Wage Gap Myth

pickup_sticks · 2013-11-23T02:13:00+00:00

Wage Gap is the only quantitative argument Feminists have.

First of all, this is false. Cultural and political issues are quantitative if done within certain disciplines, including sociology and political science. Please take a sociological statistics class (intro to biostatistics is a fun and applicable-to-life one) when you get into college.

For your main points:

even with cultural pressures the choice is still in the hands of the woman

No, the choice is in the hands of the employer. Skilled laborers are significantly less likely to hire women due to gender roles. Women are also less likely to be hired into traditionally male jobs like mathematician, technology and computer sciences, and engineering.

women are less likely to take risks

Do you have a citation for this?

this means less likely to ask for a raise, and in the application process a more modest compensation request

This also needs a citation but it should be noted that, again, the lower-earning women are not at fault -- the human's resource management is responsible for setting pay. It is not a woman's fault that a corporation is greedy and hires her for less than her male counterpart.

basically i am suggesting that sexism is dead, but we still feel past remnants

This also doesn't have a citation, but it's fun to examine its ramifications. Did you go into your project with this assumption? Did you expect this to be true? If so, this entire argument is invalid because it's a result of confirmation bias. Also, did you intend your project to debunk the wage gap and find that it exists, so you're now offering possible reasons why? That would also explain laying the fault on women for societal constraints.

basically a lot of mothers still want to work but choose part-time employment

Your key word is "choose" over and over but it means less every time you say it. You're implying that full-time mothers choose part-time work to care for their children, but you're not looking into the facts of whether these choices are a.) culturally influenced, b.) affected by reality (the man won't take a part-time job, so the woman has to) or c.) is actually part of sexism and not the fault of the women.

Finally, I want to point something out. You're focusing on explaining away the wage gap rather than examining why it exists. The question of the wage gap is one that takes a number of disciplines to examine, including sociology, economics, and psychology.

Implying that personal choice is the foremost problem behind the wage gap suggests that individuals in today's society have absolute authority over their position in life and that, on its face, is patently false. It is not debatable that intragenerational mobility is rare. It is not debatable that motherhood is an expected, cultural phenomenon that is rarely simple in its execution and methods. It is debatable, however, that these things don't contribute to the wage gap.

soulcakeduck · 2013-11-22T19:37:48+00:00

Wage Gap is the only quantitative argument Feminists have.

How do you figure? We can quantify the number of Congressmen by gender too, and this is another quick example where feminists see structural inequality.

I will continue my firm belief that the Wage Gap is a myth.

That's not a very scientific position to take.

The gap exists. We can explain part of the gap by controlling for certain variables. The remaining gap is unexplained, and may be due to discrimination.

The analysis you're doing does not tell us the gap is a "myth." It tells us how much of the gap is unexplained, which is still quite large by many studies.

Moreover, it is incorrect to say that if we can explain the entirety of the gap then there must not be any underlying discrimination. More men die in combat than women. This is not because combatants discriminate and favor killing men. Similarly, payroll doesn't need to discriminate in favor of men for the explainable gap to reflect discrimination. Choice and discrimination are not mutually exclusive: STEM earns more money than teaching, and underlying discrimination may be the reason women choosing teaching over STEM.

twentyfoursevensex · 2013-11-22T20:07:11+00:00

I do not have an opinion one way or another and this point but Id like to see some data, how it is collected, what is collected, what variables are controlled for and how the data has been analyzed. Ive heard a lot of discussion from both sides of the argument but Ive never actually seen data so that I can form an opinion.

I think a fair analysis wouldnt just look at average wage across men and women, it would look at wages for similar men and women. I.e. same field/job/starting year etc.

One other problem Ive noticed with gender discussions is people think in dichotomous and static ways. So either yes/no there is a wage gap rather than the wage gap is improving or not. Society is constantly fluctuating so what may have been true 10 years ago may not be true today. So at one point there was a legitimate concern with wage discrimination - how relevant is that now? Not sure, we need to look at the most recent data. But its not necessarily that feminism is "lying" or intentionally deceiving (which I think is the picture painted by people opposing this argument), they could perhaps just not be using to most current data.

my_name_is_stupid · 2013-11-23T15:46:11+00:00

Everything else is cultural and political, and that is just too personal to truly debate.

Why? Are you uncomfortable discussing "cultural and political" topics?

namae_nanka · 2013-11-22T21:00:00+00:00

number of degrees being attained (women are getting more) and then compared wages by different degree levels (men earn more for each). I will provide some explanations

One of mine:

http://endofwomen.blogspot.in/2012/10/women-are-victims-either-way-in-more.html

The end-game of feminist bleating on the issue:

There is a real problem with some of the recommendations recently agreed to at MIT. Salaries have a natural error variance, if you take two groups of "equally" performing people, they will almost certainly have differences both in pay and in performance. The way it now stands, feminists planning to use MIT as a template want the right to demand a pay increase anytime they can identify a salary decrement, regardless of (a) whether any performance figures have been taken into account, and (b) whether "natural variation" has been examined. Similar venues are not open to men. So, in the future, we may find rapid "fixing" of even minor, well-deserved differences when women find themselves on the short end, but no such "fixes" when men find themselves on the short end. This merely perpetuates more unfairness, and will almost certainly result in a backlash some time in the future.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/sci.stat.edu/6r0IPyxZ_b0/FDIrnfAgPg8J

the whole thread is rather amusing to read(and remember this was about MIT, arguably the pinnacle of american academia in STEM and apparently the concept of ratio was too much to ask when it came to salary numbers LOL),

and Warren Farrell on the subject,

Only when Dr. Farrell’s research journey uncovered these 25 differences, did the “holy grail” become visible: women now earn more money for the same work—that is, women earn more when they work equal hours at the same job with the same size of responsibility for the same length of time with equal productivity, etc. The women’s movement can celebrate its greatest single triumph—exceeding its goal of equal pay for equal work.

http://www.warrenfarrell.net/Summary/

shbro1 · 2013-11-23T00:31:26+00:00

A lot of typically low-paid professions are dominated by women, teaching and nursing, for example, and the often highly paid STEM professions are dominated by men. Superficially, this can explain the gender wage gap as non-discriminatory - women are simply choosing the low-paid professions, so naturally are earning less than men overall.

I believe the issue runs a bit deeper than that, however. Is it just some massive coincidence that jobs which are typically female-dominated are low-paid? Women tend towards the 'caring' professions such as childcare, nursing, teaching, etc. These jobs involve duties which women would usually undertake in the home without pay, for example, raising children, caring for elderly or sick relatives, etc.

These roles are extremely important - without someone willing to undertake them, society could not function. Seriously, imagine that one day ALL the childcare workers in the world went on strike and didn't show up for work? What if women just one day said "Nope, not today; I'm not going to do any more unpaid caring for my elderly/disabled/sick relative. Someone else can do it."? I'm pretty sure chaos would ensue.

Sure, men could pick up the slack and I know there are decent numbers of men already working in these capacities, but nowhere near the same numbers as women, so I offer the above examples purely as a thought experiment. My point is that the work women do is IMPORTANT.

So, why is it generally low-paid in comparison to work typically undertaken by men? I propose that the work women do is not valued as highly by society as the work men do, and that is due to ongoing systemic sexism, whether we're cognizant of it or not.

Yes, men do risky, stressful jobs, but in terms of value to society, is there any really good reason for the disparity in wages between, say, an aged-care worker (typically female) and a stockbroker (typically male)? I don't think so. I am happy to be otherwise enlightened, however. :) I realise it's a really complicated subject.

whatsazipper · 2013-11-22T21:46:54+00:00

Might not be the wage gap you were expecting:

http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html

angatar_ · 2013-11-23T01:26:10+00:00

2009 paper prepared under contract for the US department of labor debunking discrimination as a cause for the "wage gap"

http://consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf

Title	Wage Gap Myth
Author	2FAM0US
Upvotes	3
Comments	89
Date	November 22, 2013 6:41 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1r8fbp/wage_gap_myth/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/wage-gap-myth.286569 https://theredarchive.com/post/286569

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