming in at 7 pm and leaving at 10 pm to do it because he had other day jobs that often prevented him from coming in during the day. This is a guy who had no less than three jobs and a family of four to support.

Others, if the work request did not fit into their particular schedule, they would simply say no, because they have this or that engagement already planned, and no they couldn't come.

So which contractor do you think would be the first one to be called? The one who said "yes" to work 100% of the time, or the one who would say "no" to work 50% of the time?

Do people have the patience to call a series of people if they can expect to get a "no, not today" answers or worse, "let me get back to you in a hour" followed by "no, sorry I can't do it"?

Should anyone feel obligated to call the people who routinely refuse work first, just to give them a chance? Or is it more appropriate and deserving to reward the reliable contractor with a call offering work first, given how many times he has come in at great inconvenience to do things when others were unwilling and you were shit out of luck?

Obviously, the more reliable contractors are going to be offered the lion's share of the work. When it comes down to it, it matters not one iota if that person is a male or a female -- just whether the work meets acceptable standards of quality, and whether they are willing and able to make themselves available to do it.

It's interesting that you brought up the topic of physicians. If you look at employment data, you will actually find that the biggest average wage gaps between males and females occur not in normal employment, but in circumstances where people are paid on contracts or commission. Salespeople and medical professionals (in the United States) who are paid on a per-case basis are examples of these professions. So for example, in the United States, physicians are paid by insurers on a fee-for-service basis, so physicians who do more cases and bill more are typically paid more. Salespeople often work in a similar fashion.

So, of course, physicians who work long hours and make more effort to fill their practices with larger numbers of patients (in the US at least) are going to pull in more revenue / salary. They get paid by the case, so they later they stay and the more cases they do, the greater the earnings that they take home.

These are actually among the instances where it is most apparent that earnings differences are not due to sex discrimination by employers, because ultimately it is the market and business activity / per-case billing that reflect differences in performance. Which is not so say that women are on average less competent, they might just have other priorities in life aside from making money.

jamminnummeruno · 2016-09-19T18:54:29+00:00

Though there may be a grain of truth in your argument (RE : Sports), I disagree. In most fields there are high performing and low performing males and females.

Title	Wage gap? Or Performance gap?
Author	lporiginalg
Upvotes	15
Comments	26
Date	September 19, 2016 6:05 PM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/53iw5t/wage_gap_or_performance_gap/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/wage-gap-or-performance-gap.941334 https://theredarchive.com/post/941334

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