The Money Mustache Community
Other => Off Topic => Topic started by: anisotropy on March 09, 2018, 01:11:36 PM
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Yesterday was international women's day, and the issue of 15%+ "wage gap" was on every media almost non-stop.
Didn't studies show, as long as we are comparing oranges to oranges (no sexual connotations intended), that at "most" the gap is 4-8%? In fact, even in these "almost" orange to orange (women get paid less than men even though they have the same education and do the same duties) comparisons some factors still exist to explain these 4-8% wage gaps.
What I mean is this, many studies compare a male engineer's pay to a female engineer's pay and demonstrate/concluded males are getting paid more. Yet, there's a very simple explanation to this, which few even bother to mention: the men are on a higher pay grade.
Prior to FIRE, I worked at Big Oil as a scientist; the bureaucracy was quite an issue as we had 7, yes, SEVEN, different pay grades within each "generic" job title, ie, seven base salaries exist for people that work under the same job title: Exploitation Engineer. I also had the fortune (or misfortune) to briefly experience the Public side of things and found the pay grade structures to be quite similar.
For those that can't read good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too, the phenomenon of wage gap (ie women get paid less than men even though they have the same education and do the same duties) seems to me can be readily explained by people on different pay grades. I have yet to find any studies that display blatant sexism by paying men more than women when they are on the same pay grade. If you are aware of such studies please share I would love to learn more.
Some might argue why aren't more women on the higher pay grades, plenty books and reports have been written regarding the issue, which is not directly related to the "true" wage gap discussion I am hoping to have here.
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Sounds to me like you've already made up your mind that this 'wage gap' thing is all a big lie, and just want people to agree with you.
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The wage gap issue is not about two people with exactly the same education, skills, experience, knowledge, duties, pay grade and every other factor known to man(or woman!) being paid different amounts. No two people are ever going to be exactly the same in all respects.
The entire point of the "wage gap" argument is that because of these systemic things such as "it's not sexism at all, it's just that most men are on a different pay grade that gets paid higher" women on average earn less than men in every profession across the board, even professions dominated by women. Why not ask why it is that men with the same qualifications, doing the same duties, as in your example, are on average getting jobs that have a higher pay grade than women? Do you think it might be sexism at play or is there some logical reason most men with the same qualifications, doing the same duties, are getting those higher pay grade jobs?
Of course you can argue it isn't sexism at all, it's just nature or different pay grades or that men don't stop work to have babies or any other argument you want to make. Every argument I've heard thrown up has been accounted for already. It's either systemic sexism or it's just a jolly big coincidence.
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Sure, as an engineer, I never got paid less than my male peers doing the same job, but that doesn't mean there isn't a systemic issue across the board for womenkind. In that same company, they chose to value menial jobs traditionally performed by men higher than menial jobs traditionally performed by women. For example, a female cleaner cleaning in the office block will get paid less than the guy pushing the broom around in the shop. That is why the pay gap exists.
The issue doesn't just sit on the lower end of the pay scale, the problem also exists in management where women are under represented, even in organizations with significant populations of women working there from which to promote women from.
I joined healthcare a few years ago, and this management issue is glaring even here. Male nurses are still a relatively new concept and make up a pretty small portion of the overall nursing staff population, yet male presence in nursing management is (from my observation) disproportionately high considering how small that pool of male nurses to promote from is.
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics did a pretty exhaustive study of this issue in 1996 (Clinton era) and concluded virtually all, if not all, of the gap was due to choice of profession, hours worked, years out of the labor force.
There's another even easier way to dispel this myth. Why someone doesn't just start up a company to hire all these underpaid people and make an absolute killing from having the same output but lower labor costs that the competition?
Presumably it's because capitalists are so sexist that they don't like money (i.e., investment returns)?
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Of course you can argue it isn't sexism at all, it's just nature or different pay grades or that men don't stop work to have babies or any other argument you want to make. Every argument I've heard thrown up has been accounted for already. It's either systemic sexism or it's just a jolly big coincidence.
What do you mean by the bold?
The two main arguments that I've heard that tend to explain the differences are: number of hours and flexibility of those hours.
There was a study with Uber, since prices are calculated with an algorithm that doesn't use sex. It found that women make less because: number of hours, the time of the hours (men tend to work later at night which was more profitable), location of the fares (men would go to "more dangerous" locations) and the speed they drove (men tend to drive faster, which means more fares per hour). These are all choices that women and men tend to make somewhat differently.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16980072/uber-driver-gender-earnings-gap-study
So that tends to show there isn't sexism, it's choice. On the other hand, society brain washes us. It tells men that they should be afraid, but tells women they are in danger. It tells women they need to be home at nights to take care of their kids. And while there is some truth in those statements, it's not necessarily to the level that is true. Some of it was probably survival tactics from back before we had technology and life spans we currently do (in the US and similar countries). It probably is still good advice for third world countries, but that doesn't mean it is needed in first world countries.
So some people are looking at society and saying our society isn't fair because women don't make as much as men. Men should be doing more at home, which allows women to do less. Women shouldn't be afraid. Maybe there's no overt sexism going on in the workplace, but maybe there's hidden sexism going on in our society that limits women on average. This is why the 15% number is bad.
So on one hand, I think companies are doing a good job with pay of men and women, but our society hasn't advanced enough to give men and women the same options. If I just consider the companies, I think there's too much regulation and criticism related to sexism. On the other hand, maybe this regulation will help our society improve. It definitely has improved over the last 100 years, but I don't think we're there yet.
A lot of the same arguments can be made with races. "Black people are less educated, so they make less money." Sure, that's true, but it's a failing of the system that black people are less educated. And yes it's improved over the last 100 years. Let's make it even better!
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Seems there's some confusion on the definition of "wage gap". It is defined thus, the wage differences between a male and a female working in the same organization, in the same location, having the same qualifications (degrees, titles, etc), doing the same job, and being on the same pay grade.
Before I reply, I want to stress that I am looking for wage gaps that manifest as studies that display blatant sexism by paying men more than women when they are on the same pay grade". Thanks.
Sounds to me like you've already made up your mind that this 'wage gap' thing is all a big lie, and just want people to agree with you.
Hi ministashy,
Clearly you don't belong to the "can't read good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too" group since you can neither read good and nor want to learn how to do other stuff good too.
I specifically asked for any evidence contrary to my analytically-derived conclusion, after systematically leveling the playing field to deduce the true "wage gap" size. I am not looking for validation from other people, I am looking for contrary evidence. I will spell out in plain English (just for you) what I am looking for in bold: "studies that display blatant sexism by paying men more than women when they are on the same pay grade". Hope this helps. Please share if you know/have any, instead of simply accusing me of "made up my mind and want other people to agree with me".
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PKFFW,
I agree with you that women on average earn less than men in every profession across the board, even professions dominated by women, the data is very clear on this. But as I pointed out in my original post, a generic job title within a single organization can have several different grades of pay. A logical hypothesis to explain this is that women tend to have lower pay grades than men (this also happens to be backed by data), which would result that on average women make less than men. I will continue to address you PKFFW, but allow me to bring in FIRE Artist for now, thanks.
FIRE Artist,
I am glad you brought up the pay differences between male and female cleaners, since the data suggests that the wage gap is more pronounced in "lower skilled" (menial) jobs and lessons when the jobs become more "knowledge" based, all else being equal, ie qualifications, hours worked, job titles, pay grade.
Often on a construction site (perhaps a poor example, since construction can be pretty high skilled), the female general labourers tend to be doing less strenuous jobs such as holding traffic signs when the male general labourers tend to be doing the digging and shovelling. Notice I said general labourers, ie, not operating special machineries. Surely in this scenario the men ought to be paid more for the same hours of work performed? Our biological differences often place constraints on what we can physically do without hurting ourselves.
In the cleaning lady example, however, I find it hard to justify the men getting paid more than women, as long as their quality (and quantity) of work is the same unless.... the men cleaners are in supervisory roles. And here is where I bring PKFFW back into the discussion.
Indeed why do men occupy higher pay grades than women? Why do women tend to be overlooked during promotions (such as the nursing profession as you say)? Why are there fewer women in higher management? Like I said in my original post, plenty of studies and books have been written on this subject, my findings suggest that blinx7 is right. Quantitative studies seem to point to hours worked, years out of labor force, which.... all lead to different temperaments between men and women.
I think it is not a surprise to anyone that most women that made it big are a lot more "aggressive" and "competitive" than an average female, heck even more than an average male, but are on par with successful males. In fact, based on personality traits studies, successful men and women have more in common than with their respective sexes. It's just that these traits tend to occur with higher frequencies in Men than Women. Note, I am simply stating scientific findings which I will quote below and comment.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/
"Replicating previous findings, there was a significant gender difference in Agreeableness such that women tend to score higher than men, and this pattern was the same for the aspects, Compassion and Politeness, when measured in terms of raw scores or residualized scores"
Comment: A high agreeableness almost always predict poor advancement within an organization, in short, you are putting others before yourself.
"Though no gender difference was found for Industriousness when using the raw scores, we found a gender difference in Industriousness when using the residualized score that removed any variance shared with Orderliness. This gender difference was such that men scored higher than women in Industriousness. This difference in residualized scores but not raw scores can be interpreted as follows: if one examines a group of people with equal levels of Orderliness, the men in that group will on average score higher in Industriousness than the women."
"The age trend for women indicated a decline in Orderliness relative to Industriousness, whereas the trend for men indicated an increase."
Comment: Orderliness is linked to maintaining order and perfectionism, which is moderated by age for women. To put it simply, women become "nicer" as they age, while men become meaner and more demanding as they age, seems to have some correlation with career advancement.
"Assertiveness, on the other hand, reflects traits related to agency and dominance. Consistent with previous research showing a gender difference favoring men for facets such as Assertiveness and Excitement Seeking (Feingold, 1994; Costa et al., 2001), we found that men score higher than women in Assertiveness. "
Comment: How do women advance without being more assertive? Assertiveness convey confidence, whom would you rather promote and believe, someone with higher or lower assertiveness?
"where women score higher than men on facets marking Openness (such as Esthetics and Feelings), but men score higher than women on the Ideas facet, which is a marker of Intellect (Feingold, 1994; Costa et al., 2001)."
"Although Intellect includes perceptions of cognitive ability and is more strongly associated with IQ scores than Openness (DeYoung et al., submitted), the fact that men score higher than women in Intellect should not be taken as indicative of greater intelligence for men than women. Gender differences in general intelligence are negligible, although men are typically found to show more variance in scores than women (Deary et al., 2007; van der Sluis et al., 2008)."
Comment: OK, I want the folks that that can't read good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too to understand this intellect is not IQ. So don't accuse of me of saying men are smarter than women in general. That is not true.
These are some measureable (biological?) differences of men and women in terms of personality differences that might hinder female career advancements. And we haven't even talked about hours worked (and flexibility) and years out of the labor force (for families) that could contribute to it! Please note I am not arguing women should not advance within organizations, I am simply stating possible reasons from studies.
Before I close, I want to stress that I am looking for wage gaps that manifest as studies that display blatant sexism by paying men more than women when they are on the same pay grade". Thanks.
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There was actually a very interesting study done using Uber driver statistics that gave some insight to the wage gap.
I heard about this on a Freakonomics podcast recently.
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/what-can-uber-teach-us-about-the-gender-pay-gap/ (http://freakonomics.com/podcast/what-can-uber-teach-us-about-the-gender-pay-gap/)
Anyway, as you can imagine, the Uber data gives us a window into male vs female driver income with plenty of capability to control for hours worked and days of the week, etc,etc. Since the customer doesn't have a real opportunity for discrimination of any sort, and since the algorithm doesn't discriminate in how drivers are assigned to any routes or anything, we should, one would think, get equal income from both genders.
But it wasn't. There was something like a 7% differential. I think the leading hypotheses are that male drivers are working more lucrative hours (surge hours, or late night) and are working in different areas of town. Also that perhaps male drivers have, on average, worked the uber system a little better (this was unclear how exactly, but was in the areas of longer vs shorter rides, airport rides vs other, etc). Also a rather large factor was how fast the male drivers drove, meaning that they could do more rides in the same hours. I guess we'll consider that a personality trait.
"They found that even in a labor market where discrimination can be ruled out, women still earn 7 percent less than men — in this case, roughly 20 dollars an hour versus 21. The difference is due to three factors: time and location of driving; driver experience; and average speed."
So what it boiled down to was basically the same explanation that most of the studies on the wage gap in the larger economy have concluded, which is that, on average, the gap is explained by the choices that men vs women make about the hours that they work and the flexibility of those hours. Not discrimination on the part of the economy or the businesses, per se, but rather the larger social norms that perhaps incentivize women to make different choices about their work hours and flexibility. And men drive faster.
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What do you mean by the bold?
The two main arguments that I've heard that tend to explain the differences are: number of hours and flexibility of those hours.
What I mean by the bolded part is that the arguments I've read denying the wage gap have been accounted for.
For example, number of hours and flexibility of those hours. That argument has been comprehensively analysed and debunked for the overwhelming majority of industries and professions. Even accounting for those factors women on average are paid less than men.
Your Uber example is not what the wage gap is about however. Uber pays men and women doing the exact same job, with the same qualifications, at the same time, going to the same place, etc, the same wage. The fact some women choose to work less hours or take different routes, etc and therefore earn less, is not what the term wage gap is referring to.
Let me reiterate my previous post. No one who refers to the "wage gap" is referring to a situation in which a man and woman who are exactly the same in all respects are paid different wages, with the man's being the higher wage. The term "wage gap" refers the the fact that on average women doing the same job, with the same qualifications, in the same industry, working the same number of hours, are being paid less than men are on average.
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Seems there's some confusion on the definition of "wage gap". It is defined thus, the wage differences between a male and a female working in the same organization, in the same location, having the same qualifications (degrees, titles, etc), doing the same job, and being on the same pay grade.
No, that is how you want to define the term for this particular discussion, it is not the widely accepted definition of the term.
I agree with you that women on average earn less than men in every profession across the board, even professions dominated by women, the data is very clear on this. But as I pointed out in my original post, a generic job title within a single organization can have several different grades of pay. A logical hypothesis to explain this is that women tend to have lower pay grades than men (this also happens to be backed by data), which would result that on average women make less than men.
You are absolutely correct that someone on a higher pay grade will be paid a higher wage. What exactly is your point though? That the wage gap issue is a myth because women tend to get the lower pay grade job while men tend to get the higher pay grade job?
It's that kind of situation that is exactly at the heart of the wage gap issue. Why do women tend to have a lower pay grade than men for doing, by your own admission in your first post, the same job with the same qualifications? Do women just like getting lower pay grade jobs? Do men just naturally deserve the higher pay grade? What's the reason?
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What do you mean by the bold?
The two main arguments that I've heard that tend to explain the differences are: number of hours and flexibility of those hours.
What I mean by the bolded part is that the arguments I've read denying the wage gap have been accounted for.
For example, number of hours and flexibility of those hours. That argument has been comprehensively analysed and debunked for the overwhelming majority of industries and professions. Even accounting for those factors women on average are paid less than men.
Your Uber example is not what the wage gap is about however. Uber pays men and women doing the exact same job, with the same qualifications, at the same time, going to the same place, etc, the same wage. The fact some women choose to work less hours or take different routes, etc and therefore earn less, is not what the term wage gap is referring to.
Let me reiterate my previous post. No one who refers to the "wage gap" is referring to a situation in which a man and woman who are exactly the same in all respects are paid different wages, with the man's being the higher wage. The term "wage gap" refers the the fact that on average women doing the same job, with the same qualifications, in the same industry, working the same number of hours, are being paid less than men are on average.
I listened to the same podcast. Good summary. It's worth a listen for everyone on here as well.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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For example, number of hours and flexibility of those hours. That argument has been comprehensively analysed and debunked for the overwhelming majority of industries and professions. Even accounting for those factors women on average are paid less than men.
Can you kindly link the quantitative studies/sources so I might study them in detail thank you, since this is what I am looking for in the first place.
If we consider your (supposedly more widely accepted) definition of "wage gap":
the fact that on average women doing the same job, with the same qualifications, in the same industry, working the same number of hours, are being paid less than men are on average.
I believe this is thoroughly explained in my posts; women, as data shows, tend to be on the lower end (ABC for example, if we use my example of 7 pay grades of the same title) of the pay grade within the confines of the same position/title, while men tend to be on the higher end (DEFG) of the pay grades of the same position. So when a study looks at the wages of the same position at face value without considering the difference in the "hidden" pay-grades, of course we get the picture that women on average appear to be paid less than men for the same position with the same qualifications and work the same hours. You can't expect one gender that, on average, are at grade C get paid as much as the other gender that, on average, get grade E wages. That's just math.
In case I was not clear, I believe a female X (any knowledge-based profession) at the same pay grade as her male counterpart should get paid the same, and they are, as any company with structured grades of pay can show. What I am looking for specifically are cases/studies that document otherwise. In its absence, it seems the reported "wage gap" by the more widely accepted definition is a result of one gender being collectively or on average on the lower pay-grade than the other gender.
Let me say it again, all else (even the title of position and hours worked) being equal, women get paid less because on average, they are on lower pay grades such as ABC, while men, on average, are on higher grades such as DEFG. (again, using my experience of seven pay grades within the same position)
Now that we've established it's a matter of higher vs lower pay grade as opposed to a deliberate purely gender based pay gap within the same pay grade, we can investigate further WHY women tend to be on average stuck on a lower pay grade.
The citations regarding gender differences in personalities, which ultimately influence our choices and priorities, explain why women on average are having a tougher time moving up the pay grade compared to men. The odds of having "low agreeableness", "high orderliness and industriousness" as women age, "high assertiveness" and other traits that correlate strongly with moving up in an organization are simply not as likely to occur in the female population, which is why, on average, fewer women move up relative to men.
Men on the other hand, on average, scores
lower in agreeableness
higher in orderliness and higher in industrious as they age
higher in assertiveness
etc, etc, the list goes on and on
The uber experiment also supports the personality differences between the two genders, on average.
I hope I have answered your concerns:
1. women are paid less for doing the same (knowledge based) job because they, on average, tend to occupy the lower pay grades while men tend to occupy the higher pay grades, on average.
2. to go up the pay grades, ie, from A to E, often require promotions of some kind
3. promotions tend to happen to people with low agreeableness, high assertiveness, high orderliness, high industriousness, etc
4. these traits are, on average, found to be more common in men than in women.
5. women, thus, on average, are less likely to go up their respective pay grades
6. therefore, women, on average, are paid less than men for the same job, not because of a deliberate gender pay gap, but because they are, again, on average, occupy a lower pay grade.
This to me, is not really a wage gap as sinister as some media would have you believe. Of course, if you have contrary evidence, ie, wage gaps that manifest as studies that display blatant sexism by paying men more than women when they are on the same pay grade, please share with me. Thanks.
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I work in oil and gas as an engineer, and if you are female and competent in my company you can basically write your own ticket. The pay gap the opposite, ladies have the yellow brick road. That said, I'm fine with it. I'd much rather work for a woman than man, in my experience ladies make much better personnel managers. 9/10 I'd rather work for a woman. And women put up with so much BS passive aggressive sexism in my industry, so they deserve it as far as I'm concerned.
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Where TheHusbandHalf works, wages are paid for the job done, not because of who does the job. Age, gender, sexual orientation, skin color are not considered. In fact, if there is proof they are, steps to take are documented.
(Just gone done reading a 'won't pay for overtime' thread. That never happens either.)
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I know there has been talk here about pay grades and promotions and agreeableness and all that, and I think it's important, but when you look at the actual society-wide gap (as opposed to the much smaller gap between people of similar backgrounds in similar positions) it's clear to me that a lot of it is not even person A getting the job over person B but personal decisions to seek one entirely different lifestyle / career over another.
My wife was valedictorian of her high school, majored in sociology and worked at a small nonprofit making peanuts. When we were first dating, I suggested that she apply to work as a college administrator ("it's kind of like a nonprofit, just bigger") and she got a big pay bump.
She later did a masters degree and I heavily encouraged accounting and finance classes ("what if you do finance, just for a big nonprofit"). She did them, and liked them, but ended up deciding to get the nonprofit management certification rather than the finance / accounting one. She was valedictorian of that too.
I went straight to law school then marched off to a corporate law firm. Incidentally, she rubbed off on me a bit and I later switched to a smaller law firm and we represent a lot of nonprofits doing mission-driven (but still complex) work. I guess I realized from her that I am not a robot and that personal fulfillment matters to me too.
In any case, this is all one anecdote but DW has never made more than $60k (with admittedly great benefits) despite being sharp as a tack and very diligent and successful in her academic career. But it's all been 100% her choice -- I'm sure some big bulge bracket bank would have loved to have her spend her youth working 90 hours a week for them if she majored in finance and marched off to it.
Some of these high wage jobs are so punishing, and given that life on earth is finite and health is finicky and money has declining marginal returns, I think our culture is way too irrationally focused on long hours, promotions, the "brass ring" to begin with. So I wonder if women don't have the right attitude and more men should say "man this is not worth it" and pursue more fulfilling, lower-paid things too.
Isn't that part of the reason we are all on the mustache blog to begin with? :)
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The other piece that I find troublesome is that there are entire professions and lines of work which are broadly very low paid by our society, despite the fact that they are actually some of the most important professions out there.
In no particular order:
Personal care/home health aides
Teachers & related support
Child care
Nursing and related medical fields (nurses are way more important in patient care than doctors are, yet make far less money)
Social work
These are some of the most important jobs that exist. What else is more important than teaching the next generation? And yet on average teachers make a pittance while working way harder than a lot of other people. My teacher friends routinely work 10-12 hour days during the school year.
And these are the professions that are heavily female. So maybe there is or isn't a significant pay gap in these fields, but the fact that society devalues the types of fields women are dominant in is a real problem.
FYI - women tend to need more flexibility because SOMEONE has to take care of the kids and house and in general keep daily life going, and the male is less likely to take on that burden. Also another problem. It's getting better, but not perfect yet. So please stop arguing that all is fine, because in the grand scheme of things, it is not. Now, go do your part to help.
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Wise words blinx7, I do recall the awful 90hr weeks prior to lease rounds, and man those sucked.
I also recall reading about how women are not as flexible for work hours because they have to be more flexible at home, since they typically do 5-10x more than men at home. Maybe tech could help with that soon.... now that they have fixed Alexa's creepy laugh.
It is said by someone, I don't remember whom, that once we remove all the environmental constraints/factors, we can begin to truly see the innate biological differences. We are slowly getting there, it would be really interesting to see what happens then.
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Can you kindly link the quantitative studies/sources so I might study them in detail thank you, since this is what I am looking for in the first place.
I'd have to take the time to search for it again. It's not something I've ever kept copies of. OTOH you could google it just as easily if you are interested.
If we consider your (supposedly more widely accepted) definition of "wage gap":
the fact that on average women doing the same job, with the same qualifications, in the same industry, working the same number of hours, are being paid less than men are on average.
Your "supposedly more widely accepted" comment leads me to believe you are unlikely to do any googling on the above.
I believe this is thoroughly explained in my posts; women, as data shows, tend to be on the lower end (ABC for example, if we use my example of 7 pay grades of the same title) of the pay grade within the confines of the same position/title, while men tend to be on the higher end (DEFG) of the pay grades of the same position. So when a study looks at the wages of the same position at face value without considering the difference in the "hidden" pay-grades, of course we get the picture that women on average appear to be paid less than men for the same position with the same qualifications and work the same hours. You can't expect one gender that, on average, are at grade C get paid as much as the other gender that, on average, get grade E wages. That's just math.
Ok, problem solved, it's just that men get the higher pay grade positions much more often than women do and therefore get paid more. As it should be I guess.
Glad we got that solved.
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The other piece that I find troublesome is that there are entire professions and lines of work which are broadly very low paid by our society, despite the fact that they are actually some of the most important professions out there.
In no particular order:
Personal care/home health aides
Teachers & related support
Child care
Nursing and related medical fields (nurses are way more important in patient care than doctors are, yet make far less money)
Social work
These are some of the most important jobs that exist. What else is more important than teaching the next generation? And yet on average teachers make a pittance while working way harder than a lot of other people. My teacher friends routinely work 10-12 hour days during the school year.
And these are the professions that are heavily female. So maybe there is or isn't a significant pay gap in these fields, but the fact that society devalues the types of fields women are dominant in is a real problem.
FYI - women tend to need more flexibility because SOMEONE has to take care of the kids and house and in general keep daily life going, and the male is less likely to take on that burden. Also another problem. It's getting better, but not perfect yet. So please stop arguing that all is fine, because in the grand scheme of things, it is not. Now, go do your part to help.
The free market determines the value of any given job. These calls and pay are readily available to all in society prior to making a career choice.
And your final point is a choice a woman would make based on gender roles.
I see nothing here other than more proof is a choice not a systemic problem in your analysis.
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Morning PKFFW,
I did in fact google for contrary evidence, I would say I spent a lot more time researching this than you might think. This is a summary what I found:
Wage gap! women make ~20% less than men! ----> then I found they grouped ALL women vs ALL men, regardless of profession or qualifications.
Wage gap! women make ~15% less than men! ----> then I found they grouped ALL women vs ALL men in the same profession, not actual jobs, just professions
Wage gap! women make ~10% less than men! ----> then I found they grouped ALL women vs ALL men in the same industry, not within the same employer
Wage gap! women make ~5% less than men! ----> this turned out to be the one in question, ie, same job title, same company, same qualifications, then I noticed NO ONE even mentioned pay grades (wilful omission or ignorance?), which as we all know, can easily vary 10% within the same job title.
This is when I called in some favors and looked at some internal pay grade stats and found this single variable was quite capable of explaining the remaining 5% pay differences.
In fact, the most "comprehensive" mainstream article I could find, says this:
"According to data for 8.7m employees worldwide gathered by Korn Ferry, a consultancy, women in Britain make just 1% less than men who have the same function and level at the same employer. In most European countries, the discrepancy is similarly small. These numbers do not show that the labour market is free of sex discrimination. However, they do suggest that the main problem today is not unequal pay for equal work, but whatever it is that leads women to be in lower-ranking jobs at lower-paying organisations."
https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/08/daily-chart
I may be FIRE'd but I am still a scientist at heart, I do researches to discover underlying causes of oddities, instead of relying on pre-conceived ideology to "explain" everything.
If you actually read my post you would have noticed further down I changed my wordings to "In its absence, it seems the reported "wage gap" by the more widely accepted definition is a result of one gender being collectively or on average on the lower pay-grade than the other gender. (without supposedly)" and went on to explain WHY more women tend to be stuck on lower pay grades on average compared to men, instead of simply "as it should be".
I welcome your input but please focus on the actual data and analysis, including the contrary evidence I would love to see, instead of throwing "hissy fits". Since we are an issue where difference in genders are related and central to the discussion, I would hate to see your strongest/only argument to be
"It's not what you said, it's how you said it!"
We owe it to ourselves to be fully informed so we can make rational choices in life.
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There really are two terms for wage gap. The one arguing it's a big deal use the All men vs All women, and the one arguing it's not a big deal show that taking into account profession, hours, experience, etc, men generally make the same as women.
The second definition points to everything being good. The first definition is disconcerting. The question is does the second definition make the first one satisfactory? It's hard to say. If there's a problem, it's more of a problem with society and not so much with the businesses, yet it seems as though the businesses are the ones that are paying the price. International women's day is good to point out the problems seen in the first definition.
Hopefully that made sense, I'm on a new prescription drug and it made it difficult for me to come up with a cohesive statement.
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There really are two terms for wage gap. The one arguing it's a big deal use the All men vs All women, and the one arguing it's not a big deal show that taking into account profession, hours, experience, etc, men generally make the same as women.
The second definition points to everything being good. The first definition is disconcerting. The question is does the second definition make the first one satisfactory? It's hard to say. If there's a problem, it's more of a problem with society and not so much with the businesses, yet it seems as though the businesses are the ones that are paying the price. International women's day is good to point out the problems seen in the first definition.
Hopefully that made sense, I'm on a new prescription drug and it made it difficult for me to come up with a cohesive statement.
The people who make a living talking about this stuff like to focus on the first point because it is simpler and is all they need to talk about to make a living. Those folks (politicians, union leaders, arts majors etc) are not interested in the truth of the matter at all. They have found their niche and are mining it for all its worth. They are no worse than the folks at BMW who are trying to convince you that you need a new 7-series sportswagon. It is all noise. Ignore it.
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Here is a link. OP won't be interested in it, but others posting here might.
[It's long, so set aside some time if you want to read it.]
https://www.vox.com/2017/9/8/16268362/gender-wage-gap-explained
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Here is a link. OP won't be interested in it, but others posting here might.
[It's long, so set aside some time if you want to read it.]
https://www.vox.com/2017/9/8/16268362/gender-wage-gap-explained
this article just further proves the OPs original point - that its a choice women(their households) are making based on historical norms for gender roles. men are working longer hours and getting promoted for working longer hours - if we really want to talk about the problem here its a work life balance choice that women are making vs many men who are not. I think the reason we are seeing the wage gap decrease is that more of the younger generation doesnt work towards historical gender roles. But again its a choice its not discrimination. If you want to solve the problem then create a work life balance that rewards performance over time spent working. If you as a woman want to fix what you perceive as a problem and the media talking heads are trying to shine more light on you should start with a conversation with your husband about the balance in care giving for your children.
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Sure, as an engineer, I never got paid less than my male peers doing the same job, but that doesn't mean there isn't a systemic issue across the board for womenkind.
I've had the chance to do a big multi-year study on the pay discrepancy between men and women at engineering jobs.
My wife's an engineer, as am I. We went to the same school, got the same degree, worked at the same first job (with the same title at the same company, although in different departments) for four years then left that company and worked at the same second job (with same title at the same company, although in different departments) for eight years. I've always made 10 - 15% more than she has, and she has always had better performance reviews.
People rarely talk about what their exact salary is. My wife would have never known that she was being underpaid for being a women. I would have never known that I was being overpaid for being a guy. Our experiment has opened my eyes though. Never dismiss the pay benefit of having a dick. :P
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Here is a link. OP won't be interested in it, but others posting here might.
[It's long, so set aside some time if you want to read it.]
https://www.vox.com/2017/9/8/16268362/gender-wage-gap-explained
Here's a quick summary of what you'll find if you decide to click on it. It was an interesting read, but posting a link without much context means fewer people will actually click it:
Essentially the thesis of that article is that the vast majority of the gender pay gap is actually a motherhood pay gap, and it notes the the pay gap is quite small for both women in their first jobs out of college, and for unmarried women without children.
It goes on to point out that the motherhood pay gap likely doesn't result from direct sexism, but is concentrated in occupations where people need to be in the office at certain hours in order to be effective, and where willingness to work more and more total hours and have no sense of work-life balance leads to higher pay (both of which can be hard while also caring for a child).
@boarder42 Another potential explanation is that the continued declines in fertility rates mean that the ratio of women without children (small or no pay gap) to women with children (bigger pay gap) is changing, and with it the overall pay gap when we lump those two very different groups together. I guess we'd have to look at whether the motherhood pay gap is decreasing, rather than the overall gender pay gap, to know which explanation makes more sense.
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This is a long standing issue, and it's come up here before.
The first thing to consider: in establishing the "wage gap", as the term is to be used, are we going to:
a) take into account all of the ways that girls are steered away from high paying professions?
b) take into account the studies showing that women are offered lower pay despite having the same qualifications?
http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-job-rather-jennifer
This study goes against the result that is claimed above: the idea that women will get the same pay as men if they do the same jobs. If you're trying to say "the wage gap doesn't exist when women put in the same work", that's clearly not true. People (both men and women) attribute lower competency to applicant women just because they're women.
That's not the only study on the subject:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10755-014-9313-4
Students rated their online TAs lower if they thought they were female, even though they were randomly assigned male or female TAs.
That makes me wonder about the Uber results. How significant is "Tipping" for an Uber driver? Is it counted as part of their income for these purposes? If so, are people rating male drivers better because of the well known biases regarding women and cars?
But put all of that aside, too, because you shouldn't just be looking at the actual ways that women doing the same jobs are less valued.
You should also be examining the ways that women are steered into lower paying fields. When was the last time a male CEO was asked how he balances his family with his high powered job? When was the last time a young boy was told he couldn't be a doctor because boys aren't nurturing enough?
That happens, and it has a huge effect on outcomes.
https://phys.org/news/2008-09-tracking-girls-science-math.html
"The study confirmed that old stereotypes die slowly. Both boys and girls perceived that teachers thought boys were stronger at math and science. For boys this represented a support, while for girls it acted as a barrier."
So, if we're going to discuss the "wage gap", I think it's disingenuous to eliminate all the things that contribute to the gap throughout a woman's life.
It's like saying, "Yeah, there's a wage gap, but if you get past our society's bias while you're growing up, our hiring patterns as a young adult, our predisposition to fear your inevitable pregnancy in your 20s, and put in the same effort as a man ... well, then we're willing to regard you as 92%-96% of a man."
Toque.
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The thing I can't explain when talking about wage gaps is: if you account for all the parameters and say that for the same job/experience/hours/etc, other countries have much lower wage gaps than the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap#/media/File:OECD_gender_wage_gap.svg
I wouldn't expect them all to be the same, but I would expect there to be less of a distribution. I can't explain that.
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I've always made 10 - 15% more than she has, and she has always had better performance reviews.
That's an unusual result, unless "better performance reviews" doesn't mean "different performance label" - e.g., "outperform" vs. "meets expectations", or "1" vs. "2", etc.
At least in part due to the desire to avoid being held liable for various discriminations, pay raises have become more formulaic over time. The better one's rating, and the lower one's current pay, the higher the pay raise the payroll program spits out, with little to no room for the supervisor to modify.
But the raises are almost always as a percent of current pay, so negotiating a high starting salary can have career-long benefits - and not negotiating can have a corresponding downside.
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I've always made 10 - 15% more than she has, and she has always had better performance reviews.
That's an unusual result, unless "better performance reviews" doesn't mean "different performance label" - e.g., "outperform" vs. "meets expectations", or "1" vs. "2", etc.
At least in part due to the desire to avoid being held liable for various discriminations, pay raises have become more formulaic over time. The better one's rating, and the lower one's current pay, the higher the pay raise the payroll program spits out, with little to no room for the supervisor to modify.
But the raises are almost always as a percent of current pay, so negotiating a high starting salary can have career-long benefits - and not negotiating can have a corresponding downside.
They were in different departments. At my first job, I started in the System Engineering department, which had mostly people in their 50's and 60's who made double or more than I did. So when each department got 4%, my manager would take 1% from 3 people, then give me a 10% raise.
Later on, I switched to the Electrical Engineering department, where it was mostly people in their 30s. So when that manager took 1% from 3 people, I'd only get ~7%.
Financially, I would have done better in the first department, and I was doing mostly the same work. I switched over because leadership was trying to reduce the power of that department, so it was recommended that I switch over.
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The thing I can't explain when talking about wage gaps is: if you account for all the parameters and say that for the same job/experience/hours/etc, other countries have much lower wage gaps than the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap#/media/File:OECD_gender_wage_gap.svg
I wouldn't expect them all to be the same, but I would expect there to be less of a distribution. I can't explain that.
Better social safety net, for things like cost of/availablity of day care, sick day policies, maternity leave, etc., I'd guess. Those things tend to disproportionately affect women, as women tend to be the ones who take charge of child care, stay home when kids are ill, etc.
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They were in different departments....
That is a possible explanation, but it is still unusual for two people at the same job level when the one receiving higher ratings for 12 years has the lower pay.
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Sure, as an engineer, I never got paid less than my male peers doing the same job, but that doesn't mean there isn't a systemic issue across the board for womenkind.
I've had the chance to do a big multi-year study on the pay discrepancy between men and women at engineering jobs.
My wife's an engineer, as am I. We went to the same school, got the same degree, worked at the same first job (with the same title at the same company, although in different departments) for four years then left that company and worked at the same second job (with same title at the same company, although in different departments) for eight years. I've always made 10 - 15% more than she has, and she has always had better performance reviews.
People rarely talk about what their exact salary is. My wife would have never known that she was being underpaid for being a women. I would have never known that I was being overpaid for being a guy. Our experiment has opened my eyes though. Never dismiss the pay benefit of having a dick. :P
the different dept piece of this puzzle is a large variable that should not be overlooked at my company depending on the division or dept you're in your pay can easily vary by 10-15%. i had a guy to guy example when i first started myself and another interned one year at this company and both had EE degrees and started in the same division on the same day full time, but different dept's we got the same reviews and he recieved a bonus and raise that were 10-15% total comp higher than mine 3 years into our working careers. only difference the dept's we were in - oh and i called them out on it and they went back and they "forgot" i was an engineer and got me a bit more money. Different depts and divisions can effect alot at companies.
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They were in different departments....
That is a possible explanation, but it is still unusual for two people at the same job level when the one receiving higher ratings for 12 years has the lower pay.
Yes, it is unusual. One of the guys I worked with in the Electrical Department got slightly worse ratings (but still really good), and was getting the 7%'s while I got the 10%'s (until I switched over). I also got a mid year raise that he never got. I'm pretty sure my slightly better ratings wouldn't account for such a difference. Honestly I got really lucky in a lot of ways with that job.
And for what it's worth, he probably makes more than I do now, he's taken on more of a management/lead role, while I've stayed completely technical. I would totally work under him :)
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Sounds to me like you've already made up your mind that this 'wage gap' thing is all a big lie, and just want people to agree with you.
Hi ministashy,
Clearly you don't belong to the "can't read good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too" group since you can neither read good and nor want to learn how to do other stuff good too.
I specifically asked for any evidence contrary to my analytically-derived conclusion,
Wow, congratulations--you managed to be elitist AND condescending all in the same reply.
So fine, since you want people to disprove your 'analytically-derived conclusion' (because you couldn't possibly have any pre-existing biases, you're FAR too smart and educated for that, I'm sure), then let's play that game. You start. Show us all the documentation on YOUR studies on the wage gap. Don't forget to make sure to include large sample sizes across diverse populations, not to mention documentation of YOUR methodology, and lay out why that has led you to the conclusion that there is no 'true' wage gap. (One wonders if this is related to the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy.)
Because I'm sure you have all the peer-reviewed documentation on hand to support your argument, rather than just cherry-picking a few different studies, plus a nice sprinkling of anecdotal evidence, in order to support your conclusions, Mr. Scientist.
Before I close, I want to stress that I am looking for wage gaps that manifest as studies that display blatant sexism by paying men more than women when they are on the same pay grade"
So in other words--you want people to find studies to refute your assumption--oh, I'm sorry, carefully researched conclusion--that 'if women get paid less, it's their own fault because they don't ask for it/take time off to have kids/don't go after the high-paying jobs', while at the same time narrowing the parameters of your question almost to the point of irrelevancy. Good to know!
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I've always made 10 - 15% more than she has, and she has always had better performance reviews.
That's an unusual result, unless "better performance reviews" doesn't mean "different performance label" - e.g., "outperform" vs. "meets expectations", or "1" vs. "2", etc.
At least in part due to the desire to avoid being held liable for various discriminations, pay raises have become more formulaic over time. The better one's rating, and the lower one's current pay, the higher the pay raise the payroll program spits out, with little to no room for the supervisor to modify.
But the raises are almost always as a percent of current pay, so negotiating a high starting salary can have career-long benefits - and not negotiating can have a corresponding downside.
They were in different departments. At my first job, I started in the System Engineering department, which had mostly people in their 50's and 60's who made double or more than I did. So when each department got 4%, my manager would take 1% from 3 people, then give me a 10% raise.
Later on, I switched to the Electrical Engineering department, where it was mostly people in their 30s. So when that manager took 1% from 3 people, I'd only get ~7%.
Financially, I would have done better in the first department, and I was doing mostly the same work. I switched over because leadership was trying to reduce the power of that department, so it was recommended that I switch over.
We worked on different parts of the software product at both companies (Software - Simulators vs Software - Airframes at the first place, and Software - Management Control Systems vs Software - Tools and Simulators). It wasn't like the difference between a systems engineer and an electrical engineer, we were both doing software engineering and under the same department head (although had different immediate supervisors).
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Seems there's some confusion on the definition of "wage gap". It is defined thus, the wage differences between a male and a female working in the same organization, in the same location, having the same qualifications (degrees, titles, etc), doing the same job, and being on the same pay grade.
Before I reply, I want to stress that I am looking for wage gaps that manifest as studies that display blatant sexism by paying men more than women when they are on the same pay grade". Thanks.
Sounds to me like you've already made up your mind that this 'wage gap' thing is all a big lie, and just want people to agree with you.
Hi ministashy,
Clearly you don't belong to the "can't read good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too" group since you can neither read good and nor want to learn how to do other stuff good too.
I specifically asked for any evidence contrary to my analytically-derived conclusion,
I think what actually happened here is that people are disagreeing with your premises, not any "analytically derived conclusion" you derived from them. You eliminated a whole host of ways in which our society discriminates against female employees, then did your analysis.
Also, please mind your manners. We're not stupid. We're disagreeing with the way you're approaching this issue.
Toque.
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The thing I can't explain when talking about wage gaps is: if you account for all the parameters and say that for the same job/experience/hours/etc, other countries have much lower wage gaps than the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap#/media/File:OECD_gender_wage_gap.svg
I wouldn't expect them all to be the same, but I would expect there to be less of a distribution. I can't explain that.
Better social safety net, for things like cost of/availablity of day care, sick day policies, maternity leave, etc., I'd guess. Those things tend to disproportionately affect women, as women tend to be the ones who take charge of child care, stay home when kids are ill, etc.
I think you are correct as to what drives the lower gap in those countries. Most of that seems pretty small in cost (well, not the day care).
So the question we are trying to answer is: Is the wage gap (all men vs all women) a problem?
Here are the key points:
The median woman's salary is ~15% less than the median man's salary. Or ~19% from average to average.
For the same job, experience, hours, etc, men and women generally make the same.
Other countries drop that ~19% down to ~4%.
This might be accounted by having a bigger social services.
To me, it seems like the wage gap is generally not a big deal, but I can definitely understand if someone is pushing for more social services to lower the gap.
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Here is a link. OP won't be interested in it, but others posting here might.
[It's long, so set aside some time if you want to read it.]
https://www.vox.com/2017/9/8/16268362/gender-wage-gap-explained
this article just further proves the OPs original point - that its a choice women(their households) are making based on historical norms for gender roles. men are working longer hours and getting promoted for working longer hours - if we really want to talk about the problem here its a work life balance choice that women are making vs many men who are not. I think the reason we are seeing the wage gap decrease is that more of the younger generation doesnt work towards historical gender roles. But again its a choice its not discrimination. If you want to solve the problem then create a work life balance that rewards performance over time spent working. If you as a woman want to fix what you perceive as a problem and the media talking heads are trying to shine more light on you should start with a conversation with your husband about the balance in care giving for your children.
I noted that the OP wouldn't be interested in the article. I'm aware that it doesn't address his hyper-specific premise.
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I hadn't seem the median number before. Given that median compensation is closer than the mean, one idea to test would be whether countries with greater pay gaps between men and women are also countries with high levels of income inequality overall.
If so, maybe the skew towards men tending to occupy the higher paid positions or higher paid professions is more similar across all countries, but the difference between the compensation for those positions and others is smaller in the countries with lower overall average pay gaps between men and women?
It also strikes me that there may be a correlation between a country's ranking in that graph and a country's ranking in this graph:
(https://blogs-images.forbes.com/niallmccarthy/files/2015/02/20150217_Workers_Fo.jpg)
Which would be consistent with the model proposed by @Cressida's article that a big chunk of the gender pay gap is actually a motherhood pay gap because people who are also caring for small children are going to have more trouble putting in 50+ hour work weeks than people (male or female) who are not.
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Sure, as an engineer, I never got paid less than my male peers doing the same job, but that doesn't mean there isn't a systemic issue across the board for womenkind.
I've had the chance to do a big multi-year study on the pay discrepancy between men and women at engineering jobs.
My wife's an engineer, as am I. We went to the same school, got the same degree, worked at the same first job (with the same title at the same company, although in different departments) for four years then left that company and worked at the same second job (with same title at the same company, although in different departments) for eight years. I've always made 10 - 15% more than she has, and she has always had better performance reviews.
People rarely talk about what their exact salary is. My wife would have never known that she was being underpaid for being a women. I would have never known that I was being overpaid for being a guy. Our experiment has opened my eyes though. Never dismiss the pay benefit of having a dick. :P
Oh, I can believe this, but I worked in operations management in the oil patch, where as someone mentioned above, female managers are as scarce as hens' teeth and often treated like gold. Every year I had to review salary comp reports so I knew where I was on the bell curve. Prior to being in ops management, I worked as a quality manager and the HR manager was fantastic and also shared my position in the salary ranking with me. I am comfortable with my previous statement, but certainly accept that this is not the situation shared by all female engineers. I had many gripes about my previous work environment, but compensation was not one of them.
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Hi all, OP here, thread has clearly expanded, took me awhile to read all the posts.
Thank you Cressida for the link, I read it, even as you admit, it doesn't meet my super specific premise as contrary evidence. As boarder42, maizeman, and Mr.Moogle (maybe) commented, a huge part of this pay gap relates to motherhood and the resulting time out of employment. In addition to choice of profession, I tend to agree that the motherhood issue boils down to personal choice, perhaps reinforced by biological instinct and societal pressure. I dug around and found that some countries have taken steps to lessen the outside influence (social and environmental factors), such as Sweden and other Scandinavian countries.
These are old articles from 2014, couldn't find newer ones, sorry.
http://www.scandinaviastandard.com/what-about-women-in-the-workplace-in-scandinavia/
Other measure being taken to close the wage gap include breaking up traditional notions of gendered jobs, which has often seen women being steamrolled into work that is considered “feminine” and is, as a result, paid less. For instance, the Swedish government has allotted money to initiatives encouraging men to work in areas typically seen as feminine, such as elderly care, and encourage women to work in traditionally male sectors like tech and engineering (Business Insider).
Regarding policies results
https://www.economist.com/news/business/21632512-worlds-most-female-friendly-workplaces-executive-suites-are-still-male-dominated
Furthermore, in the first substantial study of the Norwegian reforms, Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago’s Booth business school and three colleagues conclude that “there is no evidence that these gains at the very top trickled down.” They have done nothing to improve the career prospects of highly qualified women below board level. They have not helped close the gender gap in the incomes of recent business-school graduates. Nor have they done anything to encourage younger women to go to business school in the first place.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, when we lessen the outside (social and environmental) factors, we hope to observe how much of the end result boils down to personal choice. I think I need to stress, equality of outcome (in this case, wage) regardless of personal choices seem pretty absurd.
GuitarStv,
That is extremely interesting, and could potentially be considered a contrary evidence that I've been looking for. Do you mind to give more detail regarding your experience, including how the functions of the two departments differed, and if the company had a standardized pay grade system in place. You could also PM me if you prefer, thanks.
Toque (as poster), and ministachy,
I did in fact provide a summary of my findings (post #6, #11, #19), I gave my detailed observation and thought process, then asked for contrary evidence to see if I missed anything. What I noticed was the more widely accepted definition of wage gap (ie, women make less than men, on average) gets smaller and smaller.
Toque, you disagreed with my premises where I eliminated other factors to isolate and identify true "wage gap" that are true gender bias based instead of psychology/choice based. Yet, this is how science is done, you isolate the part in question to learn more about it, same with engineering. When EVERY differences are accounted for (motherhood, profession, personal choices, pay grade, etc), the wage gap then almost disappears (if not entirely, the 1% difference in the UK case could easily have been a rounding error). Equality of outcome (wage), regardless of personal choices, is clearly absurd. Note Toque, I am separating the reply regarding the topic and poster behavior, which I am assuming came from a mod position, see below please.
Toque (as mod),
Who Can't Read Good and Who Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too is a joke from Zoolander (2001), it was used here to caution people to read carefully, because most people tend to read things out of context on the internet, which clearly happened. You have issue with my manner, yet I have been nothing less than courteous even semi-professional when discussing with people that provided actual substance in this discussion. When I tear someone a new one, it's usually when they initiated the "fight". Take ministashy for example, their very first post here said
"Sounds to me like you've already made up your mind that this 'wage gap' thing is all a big lie, and just want people to agree with you."
without contributing to the discussion at all, even though I laid out some possible explanations and specifically asked for contrary evidence, if they knew any. This is borderline trolling behavior as they did not even discuss the issue in their post but only made snide personal remarks.
Later on, they came back and, without responding to any of my and other people's arguments regarding the examination of "true" wage gap, demanded to see data, methodology, and documentations, even though there were already no less than four links to studies and reports in this very thread, yet another clear action of trolling.
My response was a play on the original zoolander joke, since ministashy clearly had no intention to read nor contribute to a meaningful discussion, that is based by studies. Based on arebelspy's pyramid (forum rules), I would suggest I've been doing the top three while ministashy has been doing the bottom three. Thank you.
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Hi all, OP here, thread has clearly expanded, took me awhile to read all the posts.
Thank you Cressida for the link, I read it, even as you admit, it doesn't meet my super specific premise as contrary evidence. As boarder42, maizeman, and Mr.Moogle (maybe) commented, a huge part of this pay gap relates to motherhood and the resulting time out of employment. In addition to choice of profession, I tend to agree that the motherhood issue boils down to personal choice, perhaps reinforced by biological instinct and societal pressure. I dug around and found that some countries have taken steps to lessen the outside influence (social and environmental factors), such as Sweden and other Scandinavian countries.
So, if my wife and I decided today that we wanted another child how would I go about choosing to carry the baby in her place for the first ~9 months of it's life?
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a huge part of this pay gap relates to motherhood and the resulting time out of employment. In addition to choice of profession, I tend to agree that the motherhood issue boils down to personal choice, perhaps reinforced by biological instinct and societal pressure.
Well this is where you have to be careful. We can use statistics to estimate the proportion of the gender pay gap which is actually the motherhood pay gap. Whether you consider motherhood to be a personal choice or something else (perhaps a protected class? a right?), is a matter of political opinion rather than something inherent in the data.
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This is a long standing issue, and it's come up here before.
The first thing to consider: in establishing the "wage gap", as the term is to be used, are we going to:
a) take into account all of the ways that girls are steered away from high paying professions?
b) take into account the studies showing that women are offered lower pay despite having the same qualifications?
http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-job-rather-jennifer
This study goes against the result that is claimed above: the idea that women will get the same pay as men if they do the same jobs. If you're trying to say "the wage gap doesn't exist when women put in the same work", that's clearly not true. People (both men and women) attribute lower competency to applicant women just because they're women.
That's not the only study on the subject:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10755-014-9313-4
Students rated their online TAs lower if they thought they were female, even though they were randomly assigned male or female TAs.
That makes me wonder about the Uber results. How significant is "Tipping" for an Uber driver? Is it counted as part of their income for these purposes? If so, are people rating male drivers better because of the well known biases regarding women and cars?
But put all of that aside, too, because you shouldn't just be looking at the actual ways that women doing the same jobs are less valued.
You should also be examining the ways that women are steered into lower paying fields. When was the last time a male CEO was asked how he balances his family with his high powered job? When was the last time a young boy was told he couldn't be a doctor because boys aren't nurturing enough?
That happens, and it has a huge effect on outcomes.
https://phys.org/news/2008-09-tracking-girls-science-math.html
"The study confirmed that old stereotypes die slowly. Both boys and girls perceived that teachers thought boys were stronger at math and science. For boys this represented a support, while for girls it acted as a barrier."
So, if we're going to discuss the "wage gap", I think it's disingenuous to eliminate all the things that contribute to the gap throughout a woman's life.
It's like saying, "Yeah, there's a wage gap, but if you get past our society's bias while you're growing up, our hiring patterns as a young adult, our predisposition to fear your inevitable pregnancy in your 20s, and put in the same effort as a man ... well, then we're willing to regard you as 92%-96% of a man."
Toque.
In case it was not clear, I decided to have a post just to discuss the issues that are brought up. They are valid points, I don't have good and convincing answers to the perception of women being incompetent, other than perhaps women are, on average, less assertive and more agreeable. I will look into this matter, thanks.
Regarding women being steered into lower paying fields, the "Norse" countries in recent years have been attempting to "push" more women into STEM fields with less than stellar results. The cause is not yet apparent, though some people claim it boils down to choices based on biology, I, for one, hope it is not the case.
Finally, I want to reiterate that the 92-96% wage gap can often be explained via the mechanisms explored on post #6.
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Hi all, OP here, thread has clearly expanded, took me awhile to read all the posts.
Thank you Cressida for the link, I read it, even as you admit, it doesn't meet my super specific premise as contrary evidence. As boarder42, maizeman, and Mr.Moogle (maybe) commented, a huge part of this pay gap relates to motherhood and the resulting time out of employment. In addition to choice of profession, I tend to agree that the motherhood issue boils down to personal choice, perhaps reinforced by biological instinct and societal pressure. I dug around and found that some countries have taken steps to lessen the outside influence (social and environmental factors), such as Sweden and other Scandinavian countries.
So, if my wife and I decided today that we wanted another child how would I go about choosing to carry the baby in her place for the first ~9 months of it's life?
The issue of motherhood does not directly relate the carrying of said child to the lower pay - its the choices made post child to work less and spend more time as a care giver that were shown to decrease the pay for a woman in a similar line of work to a man who chose to work longer hours and put child raising more on the side of the woman in his relationship.
Also you do have the choice to hire a surrogate to carry your child for you completely eliminating any of the medical needs for time off of work post birth. unless you know you choose to have her stay home and take care of the kid.
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a huge part of this pay gap relates to motherhood and the resulting time out of employment. In addition to choice of profession, I tend to agree that the motherhood issue boils down to personal choice, perhaps reinforced by biological instinct and societal pressure.
Well this is where you have to be careful. We can use statistics to estimate the proportion of the gender pay gap which is actually the motherhood pay gap. Whether you consider motherhood to be a personal choice or something else (perhaps a protected class? a right?), is a matter of political opinion rather than something inherent in the data.
Noted, thanks. I struggle to convey the point in an apolitical manner, perhaps someone smarter could help with this? As we all know, men can not carry children, not yet at least.
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a huge part of this pay gap relates to motherhood and the resulting time out of employment. In addition to choice of profession, I tend to agree that the motherhood issue boils down to personal choice, perhaps reinforced by biological instinct and societal pressure.
Well this is where you have to be careful. We can use statistics to estimate the proportion of the gender pay gap which is actually the motherhood pay gap. Whether you consider motherhood to be a personal choice or something else (perhaps a protected class? a right?), is a matter of political opinion rather than something inherent in the data.
Noted, thanks. I struggle to convey the point in an apolitical manner, perhaps someone smarter could help with this? As we all know, men can not carry children, not yet at least.
its what anyone chooses to do in motherhood or fatherhood that creates a larger pay gap between them and their peers in similar positions. I"m getting ready to have a child and am considering dropping to 4-8s i do this not expecting to keep my pay level increasing at the same as my peers working 40 hour weeks or longer. its important to understand the choice you make and the result of that choice regardless of if you're male or female.
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GuitarStv,
That is extremely interesting, and could potentially be considered a contrary evidence that I've been looking for. Do you mind to give more detail regarding your experience, including how the functions of the two departments differed, and if the company had a standardized pay grade system in place. You could also PM me if you prefer, thanks.
Two companies.
We were both hired out of university at company A into the software department of an aerospace company specializing in simulators. My wife worked developing the underlying software that ran the simulation, I developed the software and logic related to air-frames avionics. Development was in C++ and C# my wife, and C++ for me. We were on the same pay scale (were told that the same salary max/min applied), I was higher on the payscale when I started, got more stock options (which turned out to be worthless when the company tanked) when they were given out, and finished employment making more money. We both got great performance reviews at this company.
We both got laid off in 2008, and my wife found a job at company B (which dealt with train control systems )before helping me to get hired there. My wife worked in two of the software departments there, first the dealing with automatic speed control for the trains (embedded programming, Perl, C and C++, also required regular trips to Asia for on site measurement/adjustment of loaded trains) and later the software department that handles the management and routing of trains in service (C++, C#). I was hired into the software department that handles general tools, and developed train simulators for testing. My development was in C++. We were on the same pay scale (were told that the same salary max/min applied). I started off making more money (maybe because I made more at my last job?), and continued to get slightly higher raises until being laid off.
We carpooled every day, so it's not like I was staying later or getting in earlier. I kinda hated my job at the second company, and did just enough work to get by. My wife has always been more industrious than me, and her managers all gave her significantly better reviews than I ever got. My wife did get pregnant and take a year off 5 years after starting work at company B, but I had made (and continued to make) more money.
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Hi all, OP here, thread has clearly expanded, took me awhile to read all the posts.
Thank you Cressida for the link, I read it, even as you admit, it doesn't meet my super specific premise as contrary evidence. As boarder42, maizeman, and Mr.Moogle (maybe) commented, a huge part of this pay gap relates to motherhood and the resulting time out of employment. In addition to choice of profession, I tend to agree that the motherhood issue boils down to personal choice, perhaps reinforced by biological instinct and societal pressure. I dug around and found that some countries have taken steps to lessen the outside influence (social and environmental factors), such as Sweden and other Scandinavian countries.
So, if my wife and I decided today that we wanted another child how would I go about choosing to carry the baby in her place for the first ~9 months of it's life?
The issue of motherhood does not directly relate the carrying of said child to the lower pay - its the choices made post child to work less and spend more time as a care giver that were shown to decrease the pay for a woman in a similar line of work to a man who chose to work longer hours and put child raising more on the side of the woman in his relationship.
Also you do have the choice to hire a surrogate to carry your child for you completely eliminating any of the medical needs for time off of work post birth. unless you know you choose to have her stay home and take care of the kid.
That's interesting. How did they separate the issues? Did they study "during pregnancy" separately from "after pregnancy", or did they only study one time period or the other?
I wonder how much hiring a surrogate costs, not something I've looked into much. Maybe we should just have the government pay for surrogates so that women no longer have to go through pregnancy unless they choose to...
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Hi all, OP here, thread has clearly expanded, took me awhile to read all the posts.
Thank you Cressida for the link, I read it, even as you admit, it doesn't meet my super specific premise as contrary evidence. As boarder42, maizeman, and Mr.Moogle (maybe) commented, a huge part of this pay gap relates to motherhood and the resulting time out of employment. In addition to choice of profession, I tend to agree that the motherhood issue boils down to personal choice, perhaps reinforced by biological instinct and societal pressure. I dug around and found that some countries have taken steps to lessen the outside influence (social and environmental factors), such as Sweden and other Scandinavian countries.
So, if my wife and I decided today that we wanted another child how would I go about choosing to carry the baby in her place for the first ~9 months of it's life?
The issue of motherhood does not directly relate the carrying of said child to the lower pay - its the choices made post child to work less and spend more time as a care giver that were shown to decrease the pay for a woman in a similar line of work to a man who chose to work longer hours and put child raising more on the side of the woman in his relationship.
Also you do have the choice to hire a surrogate to carry your child for you completely eliminating any of the medical needs for time off of work post birth. unless you know you choose to have her stay home and take care of the kid.
That's interesting. How did they separate the issues? Did they study "during pregnancy" separately from "after pregnancy", or did they only study one time period or the other?
I wonder how much hiring a surrogate costs, not something I've looked into much. Maybe we should just have the government pay for surrogates so that women no longer have to go through pregnancy unless they choose to...
did you actually read any of the articles posted above or just respond to the one OP comment that discussed motherhood. They go deeply into one of the large causes being directly related to a mother deciding to work less hours once the child is born and spend more time on the family than career - you're picking a very small scemantic here to harp on. But motherhood in all cases is 100% a choice and there are many choices out there in which you can choose to not go thru the actual act of child birth including surrogacy and adoption - all which cost money to do - but doesnt change the choice of what you do after having the child in your life and typical gender roles put that as a mother doing it and the data backs it up.
If you could find imperical data relating the carrying of a child to a woman getting paid less at work then i think you should likely open a law firm and start suing employers b/c you'd be rich as shit if you could actually prove that with data.
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This is a long standing issue, and it's come up here before.
The first thing to consider: in establishing the "wage gap", as the term is to be used, are we going to:
a) take into account all of the ways that girls are steered away from high paying professions?
b) take into account the studies showing that women are offered lower pay despite having the same qualifications?
http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-job-rather-jennifer
This study goes against the result that is claimed above: the idea that women will get the same pay as men if they do the same jobs. If you're trying to say "the wage gap doesn't exist when women put in the same work", that's clearly not true. People (both men and women) attribute lower competency to applicant women just because they're women.
That's not the only study on the subject:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10755-014-9313-4
Students rated their online TAs lower if they thought they were female, even though they were randomly assigned male or female TAs.
That makes me wonder about the Uber results. How significant is "Tipping" for an Uber driver? Is it counted as part of their income for these purposes? If so, are people rating male drivers better because of the well known biases regarding women and cars?
But put all of that aside, too, because you shouldn't just be looking at the actual ways that women doing the same jobs are less valued.
You should also be examining the ways that women are steered into lower paying fields. When was the last time a male CEO was asked how he balances his family with his high powered job? When was the last time a young boy was told he couldn't be a doctor because boys aren't nurturing enough?
That happens, and it has a huge effect on outcomes.
https://phys.org/news/2008-09-tracking-girls-science-math.html
"The study confirmed that old stereotypes die slowly. Both boys and girls perceived that teachers thought boys were stronger at math and science. For boys this represented a support, while for girls it acted as a barrier."
So, if we're going to discuss the "wage gap", I think it's disingenuous to eliminate all the things that contribute to the gap throughout a woman's life.
It's like saying, "Yeah, there's a wage gap, but if you get past our society's bias while you're growing up, our hiring patterns as a young adult, our predisposition to fear your inevitable pregnancy in your 20s, and put in the same effort as a man ... well, then we're willing to regard you as 92%-96% of a man."
Toque.
In case it was not clear, I decided to have a post just to discuss the issues that are brought up. They are valid points, I don't have good and convincing answers to the perception of women being incompetent, other than perhaps women are, on average, less assertive and more agreeable. I will look into this matter, thanks.
Regarding women being steered into lower paying fields, the "Norse" countries in recent years have been attempting to "push" more women into STEM fields with less than stellar results. The cause is not yet apparent, though some people claim it boils down to choices based on biology, I, for one, hope it is not the case.
Finally, I want to reiterate that the 92-96% wage gap can often be explained via the mechanisms explored on post #6.
The answer to your question is that there is no way to control for promotions based on competence versus promotions impacted by sexism. Pretty clearly, early on, there is no significant gender gap based on sexism. And if you control for hours worked, experience, and job responsibilities, etc., there only at most a 1-3% gap which could be caused by sexism (or could be caused by choices not controlled for).
What those studies don't show is how a role sexism plays in moving men and women up to get those responsibilities and hours that are associated with higher pay. Obviously the motherhood gap explains a lot of it, but it's also likely small portion of that is actually reverse causation, where some women drop out of the labor force or scale back because they are already discouraged at the lack of advancement and the lack of advancement means it makes more sense for their family for them to sacrifice relatively more career wise in order to take care of kids and family life.
I suspect that the data is too messy to get much clearer a picture than what we have now, which is that there's not much discrimination other than some discrimination in decisions on advancement/promotion that are hard to isolate because women do tend on average to make work/life balance decisions that tilt them away from higher paying career tracks.
I used to work with and for a company very concerned about the percentage of women employed at the company and their representation in management that gives an idea of how messy the data can get:
- Because of the companies concern regarding equal representation in its workforce, women in technical positions could write their own ticket. Despite this, many of them simply didn't like the work. But when they expressed dissatisfaction, because the company was tech heavy and concerned about having a balanced workforce, the company was quick to offer them comparably paid positions in other departments such as marketing or customer service that didn't result in any pay decrease (and often came with a small raise) but that long term put them on a much lower paying track. So because they were worried about their overall gender balance, the company simultaneously offered the carrot of likely advancement while also constantly offering its female employees in high paid, technical positions an easy off ramp into a less stressful position with a lower long term earnings potential. Such an off ramp would not generally be available to men in the technical field, so they were in effect incentivizing women more than men to pursue lower paying careers and counterbalancing that with the carrot of a higher likelihood of advancement. I'm not sure which way that ultimately works, but it looks like it was probably a net downward impact to average female wages at the company.
- This same company, because they were tilted toward technical positions and wanted roughly equal representation in its workforce, also had preferential treatment for females in every non-technical area. This probably increased the wage gap at the company. I'm not sure how widespread the practice is, but if it is, it also maybe provides an incentive to males to pursue technical careers. If lots of big companies look like this, then the message to men is, "yea, you will have to deal with preferences that work against you in technical and non-technical positions at this company, but the competition drops off much faster in the technical side." My guess is that this doesn't really move the needle, but it's an interesting phenomena
- Despite the preference for women in many of its positions, this company still ends up with a pretty heavy tilted male upper level leadership. So is this because the preferences for females haven't been in place long enough to show up there yet? Or is it because of sexism in promotion practices at higher levels? Or is it a reflection that women disproportionately choose quality of life over pursuing status and money? I have no clue; I'm guessing a little bit of all of them but mostly the last factor? But I'm not sure how in the world you'd tease that out of the data on a company or economy wide scale.
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*snip*
But motherhood in all cases is 100% a choice and there are many choices out there in which you can choose to not go thru the actual act of child birth including surrogacy and adoption - all which cost money to do - but doesnt change the choice of what you do after having the child in your life and typical gender roles put that as a mother doing it and the data backs it up.
To the statement about motherhood being a choice. Yes it is a choice to an individual, but you have to agree that children need to be born, and therefore some women need to have them. So women as a group need to have some children. It might be a choice of who has them, but humanity needs them.
Some people's next leap is that since we need mothers, those mothers should not be penalized by a wage gap. I can't quite make that leap though. A more balanced childcare between the mother and father would help the gap. But then you'd have the parents group and the childless group, which you probably already have to some degree now.
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As was outlined in the article I linked, women prioritize caring for young children over paid employment at higher rates than men do, which often leads to lower pay. Did those women "choose" that action? Well, sure, in the sense that humans are free.
I don't think "choice," or even paid employment, is the interesting question here. We live in a society that's set up in such a way that women, at higher rates than men, find it easier to prioritize caring for young children. Is that desirable? Personally, I don't think it is. Why should there be a difference between the sexes in that area, or any other?* The wage gap is just a symptom of a larger problem of gendered expectations.
*I'm aware that sexual dimorphism means that the difference in this particular area (caring for young children) will never be absolutely zero. But there's no reason that the difference can't be made as small as possible.
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As was outlined in the article I linked, women prioritize caring for young children over paid employment at higher rates than men do, which often leads to lower pay. Did those women "choose" that action? Well, sure, in the sense that humans are free.
I don't think "choice," or even paid employment, is the interesting question here. We live in a society that's set up in such a way that women, at higher rates than men, find it easier to prioritize caring for young children. Is that desirable? Personally, I don't think it is. Why should there be a difference between the sexes in that area, or any other?* The wage gap is just a symptom of a larger problem of gendered expectations.
*I'm aware that sexual dimorphism means that the difference in this particular area (caring for young children) will never be absolutely zero. But there's no reason that the difference can't be made as small as possible.
Why???
We seem to be going through a lot of effort to force the workforce match up with an assumption that their is no behavioral related sexual dimorphism.
It's certainly possible that's the case, and since there are certainly men and women present across pretty much the entire spectrum of any non-physical trait you want to look at, we should make sure that no individual feels like they are pigeonholed based on generalities, but I don't get this blind faith that people have that men and women in the aggregate would make the exact same choices in life if it weren't for discrimination. It's just perplexing to me that people have what appears to be a fanatical belief that this is the case.
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As was outlined in the article I linked, women prioritize caring for young children over paid employment at higher rates than men do, which often leads to lower pay. Did those women "choose" that action? Well, sure, in the sense that humans are free.
I don't think "choice," or even paid employment, is the interesting question here. We live in a society that's set up in such a way that women, at higher rates than men, find it easier to prioritize caring for young children. Is that desirable? Personally, I don't think it is. Why should there be a difference between the sexes in that area, or any other?* The wage gap is just a symptom of a larger problem of gendered expectations.
*I'm aware that sexual dimorphism means that the difference in this particular area (caring for young children) will never be absolutely zero. But there's no reason that the difference can't be made as small as possible.
Why???
We seem to be going through a lot of effort to force the workforce match up with an assumption that their is no behavioral related sexual dimorphism.
It's certainly possible that's the case, and since there are certainly men and women present across pretty much the entire spectrum of any non-physical trait you want to look at, we should make sure that no individual feels like they are pigeonholed based on generalities, but I don't get this blind faith that people have that men and women in the aggregate would make the exact same choices in life if it weren't for discrimination. It's just perplexing to me that people have what appears to be a fanatical belief that this is the case.
Other countries show that it is at least possible to lower the gap. I'm not convinced the efforts to do that are worth it, but it does seem that lessoning the impact of motherhood, women would choose to make more similarly to men.
I'm not saying this is due to discrimination either. I think it's mostly society and government, and I'm not even saying those need to change. Change seems complicated to me.
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Hi all, OP here, thread has clearly expanded, took me awhile to read all the posts.
Thank you Cressida for the link, I read it, even as you admit, it doesn't meet my super specific premise as contrary evidence. As boarder42, maizeman, and Mr.Moogle (maybe) commented, a huge part of this pay gap relates to motherhood and the resulting time out of employment. In addition to choice of profession, I tend to agree that the motherhood issue boils down to personal choice, perhaps reinforced by biological instinct and societal pressure. I dug around and found that some countries have taken steps to lessen the outside influence (social and environmental factors), such as Sweden and other Scandinavian countries.
So, if my wife and I decided today that we wanted another child how would I go about choosing to carry the baby in her place for the first ~9 months of it's life?
The issue of motherhood does not directly relate the carrying of said child to the lower pay - its the choices made post child to work less and spend more time as a care giver that were shown to decrease the pay for a woman in a similar line of work to a man who chose to work longer hours and put child raising more on the side of the woman in his relationship.
Also you do have the choice to hire a surrogate to carry your child for you completely eliminating any of the medical needs for time off of work post birth. unless you know you choose to have her stay home and take care of the kid.
That's interesting. How did they separate the issues? Did they study "during pregnancy" separately from "after pregnancy", or did they only study one time period or the other?
I wonder how much hiring a surrogate costs, not something I've looked into much. Maybe we should just have the government pay for surrogates so that women no longer have to go through pregnancy unless they choose to...
did you actually read any of the articles posted above or just respond to the one OP comment that discussed motherhood. They go deeply into one of the large causes being directly related to a mother deciding to work less hours once the child is born and spend more time on the family than career - you're picking a very small scemantic here to harp on. But motherhood in all cases is 100% a choice and there are many choices out there in which you can choose to not go thru the actual act of child birth including surrogacy and adoption - all which cost money to do - but doesnt change the choice of what you do after having the child in your life and typical gender roles put that as a mother doing it and the data backs it up.
If you could find imperical data relating the carrying of a child to a woman getting paid less at work then i think you should likely open a law firm and start suing employers b/c you'd be rich as shit if you could actually prove that with data.
No, I didn't. That's why I asked questions. I was going off of what the OP said about the cause of the wage gap being "time out of employment" related to motherhood and assumed that "time out of employment" for pregnancy would fall under that description.
So what you're saying is that the study found that pay rates for men and women were approximately equal until some time after child birth? So taking time off to give birth doesn't affect pay but taking time off to care for a sick child does? That is plausible, it just seems odd to me.
Saying that motherhood is 100% a choice seems problematic to me. Generally when we say something is a choice we mean it is an individual choice, but the choice to procreate (almost) necessitates a second party. So, if we were talking about a parenting issue it might not be as big an issue. But if it is in fact a motherhood issue, then you can't just say it's based on the choice to become a parent because it's not affecting the other party to the same choice.
Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk
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*I'm aware that sexual dimorphism means that the difference in this particular area (caring for young children) will never be absolutely zero. But there's no reason that the difference can't be made as small as possible.
Why???
I don't know what's confusing about this? There's no reason men and women can't prioritize caring for young children equally. My reference to sexual dimorphism is a nod to the fact that some women breastfeed, so in those situations, a mother and father can't prioritize care 100% equally. But they can share other aspects of care, and not all women breastfeed, so yes, the difference can be made as small as possible.
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*I'm aware that sexual dimorphism means that the difference in this particular area (caring for young children) will never be absolutely zero. But there's no reason that the difference can't be made as small as possible.
Why???
I don't know what's confusing about this? There's no reason men and women can't prioritize caring for young children equally. My reference to sexual dimorphism is a nod to the fact that some women breastfeed, so in those situations, a mother and father can't prioritize care 100% equally. But they can share other aspects of care, and not all women breastfeed, so yes, the difference can be made as small as possible.
If you read my post, it would be pretty clear I'm not questioning whether the difference could be made as small as possible, I'm asking why you would be so obsessed with making the difference as small as possible.
Yes, men and women physically can prioritize caring for young children equally. Why would you expect them to choose to do so on average, and if you don't expect them to choose to do that, why would you try to force them to?
it just seems somewhat crazy to me to focus on trying to reach some particular population wide average rather than trying to ensure that individuals aren't prevented from doing what they'd like because of discrimination.
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Hi all, OP here, thread has clearly expanded, took me awhile to read all the posts.
Thank you Cressida for the link, I read it, even as you admit, it doesn't meet my super specific premise as contrary evidence. As boarder42, maizeman, and Mr.Moogle (maybe) commented, a huge part of this pay gap relates to motherhood and the resulting time out of employment. In addition to choice of profession, I tend to agree that the motherhood issue boils down to personal choice, perhaps reinforced by biological instinct and societal pressure. I dug around and found that some countries have taken steps to lessen the outside influence (social and environmental factors), such as Sweden and other Scandinavian countries.
So, if my wife and I decided today that we wanted another child how would I go about choosing to carry the baby in her place for the first ~9 months of it's life?
The issue of motherhood does not directly relate the carrying of said child to the lower pay - its the choices made post child to work less and spend more time as a care giver that were shown to decrease the pay for a woman in a similar line of work to a man who chose to work longer hours and put child raising more on the side of the woman in his relationship.
Also you do have the choice to hire a surrogate to carry your child for you completely eliminating any of the medical needs for time off of work post birth. unless you know you choose to have her stay home and take care of the kid.
That's interesting. How did they separate the issues? Did they study "during pregnancy" separately from "after pregnancy", or did they only study one time period or the other?
I wonder how much hiring a surrogate costs, not something I've looked into much. Maybe we should just have the government pay for surrogates so that women no longer have to go through pregnancy unless they choose to...
did you actually read any of the articles posted above or just respond to the one OP comment that discussed motherhood. They go deeply into one of the large causes being directly related to a mother deciding to work less hours once the child is born and spend more time on the family than career - you're picking a very small scemantic here to harp on. But motherhood in all cases is 100% a choice and there are many choices out there in which you can choose to not go thru the actual act of child birth including surrogacy and adoption - all which cost money to do - but doesnt change the choice of what you do after having the child in your life and typical gender roles put that as a mother doing it and the data backs it up.
If you could find imperical data relating the carrying of a child to a woman getting paid less at work then i think you should likely open a law firm and start suing employers b/c you'd be rich as shit if you could actually prove that with data.
No, I didn't. That's why I asked questions. I was going off of what the OP said about the cause of the wage gap being "time out of employment" related to motherhood and assumed that "time out of employment" for pregnancy would fall under that description.
So what you're saying is that the study found that pay rates for men and women were approximately equal until some time after child birth? So taking time off to give birth doesn't affect pay but taking time off to care for a sick child does? That is plausible, it just seems odd to me.
Saying that motherhood is 100% a choice seems problematic to me. Generally when we say something is a choice we mean it is an individual choice, but the choice to procreate (almost) necessitates a second party. So, if we were talking about a parenting issue it might not be as big an issue. But if it is in fact a motherhood issue, then you can't just say it's based on the choice to become a parent because it's not affecting the other party to the same choice.
Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk
It's not just the time off for the sick kid it's choosing to work typical hours rather than consistently work extra hours and put in more time. If you're not going to read any of it then I'm not gonna spoon feed it all to ya
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GuitarStv,
Thank you, this is the first piece of contrary evidence I came across, very valuable. If you don't mind, I would like to ask a few follow up questions. Do you have any theories as to why you were on a higher pay scale when you started at the same time? How many years ago was this (I heard in my field, the oil patch, was pretty sexist up until 1990, but does not constitute as evidence of ongoing discrimination)? Does your wife generally appear to be less assertive and more agreeable in public (thus giving people the perception/illusion of being less "valuable")?
Jrr85,
You brought a very interesting case study and hypothesis. I still think we can clean up the data to gain better insight, also, the Nordic countries have been consistently leveling the playing field (equality of opportunity, and outcome, to some degree), we might just need to wait a few more years for new data.
Cressida,
Regarding preferences/interests in profession (possible behavior sexual dimorphism), I will quote a pop psych article as I couldn't have said better myself:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers
"Things versus people. Su et al (2009) performed a meta-analysis of studies including a total of over 500,000 people examining gender differences in interests. Despite claims that gender differences are typically “small” (Hyde, 2005), Su et al found a gigantic gender difference in interests. Women preferred working with people, whereas men preferred working with things, a preference that is detectable within the first two days of birth and among our close species relatives, rhesus monkeys! To be sure, these differences were not absolute. Not every man prefers working with things, and not every woman prefers working with people. But the effect size was d= .93, and even if you are not familiar with effect sizes, this would make it one of the largest effects in social psychology; it is gigantic."
"In a national study of over 1,000 high school students, they found that:
1. 70 percent more girls than boys had strong math and verbal skills;
2. Boys were more than twice as likely as girls to have strong math skills but not strong verbal skills;
3. People (regardless of whether they were male or female) who had only strong math skills as students were more likely to be working in STEM fields at age 33 than were other students;
4. People (regardless of whether they were male or female) with strong math and verbal skills as students were less likely to be working in STEM fields at age 33 than were those with only strong math skills."
"Completely consistent with the work by Su et al and by Wang et al, in nearly all fields that are about people, not only is there no gap disadvantaging women, there are actually more women than men! (Health, education, social and behavioral sciences, public administration, arts and humanities, and even biological sciences)."
"But if there are bona fide gender differences in preferences and interests, equal opportunities may never translate into equal outcomes."
Finally Shenlong,
Men can not carry children as of yet, I mentioned that in my earlier post, I feel I am missing your point, could you rephrase your comment/question for me as I do not understand what you mean, thanks.
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This thread may very well be headed towards locking, but if so, before it does:
@shenlong55, I believe the studies being referred to are only comparing the pay gap for women with children to the pay gap for women without children. So it's hard to tease apart causality. It is possible that as (I think it was Jrr85) proposed, it's actually that women who feel like they're being paid less than their male co-workers are more likely to decide to have children. It doesn't seem particularly likely to me, but I cannot rule it out with the data at hand in this discussion thread, or other studies I'm aware of.
@MrMoogle, I agree with you. On an individual level, whether or not to have children is definitely a choice, but clearly as a society we have a substantial interest in having someone produce a next generation of people. So there are two pretty distinct arguments:
The fairness argument: women shouldn't pay a penalty for doing something we all ultimately benefit from.
And an economic argument: if we make the opportunity cost of having children too expensive, people may chose not to have them anymore and we end up with a demographic future which looks like Japans.
The problem with the fairness argument is that anything you do to pay or promote women who have children more relative to their time on the job (in both years and hours/week) so they aren't disadvantaged by having children ends up treating both women and men who chose not to have children unfairly. Generally arguments based on fairness are messy because the concept of what is fair means different things to different people.* To me the economic argument is more compelling because it sidesteps that whole debate over what fair means.
So then the question is how do you make sure the opportunity cost of having a child isn't too high? And there are all sorts of policy options from state subsidized daycare to Germany's kindergeld (literally money for having children), to the EITC in the USA. There are also more radical options like mandatory paternity leave (which levels the playing field a little between mothers and fathers but not between the parents and the childless/childfree), but which at least make for good press.
And none of the above should detract from the fact that, when cases of straight up sexism in hiring, promotion, or compensation are identified (and they certainly do exist), those are really bad and tend to be addressed and stopped quickly and forcefully.
*The simplest example of this is that one can easily argue that treating everyone equally is fair. And treating everyone the way they deserve based on their own actions and choice is also fair. But clearly those two ideas can produce wildly different outcomes.
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I'm lying on the floor at home today waiting for this pregnancy nausea to pass so I can stand up and change my 14 month old... and I can't help but feel like I might be able to provide some insight into this whole wage / work discussion. The OP can look for clean-cut scientific data all he likes, but I think he is genuinely missing the point of it. You see, pregnancy and baring babies is simply a result of having sex, so unless te OP sees celibacy as his ideal life and ideal for everyone, then he needs to accept that babies happen And this significantly affects women's wages and work prospects.
I work in a female dominated health profession. I chose this industry specifically bc I knew I wanted to have kids and knew that I could have both children and an on-going career. So I've limited my income bc of my biology. With my first bub, I was significantly restricted in the work I could do (no chemo patients). I started back at work after about 8 months off, and have a management role which would make it easier to work through this pregnancy except... there is a pretty high likelihood that I'll get sacked after I tell work. In theory I shouldn't have to worry, but bc I started 2 months ago they can terminate the contract without having a really good explanation. My partner, on the other hand, has no such concerns... we both started new jobs in January.
My suggestion to the OP, if he really wants to understand the different wage and work prospects available to women is to sit and talk to women in the workforce about their experience. The thing is that this scientific data needs context. These studies are about real life experiences stripped back to data, and I know that my experience in the workforce can't be understood through raw data.
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GuitarStv,
Thank you, this is the first piece of contrary evidence I came across, very valuable. If you don't mind, I would like to ask a few follow up questions. Do you have any theories as to why you were on a higher pay scale when you started at the same time? How many years ago was this (I heard in my field, the oil patch, was pretty sexist up until 1990, but does not constitute as evidence of ongoing discrimination)? Does your wife generally appear to be less assertive and more agreeable in public (thus giving people the perception/illusion of being less "valuable")?
When we were both hired out of university, my wife and I started at exactly the same salary. I wasn't initially paid more, but I received a larger raise pretty much every year. This covers the period from 2004 - 2016. My wife is less assertive and more agreeable. I'm more opinionated, quicker to act, and more often wrong. In the first job I think that I was more politically involved in the company, making friends with higher ups. In the second company that was not the case.
Neither company was overtly sexist. My assumption is that stereo-typically 'masculine' traits (risk-taking/stubbornness) are perceived as more valuable to managers. Then combine that with (maybe even an unconscious) bias of the managers - many of whom grew up when it would have been pretty unusual to have a woman in an engineering position.
Now that we're both working separate jobs, the workload dropping off our son every morning was getting to be too much for both of us. My wife moved to working seven hour days so she can pick up/drop off our son earlier largely because I've always made more money. Very tiny biases over a long period of time add up to a tremendous amount over a lifetime, and have knock-on effect.
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I am not going to look everything up, but think about some of the other threads on the forums. People (more often but not always men) discussing whether or not the wife should stay home instead of going back to work. All the job costs and child-care costs are imputed to her. I rarely see discussions of long term effects on her career and her pension.
Maternity/paternity leaves are also significant. If only the mother takes maternity leave, the father starts to see her as the primary caregiver. If she gets a short mat leave she is more likely to feel torn about staying home versus going back to work. I was off for 5 moths with DD and then back part-time. By the time she was a year old I was back to work full time. I am not sure how it would have played out if I had had a much sorter mat leave. And I was lucky that I had a decent mat leave. I had it because our union fought for it in contract negotiations.
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*I'm aware that sexual dimorphism means that the difference in this particular area (caring for young children) will never be absolutely zero. But there's no reason that the difference can't be made as small as possible.
Why???
I don't know what's confusing about this? There's no reason men and women can't prioritize caring for young children equally. My reference to sexual dimorphism is a nod to the fact that some women breastfeed, so in those situations, a mother and father can't prioritize care 100% equally. But they can share other aspects of care, and not all women breastfeed, so yes, the difference can be made as small as possible.
If you read my post, it would be pretty clear I'm not questioning whether the difference could be made as small as possible, I'm asking why you would be so obsessed with making the difference as small as possible.
Yes, men and women physically can prioritize caring for young children equally. Why would you expect them to choose to do so on average, and if you don't expect them to choose to do that, why would you try to force them to?
it just seems somewhat crazy to me to focus on trying to reach some particular population wide average rather than trying to ensure that individuals aren't prevented from doing what they'd like because of discrimination.
I'm not obsessed with anything and I'm not trying to force anyone to do anything. As I said on another thread recently, misrepresenting people's positions doesn't strengthen your argument; it does just the opposite.
I would like there to be no gendered norms and expectations in society. I would like the culture to change so that, instead of being influenced by gendered norms and expectations, men and women would make the same choices, on average, in all things. I fail to see why that would be objectionable.
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I would like the culture to change so that, instead of being influenced by gendered norms and expectations, men and women would make the same choices, on average, in all things. I fail to see why that would be objectionable.
I don't think it is objectionable, but I think the place where you're running into trouble is the assumption that in a society free from gendered norms and expectations (which I will freely admit we don't live in today), the average man and the average woman would, by definition, make the same choices about all things.
You could certainly make an interesting argument this would be the case. You can also make an interesting argument that it wouldn't be the case. Without access to a population of people who spent their lives in a culture without gendered norms and expectations its hard to conclusively resolve one way or the other. But starting with the assumption that is must be true, and conveying the impression that anyone who doesn't share the same assumption is, by definition, a men's rights activists is going to provoke some reflexive opposition.
I believe a society where the same doors are not open to men and women is a morally indefensible one. But I also believe a society where equal numbers of men and women are required to walk through every door, without trying to figure out which doors have been designed to be harder for women or men to walk through (wrong), and which doors lead to places that the average man or the average woman is slightly more likely to want to go* is likely to end up with an equally morally indefensible outcome.
*And to be clear, I am NOT saying that the the current pay gap, or even a significant portion of it, results from differences in preferences between men and women.
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Maizeman and Cressida,
After some reading I am beginning to think that some of the preferences shown are (conclusively?) inherent and born,
"Women preferred working with people, whereas men preferred working with things, a preference that is detectable within the first two days of birth and among our close species relatives, rhesus monkeys! To be sure, these differences were not absolute. Not every man prefers working with things, and not every woman prefers working with people. But the effect size was d= .93, and even if you are not familiar with effect sizes, this would make it one of the largest effects in social psychology; it is gigantic"
First two days of birth, both human and monkeys, it's pretty hard to argue the preferences shown were part of social conditioning and/or influenced by gender norms and expectations.
GuitarStv,
I must have misunderstood you, because I thought you were describing the contrary (blatant sexist) evidence I had been searching for (emphasis added):
We were on the same pay scale (were told that the same salary max/min applied), I was higher on the payscale when I started
but after further explanation from you, especially (emphasis added)
When we were both hired out of university, my wife and I started at exactly the same salary. I wasn't initially paid more, but I received a larger raise pretty much every year. My wife is less assertive and more agreeable. I'm more opinionated, quicker to act, and more often wrong. In the first job I think that I was more politically involved in the company, making friends with higher ups. In the second company that was not the case.
My assumption is that stereo-typically 'masculine' traits (risk-taking/stubbornness) are perceived as more valuable to managers. Then combine that with (maybe even an unconscious) bias of the managers - many of whom grew up when it would have been pretty unusual to have a woman in an engineering position.
All the sudden this reverts back to being less overtly sexist, and becomes more of a case which can be sufficiently explained by post #6. I am disappointed....for real. :(
I totally agree with you that these biases due to perceptions (lower agreeableness and the more assertive people do better tend to do better) are real, which seems to be a case of behavioral sexual dimorphism, but when we think about it, they are not that much different from tall people tend to make more money on average. I would hazard a guess it's more of a evolutionary bias more than a cultural bias. And yes, these tiny biases add up over the long run, but once again, from a purely analytical point of view, not that different from a male who lacks the same qualities that are more common in men.
AliEli,
I gotta be honest, this totally feels like a bait (I don't mean this maliciously, more like, it's a trap! moment), especially after maizeman cautioned me on the danger of making political statements. I will therefore not talk about having children, wage/work prospects, and personal choices (not to mention having sex does not automatically mean baring babies), since I still struggle to convey the point in an apolitical manner.
I will however, respond to your concerns regarding the data needs context. If we've learned anything in the past decade, is that everyone has a narrative, and everyone thinks his/her narrative is right about the subjects. What I learned, is that to discover the true stories, and sometimes even the underlying causes of social oddities, it is better to look at only the data. People are often unreliable narrators, since you are in HC, I will use this example. I went to a medical seminar about chronic diseases recently, and the doctors freely admitted they've begun to tell the patients to focus less on their clinical symptoms, but to pay more attention to the actual test results which resulted in more favorable long term prognosis. It is precisely because the former tend to be mixed with emotions and feelings, and the latter tend to be repeatable, verifiable, and perhaps most importantly, treatable. Think about this for a second, we can't even be sure about our own bodies!
My point is, when we talk to the people, we see "symptoms", but from data, especially good quality data where we can isolate anomalies, we can hopefully find the cause, if it's indeed there. Thanks.
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My dear anisotropy, there is no bait.
If you want to talk about a real world experience, you can't just rely on scientific data. For example, in the study that you quoted about doctors and their patient's reported symptoms - did the study examine the effect of having their feeling invalidated when they were reported them to their treating doctor? Did they also study a diverse group of people around the world? What was the sample size? What were the biases inherent in the study? Has this finding been replicated elsewhere? How did they control for other factors that might affect the results? TBH, I've always found self-reported symptoms to be beneficial in developing care plans and improving outcomes for onc pts, and I'm sure that I'd be able to find studies that backed my belief too.
The reason this all might feel like bait to you is that you are attempting to appear knowledgable about something without confronting your own underlying biases. I could not have understood how having a baby affects one's career trajectory and income until I found myself pregnant and realised how different the world looked on that side of the fence in the workplace. It's important to understand that this is a very real-life place to be in, not a study. If you want to understand this topic - engage with the women in the data.
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I would like the culture to change so that, instead of being influenced by gendered norms and expectations, men and women would make the same choices, on average, in all things. I fail to see why that would be objectionable.
I don't think it is objectionable, but I think the place where you're running into trouble is the assumption that in a society free from gendered norms and expectations (which I will freely admit we don't live in today), the average man and the average woman would, by definition, make the same choices about all things.
Why wouldn't they? If there were no gendered expectations, I would expect men's and women's behavior to fall along bell curves, and I don't know why those bell curves would be different.
You could certainly make an interesting argument this would be the case. You can also make an interesting argument that it wouldn't be the case. Without access to a population of people who spent their lives in a culture without gendered norms and expectations its hard to conclusively resolve one way or the other. But starting with the assumption that is must be true, and conveying the impression that anyone who doesn't share the same assumption is, by definition, a men's rights activists is going to provoke some reflexive opposition.
Would you point to my statement that made that impression?
I believe a society where the same doors are not open to men and women is a morally indefensible one. But I also believe a society where equal numbers of men and women are required to walk through every door, without trying to figure out which doors have been designed to be harder for women or men to walk through (wrong), and which doors lead to places that the average man or the average woman is slightly more likely to want to go* is likely to end up with an equally morally indefensible outcome.
Would you point to where I argued for this?
I'll say again: Misrepresenting people's arguments does not make your own argument stronger. It's the opposite. Edit: for the record, this turned out to be a miscommunication.
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Maizeman and Cressida,
After some reading I am beginning to think that some of the preferences shown are (conclusively?) inherent and born,
"Women preferred working with people, whereas men preferred working with things, a preference that is detectable within the first two days of birth and among our close species relatives, rhesus monkeys! To be sure, these differences were not absolute. Not every man prefers working with things, and not every woman prefers working with people. But the effect size was d= .93, and even if you are not familiar with effect sizes, this would make it one of the largest effects in social psychology; it is gigantic"
First two days of birth, both human and monkeys, it's pretty hard to argue the preferences shown were part of social conditioning and/or influenced by gender norms and expectations.
Research into "inherent" sex differences is systematically flawed. Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender (https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/ref=sr_1_1) argues this point thoroughly.
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Huh, I did not expect this thread on the wage gap to spiral into the inherent conflict between scientific and post-modern approaches to understanding the world and their different concepts of what truth is, which I think is what the most recent several posts boil down to.
Now my own view, to horribly mangle a Churchill quote, is that science and statistics as the worst way to understand ourselves and the world around us.... except for all the others which have been tried from time to time. But I've also learned that trying to argue this point with people who subscribe to more postmodernist viewpoints doesn't convince either side, and just burns a lot of time and energy while generating a lot of grudges and ill will.
@Cressida I typed out another reply to you, which I've since deleted. The short version is that #1, I wasn't accusing you of the viewpoint which you claimed I was presenting as a misrepresentation of your views only defining my own point of view by describing a points of view on either side of my own, both of which I disagree with. I misunderstood your previous post as a statement of confusion about why other people held different views than your own, and interpreted it as a request for clarification when it was clearly not the case. I'll drop the subject with you.
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Maizeman and Cressida,
After some reading I am beginning to think that some of the preferences shown are (conclusively?) inherent and born,
"Women preferred working with people, whereas men preferred working with things, a preference that is detectable within the first two days of birth and among our close species relatives, rhesus monkeys! To be sure, these differences were not absolute. Not every man prefers working with things, and not every woman prefers working with people. But the effect size was d= .93, and even if you are not familiar with effect sizes, this would make it one of the largest effects in social psychology; it is gigantic"
First two days of birth, both human and monkeys, it's pretty hard to argue the preferences shown were part of social conditioning and/or influenced by gender norms and expectations.
Research into "inherent" sex differences is systematically flawed. Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender (https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/ref=sr_1_1) argues this point thoroughly.
Cressida, would you like to propose an alternative interpretation to explain the observation on new-born babies (2 days old, human and monkeys)? Or perhaps point out some flaws in the experiment design?
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I do believe there is a wage gap, especially when you include women of colour. Humans do have unconscious and conscious biases, and it leads to people believing they are acting impartially when they really aren't. A couple anecdotal experiences that I'm sure many women share: I can't count how many times I've heard people talk about "undeserving" women getting promoted just to fill a quota, while implying that men are inherently more "deserving". Or hearing sexist comments from the recruitment team and finding out (unsurprisingly) that they ended up hiring a guy. Or getting sexually harassed at work and no one believes you or punishes the perpetrator, so you leave. All of those things add up, and the big kicker is reproduction and the expectation that mothers are more nurturing and should therefore bear most of the childrearing and household burden while hubby earns the dough. Even the discourse around parenting (dads "help out" or "babysit") implies that mothers should be the primary caregiver.
I do believe that as a society, we should strive to narrow the wage gap as much as possible, both because that's fair and because it benefits society to have more equal participation in the labour force. I think that paid maternity and paternity leave, with a portion reserved for each parent, along with affordable daycare and paid sick leave, would do a lot to equalize the situation. Breastfeeding and pregnancy are unique to women, but the rest of it can be shared equally, and if there's an expectation that both parents will take leave, then a lot of the rationale for not hiring or promoting childbearing age women goes away. It's relatively easy to make legislation, but the hard work is actually getting people to change their behaviour and social conditioning.
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Maizeman and Cressida,
After some reading I am beginning to think that some of the preferences shown are (conclusively?) inherent and born,
"Women preferred working with people, whereas men preferred working with things, a preference that is detectable within the first two days of birth and among our close species relatives, rhesus monkeys! To be sure, these differences were not absolute. Not every man prefers working with things, and not every woman prefers working with people. But the effect size was d= .93, and even if you are not familiar with effect sizes, this would make it one of the largest effects in social psychology; it is gigantic"
First two days of birth, both human and monkeys, it's pretty hard to argue the preferences shown were part of social conditioning and/or influenced by gender norms and expectations.
Research into "inherent" sex differences is systematically flawed. Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender (https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/ref=sr_1_1) argues this point thoroughly.
Cressida, would you like to propose an alternative interpretation to explain the observation on new-born babies (2 days old, human and monkeys)? Or perhaps point out some flaws in the experiment design?
Yes. As I said, Delusions of Gender makes this point thoroughly. The gist of that book is that when you look at the body of studies that purport to prove that there are innate biological differences between male and female brains, there are all kinds of problems: poor design, conclusions not supported by the evidence, studies showing zero difference not being published, etc. It's a meta-analysis, not a single study.
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@Cressida I typed out another reply to you, which I've since deleted. The short version is that #1, I wasn't accusing you of the viewpoint which you claimed I was presenting as a misrepresentation of your views only defining my own point of view by describing a points of view on either side of my own, both of which I disagree with. I misunderstood your previous post as a statement of confusion about why other people held different views than your own, and interpreted it as a request for clarification when it was clearly not the case. I'll drop the subject with you.
Understood, thanks for the clarification. I'll edit.
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My dear anisotropy, there is no bait.
If you want to talk about a real world experience, you can't just rely on scientific data. For example, in the study that you quoted about doctors and their patient's reported symptoms - did the study examine the effect of having their feeling invalidated when they were reported them to their treating doctor? Did they also study a diverse group of people around the world? What was the sample size? What were the biases inherent in the study? Has this finding been replicated elsewhere? How did they control for other factors that might affect the results? TBH, I've always found self-reported symptoms to be beneficial in developing care plans and improving outcomes for onc pts, and I'm sure that I'd be able to find studies that backed my belief too.
The reason this all might feel like bait to you is that you are attempting to appear knowledgable about something without confronting your own underlying biases. I could not have understood how having a baby affects one's career trajectory and income until I found myself pregnant and realised how different the world looked on that side of the fence in the workplace. It's important to understand that this is a very real-life place to be in, not a study. If you want to understand this topic - engage with the women in the data.
No worries, I said bait in jest considering the circumstances, I was not entirely serious. Regarding the seminar and the underlying studies, this document forms a "consensus of clinical guideline" for long term management of various treatments. The "method" section details how the consensus was formed, not about how treatments were evaluated. Rather, each treatment has its own section detailing the trial results completed with placebos, confidence values, and p. The seminar went into great detail on why sometimes symptoms and tests don't agree with one another, with the consensus being that we should place a lot more weight on objective test results rather than patients' self reported symptoms.
https://www.cag-acg.org/images/publications/cpg_toronto_consensus_on_uc_may2015.pdf
I will cite the passage that are most relevant for our discussion:
ok...apparently it wont allow me to copy-paste.... typing this sucks.
Emphasis added, note, I don't "think" (no objective test results lol) I have UC, I go to weird seminars a lot these days, part of being FIRE
"Complete remission requires endoscopy to document mucosal healing. Although this can not be conducted at every assessment, the consensus group recommended performance of endoscopy when making important management decisions."
"Mucosal healing is an important predictor of long-term outcomes of treatment of UC. Patents who achieve mucosal healing have lower rates of hospitalization, decreased need for corticosteroids, and lower rates of colectomy."
"However, it should be recognized that escalation of therapy to treat patients who are asymptomatic but have endoscopically active disease remains controversial." pg.1037
"similarly, the management of histological disease activity with macroscopic endoscopic remission is also unclear."
"in lieu of full endoscopic assessment, objective measures of inflammation may be useful when evaluating disease activity." pg. 1038
The document then goes through great lengths to discuss recommendations in how to continue various treatments for patients that have achieved symptomatic remission, also in rare instances, patients that achieved endoscopic healings but continue to have symptoms.
Since you work in HC, maybe you can talk to a friend who specializes in this area, I am sure they would be able to go over each treatment/trial with you in much better detail and better accuracy than I ever could.
Regarding my own underlying bias, I am extremely biased in terms of what the data says. If the numbers tell me one thing, I am more inclined to think that way. In its absence, not so much.
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Maizeman and Cressida,
After some reading I am beginning to think that some of the preferences shown are (conclusively?) inherent and born,
"Women preferred working with people, whereas men preferred working with things, a preference that is detectable within the first two days of birth and among our close species relatives, rhesus monkeys! To be sure, these differences were not absolute. Not every man prefers working with things, and not every woman prefers working with people. But the effect size was d= .93, and even if you are not familiar with effect sizes, this would make it one of the largest effects in social psychology; it is gigantic"
First two days of birth, both human and monkeys, it's pretty hard to argue the preferences shown were part of social conditioning and/or influenced by gender norms and expectations.
Research into "inherent" sex differences is systematically flawed. Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender (https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/ref=sr_1_1) argues this point thoroughly.
Cressida, would you like to propose an alternative interpretation to explain the observation on new-born babies (2 days old, human and monkeys)? Or perhaps point out some flaws in the experiment design?
Yes. As I said, Delusions of Gender makes this point thoroughly. The gist of that book is that when you look at the body of studies that purport to prove that there are innate biological differences between male and female brains, there are all kinds of problems: poor design, conclusions not supported by the evidence, studies showing zero difference not being published, etc. It's a meta-analysis, not a single study.
LOL What? the within two days of birth study was not a meta-analysis:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222673203_Sex_Differences_in_Human_Neonatal_Social_Perception
neither was the one on monkeys:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/
Please, instead of deflecting each and every contrary studies with a blanket "can't be right, must be wrong" cookie cutter answer based on a book that does not address these studies, at least look into these studies and identify its flaws. You could always just google, I've done it and I couldn't find any that are convincing.
That being said, the author is quite accomplished and a fellow Oxbridge. I think I will give it another read.
This kind of intellectual laziness (I won't go so far as calling it dishonesty) is precisely the attitude I find disheartening, in addition how ministachy reacted. Find a flaw in the data and analysis, why do you just adhere to an ideology and create "alternative facts" to suit your own belief. Truly a post-modern world we live in these days.
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@anisotropy, what I said is that Delusions of Gender, the book, is a meta-analysis. Therefore, it covers studies like these two you find so persuasive, and it finds them wanting, as a group.
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Sweet anisotropy - I'd be keen to get into a discussion about inflammatory markers and their validity. Can you tell me which specific inflammatory marker they are discussing? I'm not sure what your reasoning is that I would need help to understand the relationship between inflammatory markers and disease. Can you tell me what your healthcare background is? Personally I have been a nurse for 11 years, I have worked in cardiology, emergency, a couple of years in oncology, I have been a clinical nurse specialist, I have post-graduate qualifications in infection control, gen med / surg as well as most of masters under my belt. I am currently working in a ward that provides endoscopy services. I feel that I am pretty up to speed with understanding inflammatory markers and the patient journey from disease to health. And I have to say that I smell a rat in the information you have provided. I can tell you that inflammatory markers a one part of a wider picture, and I'm certainly that I could equally find a group of studies that refutes your take-away.
So can you explain to me kindly why I need to ask someone else about the information about inflammatory markers? Thanks ☺️
Or were you just too busy proving your own underlying biases to ask me directly?
Also- do you ever wonder whether you are making a mistake when you are interpreting the data you are quoting? You seem very confident and pushy about it, but reading the quotes directly added to the thread by you gives me an entirely different and far less certain picture about what the authors of these studies have actually found 😕 As a fellow "scientist", I'm sure you agree that understanding your own biases is integral to the scientific method.
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oh wow this @ thing is cool, thanks for showing it me @Cressida
Also, thank you for correcting me, my mistake for misunderstanding what you meant regarding meta-analysis. I read the book back when I was still working, I do not recall it discussing specifically the short comings of the two studies in question. As I said, I will reread it. In general, many studies are ultimately found wanting, including many of the wage gap studies I had come across, an example from my previous post:
Wage gap! women make ~20% less than men! ----> then I found they grouped ALL women vs ALL men, regardless of profession or qualifications.
Wage gap! women make ~15% less than men! ----> then I found they grouped ALL women vs ALL men in the same profession, not actual jobs, just professions
Wage gap! women make ~10% less than men! ----> then I found they grouped ALL women vs ALL men in the same industry, not within the same employer
Wage gap! women make ~5% less than men! ----> this turned out to be the one in question, ie, same job title, same company, same qualifications, then I noticed NO ONE even mentioned pay grades (wilful omission or ignorance?), which as we all know, can easily vary 10% within the same job title.
Personally, when I question the validity of something, I am inclined to go over every study in question and investigate the flaws in design or interpretations. I have done so in my numerous posts here, I hope that is clear for all to see. I have yet to meet an "adversary" (I use this term loosely, don't take it too seriously) that has done (or even inclined to do) the same in this thread, many prefer to simply focus on my "tones and manners" instead of doing some analytical/critical thinking and focus on the issue. It is completely up to you to decide if you want to look into the two studies to discover flaws yourself or you could just "believe" them to be part of the flawed studies without even looking at them. As far as I can tell there are no real academic attempts to refute these studies.
I salute all who contributed to the discussion in an analytical and rational manner, especially the ones that provided studies and possible hypothesis. Especially the Stanford link, which I will study further for more insights.
AliEli,
May I request the terms of endearments to be dropped from our exchanges. I am not one for endearments from people on the internet, thank you. I am sorry if I had somehow offended you. You had only mentioned you were in HC, without further info, the odds of someone in the field with extensive background in inflammatory studies were low; playing the odds, I made the suggestion, clearly, I was mistaken.
Your qualifications/experiences will no doubt enable you to read the whole document without assistance, I hope you find the document worth reading, and I welcome any studies that refute my take-away, that's the reason I am here in the first place (although it seems, it went from evidence about overtly sexism induced wage gap to studies that physicians should place more weight on patients' self reported symptoms than objective tests).
From what I remember, C-reactive proteins was brought up as a marker, but the physicians (on the day) stressed using Fecal calprotectin? to be more accurate in evaluations.
Regarding the "less certain picture" from the quote, remember this is a consensus clinical practice guideline. Many of these documents have degrees of uncertainty "built-in" to provide some wiggle room (legal leeway) should some unforeseen event were to happen, not unlike some investment prospectus. Back in the day when I wrote exploration/seismic reports I employed similar tactics as well. The tone of the discussion at the seminar was quite unequivocal: objective test results are much more important than patients' self reported symptoms. ie, hard data > people's narratives.
I can't help but to notice our current discussion is more about my "conviction" on whether data tells the true story better than narratives, instead of a discussion about the actual data and analysis itself. May I suggest we spend more time on the data presented and conclusions drawn. After all, I have admitted my own bias is what the data says. Thank you.
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They go deeply into one of the large causes being directly related to a mother deciding to work less hours once the child is born and spend more time on the family than career - you're picking a very small scemantic here to harp on. But motherhood in all cases is 100% a choice and there are many choices out there ...
I think this is where the disconnect is. When you say "motherhood is 100% a choice" ... well ... why aren't you saying "fatherhood is 100% a choice"?
Why aren't we telling fathers that having a child will impact their hours and their careers?
Why aren't we asking fathers how they plan to balance a family and sick children with their jobs?
Why aren't we assuming that fathers will be impacted by fatherhood and take presumptive money off their paycheques ahead of time?
We'd like to take one big step backward and look at how our society treats mothers and fathers differently - has different expectations - and those expectations work on people from cradle to grave to mold them into different shapes.
Toque.
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They go deeply into one of the large causes being directly related to a mother deciding to work less hours once the child is born and spend more time on the family than career - you're picking a very small scemantic here to harp on. But motherhood in all cases is 100% a choice and there are many choices out there ...
I think this is where the disconnect is. When you say "motherhood is 100% a choice" ... well ... why aren't you saying "fatherhood is 100% a choice"?
Why aren't we telling fathers that having a child will impact their hours and their careers?
Why aren't we asking fathers how they plan to balance a family and sick children with their jobs?
Why aren't we assuming that fathers will be impacted by fatherhood and take presumptive money off their paycheques ahead of time?
We'd like to take one big step backward and look at how our society treats mothers and fathers differently - has different expectations - and those expectations work on people from cradle to grave to mold them into different shapes.
Toque.
i 100% agree both are a choice - mothers more frequently make the choice of childcare over the opposite. So rather than Bitching about it like poster above saying i cant carry my wife's child maybe that male should step up and change how he's viewing things. I a male plan to go to 4-8s when our kids are younger. Men and women alike can sit here and bitch about the problem but if you have kids you have the option to choose how you personally do something if you'd like to see the problem corrected. - also i think this mindset is much more with older than younger generations - gender roles dont exist as much in the millenial world as they do with the older crowds. but society has been trending that way for a while.
this discussion was around why women were paid less and that article focused on the typical choices men and women make which was my comment on motherhood - we're all free to choose to do whatever we want in life.
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They go deeply into one of the large causes being directly related to a mother deciding to work less hours once the child is born and spend more time on the family than career - you're picking a very small scemantic here to harp on. But motherhood in all cases is 100% a choice and there are many choices out there ...
I think this is where the disconnect is. When you say "motherhood is 100% a choice" ... well ... why aren't you saying "fatherhood is 100% a choice"?
Why aren't we telling fathers that having a child will impact their hours and their careers?
Why aren't we asking fathers how they plan to balance a family and sick children with their jobs?
Why aren't we assuming that fathers will be impacted by fatherhood and take presumptive money off their paycheques ahead of time?
We'd like to take one big step backward and look at how our society treats mothers and fathers differently - has different expectations - and those expectations work on people from cradle to grave to mold them into different shapes.
Toque.
i 100% agree both are a choice - mothers more frequently make the choice of childcare over the opposite. So rather than Bitching about it like poster above saying i cant carry my wife's child maybe that male should step up and change how he's viewing things. I a male plan to go to 4-8s when our kids are younger. Men and women alike can sit here and bitch about the problem but if you have kids you have the option to choose how you personally do something if you'd like to see the problem corrected. - also i think this mindset is much more with older than younger generations - gender roles dont exist as much in the millenial world as they do with the older crowds. but society has been trending that way for a while.
this discussion was around why women were paid less and that article focused on the typical choices men and women make which was my comment on motherhood - we're all free to choose to do whatever we want in life.
Look, I was just trying to make the point that not everything about parenting is an easy choice for most people nor is it (generally) an individual choice. Maybe if you can afford surrogates and maids and crap then it's easy for you, but I don't think those things are readily available/affordable for most people. Regardless, I already have a job that allows me to contribute more to my family life because the people I work with/for value work/life balance and therefore provide things like a flexible schedule and remote work. I'm led to believe that that is not the case for most people however and I would like to see that change. Especially since it seems that the effects that society chooses to impose on someone for making a collective choice seem to be falling disproportionately on one party to that collective choice.
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My dear anisotropy, there is no bait.
If you want to talk about a real world experience, you can't just rely on scientific data. For example, in the study that you quoted about doctors and their patient's reported symptoms - did the study examine the effect of having their feeling invalidated when they were reported them to their treating doctor? Did they also study a diverse group of people around the world? What was the sample size? What were the biases inherent in the study? Has this finding been replicated elsewhere? How did they control for other factors that might affect the results? TBH, I've always found self-reported symptoms to be beneficial in developing care plans and improving outcomes for onc pts, and I'm sure that I'd be able to find studies that backed my belief too.
The reason this all might feel like bait to you is that you are attempting to appear knowledgable about something without confronting your own underlying biases. I could not have understood how having a baby affects one's career trajectory and income until I found myself pregnant and realised how different the world looked on that side of the fence in the workplace. It's important to understand that this is a very real-life place to be in, not a study. If you want to understand this topic - engage with the women in the data.
And it's not just how the world (workplace) looks at you as becoming pregnant, it's how it looks at you just for having the potential to become pregnant even if that hasn't happened and you never plan to have kids.
If a female stands shoulder to shoulder with a male of equal education, experience and skill if front of an employer to be hired, promoted or selected to lead no one is wondering if the guy will quit or need lot of time off in the event he ever has children. Or need to quit or take time off if he ever has ill family or aging parents. Or if he'll quit to follow his spouse if she gets transferred. Or take excessive time off to deal with "Male Issues". Or if he'll be seen as meek and mild and lacking assertiveness by his subordinates. If he has the capacity and ability to make the hard unfriendly choices. Couple these with other preceived female stereotypes and its easy to see that many women can be discriminated against in job hiring and promotions just by the perception of "this is how women will be" even if none of those factors EVER happen in a woman's life. Many don't have kids, or care for parents, or follow a spouse for his job, or have "female issues" (WTF those are), or any problem with being assertive with co-workers and subordinates.
Yet I'm sure the these thoughts cross a lot of employers and managers minds when making promotions and hiring women but not when pronoting or hiring a male. This alone may have cost many women from moving up the employment steps and would not be anything that showed up in a statistical analysis of gender bias or discrimination but could account for pay disparity due to lack of step promotions.
I agree that all of these things are issues, I just don't know how big they are. They are hard to measure. I live in a bubble that doesn't see them. I'm not a woman, I don't hire anyone, I don't work with that many women, and those I work with/know haven't complained about such things. Without statistics, it's difficult for me to make judgements.
I completely understand to the individual experiencing these things, it is horrible.
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There is a "wage gap" in that the total earnings of women lags compared to total earnings of men. There is really an "earnings gap" not a wage gap. Vis a vis the same job, there's somewhere in the vicinity of a 5% wage gap.
The real issue is how and why women aren't getting the high earning jobs at the rate that men are. Is it sexism? Is it by choice? That's where the real crux of the problem lies.
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GuitarStv,
I must have misunderstood you, because I thought you were describing the contrary (blatant sexist) evidence I had been searching for (emphasis added):
We were on the same pay scale (were told that the same salary max/min applied), I was higher on the payscale when I started
but after further explanation from you, especially (emphasis added)
When we were both hired out of university, my wife and I started at exactly the same salary. I wasn't initially paid more, but I received a larger raise pretty much every year.
I'm sorry for any confusion. We had the same salary starting, but I made more money at the end of my first seven months there, and this continued for the rest of both our careers - despite me having worse performance reviews. We worked the same hours, doing pretty much the same work.
All the sudden this reverts back to being less overtly sexist, and becomes more of a case which can be sufficiently explained by post #6. I am disappointed....for real. :(
I totally agree with you that these biases due to perceptions (lower agreeableness and the more assertive people do better tend to do better) are real, which seems to be a case of behavioral sexual dimorphism, but when we think about it, they are not that much different from tall people tend to make more money on average. I would hazard a guess it's more of a evolutionary bias more than a cultural bias. And yes, these tiny biases add up over the long run, but once again, from a purely analytical point of view, not that different from a male who lacks the same qualities that are more common in men.
Your post number 6 indicates that there may be measurable differences in how women and men approach work, and then men are promoted because of this. My wife got better performance reviews for an eight year period and received lower wage increases than me. We were considered to be at the same pay grade for the 12 years that we worked the same job. To me, this is indicative of a serious social problem.
You can argue that men who have a more 'womanly' approach to work will also suffer because of this . . . but I'd argue that it's just as fundamentally unfair to those men. If we have unspoken hiring/promoting practices that take precedent over observed/measured quality of work, that should be made an issue. If these unwritten practices predominantly impact a minority it is absolutely discriminatory. To address your other point . . . if taller people make more money regardless of quality of work, that is discriminatory. If you're a shorter person, you're therefore going to be discriminated against. It is important to level the playing field so that people rise to the top based on their work and merit, unless you can think of a good argument for shorter people (or women) making less money.
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They go deeply into one of the large causes being directly related to a mother deciding to work less hours once the child is born and spend more time on the family than career - you're picking a very small scemantic here to harp on. But motherhood in all cases is 100% a choice and there are many choices out there ...
I think this is where the disconnect is. When you say "motherhood is 100% a choice" ... well ... why aren't you saying "fatherhood is 100% a choice"?
Why aren't we telling fathers that having a child will impact their hours and their careers?
Why aren't we asking fathers how they plan to balance a family and sick children with their jobs?
Why aren't we assuming that fathers will be impacted by fatherhood and take presumptive money off their paycheques ahead of time?
We'd like to take one big step backward and look at how our society treats mothers and fathers differently - has different expectations - and those expectations work on people from cradle to grave to mold them into different shapes.
Toque.
We do tell fathers that having a child will impact their hours and their careers. Implicitly and explicitly, men are told that they better increase their earnings when children come. It is a very rich person's problem for the male to have the luxury to worry about whether he should cut back hours and take reduced pay or decrease his upward mobility. For most people it's not a choice.
Also, anecdotally (and in survey responses), listen to women who don't have the choice (or feel like they don't have the choice) to prioritize children over work because they don't believe their spouse can earn enough or because they chose early on for the father to prioritize children because of higher earning/better career prospects of the mother. They generally aren't really happy about it.
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I would like the culture to change so that, instead of being influenced by gendered norms and expectations, men and women would make the same choices, on average, in all things. I fail to see why that would be objectionable.
I don't think it is objectionable, but I think the place where you're running into trouble is the assumption that in a society free from gendered norms and expectations (which I will freely admit we don't live in today), the average man and the average woman would, by definition, make the same choices about all things.
Why wouldn't they? If there were no gendered expectations, I would expect men's and women's behavior to fall along bell curves, and I don't know why those bell curves would be different.
You're being nonsensical. Not knowing why they would be different doesn't imply they wouldn't be different.
Why would men generally be bigger, faster, stronger, than women? Every argument you can make for that could pretty equally be used to justify why women might on average, be more inclined to prioritize family and quality of life and other factors over income and prestige.
It's possible that men and women have no inherent differences in behavioral traits that show up in population wide averages. But that seems like a crazy position to not only take without any proof, but to take so strongly as to assume that any evidence of potential population wide differences in distribution are evidence of some sort of discrimination or societal brainwashing.
Which again comes back to the question of why you would take such a position. I can understand being agnostic. I can understand thinking it likely that there is some minor or even moderate differences just based on prevalence of sexual dimorphism among animals. I don't understand a dogmatic belief that there would be no differences if society got out of the way.
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I'm quite late to the conversation and need to catch up on all the posts, but on quick skim I didn't see the research on gender and negotiation referenced.
Here's a solid overview of the research and findings on how gender influences negotiation behavior and results. It's certainly part of the story around the wage gap: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264339251_Psychological_perspectives_on_gender_in_negotiation (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264339251_Psychological_perspectives_on_gender_in_negotiation)
I'm giving a lecture on this topic at MIT tomorrow night.
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They go deeply into one of the large causes being directly related to a mother deciding to work less hours once the child is born and spend more time on the family than career - you're picking a very small scemantic here to harp on. But motherhood in all cases is 100% a choice and there are many choices out there ...
I think this is where the disconnect is. When you say "motherhood is 100% a choice" ... well ... why aren't you saying "fatherhood is 100% a choice"?
Why aren't we telling fathers that having a child will impact their hours and their careers?
Why aren't we asking fathers how they plan to balance a family and sick children with their jobs?
Why aren't we assuming that fathers will be impacted by fatherhood and take presumptive money off their paycheques ahead of time?
We'd like to take one big step backward and look at how our society treats mothers and fathers differently - has different expectations - and those expectations work on people from cradle to grave to mold them into different shapes.
Toque.
i 100% agree both are a choice - mothers more frequently make the choice of childcare over the opposite. So rather than Bitching about it like poster above saying i cant carry my wife's child maybe that male should step up and change how he's viewing things. I a male plan to go to 4-8s when our kids are younger. Men and women alike can sit here and bitch about the problem but if you have kids you have the option to choose how you personally do something if you'd like to see the problem corrected. - also i think this mindset is much more with older than younger generations - gender roles dont exist as much in the millenial world as they do with the older crowds. but society has been trending that way for a while.
this discussion was around why women were paid less and that article focused on the typical choices men and women make which was my comment on motherhood - we're all free to choose to do whatever we want in life.
Look, I was just trying to make the point that not everything about parenting is an easy choice for most people nor is it (generally) an individual choice. Maybe if you can afford surrogates and maids and crap then it's easy for you, but I don't think those things are readily available/affordable for most people. Regardless, I already have a job that allows me to contribute more to my family life because the people I work with/for value work/life balance and therefore provide things like a flexible schedule and remote work. I'm led to believe that that is not the case for most people however and I would like to see that change. Especially since it seems that the effects that society chooses to impose on someone for making a collective choice seem to be falling disproportionately on one party to that collective choice.
so why dont you quit your job and stay home with the kids and let your wife work so you can help skew the statistics the other way? if you're doing the opposite or your wife is carrying more of the burden of your childcare then you're just adding to the disproportionality. If you truly want to fix it you personally have the power to change part of the statistics. I can't believe you have this stance that it should be less disproportionate yet are clearly not doing everything you could to skew the collective statistics. which would be becoming a full time stay at home dad and letting your wife work full time ridiculously long hours to climb the corporate ladder. Or is that not what you two are choosing to do?
remember you're looking at big data that includes all people and the choices many couples like yourself not individuals are necessarily making - and if you're making anything that tends towards the gender biased numbers you're not helping change those numbers - though you'd like to see them change. Its like saying i want to save more money b/c i'd like to retire earlier - but i will not get rid of cable b/c i just cant - and it happens to be the only legitimate area you have left to cut - and you will not earn more money - you're just contributing to the problem that you'd like to change thru not cutting the last thing you could cut to accomplish what you're acclaimed goal is.
Just having a job as a male is hurting the overall statistics - which you could change. You're likely blaming society here from something you're actually contributing to the skewed statistics for - i dont think there is much of anything to change here - other than in general rewarding performance vs time spent at a desk in the corporate world - which is a completely different topic.
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It is completely up to you to decide if you want to look into the two studies to discover flaws yourself or you could just "believe" them to be part of the flawed studies without even looking at them. As far as I can tell there are no real academic attempts to refute these studies.
I already explained why I'm unconvinced by your citation of those studies. I'm not going to do it again.
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It is completely up to you to decide if you want to look into the two studies to discover flaws yourself or you could just "believe" them to be part of the flawed studies without even looking at them. As far as I can tell there are no real academic attempts to refute these studies.
I already explained why I'm unconvinced by your citation of those studies. I'm not going to do it again.
As someone who hasn't read the book, and likely won't have access to a copy today, am I correct in my interpretation that your takeaway from reading the book was that if a study finds a difference between male and female behavior (in humans or related species) that the fact that researchers got such as result inherently serves as evidence that either the design of the study was flawed and/or the study is measuring the consequences of societal gender roles rather than any inherent characteristic linked to sex (rather than gender)?
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Why wouldn't they? If there were no gendered expectations, I would expect men's and women's behavior to fall along bell curves, and I don't know why those bell curves would be different.
You're being nonsensical. Not knowing why they would be different doesn't imply they wouldn't be different.
Why would men generally be bigger, faster, stronger, than women? Every argument you can make for that could pretty equally be used to justify why women might on average, be more inclined to prioritize family and quality of life and other factors over income and prestige.
It's possible that men and women have no inherent differences in behavioral traits that show up in population wide averages. But that seems like a crazy position to not only take without any proof, but to take so strongly as to assume that any evidence of potential population wide differences in distribution are evidence of some sort of discrimination or societal brainwashing.
Which again comes back to the question of why you would take such a position. I can understand being agnostic. I can understand thinking it likely that there is some minor or even moderate differences just based on prevalence of sexual dimorphism among animals. I don't understand a dogmatic belief that there would be no differences if society got out of the way.
This is the "proof by assertion" fallacy. Saying something doesn't make it true.
Put another way: We can all agree that gendered norms and expectations cause men and women to make different decisions. Therefore, absent those norms and expectations, the difference in decisions caused by those norms and expectations would go away.
You're claiming that absent those norms and expectations, men and women would still make some different decisions. I would argue that if you're going to make that claim, then the onus is on you to explain the cause and effect. The only cause you posited above is that men are bigger and stronger than women. I would counter that bigger and stronger people don't make uniformly different decisions than smaller and weaker people, or at least not ones of any social significance.
Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
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It is completely up to you to decide if you want to look into the two studies to discover flaws yourself or you could just "believe" them to be part of the flawed studies without even looking at them. As far as I can tell there are no real academic attempts to refute these studies.
I already explained why I'm unconvinced by your citation of those studies. I'm not going to do it again.
As someone who hasn't read the book, and likely won't have access to a copy today, am I correct in my interpretation that your takeaway from reading the book was that if a study finds a difference between male and female behavior (in humans or related species) that the fact that researchers got such as result inherently serves as evidence that either the design of the study was flawed and/or the study is measuring the consequences of societal gender roles rather than any inherent characteristic linked to sex (rather than gender)?
No.
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Okay, then it appears on re-reading that I'm not able to follow the view or position you are trying to communicate. *shrug* Good luck!
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Why wouldn't they? If there were no gendered expectations, I would expect men's and women's behavior to fall along bell curves, and I don't know why those bell curves would be different.
You're being nonsensical. Not knowing why they would be different doesn't imply they wouldn't be different.
Why would men generally be bigger, faster, stronger, than women? Every argument you can make for that could pretty equally be used to justify why women might on average, be more inclined to prioritize family and quality of life and other factors over income and prestige.
It's possible that men and women have no inherent differences in behavioral traits that show up in population wide averages. But that seems like a crazy position to not only take without any proof, but to take so strongly as to assume that any evidence of potential population wide differences in distribution are evidence of some sort of discrimination or societal brainwashing.
Which again comes back to the question of why you would take such a position. I can understand being agnostic. I can understand thinking it likely that there is some minor or even moderate differences just based on prevalence of sexual dimorphism among animals. I don't understand a dogmatic belief that there would be no differences if society got out of the way.
This is the "proof by assertion" fallacy. Saying something doesn't make it true.
Put another way: We can all agree that gendered norms and expectations cause men and women to make different decisions. Therefore, absent those norms and expectations, the difference in decisions caused by those norms and expectations would go away.
You're claiming that absent those norms and expectations, men and women would still make some different decisions. I would argue that if you're going to make that claim, then the onus is on you to explain the cause and effect. The only cause you posited above is that men are bigger and stronger than women. I would counter that bigger and stronger people don't make uniformly different decisions than smaller and weaker people, or at least not ones of any social significance.
Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
the onus is on you to prove this b/c others have presented evidence that says what you're arguing against is true. You have dont nothing other than say i dont believe those studies. That has been your entire point thus far unless i'm missing something - and have produced no counter study to it. females and males are fundamentally different genetically and biologically to assert that ONLY Societal pressures influence decisions is not only difficult to prove i would say its not even possible to prove.
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so why dont you quit your job and stay home with the kids and let your wife work so you can help skew the statistics the other way? if you're doing the opposite or your wife is carrying more of the burden of your childcare then you're just adding to the disproportionality. If you truly want to fix it you personally have the power to change part of the statistics. I can't believe you have this stance that it should be less disproportionate yet are clearly not doing everything you could to skew the collective statistics. which would be becoming a full time stay at home dad and letting your wife work full time ridiculously long hours to climb the corporate ladder. Or is that not what you two are choosing to do?
I can answer this question!
My wife is currently working a reduced work week to look after our son. She is doing this rather than me, because for 12 consecutive years she has always been paid less (except for the first seven months we were employed) for doing the exact same work and the exact same number of hours. She's not going to get a raise because I stay home . . . so it makes more sense for me to keep working. I'd be surprised if there weren't many other families in our situation.
Choosing the person who has always made more money to stay home is sub-optimal.
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so why dont you quit your job and stay home with the kids and let your wife work so you can help skew the statistics the other way? if you're doing the opposite or your wife is carrying more of the burden of your childcare then you're just adding to the disproportionality. If you truly want to fix it you personally have the power to change part of the statistics. I can't believe you have this stance that it should be less disproportionate yet are clearly not doing everything you could to skew the collective statistics. which would be becoming a full time stay at home dad and letting your wife work full time ridiculously long hours to climb the corporate ladder. Or is that not what you two are choosing to do?
I can answer this question!
My wife is currently working a reduced work week to look after our son. She is doing this rather than me, because for 12 consecutive years she has always been paid less (except for the first seven months we were employed) for doing the exact same work and the exact same number of hours. She's not going to get a raise because I stay home . . . so it makes more sense for me to keep working. I'd be surprised if there weren't many other families in our situation.
Choosing the person who has always made more money to stay home is sub-optimal.
this works for you but i'd submit there are next to 0 families statistically in your same situation(your similarities are far to close to each other to replicate on a large scale that would produce significant data back) - and as i said before i was in your same situation and another employee was getting raises faster than i was we were both males. your data point is extremely small and isolated and could have everything to do with Dept. and the management of that dept. vs male/female.
but in allowing your wife to stay home you're furthering the gap in the statistic - my comment was steered directly at the poster who wanted to make this go away and if you feel the same you're contributing to the statistic.
Also if you really feel thats the issue and she was discriminated against i dont see why you havent hired an attorney b/c with the buzz this has in the media you could FIRE tomorrow after they settle to not get their name in the news for this - you have all the data points. Unless all they have to say is different dept's have slightly different payscales based on dept performance. and show a male in her dept who was getting similar or lower raises to hers based on similar to lower performance.
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Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
Ok, I'll bite.
Assuming same-sex marriage becomes non-controversial and thus people can marry whomever without societal pressure, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that 50% of men and 50% of women will not choose same sex partners. In other words, men's and women's behavior will be reliably different in terms of choosing the sex of their marriage partner.
Is your assumption different?
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so why dont you quit your job and stay home with the kids and let your wife work so you can help skew the statistics the other way? if you're doing the opposite or your wife is carrying more of the burden of your childcare then you're just adding to the disproportionality. If you truly want to fix it you personally have the power to change part of the statistics. I can't believe you have this stance that it should be less disproportionate yet are clearly not doing everything you could to skew the collective statistics. which would be becoming a full time stay at home dad and letting your wife work full time ridiculously long hours to climb the corporate ladder. Or is that not what you two are choosing to do?
I can answer this question!
My wife is currently working a reduced work week to look after our son. She is doing this rather than me, because for 12 consecutive years she has always been paid less (except for the first seven months we were employed) for doing the exact same work and the exact same number of hours. She's not going to get a raise because I stay home . . . so it makes more sense for me to keep working. I'd be surprised if there weren't many other families in our situation.
Choosing the person who has always made more money to stay home is sub-optimal.
this works for you but i'd submit there are next to 0 families statistically in your same situation(your similarities are far to close to each other to replicate on a large scale that would produce significant data back) - and as i said before i was in your same situation and another employee was getting raises faster than i was we were both males. your data point is extremely small and isolated and could have everything to do with Dept. and the management of that dept. vs male/female.
but in allowing your wife to stay home you're furthering the gap in the statistic - my comment was steered directly at the poster who wanted to make this go away and if you feel the same you're contributing to the statistic.
Also if you really feel thats the issue and she was discriminated against i dont see why you havent hired an attorney b/c with the buzz this has in the media you could FIRE tomorrow after they settle to not get their name in the news for this - you have all the data points. Unless all they have to say is different dept's have slightly different payscales based on dept performance. and show a male in her dept who was getting similar or lower raises to hers based on similar to lower performance.
Given that we know most men will make more money than women (for a variety of reasons) and that we know these little differences add up a lot over a lifetime, I suspect that it's the smartest thing to do for most couples.
I am furthering the gap in the statistic because the statistic has made that the smartest thing to do financially. If you're arguing that a woman is likely to make more money than her husband if he stays home with a kid, can you provide your data to support the claim?
My wife has a good paying job. Opening this lawsuit would probably make her work situation much more uncomfortable and costs of a lawsuit are pretty high. Most importantly, although I do believe that my wife was discriminated against it (and that other women are as well), this is difficult for me to prove without access to all of the employment records in the company.
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Why wouldn't they? If there were no gendered expectations, I would expect men's and women's behavior to fall along bell curves, and I don't know why those bell curves would be different.
You're being nonsensical. Not knowing why they would be different doesn't imply they wouldn't be different.
Why would men generally be bigger, faster, stronger, than women? Every argument you can make for that could pretty equally be used to justify why women might on average, be more inclined to prioritize family and quality of life and other factors over income and prestige.
It's possible that men and women have no inherent differences in behavioral traits that show up in population wide averages. But that seems like a crazy position to not only take without any proof, but to take so strongly as to assume that any evidence of potential population wide differences in distribution are evidence of some sort of discrimination or societal brainwashing.
Which again comes back to the question of why you would take such a position. I can understand being agnostic. I can understand thinking it likely that there is some minor or even moderate differences just based on prevalence of sexual dimorphism among animals. I don't understand a dogmatic belief that there would be no differences if society got out of the way.
This is the "proof by assertion" fallacy. Saying something doesn't make it true.
Put another way: We can all agree that gendered norms and expectations cause men and women to make different decisions. Therefore, absent those norms and expectations, the difference in decisions caused by those norms and expectations would go away.
You're claiming that absent those norms and expectations, men and women would still make some different decisions. I would argue that if you're going to make that claim, then the onus is on you to explain the cause and effect. The only cause you posited above is that men are bigger and stronger than women. I would counter that bigger and stronger people don't make uniformly different decisions than smaller and weaker people, or at least not ones of any social significance.
Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
Holy snikes. You actually identified the fallacy and then un-ironically engaged in it.
I am not making any claims other than it seems unwise to try to make the workforce match some arbitrary number without having some evidence to think that number is the "right" number. You have no reason to think that there is zero differences in distribution of behavioral traits between men and women; it's just what you wish to believe. And in order to believe it, you have to simultaneously assume that despite different levels of hormones, men and women are exactly the same except for anatomical features and also that every observed difference between population distributions of men and women are the result of societal conditioning that cannot be corrected for.
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This is the "proof by assertion" fallacy. Saying something doesn't make it true.
Put another way: We can all agree that gendered norms and expectations cause men and women to make different decisions. Therefore, absent those norms and expectations, the difference in decisions caused by those norms and expectations would go away.
You're claiming that absent those norms and expectations, men and women would still make some different decisions. I would argue that if you're going to make that claim, then the onus is on you to explain the cause and effect. The only cause you posited above is that men are bigger and stronger than women. I would counter that bigger and stronger people don't make uniformly different decisions than smaller and weaker people, or at least not ones of any social significance.
Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
I don't think we all agree with your bolded statement. If that were true, then yes, I would agree with you. But that would be proof by assertion too :P
I believe: gendered norms and expectations impact the decisions men and women make. Strength and size do impact certain decisions. For example even in a perfect society, I would still think more men would work as construction workers than women.
I believe that since women have the baby inside them for 9 months probably influences their decisions about childcare differently than it does for a man. Yes, the distribution overlap, but I would guess they aren't the same.
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Your post number 6 indicates that there may be measurable differences in how women and men approach work, and then men are promoted because of this. My wife got better performance reviews for an eight year period and received lower wage increases than me. We were considered to be at the same pay grade for the 12 years that we worked the same job. To me, this is indicative of a serious social problem.
You can argue that men who have a more 'womanly' approach to work will also suffer because of this . . . but I'd argue that it's just as fundamentally unfair to those men. If we have unspoken hiring/promoting practices that take precedent over observed/measured quality of work, that should be made an issue. If these unwritten practices predominantly impact a minority it is absolutely discriminatory. To address your other point . . . if taller people make more money regardless of quality of work, that is discriminatory. If you're a shorter person, you're therefore going to be discriminated against. It is important to level the playing field so that people rise to the top based on their work and merit, unless you can think of a good argument for shorter people (or women) making less money.
Sorry for the late reply, went to see my dentist buddy, he found no cavity today, yay!
I agree with you that many of these the practices described are fundamentally biased and detrimental to the groups that lack the "prized" qualities. However, we must make the distinction between that and bias based on gender alone. We are not discriminating against ONLY women, rather we are discriminating against all people, both women and men, who lack these traits.
To me, this almost dissolves the validity of gender-based wage/earning gap completely, as we now have identified the underlying causes and the wage differences can rather be explained as trait-based.
We have identified the cause to a problem, yes, it is a problem. But I have no solution for you. These trait-related (normally distributed and compounded by behavior sexual dimorphism) biases came from our evolution history (side note: I am rather convinced of that now, based on the new-born and monkeys studies, feel free to correct me, I change my mind easily if I see arguments supported by data) and as long as our performances are evaluated by people in a social setting, I am afraid the biases will always persist. We can't realistically hope for equality of outcome (wages/earnings) when people are clearly different from the feet up. Nordic countries have tried various policies to lessen the gap (as I mentioned in earlier posts), but the results are disappointing thus far. But like I said, maybe tech can remove the human element altogether and we might achieve the goal that way.
btw..... is that an Alien riding a bike on your pic?
Cressida,
Put another way: We can all agree that gendered norms and expectations cause men and women to make different decisions. Therefore, absent those norms and expectations, the difference in decisions caused by those norms and expectations would go away.
Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
The difference in decisions DON'T go away. If anything, the new-born and monkey studies show that even in the ABSENCE of gendered norms and expectations, biology seems to have an even bigger role in how we make decisions. And as they say, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution".
I have met your lot before, refuting evidences without even thinking about it, simply because it does not suit your ideological belief. That is no longer intellectual laziness, but is more of an intellectual dishonesty. How is that different from the religious fundamentalists that believe the world was created in 7 days and only 6000 years old? Don't forget, the flat earth society has members all around the globe.
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so why dont you quit your job and stay home with the kids and let your wife work so you can help skew the statistics the other way? if you're doing the opposite or your wife is carrying more of the burden of your childcare then you're just adding to the disproportionality. If you truly want to fix it you personally have the power to change part of the statistics. I can't believe you have this stance that it should be less disproportionate yet are clearly not doing everything you could to skew the collective statistics. which would be becoming a full time stay at home dad and letting your wife work full time ridiculously long hours to climb the corporate ladder. Or is that not what you two are choosing to do?
I can answer this question!
My wife is currently working a reduced work week to look after our son. She is doing this rather than me, because for 12 consecutive years she has always been paid less (except for the first seven months we were employed) for doing the exact same work and the exact same number of hours. She's not going to get a raise because I stay home . . . so it makes more sense for me to keep working. I'd be surprised if there weren't many other families in our situation.
Choosing the person who has always made more money to stay home is sub-optimal.
this works for you but i'd submit there are next to 0 families statistically in your same situation(your similarities are far to close to each other to replicate on a large scale that would produce significant data back) - and as i said before i was in your same situation and another employee was getting raises faster than i was we were both males. your data point is extremely small and isolated and could have everything to do with Dept. and the management of that dept. vs male/female.
but in allowing your wife to stay home you're furthering the gap in the statistic - my comment was steered directly at the poster who wanted to make this go away and if you feel the same you're contributing to the statistic.
Also if you really feel thats the issue and she was discriminated against i dont see why you havent hired an attorney b/c with the buzz this has in the media you could FIRE tomorrow after they settle to not get their name in the news for this - you have all the data points. Unless all they have to say is different dept's have slightly different payscales based on dept performance. and show a male in her dept who was getting similar or lower raises to hers based on similar to lower performance.
Given that we know most men will make more money than women (for a variety of reasons) and that we know these little differences add up a lot over a lifetime, I suspect that it's the smartest thing to do for most couples.
I am furthering the gap in the statistic because the statistic has made that the smartest thing to do financially. If you're arguing that a woman is likely to make more money than her husband if he stays home with a kid, can you provide your data to support the claim?
My wife has a good paying job. Opening this lawsuit would probably make her work situation much more uncomfortable and costs of a lawsuit are pretty high. Most importantly, although I do believe that my wife was discriminated against it (and that other women are as well), this is difficult for me to prove without access to all of the employment records in the company.
the data in the study that shows the lower pay for female workers in siimilar jobs to their male couterparts falling when they stop working or cut back on work directly shows that the inverse of this is likely true - and if you wanted to complete your social experiment however small it is you could swap roles with your wife to see what happened with your pay and help the statistics out b/c she would continue to get high marks and working more was directly related to womens pay increasing the those studies posted earlier. You also dont have to dig too far to find the study that shows that the people regardless of sex who spend more time in office are typically promoted and get larger pay raises. again you believe its discrimination but cant prove it and dont plan to put your money where your mouth is on it so ... ambivolence ... I dont enjoy talking about things til we find what we think the issue is and then not acting on it. unless you dont truly believe what you're saying - engineers find the problem and fix it - you should have been in HR's office after the first pay raise bias and every year after that asking for the difference.
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Jrr85 and boarder42 and anisotropy are all saying pretty much the same thing, so I will combine my response.
Here is a premise: The physiological differences between men and women cause men and women to behave reliably differently in socially significant ways.
You guys are taking this on faith. And if it were true, then what I've been saying wouldn't make sense. But this premise has never been proven to be true. If you take this premise to be true, you are making an assumption, not a factual statement.
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Jrr85 and boarder42 and anisotropy are all saying pretty much the same thing, so I will combine my response.
Here is a premise: The physiological differences between men and women cause men and women to behave reliably differently in socially significant ways.
You guys are taking this on faith. And if it were true, then what I've been saying wouldn't make sense. But this premise has never been proven to be true. If you take this premise to be true, you are making an assumption, not a factual statement.
Excuse me? we are taking this on faith when we are the ones with studies to back our conclusions???
You say we are basing this on faith when you can not even give a rigorous critique on the specific studies??
LOL WHAT? Are the mods watching this? or am I in trouble again because of my manner?
Mods, especially toque, this sort of trolling behavior needs to end. Please do not allow trolls like this to thrive. Do not lock, simply educate the troll. I am still waiting for contrary evidence from AliEli, thanks.
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Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
Ok, I'll bite.
Assuming same-sex marriage becomes non-controversial and thus people can marry whomever without societal pressure, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that 50% of men and 50% of women will not choose same sex partners. In other words, men's and women's behavior will be reliably different in terms of choosing the sex of their marriage partner.
Is your assumption different?
In addition, we see a number of personality traits which are associated with variation in levels of sex hormones within single-sex populations. On top of that, people have actually done double blind studies where you perturb the level of sex hormones (generally as part of studies on new potential birth control methods in either men or women), and you see changes in some personality traits emerge, letting us parse apart directions of causality.
Are this differences giant? No. Are they likely to explain the gender pay gap? I think it's very unlikely. Are they enough that I am not comfortable agreeing with the assertion that in the absence of social forces, we can be completely confident that the average man and average woman* would show the exact same patterns of decision making? Yup.
*Given the differences in mean levels of sex hormones between men and women, even though the range of distributions for both sexes are overlapping.
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Jrr85 and boarder42 and anisotropy are all saying pretty much the same thing, so I will combine my response.
Here is a premise: The physiological differences between men and women cause men and women to behave reliably differently in socially significant ways.
You guys are taking this on faith. And if it were true, then what I've been saying wouldn't make sense. But this premise has never been proven to be true. If you take this premise to be true, you are making an assumption, not a factual statement.
i see you avoided @MDM 's response and still havent shown any study that counteracts the study presented other than your personal belief of it cant be true. this is the fucking nature vs nurture arguement basically spun a different way and i think any reasonable human being when looking at the data can conclude that both play a role in it.
what you're saying doesnt make any sense b/c you're trying to say is that society is the basis for all things people choose to do and i think there is quite a bit of evidence that we're born the way we are and will make choices based on that as well.
When you use always and never you're seldom correct.
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Jrr85 and boarder42 and anisotropy are all saying pretty much the same thing, so I will combine my response.
Here is a premise: The physiological differences between men and women cause men and women to behave reliably differently in socially significant ways.
You guys are taking this on faith. And if it were true, then what I've been saying wouldn't make sense. But this premise has never been proven to be true. If you take this premise to be true, you are making an assumption, not a factual statement.
i see you avoided @MDM 's response and still havent shown any study that counteracts the study presented other than your personal belief of it cant be true. this is the fucking nature vs nurture arguement basically spun a different way and i think any reasonable human being when looking at the data can conclude that both play a role in it.
what you're saying doesnt make any sense b/c you're trying to say is that society is the basis for all things people choose to do and i think there is quite a bit of evidence that we're born the way we are and will make choices based on that as well.
When you use always and never you're seldom correct.
Cressida is just trolling now, don't feed them, summon the mod to suspend them. This is a huge part of what is wrong with the world these days, each person has an alternative reality lol. Do you see what happens when we tolerate narratives that are not backed by data?
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Jrr85 and boarder42 and anisotropy are all saying pretty much the same thing, so I will combine my response.
Here is a premise: The physiological differences between men and women cause men and women to behave reliably differently in socially significant ways.
You guys are taking this on faith. And if it were true, then what I've been saying wouldn't make sense. But this premise has never been proven to be true. If you take this premise to be true, you are making an assumption, not a factual statement.
i see you avoided @MDM 's response and still havent shown any study that counteracts the study presented other than your personal belief of it cant be true. this is the fucking nature vs nurture arguement basically spun a different way and i think any reasonable human being when looking at the data can conclude that both play a role in it.
what you're saying doesnt make any sense b/c you're trying to say is that society is the basis for all things people choose to do and i think there is quite a bit of evidence that we're born the way we are and will make choices based on that as well.
When you use always and never you're seldom correct.
Cressida is just trolling now, don't feed them, summon the mod to suspend them. This is a huge part of what is wrong with the world these days, each person has an alternative reality lol. Do you see what happens when we tolerate narratives that are not backed by data?
you havent been around here long the mod isnt going to suspend someone b/c they arent backing up their opinion with data. we have whole threads dedicated to mortgage paydowns here.
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GuitarStv,
I must have misunderstood you, because I thought you were describing the contrary (blatant sexist) evidence I had been searching for (emphasis added):
We were on the same pay scale (were told that the same salary max/min applied), I was higher on the payscale when I started
but after further explanation from you, especially (emphasis added)
When we were both hired out of university, my wife and I started at exactly the same salary. I wasn't initially paid more, but I received a larger raise pretty much every year.
I'm sorry for any confusion. We had the same salary starting, but I made more money at the end of my first seven months there, and this continued for the rest of both our careers - despite me having worse performance reviews. We worked the same hours, doing pretty much the same work.
All the sudden this reverts back to being less overtly sexist, and becomes more of a case which can be sufficiently explained by post #6. I am disappointed....for real. :(
I totally agree with you that these biases due to perceptions (lower agreeableness and the more assertive people do better tend to do better) are real, which seems to be a case of behavioral sexual dimorphism, but when we think about it, they are not that much different from tall people tend to make more money on average. I would hazard a guess it's more of a evolutionary bias more than a cultural bias. And yes, these tiny biases add up over the long run, but once again, from a purely analytical point of view, not that different from a male who lacks the same qualities that are more common in men.
Your post number 6 indicates that there may be measurable differences in how women and men approach work, and then men are promoted because of this. My wife got better performance reviews for an eight year period and received lower wage increases than me. We were considered to be at the same pay grade for the 12 years that we worked the same job. To me, this is indicative of a serious social problem.
You can argue that men who have a more 'womanly' approach to work will also suffer because of this . . . but I'd argue that it's just as fundamentally unfair to those men. If we have unspoken hiring/promoting practices that take precedent over observed/measured quality of work, that should be made an issue. If these unwritten practices predominantly impact a minority it is absolutely discriminatory. To address your other point . . . if taller people make more money regardless of quality of work, that is discriminatory. If you're a shorter person, you're therefore going to be discriminated against. It is important to level the playing field so that people rise to the top based on their work and merit, unless you can think of a good argument for shorter people (or women) making less money.
I'm pretty much in agreement with you, but as one of the agreeable guys (with a heavy dose of cynicism), I expect this to come mostly of my hide, not the guys that are going to get over-paid.
Like, what's going to happen is that you are going to get your raise, then management is going to review the government-approved-gender-compensation figures, determine women are underpaid, try to correct that on the annual reviews, and then leave little left over in the wage budget for any agreeable males.
You're still going to get paid more than your wife, because business rewards that behavior, full-stop.
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Jrr85 and boarder42 and anisotropy are all saying pretty much the same thing, so I will combine my response.
Here is a premise: The physiological differences between men and women cause men and women to behave reliably differently in socially significant ways.
You guys are taking this on faith. And if it were true, then what I've been saying wouldn't make sense. But this premise has never been proven to be true. If you take this premise to be true, you are making an assumption, not a factual statement.
I can't speak for boarder42 and anisotropy, but you are misinterpreting/misrepresenting what I've said so badly that I question whether you could really be doing so in good faith. Again, you are the one who not only has blind faith that there is no sexual dimorphism in humans, but such strong blind faith that you want to force the economy to match what your blind faith tells you it should look like.
I haven't really taken any position except that your position is crazy.
I could be convinced that there is no difference (although it looks like since everything tried so far shows gendered differences, the only possible routes for proving such would be unethical and impractical). I could be convinced that there are moderate population level differences. I could be convinced of anything in between. I suspect that there are real innate differences in tendencies of men and women when making tradeoffs between family versus work life, risk taking, etc and that the impacts of these differences in distributions are exaggerated because they create something of a positive reinforcement loop. I'm not about to recommend trying to forcefully rearrange the economy based on my suspicions though.
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Your post number 6 indicates that there may be measurable differences in how women and men approach work, and then men are promoted because of this. My wife got better performance reviews for an eight year period and received lower wage increases than me. We were considered to be at the same pay grade for the 12 years that we worked the same job. To me, this is indicative of a serious social problem.
You can argue that men who have a more 'womanly' approach to work will also suffer because of this . . . but I'd argue that it's just as fundamentally unfair to those men. If we have unspoken hiring/promoting practices that take precedent over observed/measured quality of work, that should be made an issue. If these unwritten practices predominantly impact a minority it is absolutely discriminatory. To address your other point . . . if taller people make more money regardless of quality of work, that is discriminatory. If you're a shorter person, you're therefore going to be discriminated against. It is important to level the playing field so that people rise to the top based on their work and merit, unless you can think of a good argument for shorter people (or women) making less money.
Sorry for the late reply, went to see my dentist buddy, he found no cavity today, yay!
I agree with you that many of these the practices described are fundamentally biased and detrimental to the groups that lack the "prized" qualities. However, we must make the distinction between that and bias based on gender alone. We are not discriminating against ONLY women, rather we are discriminating against all people, both women and men, who lack these traits.
Agreed.
To me, this almost dissolves the validity of gender-based wage/earning gap completely, as we now have identified the underlying causes and the wage differences can rather be explained as trait-based.
No, I don't agree with this. That's like saying that people find dark skin menacing, and therefore will be less likely to hire black folks . . . so it's OK that they make less money. You can't argue that you're not discriminating against a race, but a trait. It is still discrimination against black people (even if it also discriminates to lesser degrees against spanish, latino, arab, and Jersey Shore folks) despite the fact that it's trait based - because it inordinately impacts black people.
We have identified the cause to a problem, yes, it is a problem. But I have no solution for you. These trait-related (normally distributed and compounded by behavior sexual dimorphism) biases came from our evolution history (side note: I am rather convinced of that now, based on the new-born and monkeys studies, feel free to correct me, I change my mind easily if I see arguments supported by data) and as long as our performances are evaluated by people in a social setting, I am afraid the biases will always persist. We can't realistically hope for equality of outcome (wages/earnings) when people are clearly different from the feet up. Nordic countries have tried various policies to lessen the gap (as I mentioned in earlier posts), but the results are disappointing thus far. But like I said, maybe tech can remove the human element altogether and we might achieve the goal that way.
I don't have a solution either.
I have always wondered if requiring public record of all private employees and the wages they earn would be of benefit though. Kinda a free market solution. It's easy to hide wage discrepancies when nobody knows what the next guy over makes. It becomes a bit harder when you see that every woman in a company is paid 8% less than men in the same position. This would also maybe empower people who are currently being disadvantaged to ask for more money, with the data to back up the request.
btw..... is that an Alien riding a bike on your pic?
Yes. Or a Triathlete. They're both pretty weird species. :P
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No, I don't agree with this. That's like saying that people find dark skin menacing, and therefore will be less likely to hire black folks . . . so it's OK that they make less money. You can't argue that you're not discriminating against a race, but a trait. It is still discrimination against black people (even if it also discriminates to lesser degrees against spanish, latino, arab, and Jersey Shore folks) despite the fact that it's trait based - because it inordinately impacts black people.
Well, the counter argument to that would be: The behavioral traits could be retained/learned, some might have a more difficult time than others, but through effort and "choices" the majority of the deficiencies might be overcome. Obviously I don't have data to back this up, just a hypothesis, but isn't that a central purpose of education? We learn good traits that might help us to go further in life.
Skin color... on the other hand, well, I don't think you could change that easily, not within realms of reason. I can see we actually agree on plenty, but the differences might be vital too lol.
I struggle to see the triathlete, which way is his/her head facing?
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I have always wondered if requiring public record of all private employees and the wages they earn would be of benefit though. Kinda a free market solution. It's easy to hide wage discrepancies when nobody knows what the next guy over makes. It becomes a bit harder when you see that every woman in a company is paid 8% less than men in the same position. This would also maybe empower people who are currently being disadvantaged to ask for more money, with the data to back up the request.
Removing some of the secrecy around pay has almost certainly got to be part of the solution. Paying someone less for no reason other than gender (or race) has been illegal in the US since 1963 but it's nearly impossible to enforce because of the secrecy companies are allowed to keep around their compensation practices (read about Lilly Ledbetter for a good example of someone getting hosed by both biased management and bad laws).
I would stop short of advocating the publishing of individual salaries, but there are ways to require larger employers to track and release aggregated numbers comparing wages across all the relevant variables that would help uncover wage biases, and then create plans to address any problems found. Many northern European countries do it. It's just a political no go for conservatives in the US.
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No, I don't agree with this. That's like saying that people find dark skin menacing, and therefore will be less likely to hire black folks . . . so it's OK that they make less money. You can't argue that you're not discriminating against a race, but a trait. It is still discrimination against black people (even if it also discriminates to lesser degrees against spanish, latino, arab, and Jersey Shore folks) despite the fact that it's trait based - because it inordinately impacts black people.
Well, the counter argument to that would be: The behavioral traits could be retained/learned, some might have a more difficult time than others, but through effort and "choices" the majority of the deficiencies might be overcome. Obviously I don't have data to back this up, just a hypothesis, but isn't that a central purpose of education?
We educate young people so that they have a mental framework which can be used to think later in life. I believe that attempts to change someone's behavior tend to be incidental rather than intentional. An awful lot of a person's behaviour is set in stone by the time they get out of being a toddler anyway. Some of it doesn't appear to something that can be controlled at all in later life (sexual preference, risk tolerance, instant/delayed gratification preference).
We learn good traits that might help us to go further in life.
You're also assuming that the traits that are being promoted are 'good'. I don't believe that this is the case. I think that there's something fundamentally wrong with the valuation system related to compensation for work in most places.
I struggle to see the triathlete, which way is his/her head facing?
(http://www.intelligent-triathlon-training.com/images/Aerohelmet2.jpg)
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You guys are getting kind of worked up over a pretty mild position I've taken. I'm saying this: If gendered expectations went away, then any differences in men's and women's behavior would be attributable to the physiological differences between them. Since there's no scientific consensus reliably linking physiological differences to differences in behavior, I conclude that there's no reason to expect men's and women's behavior to be different once gendered expectations are removed.
If the scientific consensus changes, then my position will change as well.
I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.
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I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.
Let's try it this way (see original post (https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/off-topic/wage-gap/msg1931671/#msg1931671) for assumptions) : if X% of women choose a man for a marriage partner, do you expect X% of men would also choose a man for a marriage partner?
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For those that can't read good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too, the phenomenon of wage gap (ie women get paid less than men even though they have the same education and do the same duties) seems to me can be readily explained by people on different pay grades. I have yet to find any studies that display blatant sexism by paying men more than women when they are on the same pay grade. If you are aware of such studies please share I would love to learn more.
Some might argue why aren't more women on the higher pay grades, plenty books and reports have been written regarding the issue, which is not directly related to the "true" wage gap discussion I am hoping to have here.
You're complaining about the presentation of the problem ("wage gap") as if it invalidates the underlying problem you highlight - men, overall, get promoted to higher paying positions than women. So the problem still exists that we aren't treating women equally in the workplace as it relates to pay grades.
I don't get the point of the post other than to critique the short-attention-span media not detailing this nuance.
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you havent been around here long the mod isnt going to suspend someone b/c they arent backing up their opinion with data. we have whole threads dedicated to mortgage paydowns here.
lol gold.
seriously though, it's not even about not backing up opinions with data, it's blatant trolling, talk about mod bias lol. Whats that? no I don't have evidence to back up my opinion of mod bias and it is most likely a false claim, but hey, that's no different from what we've just witnessed. I am going to believe that because I want to. lol absurd.
GuitarStv,
Good point, many traits we probably can't change, try as we may.
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I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.
Let's try it this way (see original post (https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/off-topic/wage-gap/msg1931671/#msg1931671) for assumptions) : if X% of women choose a man for a marriage partner, do you expect X% of men would also choose a man for a marriage partner?
If that's supposed to be a gotcha, I'm not impressed. Just rewrite it to "if X% of women choose an opposite-sex marriage partner" etc. So no, my assumption is no different.
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If you all don't stop pretending to know about Evolution, speaking with such certainty on what Biology makes women and men do, as if we really had that level of scientific clarity, I will Summon a Biologist to Crush your Views.
Also, on the subject of our biases: we remove jerks; we tolerate everything but intolerance.
Toque.
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For those that can't read good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too, the phenomenon of wage gap (ie women get paid less than men even though they have the same education and do the same duties) seems to me can be readily explained by people on different pay grades. I have yet to find any studies that display blatant sexism by paying men more than women when they are on the same pay grade. If you are aware of such studies please share I would love to learn more.
Some might argue why aren't more women on the higher pay grades, plenty books and reports have been written regarding the issue, which is not directly related to the "true" wage gap discussion I am hoping to have here.
You're complaining about the presentation of the problem ("wage gap") as if it invalidates the underlying problem you highlight - men, overall, get promoted to higher paying positions than women. So the problem still exists that we aren't treating women equally in the workplace as it relates to pay grades.
I don't get the point of the post other than to critique the short-attention-span media not detailing this nuance.
Hi DarkandStormy,
Originally I was looking for simple contrary evidence (I still am) to refute my hypothesis that the gender wage gap phenomenon is a second order phenomenon which has its "deeper" cause in personality/behavior traits that spawned from sexual behavior dimorphism. I simply wanted to see if I had missed something in my pursuit to isolate the "gender" premium.
Later on it became a debate about science/data/stats vs post-modern view of facts.
Anyway, I think there's a problem, but to fix the problem properly we need to find the actual cause, not just slap a gender bias sticker on it and call it a day. It's like medicine (I am sort of obsessed with med these days, went to too many talks/seminars), you have symptoms, but you have to identify the actual disease for optimal treatments.
Many people seem to be happy to just stop at gender bias and attempt to "fix" the problem even though the attempts so far have been less than effective (Nordic country examples). Hope this helps.
Toque,
Would you like to comment on the new-born baby and monkeys studies so I know how I got it wrong? Some real biological insight regarding the studies would help me a lot. Thanks.
I also went over the Moss-Racusin study that was central to your Stanford link (pretty much all gender related studies to be honest). My complaint is the sample size is quite small, with minimal "hiring manager" set up too. I still think the study has merits, do you know of any other study with similar premises but better set up? (bigger pool, more variable hiring scenarios, etc). Thanks again.
Gave some thoughts, I agree about intolerance, in general.
ps. just to clarify, does being a jerk include employing the following logic:
a. hi I am a believer in scientific methods
b. no I will not look at any contrary evidence that does not suit my ideology/belief because they must be wrong
c. oh but I am a believer in scientific methods, as long as I agree with the conclusions
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You guys are getting kind of worked up over a pretty mild position I've taken. I'm saying this: If gendered expectations went away, then any differences in men's and women's behavior would be attributable to the physiological differences between them. Since there's no scientific consensus reliably linking physiological differences to differences in behavior, I conclude that there's no reason to expect men's and women's behavior to be different once gendered expectations are removed.
If the scientific consensus changes, then my position will change as well.
I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.
Despite the motte and bailey defense tactic of leaving out the part about rearranging the economy to match your unsupported assumptions, your statement that there isn't a consensus that physiological traits can be linked to behavior (even if it were true, which I would question whether there's really no consensus that levels of testosterone versus estrogen or other hormones are associated with different behaviors), does not mean that it's reasonable to assume that there are zero differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits.
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I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.
Let's try it this way (see original post (https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/off-topic/wage-gap/msg1931671/#msg1931671) for assumptions) : if X% of women choose a man for a marriage partner, do you expect X% of men would also choose a man for a marriage partner?
If that's supposed to be a gotcha, I'm not impressed. Just rewrite it to "if X% of women choose an opposite-sex marriage partner" etc. So no, my assumption is no different.
One person's gotcha is another person's check to see if a proposed logical framework is supportable.
One can rewrite pretty much any question to change the outcome. The issue then becomes "does the need to rewrite indicate a trivial or a significant problem with the original hypothesis?"
A good write-up on generating and testing falsifiable hypotheses, even though it is >50 years old, is Strong Inference (http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~markhill/science64_strong_inference.pdf).
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Despite the motte and bailey defense tactic of leaving out the part about rearranging the economy to match your unsupported assumptions,
I don't want to rearrange the economy. I want to change gendered expectations, and then the economy will rearrange itself.
your statement that there isn't a consensus that physiological traits can be linked to behavior (even if it were true, which I would question whether there's really no consensus that levels of testosterone versus estrogen or other hormones are associated with different behaviors), does not mean that it's reasonable to assume that there are zero differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits.
If we concede the former point, on what would you base nonzero "differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits"? If it's not gendered expectations (since we've already got rid of those in the premise), and if it's not physiological differences (because you've temporarily conceded that point), what is it?
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A good write-up on generating and testing falsifiable hypotheses, even though it is >50 years old, is Strong Inference (http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~markhill/science64_strong_inference.pdf).
That is a great write up which I had not come across before, and took real pleasure in reading. And I would completely agree that the bit quoted below is one of the key realizations that separates purely descriptive fields of science from the kind which can truly help us figure out how the world around us works.
...there is no such thing as proof in science -- because some later alternative explanation may be as good or better -- so that science advances only by disproofs. There is no point in making hypotheses that are not falsifiable, because such hypotheses do not say anything...
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In all this discussion I am reminded of the change in orchestra hiring when candidates played for the hiring people behind a screen. Suddenly women were hired. Before no one thought they could play some instruments (cello for one) well. I forget where I read this, but it was certainly an "aha" moment.
We have all seen the accounts where papers/reports that were identical except for names were judged better if the name was a male name, right? And online TAs were evaluated better if the name was male, even though they were actually the same person.
And on these forums I have seen people be extremely surprised when someone with a neutral name turned out to be female - they were assumed to be male because of interests and writing style.
All this to say that we all have lots of built-in assumptions that we aren't aware of, they were embedded in us before we were old enough to analyze them. And they are culture specific - I had an aha moment of my own for one of The Last Jedi characters.
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In all this discussion I am reminded of the change in orchestra hiring when candidates played for the hiring people behind a screen. Suddenly women were hired. Before no one thought they could play some instruments (cello for one) well. I forget where I read this, but it was certainly an "aha" moment.
We have all seen the accounts where papers/reports that were identical except for names were judged better if the name was a male name, right? And online TAs were evaluated better if the name was male, even though they were actually the same person.
And on these forums I have seen people be extremely surprised when someone with a neutral name turned out to be female - they were assumed to be male because of interests and writing style.
All this to say that we all have lots of built-in assumptions that we aren't aware of, they were embedded in us before we were old enough to analyze them. And they are culture specific - I had an aha moment of my own for one of The Last Jedi characters.
The Moss-Racusin study definitely falls in this category, likely most known too. I think it has merits, but as I mentioned in my reply to Toque, I wish the set up were more rigorous and the study pool bigger.
The TA-rating study set up was even worse, the four study groups had a grand total of 43 students (table 1 in paper), with each group averaging around 20 students to make the rating (note to people unfamiliar with the process, this is how you critique studies in a scientific manner, you do it from the feet up, starting with experimental design).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269288475_What%27s_in_a_Name_Exposing_Gender_Bias_in_Student_Ratings_of_Teaching
The students were from the university of north Carolina, a better design would be to include another group from elsewhere. Yes it's online, but odds are the students were predominately from North Carolina.
The grading scale itself was also problematic, students were given choice of 1-5, which no choice of scores in between, ie, no 2.5 allowed. In this set up, each score off creates 20% difference in final results. Preferably, the scoring schemes should be at least 1-10.
When you look at the actual data, most people will cry foul on how the "perceived female" TA got the shaft and scored lower than the "perceived male" TA, but COMPLETELY IGNORE the score differences in "real" female and male TA were minimal.
I quote the paper itself:
"When looking at the individual questions as well as the student ratings index, there are no significant differences between the ratings of the actual male and female instructor." pg 298
In fact, the only rating that was "significantly" (that is suspect also) below the mean was the perceived female TA, if it were truly purely gender-based bias, we would expect BOTH perceived and real female TA to receive poor scores. That did not happen. What about the fact that female instructor consistently scored better than the male instructor, which suggested the male instructor was a weaker instructor overall, and partially bears the blame for the perceived female TA's low scores?
This idea is further supported by comparing the histogram (Figure 1), we will notice the perceived male and real female (same person), had very similar scores and the confidence interval (error bars) overlap by quite a bit, we notice the same effect when we compare perceived female and real male (same person), notice the error bars also overlapped.
Most people touting the validity of this study seem to ignore or didn't even notice this, and instead focus on an ideology fueled march.
The results actually suggests that there is some disconnect in terms of quality of students of the perceived female TA group, and the quality of performances between the REAL male and female TAs. Whatever pro gender bias conclusion one can draw from this study is extremely weak.
I know most of you probably don't understand or don't even care why the things I mentioned are important, it is extremely important, because if we hope to fix the problem, we have to identify the right cause, and not just a blanket gender bias sticker in all circumstances.
Don't just group think and follow the crowd. Read the studies yourself, critique the set-up, the method, the data, be a jerk and ask tough questions, that's how we fix things in the long run.
ps.
GuitarStv, recall my suggestion that tech might one day fix the trait-based problem and level the playing field, do you think this might be an experiment to that idea? As the real female TA consistently outscored the real male TA.
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MDM, I’m honestly trying to understand your question here.
Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
Ok, I'll bite.
Assuming same-sex marriage becomes non-controversial and thus people can marry whomever without societal pressure, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that 50% of men and 50% of women will not choose same sex partners. In other words, men's and women's behavior will be reliably different in terms of choosing the sex of their marriage partner.
Is your assumption different?
I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.
Let's try it this way (see original post (https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/off-topic/wage-gap/msg1931671/#msg1931671) for assumptions) : if X% of women choose a man for a marriage partner, do you expect X% of men would also choose a man for a marriage partner?
What do you mean by ‘men and women’s behavior will be reliably different in terms of choosing the sex of their marriage partner’? If you mean their behavior in relation to current societal expectations, I agree that it will be different in this scenario (but different for both men and women equally). If you mean there will be a difference in the choices that women make vs men, I don’t understand that.
In your case of 50/50 (my assumption of the percentage would be different, but we’re just guessing here so it doesn’t matter), we get:
50% of women choose men <50% of women will not choose same sex partners>. 50% of women choose women.
50% of men choose women <50% of men will not choose same sex partners>. 50% of men choose men.
Seems like the same behavior between men and women.
Your second question changes the original one, and compare women choosing men (opposite sex partners) to men choosing men (same sex partners), which doesn’t make sense to me. Although in your 50/50 example, it’s the same outcome.
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MDM, I’m honestly trying to understand your question here.
Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
Ok, I'll bite.
Assuming same-sex marriage becomes non-controversial and thus people can marry whomever without societal pressure, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that 50% of men and 50% of women will not choose same sex partners. In other words, men's and women's behavior will be reliably different in terms of choosing the sex of their marriage partner.
Is your assumption different?
I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.
Let's try it this way (see original post (https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/off-topic/wage-gap/msg1931671/#msg1931671) for assumptions) : if X% of women choose a man for a marriage partner, do you expect X% of men would also choose a man for a marriage partner?
What do you mean by ‘men and women’s behavior will be reliably different in terms of choosing the sex of their marriage partner’? If you mean their behavior in relation to current societal expectations, I agree that it will be different in this scenario (but different for both men and women equally). If you mean there will be a difference in the choices that women make vs men, I don’t understand that.
In your case of 50/50 (my assumption of the percentage would be different, but we’re just guessing here so it doesn’t matter), we get:
50% of women choose men <50% of women will not choose same sex partners>. 50% of women choose women.
50% of men choose women <50% of men will not choose same sex partners>. 50% of men choose men.
Seems like the same behavior between men and women.
Your second question changes the original one, and compare women choosing men (opposite sex partners) to men choosing men (same sex partners), which doesn’t make sense to me. Although in your 50/50 example, it’s the same outcome.
Boiled down, Cressida's original hypothesis: "men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different"
I believe that is false, using the counterexample "choice of sex in a marriage partner". Note the italicized "not" in my first post - perhaps you and I agree?
In other words, I believe women will choose men as marriage partners more often than men will choose men - just as men will choose women more often than women will choose women.
Assuming monogamy and equal numbers of men and women (if for no other reason than it makes the math simpler), the only way men's and women's choices would be equal is if each chose 50% same sex and 50% opposite sex. I don't believe that would happen, and from what I can tell you don't either, so are we saying the same thing?
If one believes that, statistically speaking, men and women look for different things in a spouse, it's not unreasonable to expect (again, statistically speaking) men and women might look for different things in other areas, e.g., in a career.
In other words, even given absolute equality of opportunity (in which I firmly believe), the demographics of specific work roles may not match the demographics of the overall population - and that's ok.
The pay scales for different work roles is a legitimate subject, but for another discussion.
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I quote the paper itself:
"When looking at the individual questions as well as the student ratings index, there are no significant differences between the ratings of the actual male and female instructor." pg 298
In fact, the only rating that was "significantly" (that is suspect also) below the mean was the perceived female TA, if it were truly purely gender-based bias, we would expect BOTH perceived and real female TA to receive poor scores. That did not happen. What about the fact that female instructor consistently scored better than the male instructor, which suggested the male instructor was a weaker instructor overall, and partially bears the blame for the perceived female TA's low scores?
"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistantinstructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in thetwo groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be female, regardless of the actual genderof the assistant instructor.
It's possible that the male instructor was worse than the female instructor. That doesn't really change the findings though. As mentioned on pg. 298:
"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in the two groups that perceived their instructor to be female, regardless of the actual gender of the instructor."
You would have an argument if the male instructor perceived as male got lower ratings, but that didn't happen.
GuitarStv, recall my suggestion that tech might one day fix the trait-based problem and level the playing field, do you think this might be an experiment to that idea? As the real female TA consistently outscored the real male TA.
I think that in certain fields (distance education could use gender neutral identification for teachers and assistants for example) it may be possible, but that widespread use of computer generated performance evaluation is unlikely to catch on in most of the business world very easily. As we've already discussed, performance is only a small part of what people are rated on. If computer generated ratings were given, it wouldn't obviously wouldn't align with what managers want (since they don't currently promote based on performance) . . . and thus would be unpopular.
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You're complaining about the presentation of the problem ("wage gap") as if it invalidates the underlying problem you highlight - men, overall, get promoted to higher paying positions than women. So the problem still exists that we aren't treating women equally in the workplace as it relates to pay grades.
I don't get the point of the post other than to critique the short-attention-span media not detailing this nuance.
Fewer women in higher paying positions does not necessarily mean we aren't treating women equally. Fewer hours and less flexibility of those hours would also lead to less promotions, and it has already been mentioned that women do those things. I'm not saying there's not a problem, I'm saying it's not obvious to me.
You guys are getting kind of worked up over a pretty mild position I've taken. I'm saying this: If gendered expectations went away, then any differences in men's and women's behavior would be attributable to the physiological differences between them. Since there's no scientific consensus reliably linking physiological differences to differences in behavior, I conclude that there's no reason to expect men's and women's behavior to be different once gendered expectations are removed.
If the scientific consensus changes, then my position will change as well.
I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.
Is there scientific consensus that physiological differences does not lead to behavioral differences?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2013/oct/06/male-brain-versus-female-brain
Subtle observable differences exist between male and female brains, but how exactly these relate to differences in behaviour is unknown.
"Unknown" is not the same as "does not exist."
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics did a pretty exhaustive study of this issue in 1996 (Clinton era) and concluded virtually all, if not all, of the gap was due to choice of profession, hours worked, years out of the labor force.
There's another even easier way to dispel this myth. Why someone doesn't just start up a company to hire all these underpaid people and make an absolute killing from having the same output but lower labor costs that the competition?
Presumably it's because capitalists are so sexist that they don't like money (i.e., investment returns)?
LOL
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." John Adams
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Subtle observable differences exist between male and female brains, but how exactly these relate to differences in behaviour is unknown.
"Unknown" is not the same as "does not exist."
Of course not. That's not the point. The point is that we have no good way of telling how human beings actually differ, between male and female brains, given the amount of cultural baggage we load kids up with, basically starting at birth.
Now, if you want, you can go back and forth:
1) "There's no way you can know what difference it makes."
2) "There's no way you can say there's no difference."
No shit. Move along.
Toque.
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Boiled down, Cressida's original hypothesis: "men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different"
I believe that is false, using the counterexample "choice of sex in a marriage partner". Note the italicized "not" in my first post - perhaps you and I agree?
In other words, I believe women will choose men as marriage partners more often than men will choose men - just as men will choose women more often than women will choose women.
Assuming monogamy and equal numbers of men and women (if for no other reason than it makes the math simpler), the only way men's and women's choices would be equal is if each chose 50% same sex and 50% opposite sex. I don't believe that would happen, and from what I can tell you don't either, so are we saying the same thing?
If one believes that, statistically speaking, men and women look for different things in a spouse, it's not unreasonable to expect (again, statistically speaking) men and women might look for different things in other areas, e.g., in a career.
In other words, even given absolute equality of opportunity (in which I firmly believe), the demographics of specific work roles may not match the demographics of the overall population - and that's ok.
The pay scales for different work roles is a legitimate subject, but for another discussion.
No, we do not agree.
I believe the following statement is in agreement with Cressida's hypothesis. Men and women's behavior is not different in the case you described here:
In other words, I believe women will choose men as marriage partners more often than men will choose men - just as men will choose women more often than women will choose women.
That's the same as saying: women will choose opposite-sex partners more than same-sex partners - just as men will choose opposite-sex partners more than same-sex partners.
Seems like the same behavior to me.
Assuming monogamy and equal numbers of men and women (if for no other reason than it makes the math simpler), the only way men's and women's choices would be equal is if each chose 50% same sex and 50% opposite sex. I don't believe that would happen, and from what I can tell you don't either, so are we saying the same thing?
That's one way to be equal, but not the only way. Another way to be equal is to say that women choose same sex partners 25% of the time and men choose same sex partners 25% of the time. Equal. I do believe this will happen, though I have no idea what the actual percentage will be.
A% of people will choose opposite-sex partners.
B% of people will choose same-sex partners.
C% of people will choose to not marry.
D% of people will choose some option I have not considered.
A+B+C+D = 100%
I do not believe that these percentages will differ significantly when viewed as male vs female.
If one believes that, statistically speaking, men and women look for different things in a spouse
I don't believe your example contains any reference to "men and women looking for different things in a spouse". Your example appears to be about sexual orientation, which may be why I am completely confused by your argument here.
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So to sum it up, in the absence of proof, we can only speculate whether men and women would behave differently if the slate were wiped clean and there were no cultural norms regarding gender differences.
There are studies and examples we can point to that might support our speculations, but we don't really know.
I'm all for making strong arguments in favor of viewpoints. I think what's getting tiresome here is that certain studies and examples are being trotted out as conclusive proof rather than evidence that could reasonably be interpreted to support a viewpoint.
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I quote the paper itself:
"When looking at the individual questions as well as the student ratings index, there are no significant differences between the ratings of the actual male and female instructor." pg 298
In fact, the only rating that was "significantly" (that is suspect also) below the mean was the perceived female TA, if it were truly purely gender-based bias, we would expect BOTH perceived and real female TA to receive poor scores. That did not happen. What about the fact that female instructor consistently scored better than the male instructor, which suggested the male instructor was a weaker instructor overall, and partially bears the blame for the perceived female TA's low scores?
"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistantinstructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in thetwo groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be female, regardless of the actual genderof the assistant instructor.
It's possible that the male instructor was worse than the female instructor. That doesn't really change the findings though. As mentioned on pg. 298:
"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in the two groups that perceived their instructor to be female, regardless of the actual gender of the instructor."
You would have an argument if the male instructor perceived as male got lower ratings, but that didn't happen.
Morning GuitarStv,
I am slightly confused.
"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in the two groups that perceived their instructor to be female, regardless of the actual gender of the instructor."
When we look at the actual scores and histogram, we see there really is only one outlier (perceived female), with only four groups, perhaps the word outlier is an overreach. The other three were roughly on par, with the perceived male and actual female (same person) both scoring higher than actual male. ie, The female TA scored consistently higher regardless of identities.
If it were truly gender biased, wouldn't we expect both the actual and perceived female TA to score lower than the male identities? Am I missing something?
I am going to try to do some stats to see which creates bigger differences:
1. actual female + perceived female vs actual male + perceived male (gender based)
2. actual female + perceived male vs actual male + perceived female (person based)
ps. we also have to remember, the student groups (likely A and B) that graded the perceived female could also be a cause of discrepancies, as the experiment set up did not allow the other student groups (C and D) to vote for female identities.
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So to sum it up, in the absence of proof, we can only speculate whether men and women would behave differently if the slate were wiped clean and there were no cultural norms regarding gender differences.
There are studies and examples we can point to that might support our speculations, but we don't really know.
I'm all for making strong arguments in favor of viewpoints. I think what's getting tiresome here is that certain studies and examples are being trotted out as conclusive proof rather than evidence that could reasonably be interpreted to support a viewpoint.
Hi Boogie,
The "proof" are in the studies, we just have to discover them, no one (unless it comes with a massive dose of narrative) will spoon feed it to us.
If you don't like a particular interpretation you can certainly look at the studies and critique them to discover their shortcomings, much like some had done here. Just because the studies show conflicting answers doesn't mean the answer is unknowable, the studies are not created equal.
If some studies' conclusions remain unchallenged, wouldn't you think those studies have a stronger inclination to be closer to how things actually work?
(I am referring to the two day baby and monkeys studies, which so far have had no critique)
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So to sum it up, in the absence of proof, we can only speculate whether men and women would behave differently if the slate were wiped clean and there were no cultural norms regarding gender differences.
There are studies and examples we can point to that might support our speculations, but we don't really know.
I'm all for making strong arguments in favor of viewpoints. I think what's getting tiresome here is that certain studies and examples are being trotted out as conclusive proof rather than evidence that could reasonably be interpreted to support a viewpoint.
Hi Boogie,
The "proof" are in the studies, we just have to discover them, no one (unless it comes with a massive dose of narrative) will spoon feed it to us.
If you don't like a particular interpretation you can certainly look at the studies and critique them to discover their shortcomings, much like some had done here. Just because the studies show conflicting answers doesn't mean the answer is unknowable, the studies are not created equal.
If some studies' conclusions remain unchallenged, wouldn't you think those studies have a stronger inclination to be closer to how things actually work?
(I am referring to the two day baby and monkeys studies, which so far have had no critique)
I read the methodology of the baby study and there's no way it can be used to infer population wide differences between men and women, and even if it was a good study, it still doesn't justify paying women less for the same work.
They had a woman with a neutral face vs a scrambled nonsense face mobile, and timed the number of seconds the baby looked at either one. There weren't that many babies included, and a whole bunch were tested but excluded for crying too much or falling asleep. The conclusion was supposedly that the girl babies would rather look at the face than the weird scrambled thing, but the difference was pretty small and it's a pretty specific thing to look at that can't really be extrapolated to real world circumstances.
Here's a critique if you're interested: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=261
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So to sum it up, in the absence of proof, we can only speculate whether men and women would behave differently if the slate were wiped clean and there were no cultural norms regarding gender differences.
There are studies and examples we can point to that might support our speculations, but we don't really know.
I'm all for making strong arguments in favor of viewpoints. I think what's getting tiresome here is that certain studies and examples are being trotted out as conclusive proof rather than evidence that could reasonably be interpreted to support a viewpoint.
Hi Boogie,
The "proof" are in the studies, we just have to discover them, no one (unless it comes with a massive dose of narrative) will spoon feed it to us.
If you don't like a particular interpretation you can certainly look at the studies and critique them to discover their shortcomings, much like some had done here. Just because the studies show conflicting answers doesn't mean the answer is unknowable, the studies are not created equal.
If some studies' conclusions remain unchallenged, wouldn't you think those studies have a stronger inclination to be closer to how things actually work?
(I am referring to the two day baby and monkeys studies, which so far have had no critique)
I read the methodology of the baby study and there's no way it can be used to infer population wide differences between men and women, and even if it was a good study, it still doesn't justify paying women less for the same work.
No poutine! I never meant to use it as an excuse to pay women less, I don't think that's right!
I bring it up because I think study supports there are inherent and biological differences between male and female. But to see your point, do you think it's because the sample size was too small? Being 102 only
If that were the case, what about Su et al 2009, sample size exceeds 500,000 and got similar results.
ps. thanks for the critique link.
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Despite the motte and bailey defense tactic of leaving out the part about rearranging the economy to match your unsupported assumptions,
I don't want to rearrange the economy. I want to change gendered expectations, and then the economy will rearrange itself.
So you don't want to enact any changes in law or regulation? All you want to do is argue without any government coercion that we are pigeonholing people based on gender and we should stop? I'm skeptical of that, but great, if true.
your statement that there isn't a consensus that physiological traits can be linked to behavior (even if it were true, which I would question whether there's really no consensus that levels of testosterone versus estrogen or other hormones are associated with different behaviors), does not mean that it's reasonable to assume that there are zero differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits.
If we concede the former point, on what would you base nonzero "differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits"? If it's not gendered expectations (since we've already got rid of those in the premise), and if it's not physiological differences (because you've temporarily conceded that point), what is it?
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not. Ignoring the appeal to authority (whether there is a scientific consensus doesn't change reality), do you really not see the blatantly obvious bad logic that it takes to equate the lack of a consensus on a belief that gender is linked to the population distribution of certain behavioral traits does not equate that there is a consensus that gender has no link to the population distribution of certain behavioral traits.
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Boiled down, Cressida's original hypothesis: "men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different"
I believe that is false, using the counterexample "choice of sex in a marriage partner". Note the italicized "not" in my first post - perhaps you and I agree?
In other words, I believe women will choose men as marriage partners more often than men will choose men - just as men will choose women more often than women will choose women.
Assuming monogamy and equal numbers of men and women (if for no other reason than it makes the math simpler), the only way men's and women's choices would be equal is if each chose 50% same sex and 50% opposite sex. I don't believe that would happen, and from what I can tell you don't either, so are we saying the same thing?
If one believes that, statistically speaking, men and women look for different things in a spouse, it's not unreasonable to expect (again, statistically speaking) men and women might look for different things in other areas, e.g., in a career.
In other words, even given absolute equality of opportunity (in which I firmly believe), the demographics of specific work roles may not match the demographics of the overall population - and that's ok.
The pay scales for different work roles is a legitimate subject, but for another discussion.
No, we do not agree.
I believe the following statement is in agreement with Cressida's hypothesis. Men and women's behavior is not different in the case you described here:
In other words, I believe women will choose men as marriage partners more often than men will choose men - just as men will choose women more often than women will choose women.
That's the same as saying: women will choose opposite-sex partners more than same-sex partners - just as men will choose opposite-sex partners more than same-sex partners.
Seems like the same behavior to me.
Assuming monogamy and equal numbers of men and women (if for no other reason than it makes the math simpler), the only way men's and women's choices would be equal is if each chose 50% same sex and 50% opposite sex. I don't believe that would happen, and from what I can tell you don't either, so are we saying the same thing?
That's one way to be equal, but not the only way. Another way to be equal is to say that women choose same sex partners 25% of the time and men choose same sex partners 25% of the time. Equal. I do believe this will happen, though I have no idea what the actual percentage will be.
A% of people will choose opposite-sex partners.
B% of people will choose same-sex partners.
C% of people will choose to not marry.
D% of people will choose some option I have not considered.
A+B+C+D = 100%
I do not believe that these percentages will differ significantly when viewed as male vs female.
If one believes that, statistically speaking, men and women look for different things in a spouse
I don't believe your example contains any reference to "men and women looking for different things in a spouse". Your example appears to be about sexual orientation, which may be why I am completely confused by your argument here.
You are ignoring Cressida's stated belief, which is that the only reason there is any difference between male and female behaviors is society's gendered expectations. For that to be true, that would mean that if we could successfully remove society's gendered expectations, male and females would be equally likely to choose a male spouse. Cressida's argument is that the only reason ~95-97% of men prefer a female spouse (or sexual companion since not everybody wants a spouse at all) is that society has trained them to. I think people are understandably skeptical of that argument, even if they would concede that societal expectations do have enough influence to move the needle some.
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Subtle observable differences exist between male and female brains, but how exactly these relate to differences in behaviour is unknown.
"Unknown" is not the same as "does not exist."
Of course not. That's not the point. The point is that we have no good way of telling how human beings actually differ, between male and female brains, given the amount of cultural baggage we load kids up with, basically starting at birth.
Now, if you want, you can go back and forth:
1) "There's no way you can know what difference it makes."
2) "There's no way you can say there's no difference."
No shit. Move along.
Toque.
I'm arguing that Cressida shouldn't then "conclude that there's no reason to expect men's and women's behavior to be different once gendered expectations are removed."
It's unknown so either are possible, why make the assumption that only one is possible?
No shit. Move along.
I'm not sure why you are being so dismissive. By removing that assumption, most of Cressida's argument falls apart. That seems like something that should be pointed out.
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So to sum it up, in the absence of proof, we can only speculate whether men and women would behave differently if the slate were wiped clean and there were no cultural norms regarding gender differences.
There are studies and examples we can point to that might support our speculations, but we don't really know.
I'm all for making strong arguments in favor of viewpoints. I think what's getting tiresome here is that certain studies and examples are being trotted out as conclusive proof rather than evidence that could reasonably be interpreted to support a viewpoint.
Hi Boogie,
The "proof" are in the studies, we just have to discover them, no one (unless it comes with a massive dose of narrative) will spoon feed it to us.
If you don't like a particular interpretation you can certainly look at the studies and critique them to discover their shortcomings, much like some had done here. Just because the studies show conflicting answers doesn't mean the answer is unknowable, the studies are not created equal.
If some studies' conclusions remain unchallenged, wouldn't you think those studies have a stronger inclination to be closer to how things actually work?
(I am referring to the two day baby and monkeys studies, which so far have had no critique)
I read the methodology of the baby study and there's no way it can be used to infer population wide differences between men and women, and even if it was a good study, it still doesn't justify paying women less for the same work.
No poutine! I never meant to use it as an excuse to pay women less, I don't think that's right!
I bring it up because I think study supports there are inherent and biological differences between male and female. But to see your point, do you think it's because the sample size was too small? 102 only
Yes, the sample was too small, and I think the design was flawed because of the surreality of the sample "thing" they used to compare to a face.
But on a larger scale, I don't think that whether or not biological differences exist is the real issue with the wage gap. I believe that diversity is important in organizations, and any company that doesn't have a variety of genders, races, ages and abilities is limiting their competitiveness. Studies have shown that mixed gender boards perform better than all male ones, and I think that the more different perspectives you include in your decision making, the more likely it is that you'll create and sell a more appealing product and have a more productive workforce. By not compensating women as much as men, companies are choosing to value only one sort of view, and making it more likely that women will leave for various reasons, which is not only bad for the women, it's bad for them. Individual people have their own traits and skills, but by attributing certain characteristics as either male or female, and then assigning different values to those characteristics, you are elevating one gender over the other.
Whether or not women in general are less assertive than men in general has very little to do with how individual people behave, and those broad stereotypes impact how we relate to others, and our assumptions about them. I don't believe that women are inherently less assertive, but when they act assertively they are called bossy or bitchy, and those are seen as negatives, while assertive boys are called leaders. All people, especially men, and especially men in positions of power, should be doing a lot of personal work to examine their own biases and see how that might be impacting their perceptions of and interactions with women.
To me the contributing factors of the current wage gap would be some of the following common perceptions:
1) men are seen as breadwinners, women as homemakers, so his wage needs to be higher
2) longer hours=better employee
3) women aren't as ambitious as men
4) women are going to have babies and take lots of time off to care for their families
Some fixes would be
1) recognizing that men and women can contribute equally to the household, both financially and chores at home
2) productivity matters more than hours at the office
3) some people are more ambitious than others, but it isn't because of their gender
4) pregnancy is like sick leave for any other reason, and men and women take equal shares of the childcare duties, including a portion of parental leave for dads becoming normalized and expected
Also, make salaries and raises transparent so it's harder to hide discrimination
Not saying the fixes are easy or fast, and they require both legislation and societal changes, but they are worthwhile changes to make if we want a more equal society
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Despite the motte and bailey defense tactic of leaving out the part about rearranging the economy to match your unsupported assumptions,
I don't want to rearrange the economy. I want to change gendered expectations, and then the economy will rearrange itself.
So you don't want to enact any changes in law or regulation? All you want to do is argue without any government coercion that we are pigeonholing people based on gender and we should stop? I'm skeptical of that, but great, if true.
Dude. I've said, multiple times, that what I want is for there to be no gendered norms and expectations. OF COURSE I'm not calling for laws and regulations to end gendered norms and expectations. Societal norms and expectations aren't established by laws and regulations. Is this a real question?
your statement that there isn't a consensus that physiological traits can be linked to behavior (even if it were true, which I would question whether there's really no consensus that levels of testosterone versus estrogen or other hormones are associated with different behaviors), does not mean that it's reasonable to assume that there are zero differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits.
If we concede the former point, on what would you base nonzero "differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits"? If it's not gendered expectations (since we've already got rid of those in the premise), and if it's not physiological differences (because you've temporarily conceded that point), what is it?
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not. Ignoring the appeal to authority (whether there is a scientific consensus doesn't change reality), do you really not see the blatantly obvious bad logic that it takes to equate the lack of a consensus on a belief that gender is linked to the population distribution of certain behavioral traits does not equate that there is a consensus that gender has no link to the population distribution of certain behavioral traits.
I'm not going to respond to this because the language is too tortured for me to parse, and I'm not interested in putting in the time to figure it out. I've stated my position more than once, and I don't think it's hard to understand.
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Cressida's argument is that the only reason ~95-97% of men prefer a female spouse (or sexual companion since not everybody wants a spouse at all) is that society has trained them to.
That's not my argument, and the record shows that it's not.
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No, we do not agree.
I believe the following statement is in agreement with Cressida's hypothesis. Men and women's behavior is not different in the case you described here:
In other words, I believe women will choose men as marriage partners more often than men will choose men - just as men will choose women more often than women will choose women.
That's the same as saying: women will choose opposite-sex partners more than same-sex partners - just as men will choose opposite-sex partners more than same-sex partners.
Seems like the same behavior to me.
If one believes that, statistically speaking, men and women look for different things in a spouse
I don't believe your example contains any reference to "men and women looking for different things in a spouse". Your example appears to be about sexual orientation, which may be why I am completely confused by your argument here.
Ok, I agree with you that we don't agree.
To me, "choosing the opposite" is not "same behavior," it's different behavior. Vive la différence (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vive_la_diff%C3%A9rence) if one is so inclined.
Whether the difference in choosing the sex of a marriage partner indicates that, even in a world in which career choice is unconstrained by societal expectations, men and women might statistically choose different careers, is another question. How one should be compensated in different careers is yet another question.
But if we don't agree on whether "same = same" or "opposite = same", we might be talking past each other (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_past_each_other).
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@MDM are you being deliberately obtuse or do you truly believe that homosexuality in men=heterosexuality in women?
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Is there scientific consensus that physiological differences does not lead to behavioral differences?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2013/oct/06/male-brain-versus-female-brain
Subtle observable differences exist between male and female brains, but how exactly these relate to differences in behaviour is unknown.
"Unknown" is not the same as "does not exist."
I didn't say that a relationship between one's sex and one's behavior does not exist. I said that it hasn't been proven to exist, and therefore there's no reason to assume it exists.
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You guys are getting kind of worked up over a pretty mild position I've taken. I'm saying this: If gendered expectations went away, then any differences in men's and women's behavior would be attributable to the physiological differences between them. Since there's no scientific consensus reliably linking physiological differences to differences in behavior, I conclude that there's no reason to expect men's and women's behavior to be different once gendered expectations are removed.
If the scientific consensus changes, then my position will change as well.
Humans are animals, and gender differentiated behavior in animals is nearly universal. It seems more reasonable to assume that if you could neatly remove cultural gendered expectations there would still be some level of baseline differentiation. It's true that humans have remarkably less gender differentiated brains than even our nearest biological relatives (which prompts interesting questions about what would have caused such a long term convergence...presumably language and culture?) but to assume we've reached perfect uniformity seems like an unreasonable assumption.
It's clear that cultural expectations shape individual choices in subtle and not subtle ways and that is a factor in occupational sex segregation and gender wage gaps. But to assume that because the science is not yet settled cultural expectations account for all of the difference is a pretty big leap of faith.
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You are ignoring Cressida's stated belief, which is that the only reason there is any difference between male and female behaviors is society's gendered expectations. For that to be true, that would mean that if we could successfully remove society's gendered expectations, male and females would be equally likely to choose a male spouse. Cressida's argument is that the only reason ~95-97% of men prefer a female spouse (or sexual companion since not everybody wants a spouse at all) is that society has trained them to. I think people are understandably skeptical of that argument, even if they would concede that societal expectations do have enough influence to move the needle some.
If sex/procreation were removed from the equation and marriage was about choosing your "best friend for life who you will enter into a default legal/financial contract with", yes, I think it's possible that 50% of women would choose to marry men, and 50% of men would choose to marry men, conforming to Cressida's stated belief*.
You are ignoring sexual orientation. I'm not sure why. That's something that isn't gendered and happens among the entire population and influences the marriage/companionship decision. That's like saying of the four available hair colors, women and men MUST choose to dye their hair 25% blonde, 25% red, 25% black, and 25% brown or else all arguments about equality fall apart...
Otherwise, I believe that procreation is a large driver in marriage/sexual companionship decisions (and will be even without societal expectations), and if that is equally important to men and women, we would see equal numbers of women who want opposite-sex partners and men who want opposite-sex partners, since that is what is required for procreation. This does not ignore Cressida's stated belief.
* I wanted to clarify that I don't think Cressida was implying what I wrote. I meant "Cressida's belief as interpreted by Jrr85".
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No poutine! I never meant to use it as an excuse to pay women less, I don't think that's right!
This is a very important disclaimer to make. It's been my observation whenever these sorts of topics come up that a lot of people will leap to the conclusion that anyone talking about evidence to support the idea that the average man and the average woman may have somewhat difference preferences is therefore arguing that it's okay to discriminate against women.* That's part of why my responses on this thread have tended to be even more wordy and full of disclaimers than my normal writing style, which is not crystal clear to begin with.
So it's helpful all around to explicitly state and reiteration that society should treat all men and all women equally and fairly,** regardless of any differences in average traits between those groups that may exist. Edit: It may feel like it should go without saying, but the unfortunate fact is that it doesn't for many people (particularly because there are some folks in the world or on the internet who would argue in favor of discrimination).
*And let's be fair, there is in fact a long history of people using arguments for biological differences as an excuse to treat women differently, so you can see where that reaction comes from.
**Of course also remembering that "fair" will mean different things to different people, so we can still argue on implementation even if we're all (hopefully) in agreement on the fundamental principal.
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I quote the paper itself:
"When looking at the individual questions as well as the student ratings index, there are no significant differences between the ratings of the actual male and female instructor." pg 298
In fact, the only rating that was "significantly" (that is suspect also) below the mean was the perceived female TA, if it were truly purely gender-based bias, we would expect BOTH perceived and real female TA to receive poor scores. That did not happen. What about the fact that female instructor consistently scored better than the male instructor, which suggested the male instructor was a weaker instructor overall, and partially bears the blame for the perceived female TA's low scores?
"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistantinstructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in thetwo groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be female, regardless of the actual genderof the assistant instructor.
It's possible that the male instructor was worse than the female instructor. That doesn't really change the findings though. As mentioned on pg. 298:
"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in the two groups that perceived their instructor to be female, regardless of the actual gender of the instructor."
You would have an argument if the male instructor perceived as male got lower ratings, but that didn't happen.
Morning GuitarStv,
I am slightly confused.
"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in the two groups that perceived their instructor to be female, regardless of the actual gender of the instructor."
When we look at the actual scores and histogram, we see there really is only one outlier (perceived female), with only four groups, perhaps the word outlier is an overreach. The other three were roughly on par, with the perceived male and actual female (same person) both scoring higher than actual male. ie, The female TA scored consistently higher regardless of identities.
I don't follow your reading of the histogram.
When the real sex of the instructor is known, there was a 3.8% ratings difference between the two of them with the guy being lower.
The girls rating increases by 4.2% when the students thought she was a guy.
The guy's rating decreases by 5.9% when the students thought he was a girl.
If it were truly gender biased, wouldn't we expect both the actual and perceived female TA to score lower than the male identities? Am I missing something?
If there was no bias, you would expect the perceived female to decrease by about 1.9% and the percieved male to increase by about 1.9%. That would mirror the initial instructor assessments for the two when sex was known. This did not happen. The ratings quite clearly changed for both of them opposite to expected results, suggesting that there is indeed evidence of gender bias.
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@MDM are you being deliberately obtuse or do you truly believe that homosexuality in men=heterosexuality in women?
you need to go back to the original post he's trying to debunk cressidia's stance that if there were no social norms/pressures men and women would make the exact same decisions on avg meaning for everyman that chose to become a doctor there would be one woman. So taking it to the relationship level for everyman that chose to marry a woman there would be one woman who chose to marry a woman. He in fact does not believe it to be the case thats why he presented it as opposition to the theory.
At the end of the day Cressidia is arguing that its all nurture and no nature in the nature v nurture debate - and trying to prove its all or nothing its next to impossible in the scientific community - i mean gravity and evolution are still theories til someone comes along and changes the way science thinks and proves its different. resulting in a new theory.
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@MDM are you being deliberately obtuse or do you truly believe that homosexuality in men=heterosexuality in women?
Good question. No, I don't believe that homosexuality in men=heterosexuality in women. Seems you also don't believe that, so we agree.
Let's go back to the original issue: "...the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist."
I believe that assumption is incorrect, and use the choice of a marriage partner's sex as a counterexample.
Others have said, in so many words, "the behavior is the same because men and women both tend to choose the opposite sex as a marriage partner." I don't believe that "opposite = same". Perhaps that makes me obtuse. I don't think so, but...?
If "choosing the opposite" falls under the definition of "behavior would not be reliably different," then does that mean "choosing different career paths" is also "behavior [that is not] reliably different"?
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No poutine! I never meant to use it as an excuse to pay women less, I don't think that's right!
This is a very important disclaimer to make. It's been my observation whenever these sorts of topics come up that a lot of people will leap to the conclusion that anyone talking about evidence to support the idea that the average man and the average woman may have somewhat difference preferences is therefore arguing that it's okay to discriminate against women.* That's part of why my responses on this thread have tended to be even more wordy and full of disclaimers than my normal writing style, which is not crystal clear to begin with.
So it's helpful all around to explicitly state and reiteration that society should treat all men and all women equally and fairly,** regardless of any differences in average traits between those groups that may exist. Edit: It may feel like it should go without saying, but the unfortunate fact is that it doesn't for many people (particularly because there are some folks in the world or on the internet who would argue in favor of discrimination).
*And let's be fair, there is in fact a long history of people using arguments for biological differences as an excuse to treat women differently, so you can see where that reaction comes from.
**Of course also remembering that "fair" will mean different things to different people, so we can still argue on implementation even if we're all (hopefully) in agreement on the fundamental principal.
I think most here agree with this.
This debate seems to be more about whether the status quo is fair or not. It is not obvious either way to me.
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At the end of the day Cressidia is arguing that its all nurture and no nature in the nature v nurture debate - and trying to prove its all or nothing its next to impossible in the scientific community - i mean gravity and evolution are still theories til someone comes along and changes the way science thinks and proves its different. resulting in a new theory.
I don't believe Cressida is arguing this - there IS nature that is possible, it's just not gendered nature. We are born with a sexual orientation. Nature. That sexual orientation does not depend on gender - there exist homosexual males and homosexual females and heterosexual males and heterosexual females. I'm not sure why some people are ignoring this.
Which makes this statement
So taking it to the relationship level for every man that chose to marry a woman there would be one woman who chose to marry a woman.
Not equivalent to this statement
meaning for every man that chose to become a doctor there would be one woman
However, saying "for every homosexual man there is a homosexual woman" makes much more sense as an equivalent statement.
Let's go back to the original issue: "...the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist."
Why do you think that sexual orientation is a gendered norm?
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Hey GuitarStv,
I struggled to reject the null hypothesis of each category with the raw data for like an hour..... I was checking if I made a typo then I saw footnote 4 from the paper:
"We have used a significance level of .10 for some tests where: 1) the results support the hypothesis and we are consequently more willing to reject the null hypothesis of no difference; 2) our hypothesis is strongly supported theoretically and by empirical results in other studies that use lower significance levels; 3) our small n may be obscuring large differences; and 4) the gravity of an increased risk of Type I error is diminished in light of the benefit of decreasing the risk of a Type II error. " p.288
err what? I don't buy the reasons especially when they used 0.05 for some scores and 0.10 for others. That's like saying we will lower our "significance" standard if it agrees with our hypothesis and if it agrees with other studies that we like. Given how small the n already is, this arbitrary decision to use 0.10 instead of .05 for some scores really make the whole study much weaker.
Then I found this: The paper states perceived male vs female reaches the 0.05 threshold (pg. 298), but in the actual histogram it reverts back to only 0.10. (pg.299) WHAT?
Using 0.05 threshold, as is common to pretty much all studies, in my effort to identify an outlier (in the aggregate), I found none. Namely, no instructor bias and no gender bias.....
To reiterate, the difference only shows when we compare ONLY perceived female vs perceived male (at 0.10), but disappears when we compare Actual male vs Actual female, or when we compare perceived female vs aggregate.
If it were truly gender based bias, we would expect the female identities to consistently score lower in all
1. Actual female vs Actual male
2. Actual female vs perceived male
3. Perceived female vs perceived male (the paper concedes it does not reach 0.05, pg.299)
Which are all absent, in conclusion, the author's conclusion is quite weak in my opinion.
On the other hand, the Female TA got an avg score of 4.16 (0.98) while the Male TA got 3.82 (1.11), which, is not significant at 0.05, but if we choose to use their 0.10 threshold, actually is significant, lol.
ps. sorry Guitar I missed your post, yes the scores changed, but we have to remember the change could be due to different groups of students making the ratings or random variation since N is so small to being with. In fact, these changes you noted, are not significant enough to pass the 0.05 null test.
Regarding:
If there was no bias, you would expect the perceived female to decrease by about 1.9% and the percieved male to increase by about 1.9%. That would mirror the initial instructor assessments for the two when sex was known
I don't understand, can you elaborate please. Why would the score of perceived female decrease and score of perceived male increase? I am saying there is a bias, and the bias is actually against the instructor (quality of work), not gender. Provided that we lower our standard to using the 0.10 threshold.
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Otherwise, I believe that procreation is a large driver in marriage/sexual companionship decisions (and will be even without societal expectations), and if that is equally important to men and women, we would see equal numbers of women who want opposite-sex partners and men who want opposite-sex partners, since that is what is required for procreation. This does not ignore Cressida's stated belief.
At the end of the day Cressidia is arguing that its all nurture and no nature in the nature v nurture debate - and trying to prove its all or nothing its next to impossible in the scientific community
FWIW, both of the above seem reasonable.
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@MDM are you being deliberately obtuse or do you truly believe that homosexuality in men=heterosexuality in women?
you need to go back to the original post he's trying to debunk cressidia's stance that if there were no social norms/pressures men and women would make the exact same decisions on avg meaning for everyman that chose to become a doctor there would be one woman. So taking it to the relationship level for everyman that chose to marry a woman there would be one woman who chose to marry a woman. He in fact does not believe it to be the case thats why he presented it as opposition to the theory.
At the end of the day Cressidia is arguing that its all nurture and no nature in the nature v nurture debate - and trying to prove its all or nothing its next to impossible in the scientific community - i mean gravity and evolution are still theories til someone comes along and changes the way science thinks and proves its different. resulting in a new theory.
No, I got that, I just think that argument doesn't make sense.
It's true that you can't prove anything absolutely, but that's not how science is supposed to work. A theory is proposed, data and observations are collected, experiments are devised, hypothesis are tested, and you try to find an explanation that best describes the observations. Sure, gravity is a theory, but it is the theory that best explains an observed phenomenon, so unless you can disprove it, gravity exists. It's an iterative process, and as our knowledge grows, we are able to find explanations for more phenomena.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
@MDM are you being deliberately obtuse or do you truly believe that homosexuality in men=heterosexuality in women?
Good question. No, I don't believe that homosexuality in men=heterosexuality in women. Seems you also don't believe that, so we agree.
Let's go back to the original issue: "...the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist."
I believe that assumption is incorrect, and use the choice of a marriage partner's sex as a counterexample.
Others have said, in so many words, "the behavior is the same because men and women both tend to choose the opposite sex as a marriage partner." I don't believe that "opposite = same". Perhaps that makes me obtuse. I don't think so, but...?
If "choosing the opposite" falls under the definition of "behavior would not be reliably different," then does that mean "choosing different career paths" is also "behavior [that is not] reliably different"?
I do believe that absent societal pressures, similar proportions of men and women would choose any given career. As it stands, we have assigned "male" to some careers, and "female" to others, based on assumed characteristics or aptitudes of each gender. These standards haven't always remained constant, which makes me believe that societal pressure does have more to do with it than inherent biological differences.
Nurse=female
Doctor=male
Teacher=female
Professor=male
Secretary=female
CEO=male
The majority of those jobs could be done by anyone, but in a patriarchal society the higher status jobs tend to be attributed to men, while the lower status jobs are for women. This is the system of expectations that should change to achieve equality. If there's a physical reason why some people are suited to some jobs, that's fine, but just because on average men are larger/stronger than women doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider the individual profile of the person applying for the job.
If a small weak guy and a tall strong woman apply for a physical job, she is probably better suited to it, even though on average men are stronger.
So it stands to reason that despite the average stereotypes of men and women, individual candidates should be considered on their own merits, and not the average characteristics of their gender. And then those people should be paid based on objective measures of skill and performance, not according to gender biases.
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The issue of motherhood does not directly relate the carrying of said child to the lower pay - its the choices made post child to work less and spend more time as a care giver that were shown to decrease the pay for a woman in a similar line of work to a man who chose to work longer hours and put child raising more on the side of the woman in his relationship.
Okay @boarder42, I went back and read through all the links posted in this thread. I did not find any support for your position above. Some of the articles talk about how "time away from/breaks from work" are likely one cause of the wage gap but none of them differentiated "time away from/breaks from work" during pregnancy from "time away from/breaks from work" after pregnancy. In fact, the Vox article that was linked included this little tidbit...
"And even before having children, just the act of becoming pregnant will mean more doctor appointments and actually delivering a baby — all things harder to do in jobs with rigid schedules."
It's not just the time off for the sick kid it's choosing to work typical hours rather than consistently work extra hours and put in more time. If you're not going to read any of it then I'm not gonna spoon feed it all to ya
Oh, so you mean it's not a single incident that women are penalized for it's more of a pattern of prioritizing family over work more often than a man would? Can you explain why you think that pattern doesn't start until after the actual birth of the child?
so why dont you quit your job and stay home with the kids and let your wife work so you can help skew the statistics the other way? if you're doing the opposite or your wife is carrying more of the burden of your childcare then you're just adding to the disproportionality. If you truly want to fix it you personally have the power to change part of the statistics. I can't believe you have this stance that it should be less disproportionate yet are clearly not doing everything you could to skew the collective statistics. which would be becoming a full time stay at home dad and letting your wife work full time ridiculously long hours to climb the corporate ladder. Or is that not what you two are choosing to do?
remember you're looking at big data that includes all people and the choices many couples like yourself not individuals are necessarily making - and if you're making anything that tends towards the gender biased numbers you're not helping change those numbers - though you'd like to see them change. Its like saying i want to save more money b/c i'd like to retire earlier - but i will not get rid of cable b/c i just cant - and it happens to be the only legitimate area you have left to cut - and you will not earn more money - you're just contributing to the problem that you'd like to change thru not cutting the last thing you could cut to accomplish what you're acclaimed goal is.
Just having a job as a male is hurting the overall statistics - which you could change. You're likely blaming society here from something you're actually contributing to the skewed statistics for - i dont think there is much of anything to change here - other than in general rewarding performance vs time spent at a desk in the corporate world - which is a completely different topic.
I'm going to ignore most of this post because it's nonsense, but the bolded part is more or less what I think will help this particular issue. Pushing companies to reward performance rather than the perception of productivity and to provide more schedule flexibility through legislation and/or social pressure.
the data in the study that shows the lower pay for female workers in siimilar jobs to their male couterparts falling when they stop working or cut back on work directly shows that the inverse of this is likely true - and if you wanted to complete your social experiment however small it is you could swap roles with your wife to see what happened with your pay and help the statistics out b/c she would continue to get high marks and working more was directly related to womens pay increasing the those studies posted earlier. You also dont have to dig too far to find the study that shows that the people regardless of sex who spend more time in office are typically promoted and get larger pay raises. again you believe its discrimination but cant prove it and dont plan to put your money where your mouth is on it so ... ambivolence ... I dont enjoy talking about things til we find what we think the issue is and then not acting on it. unless you dont truly believe what you're saying - engineers find the problem and fix it - you should have been in HR's office after the first pay raise bias and every year after that asking for the difference.
So, is that because they are more productive? If they are not more productive, then why should they get promoted and get larger pay raises? Because they happen to be male and therefore are more willing to sacrifice family time in order to appear more productive?
And this is all in addition to the fact that women don't actually have to make the choice to prioritize family over work in order to be penalized for it. This is shown by the study that was looking at resumes with or without a PTA association where women with the PTA association were half as likely to get a callback. Those fake women hadn't actually made any choices about how much time to spend at work, they were penalized simply because there was the perception that a mother would not be as dedicated to work as a father.
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Let's go back to the original issue: "...the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist."
Why do you think that sexual orientation is a gendered norm?
Because for many years society has "expected" that men would marry women and women would marry men. Do you disagree?
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So to sum it up, in the absence of proof, we can only speculate whether men and women would behave differently if the slate were wiped clean and there were no cultural norms regarding gender differences.
There are studies and examples we can point to that might support our speculations, but we don't really know.
I'm all for making strong arguments in favor of viewpoints. I think what's getting tiresome here is that certain studies and examples are being trotted out as conclusive proof rather than evidence that could reasonably be interpreted to support a viewpoint.
Hi Boogie,
The "proof" are in the studies, we just have to discover them, no one (unless it comes with a massive dose of narrative) will spoon feed it to us.
If you don't like a particular interpretation you can certainly look at the studies and critique them to discover their shortcomings, much like some had done here. Just because the studies show conflicting answers doesn't mean the answer is unknowable, the studies are not created equal.
If some studies' conclusions remain unchallenged, wouldn't you think those studies have a stronger inclination to be closer to how things actually work?
(I am referring to the two day baby and monkeys studies, which so far have had no critique)
Yes, I agree that the unchallenged conclusions of various studies have a stronger inclination to be closer to reality.
However, in discourse, we often take the conclusions of the studies and build upon them to support our arguments which often introduce many new variables. The validity of these studies is not necessarily called into question by someone who disagrees with you - they are most likely disagreeing with the additional claims you are making based on the studies.
So yes, we can determine monkeys do X, Y, and Z in environment W, but we can only conjecture humans do similarly with our own set of variables.
This is not to say that an argument cannot be overwhelmingly compelling. I find many of Jordan Peterson's arguments on this topic compelling, but it is far from certain knowledge that we have regarding the pay gap by gender. It's a very plausible and nuanced theory, and one that takes discrimination into account - but we can only take an estimated guess at how much of this pay gap is caused by discrimination.
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I do believe that absent societal pressures, similar proportions of men and women would choose any given career. As it stands, we have assigned "male" to some careers, and "female" to others, based on assumed characteristics or aptitudes of each gender. These standards haven't always remained constant, which makes me believe that societal pressure does have more to do with it than inherent biological differences.
Nurse=female
Doctor=male
Teacher=female
Professor=male
Secretary=female
CEO=male
The majority of those jobs could be done by anyone, but in a patriarchal society the higher status jobs tend to be attributed to men, while the lower status jobs are for women. This is the system of expectations that should change to achieve equality. If there's a physical reason why some people are suited to some jobs, that's fine, but just because on average men are larger/stronger than women doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider the individual profile of the person applying for the job.
If a small weak guy and a tall strong woman apply for a physical job, she is probably better suited to it, even though on average men are stronger.
So it stands to reason that despite the average stereotypes of men and women, individual candidates should be considered on their own merits, and not the average characteristics of their gender. And then those people should be paid based on objective measures of skill and performance, not according to gender biases.
And on all that, I agree with you 100%. If you knew my family, that would be clear.... :)
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Let's go back to the original issue: "...the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist."
Why do you think that sexual orientation is a gendered norm?
Because for many years society has "expected" that men would marry women and women would marry men. Do you disagree?
That is not sexual orientation.
Removing that particular societal norm does not change the distribution of sexual orientation. It will change the percentages of who decides to marrying who, but will not make it that for every woman who marries a man, a man will marry a man, because other factors are involved in that decision (sexual orientation and desire to procreate).
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Let's go back to the original issue: "...the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist."
Why do you think that sexual orientation is a gendered norm?
Because for many years society has "expected" that men would marry women and women would marry men. Do you disagree?
That is not sexual orientation.
Removing that particular societal norm does not change the distribution of sexual orientation. It will change the percentages of who decides to marrying who, but will not make it that for every woman who marries a man, a man will marry a man, because other factors are involved in that decision (sexual orientation and desire to procreate).
I think we are talking past each other.
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[quote author=NotJen link=topic=88995.msg1933261#msg1933261 date=1521052530
Removing that particular societal norm does not change the distribution of sexual orientation.
Because sexual orientations are what we are born with right? Or do you think we can make gay people straight and vice versa?
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If it were truly gender based bias, we would expect the female identities to consistently score lower in all
1. Actual female vs Actual male
Not necessarily. You require the assumption that the female and male instructors are identical in ability for this to hold true. This will be difficult to replicate in a study. Indeed, the test is structured so that this assumption does not need to be made. The data gathered shows that the female TA is better reviewed than the male TA, therefore this assumption is proven invalid anyway.
2. Actual female vs perceived male
The result of the study indicated that evidence for this outcome was found.
3. Perceived female vs perceived male
The result of the study indicated that evidence for this outcome was found.
Which are all absent, in conclusion, the author's conclusion is quite weak in my opinion.
Well . . . yeah. It's a weak study. It's a small sample size. It only applied to written comments in an online discussion. There's a lot of stuff that can be done better so that we could refer to it with higher confidence. However, taken as it is the results of the study suggests that some degree of gender imbalance may be going on.
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The issue of motherhood does not directly relate the carrying of said child to the lower pay - its the choices made post child to work less and spend more time as a care giver that were shown to decrease the pay for a woman in a similar line of work to a man who chose to work longer hours and put child raising more on the side of the woman in his relationship.
Okay @boarder42, I went back and read through all the links posted in this thread. I did not find any support for your position above. Some of the articles talk about how "time away from/breaks from work" are likely one cause of the wage gap but none of them differentiated "time away from/breaks from work" during pregnancy from "time away from/breaks from work" after pregnancy. In fact, the Vox article that was linked included this little tidbit...
"And even before having children, just the act of becoming pregnant will mean more doctor appointments and actually delivering a baby — all things harder to do in jobs with rigid schedules."
It's not just the time off for the sick kid it's choosing to work typical hours rather than consistently work extra hours and put in more time. If you're not going to read any of it then I'm not gonna spoon feed it all to ya
Oh, so you mean it's not a single incident that women are penalized for it's more of a pattern of prioritizing family over work more often than a man would? Can you explain why you think that pattern doesn't start until after the actual birth of the child?
so why dont you quit your job and stay home with the kids and let your wife work so you can help skew the statistics the other way? if you're doing the opposite or your wife is carrying more of the burden of your childcare then you're just adding to the disproportionality. If you truly want to fix it you personally have the power to change part of the statistics. I can't believe you have this stance that it should be less disproportionate yet are clearly not doing everything you could to skew the collective statistics. which would be becoming a full time stay at home dad and letting your wife work full time ridiculously long hours to climb the corporate ladder. Or is that not what you two are choosing to do?
remember you're looking at big data that includes all people and the choices many couples like yourself not individuals are necessarily making - and if you're making anything that tends towards the gender biased numbers you're not helping change those numbers - though you'd like to see them change. Its like saying i want to save more money b/c i'd like to retire earlier - but i will not get rid of cable b/c i just cant - and it happens to be the only legitimate area you have left to cut - and you will not earn more money - you're just contributing to the problem that you'd like to change thru not cutting the last thing you could cut to accomplish what you're acclaimed goal is.
Just having a job as a male is hurting the overall statistics - which you could change. You're likely blaming society here from something you're actually contributing to the skewed statistics for - i dont think there is much of anything to change here - other than in general rewarding performance vs time spent at a desk in the corporate world - which is a completely different topic.
I'm going to ignore most of this post because it's nonsense, but the bolded part is more or less what I think will help this particular issue. Pushing companies to reward performance rather than the perception of productivity and to provide more schedule flexibility through legislation and/or social pressure.
the data in the study that shows the lower pay for female workers in siimilar jobs to their male couterparts falling when they stop working or cut back on work directly shows that the inverse of this is likely true - and if you wanted to complete your social experiment however small it is you could swap roles with your wife to see what happened with your pay and help the statistics out b/c she would continue to get high marks and working more was directly related to womens pay increasing the those studies posted earlier. You also dont have to dig too far to find the study that shows that the people regardless of sex who spend more time in office are typically promoted and get larger pay raises. again you believe its discrimination but cant prove it and dont plan to put your money where your mouth is on it so ... ambivolence ... I dont enjoy talking about things til we find what we think the issue is and then not acting on it. unless you dont truly believe what you're saying - engineers find the problem and fix it - you should have been in HR's office after the first pay raise bias and every year after that asking for the difference.
So, is that because they are more productive? If they are not more productive, then why should they get promoted and get larger pay raises? Because they happen to be male and therefore are more willing to sacrifice family time in order to appear more productive?
And this is all in addition to the fact that women don't actually have to make the choice to prioritize family over work in order to be penalized for it. This is shown by the study that was looking at resumes with or without a PTA association where women with the PTA association were half as likely to get a callback. Those fake women hadn't actually made any choices about how much time to spend at work, they were penalized simply because there was the perception that a mother would not be as dedicated to work as a father.
you ignored most of my post that suggested you could change something that you're against thats great! Thats why the stastics are what they are you and guitar steve both have a chance to change the stats - but choose not to- a choice you're making in fatherhood. b/c its mathmatically better but since you've chosen those paths you're further skewing the statistics - which i dont think is a problem - and no instituting laws to award performance over time is a terrible idea - society should take care of it self in this area.
statistically the time spent pre birth vs post birth are very large orders of magnitudes in difference - do any of the studies specifically isolate them no- but you didnt read them prior to your terrible comment I cant carry the child the studies isolated that it was due to time spent out of the workplace for event around motherhood. - the appt's at the doctor are quite easily made up - shit i even attend these with my wife its not going to affect pay significantly - the events around birth with maternity leave are significant depending on the amount of time chosen to take off. but its a small blip in time - and if for the next 18 years while the children are at home the mother skews to choose family time over working this is a large amount of time that was addressed in the study - in one they specifically asked about time they were dedicating to work vs their children which is mostly a post birth question.
again if you're so adamant about change you have the power to change it ... bitching about it doesnt make a proactive step towards change.
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Cressida's argument is that the only reason ~95-97% of men prefer a female spouse (or sexual companion since not everybody wants a spouse at all) is that society has trained them to.
That's not my argument, and the record shows that it's not.
I apologize. Looking at your subsequent posts, your actual argument is there is no reason to assume that 95-97% because of anything other than gendered expectation. Correct?
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Removing that particular societal norm does not change the distribution of sexual orientation.
Because sexual orientations are what we are born with right? Or do you think we can make gay people straight and vice versa?
Yes, my point is that sexual orientation is something we are born with and is not a gendered norm. It is not something that makes men/women unequal in any way. That's why I don't understand why it is being ignored in order to prove a point.
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you ignored most of my post that suggested you could change something that you're against thats great! Thats why the stastics are what they are you and guitar steve both have a chance to change the stats - but choose not to- a choice you're making in fatherhood. b/c its mathmatically better
I've already explained that doing the same job as my wife, I've made more money every year. This was well before we had a child. Now you're telling me that I should give up the extra money we get because I'm a guy and work less to take care of our kid because you believe that it will 'change the stats'.
Why do you believe that the 12 years of my wife making less money doing the same job will be superseded by four or five years of me working a reduced work week to look after our son?
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If it were truly gender based bias, we would expect the female identities to consistently score lower in all
1. Actual female vs Actual male
Not necessarily. You require the assumption that the female and male instructors are identical in ability for this to hold true. This will be difficult to replicate in a study. Indeed, the test is structured so that this assumption does not need to be made. The data gathered shows that the female TA is better reviewed than the male TA, therefore this assumption is proven invalid anyway.
2. Actual female vs perceived male
The result of the study indicated that evidence for this outcome was found.
3. Perceived female vs perceived male
The result of the study indicated that evidence for this outcome was found.
Which are all absent, in conclusion, the author's conclusion is quite weak in my opinion.
Well . . . yeah. It's a weak study. It's a small sample size. It only applied to written comments in an online discussion. There's a lot of stuff that can be done better so that we could refer to it with higher confidence. However, taken as it is the results of the study suggests that some degree of gender imbalance may be going on.
Regarding the three points.
1. I think this is a necessary condition to declare a systematic gender based bias from this study. Recall the paper's hypothesis is to expose a systematic gender bias, therefore, we should observe all male identities to consistently score significantly better than all female identities in all cases, if their abilities are identical. What we observed is if you switch out the variable in question (gender identities vs ability of instructor) at the 0.05 level there is no difference for either , and at 0.10 level there are differences for both. NOTE: the paper initial claims p <=0.05, but changed to story to 0.10 on pg.299.
2. There is no statistically significant (p 0.05)difference (for the tiny sample lol), I think you are looking at the final mean score and ignoring the standard deviations associated.
3. Again, there is no statistically significant (p 0.05) difference, I think you are looking at the only the final mean score and ignoring the standard deviations.
I am actually quite peeved the authors did a slight of hand to tweak the confidence interval level.
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2 of my ten closest female friends were young senior auditors who on paper had promising careers at a big four firm. They married other auditors and quit for no other reason then they would rather be a stay at home mom than work at the firm.
This happens all the time yet the firms get blamed despite offering pretty good maternity and paternity leave despite grueling hours for both men and women. But it's a personal choice they made that they should stay home versus the husband in a similar job.
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2 of my ten closest female friends were young senior auditors who on paper had promising careers at a big four firm. They married other auditors and quit for no other reason then they would rather be a stay at home mom than work at the firm.
This happens all the time yet the firms get blamed despite offering pretty good maternity and paternity leave despite grueling hours for both men and women. But it's a personal choice they made that they should stay home versus the husband in a similar job.
that pretty much sums up most of the gender based pay gap on a macro scale. coupled with women typically taking or being interested in jobs that pay less.
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Removing that particular societal norm does not change the distribution of sexual orientation.
Because sexual orientations are what we are born with right? Or do you think we can make gay people straight and vice versa?
Yes, my point is that sexual orientation is something we are born with and is not a gendered norm. It is not something that makes men/women unequal in any way. That's why I don't understand why it is being ignored in order to prove a point.
That's an assertion. If someone disagrees with your assertion, they will look at the data and see nothing but discrimination, and be bewildered that you don't see the same thing.
Also, strictly speaking, if most men like women and most women like men, that should....ahhhh...make things different, if not "unequal"
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So, is that because they are more productive? If they are not more productive, then why should they get promoted and get larger pay raises? Because they happen to be male and therefore are more willing to sacrifice family time in order to appear more productive?
And this is all in addition to the fact that women don't actually have to make the choice to prioritize family over work in order to be penalized for it. This is shown by the study that was looking at resumes with or without a PTA association where women with the PTA association were half as likely to get a callback. Those fake women hadn't actually made any choices about how much time to spend at work, they were penalized simply because there was the perception that a mother would not be as dedicated to work as a father.
Mostly it's because they are perceived as more productive, rather than actually being more productive. There's also some actual benefit, but it's probably very little. Along the lines of: We had a problem at 6pm and everyone else was already gone, it's such a good thing this guy works so much and stays so late. Usually getting in at 6am is less recognized because it could just be handled at 7 or 8 when others get in.
And the problem with paying for productivity instead of hours is in many jobs it is hard to measure productivity. I definitely can't come up with a way to measure it to differentiate me with my coworkers. Most of my tasks are ambiguous and hard to predict. Usually you can ballpark it, but should it take 2 hours or 4 hours, it just depends on what you find when you start working it.
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Removing that particular societal norm does not change the distribution of sexual orientation.
Because sexual orientations are what we are born with right? Or do you think we can make gay people straight and vice versa?
Yes, my point is that sexual orientation is something we are born with and is not a gendered norm. It is not something that makes men/women unequal in any way. That's why I don't understand why it is being ignored in order to prove a point.
It's not being ignored, it is the point. It is as iron clad a proof as you are going to get that certain behavioral traits are distributed differently between male and female populations. Most men don't prefer women because of gendered expectations, but because biologically, having XY chromosome means it's very likely you are going to be attracted to people with XX chromosome. Even if there both men and women are found all over the spectrum regarding attraction, there are population level differences in the distribution of such behavioral traits.
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Removing that particular societal norm does not change the distribution of sexual orientation.
Because sexual orientations are what we are born with right? Or do you think we can make gay people straight and vice versa?
Yes, my point is that sexual orientation is something we are born with and is not a gendered norm. It is not something that makes men/women unequal in any way. That's why I don't understand why it is being ignored in order to prove a point.
It's not being ignored, it is the point. It is as iron clad a proof as you are going to get that certain behavioral traits are distributed differently between male and female populations. Most men don't prefer women because of gendered expectations, but because biologically, having XY chromosome means it's very likely you are going to be attracted to people with XX chromosome. Even if there both men and women are found all over the spectrum regarding attraction, there are population level differences in the distribution of such behavioral traits.
Some people might assert that men prefer women and women prefer men are the same thing, ie, heterosexuality. To me, that's twisting arms by quite a bit.
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Cressida's argument is that the only reason ~95-97% of men prefer a female spouse (or sexual companion since not everybody wants a spouse at all) is that society has trained them to.
That's not my argument, and the record shows that it's not.
I apologize. Looking at your subsequent posts, your actual argument is there is no reason to assume that 95-97% because of anything other than gendered expectation. Correct?
No. I request that you stop saying I said things I didn't say.
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Removing that particular societal norm does not change the distribution of sexual orientation.
Because sexual orientations are what we are born with right? Or do you think we can make gay people straight and vice versa?
Yes, my point is that sexual orientation is something we are born with and is not a gendered norm. It is not something that makes men/women unequal in any way. That's why I don't understand why it is being ignored in order to prove a point.
That's an assertion. If someone disagrees with your assertion, they will look at the data and see nothing but discrimination, and be bewildered that you don't see the same thing.
Also, strictly speaking, if most men like women and most women like men, that should....ahhhh...make things different, if not "unequal"
Yes, I think I addressed that point here: https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/off-topic/wage-gap/msg1933153/#msg1933153
If sexual orientation and desire to procreate are things that can be removed from the decision (because they are nurture and get thrown out with cultural/societal/gender norms), then I absolutely think that for every woman who chooses a man, a man will also choose a man. Therefore Cressida's assertion is intact. If I believe (like MDM appears to) that sexual orientation is something that can't be changed, and the choice won't be equal (man chooses man for every woman chooses man is not true), then Cressida's assertion is still intact because the decision involves nature and not cultural/societal/gender norms.
My point is this is a bad example to disprove Cressida's stated belief.
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Cressida's argument is that the only reason ~95-97% of men prefer a female spouse (or sexual companion since not everybody wants a spouse at all) is that society has trained them to.
That's not my argument, and the record shows that it's not.
I apologize. Looking at your subsequent posts, your actual argument is there is no reason to assume that 95-97% because of anything other than gendered expectation. Correct?
No. I request that you stop saying I said things I didn't say.
I apparently deleted a section of my last comment before I hit post and didn't proof, so that may not have been entirely clear, but, you said:
I didn't say that a relationship between one's sex and one's behavior does not exist. I said that it hasn't been proven to exist, and therefore there's no reason to assume it exists.
So it is fair, correct, to say your position is that if more men than women prefer their sexual partners to be women, there is no reason to assume that it's actually because of their sex as opposed to gendered expectations or some other factor.
Or to repeat and clarify my previous post without the inadvertent deletion, your position would be that there is no reason to assume that 95-97% of men prefer a female spouse (or sexual partner) because men are more likely to prefer women as sexual partners than women are.
Better?
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you ignored most of my post that suggested you could change something that you're against thats great! Thats why the stastics are what they are you and guitar steve both have a chance to change the stats - but choose not to- a choice you're making in fatherhood. b/c its mathmatically better but since you've chosen those paths you're further skewing the statistics - which i dont think is a problem - and no instituting laws to award performance over time is a terrible idea - society should take care of it self in this area.
statistically the time spent pre birth vs post birth are very large orders of magnitudes in difference - do any of the studies specifically isolate them no- but you didnt read them prior to your terrible comment I cant carry the child the studies isolated that it was due to time spent out of the workplace for event around motherhood. - the appt's at the doctor are quite easily made up - shit i even attend these with my wife its not going to affect pay significantly - the events around birth with maternity leave are significant depending on the amount of time chosen to take off. but its a small blip in time - and if for the next 18 years while the children are at home the mother skews to choose family time over working this is a large amount of time that was addressed in the study - in one they specifically asked about time they were dedicating to work vs their children which is mostly a post birth question.
again if you're so adamant about change you have the power to change it ... bitching about it doesnt make a proactive step towards change.
Thank you for admitting that you're original criticism of my post was incorrect. I know it's hard to admit when you're wrong, so I understand why you keep trying to change the subject.
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Some people might assert that men prefer women and women prefer men are the same thing, ie, heterosexuality. To me, that's twisting arms by quite a bit.
Yes, that is what I'm trying to ascertain. If a person believes "female relationship choice due to being heterosexual" is not the same as "male relationship choice due to being heterosexual", then I will never understand their argument, and I will stop trying.
It is as iron clad a proof as you are going to get that certain behavioral traits are distributed differently between male and female populations.
Can you point me to this iron clad proof?
I do believe that this is true:
"Most men don't prefer women because of gendered expectations, but because biologically, having XY chromosome means it's very likely you are going to be attracted to people with XX chromosome."
and also this is true:
"Most women don't prefer men because of gendered expectations, but because biologically, having XX chromosome means it's very likely you are going to be attracted to people with XY chromosome."
and that this is an example of men and women behaving the same way, not an example of men and women behaving differently.
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Removing that particular societal norm does not change the distribution of sexual orientation.
Because sexual orientations are what we are born with right? Or do you think we can make gay people straight and vice versa?
Yes, my point is that sexual orientation is something we are born with and is not a gendered norm. It is not something that makes men/women unequal in any way. That's why I don't understand why it is being ignored in order to prove a point.
That's an assertion. If someone disagrees with your assertion, they will look at the data and see nothing but discrimination, and be bewildered that you don't see the same thing.
Also, strictly speaking, if most men like women and most women like men, that should....ahhhh...make things different, if not "unequal"
Yes, I think I addressed that point here: https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/off-topic/wage-gap/msg1933153/#msg1933153
If sexual orientation and desire to procreate are things that can be removed from the decision (because they are nurture and get thrown out with cultural/societal/gender norms), then I absolutely think that for every woman who chooses a man, a man will also choose a man. Therefore Cressida's assertion is intact. If I believe (like MDM appears to) that sexual orientation is something that can't be changed, and the choice won't be equal (man chooses man for every woman chooses man is not true), then Cressida's assertion is still intact because the decision involves nature and not cultural/societal/gender norms.
My point is this is a bad example to disprove Cressida's stated belief.
You didn't address it. You can't say, "taking sex out of it, men and women would have similar distributions of preference in sexual partner." The entire point is that Cressida is saying there is no reason to assume men and women would have different distributions of preferences as to sexual partner without cultural/societal/gender norms/expectations. If you think that without cultural/societal/gender norms/expectations, that the percentage of men who are sexually attracted to women would be higher than the percentage of women who are sexually attracted to women, then you don't agree with Cressida position (or I guess alternatively you agree with her but admit to having an assumption without any basis for believing it).
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You didn't address it. You can't say, "taking sex out of it, men and women would have similar distributions of preference in sexual partner." The entire point is that Cressida is saying there is no reason to assume men and women would have different distributions of preferences as to sexual partner without cultural/societal/gender norms/expectations. If you think that without cultural/societal/gender norms/expectations, that the percentage of men who are sexually attracted to women would be higher than the percentage of women who are sexually attracted to women, then you don't agree with Cressida position (or I guess alternatively you agree with her but admit to having an assumption without any basis for believing it).
Cressida did not address choice of sexual partner. I do not believe Cressida ever said what you are asserting. MDM is using choice of sexual/marriage partner to try to discredit Cressida's point, and I don't believe it is a good example to use for this purpose. That is all.
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You didn't address it. You can't say, "taking sex out of it, men and women would have similar distributions of preference in sexual partner." The entire point is that Cressida is saying there is no reason to assume men and women would have different distributions of preferences as to sexual partner without cultural/societal/gender norms/expectations. If you think that without cultural/societal/gender norms/expectations, that the percentage of men who are sexually attracted to women would be higher than the percentage of women who are sexually attracted to women, then you don't agree with Cressida position (or I guess alternatively you agree with her but admit to having an assumption without any basis for believing it).
Cressida did not address choice of sexual partner. I do not believe Cressida ever said what you are asserting. MDM is using choice of sexual/marriage partner to try to discredit Cressida's point, and I don't believe it is a good example to use for this purpose. That is all.
That is fine, I think most people (arguing with Cressida anyway) here have an issue with Cressida's logic process to refuse studies showing results contrary to their existing beliefs. Also when people try to understand their points better, Cressida displays classic "passive" responses, such as No, That's not what I said, My stance hasn't changed, without elaborating further. People might find these responses uncooperative, but the responses might be a second order phenomenon in being refusing to even look at the studies.
For example,
Cressida (C) maintains there is no prove or "consensus" in behavior sexual dimorphism in absence of social conditioning, that's fine. Then people show a bunch of studies that say otherwise, but instead of refuting the studies on their individual merit, C decided to maintain their belief without doing investigations themselves, instead citing a book that somehow provided a universal refusal to all studies contrary to their preferred belief.
Side note, this book is good, by a fellow Oxbridge product, it's worth a read. No I don't get commissions.
C cites there is no proof, yet animal and human (yes animal too) behavior studies clearly show otherwise. People that brought this up were met with universal rejection without even a slightest intellectual interest/effort. Simply saying no doesn't make one right automatically, attack the studies, attack the data, attack the analysis, dont just say no. C's stance is incredibly shaky if we even apply an ounce of scientific rigor. This reminds me, didn't someone say they were going to bring a real biologist and provide some real biological insight into this? I am still waiting. Btw Poutine, I will provide a reply to the critique link soon, more studies exist than the two-day baby study.
I will end with this:
"Why? There was too much data pointing to the biological basis of sex-based cognitive differences to ignore, Halpern says. For one thing, the animal-research findings resonated with sex-based differences ascribed to people. These findings continue to accrue. In a study of 34 rhesus monkeys, for example, males strongly preferred toys with wheels over plush toys, whereas females found plush toys likable. It would be tough to argue that the monkeys’ parents bought them sex-typed toys or that simian society encourages its male offspring to play more with trucks. A much more recent study established that boys and girls 9 to 17 months old — an age when children show few if any signs of recognizing either their own or other children’s sex — nonetheless show marked differences in their preference for stereotypically male versus stereotypically female toys."
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different.html
Any real debate requires both sides to be open to change. I have done so throughout, thanks to posters who had helped me in taking the studies apart for further investigations. So far, from the "all nurture" camp, we are seeing no such thing.
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Cressida's argument is that the only reason ~95-97% of men prefer a female spouse (or sexual companion since not everybody wants a spouse at all) is that society has trained them to.
That's not my argument, and the record shows that it's not.
I apologize. Looking at your subsequent posts, your actual argument is there is no reason to assume that 95-97% because of anything other than gendered expectation. Correct?
No. I request that you stop saying I said things I didn't say.
I apparently deleted a section of my last comment before I hit post and didn't proof, so that may not have been entirely clear, but, you said:
I didn't say that a relationship between one's sex and one's behavior does not exist. I said that it hasn't been proven to exist, and therefore there's no reason to assume it exists.
So it is fair, correct, to say your position is that if more men than women prefer their sexual partners to be women, there is no reason to assume that it's actually because of their sex as opposed to gendered expectations or some other factor.
Or to repeat and clarify my previous post without the inadvertent deletion, your position would be that there is no reason to assume that 95-97% of men prefer a female spouse (or sexual partner) because men are more likely to prefer women as sexual partners than women are.
Better?
My response hasn't changed.
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You didn't address it. You can't say, "taking sex out of it, men and women would have similar distributions of preference in sexual partner." The entire point is that Cressida is saying there is no reason to assume men and women would have different distributions of preferences as to sexual partner without cultural/societal/gender norms/expectations. If you think that without cultural/societal/gender norms/expectations, that the percentage of men who are sexually attracted to women would be higher than the percentage of women who are sexually attracted to women, then you don't agree with Cressida position (or I guess alternatively you agree with her but admit to having an assumption without any basis for believing it).
Cressida did not address choice of sexual partner. I do not believe Cressida ever said what you are asserting. MDM is using choice of sexual/marriage partner to try to discredit Cressida's point, and I don't believe it is a good example to use for this purpose. That is all.
Well, Cressida said:
I didn't say that a relationship between one's sex and one's behavior does not exist. I said that it hasn't been proven to exist, and therefore there's no reason to assume it exists.
I don't think most people would agree that there's no reason to assume that men are more likely to prefer women sexual partners than women are. So even if it's not relevant to the wage gap, it's a pretty good starting point to show that it's probably wrong to think there are no behavioral differences related to sex.
Granted, it's dangerous to rely simply on people's "gut" feeling with respect to something like that. It's possible everybody is just wrong in what they "know". But the value in the argument is not really what other people think, it's that very likely even people claiming there is no reason to think there are any behavioral differences related to sex don't really believe that men aren't more likely to prefer women sexual partners than women are. That's a pretty stark difference in distribution of a behaviorial trait that most people believe is driven by biology.
So once someone is forced to face that, they either have to go the cognitive dissonance route and convince themselves they don't understand the argument, or they have to acknowledge that their original position was incorrect (or at least they believe it's incorrect; again, it's possible we are just so strongly conditioned that we think we "know" something that isn't true). So then if they are somewhat intellectually honest, they have to ask why they are so sure that there are zero other differences in distribution of behavioral traits across the sexes? And once they ask that question, I think they are probably on the path to agnosticism with respect to whether there are any traits relevant to employment preferences that might impact salary data.
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anisotropy:
I already explained why I'm unconvinced by your citation of those studies. I'm not going to do it again.
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Well, Cressida said:
I didn't say that a relationship between one's sex and one's behavior does not exist. I said that it hasn't been proven to exist, and therefore there's no reason to assume it exists.
I don't think most people would agree that there's no reason to assume that men are more likely to prefer women sexual partners than women are. So even if it's not relevant to the wage gap, it's a pretty good starting point to show that it's probably wrong to think there are no behavioral differences related to sex.
My last comment on this thread :
A woman chooses a male sexual partner because she is heterosexual (or bi or whatever), not because she is a woman.
A man chooses a female sexual partner because he is heterosexual (or bi or whatever), not because he is a man.
We have a different understanding and that is fine.
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So, is that because they are more productive? If they are not more productive, then why should they get promoted and get larger pay raises? Because they happen to be male and therefore are more willing to sacrifice family time in order to appear more productive?
And this is all in addition to the fact that women don't actually have to make the choice to prioritize family over work in order to be penalized for it. This is shown by the study that was looking at resumes with or without a PTA association where women with the PTA association were half as likely to get a callback. Those fake women hadn't actually made any choices about how much time to spend at work, they were penalized simply because there was the perception that a mother would not be as dedicated to work as a father.
Mostly it's because they are perceived as more productive, rather than actually being more productive. There's also some actual benefit, but it's probably very little. Along the lines of: We had a problem at 6pm and everyone else was already gone, it's such a good thing this guy works so much and stays so late. Usually getting in at 6am is less recognized because it could just be handled at 7 or 8 when others get in.
And the problem with paying for productivity instead of hours is in many jobs it is hard to measure productivity. I definitely can't come up with a way to measure it to differentiate me with my coworkers. Most of my tasks are ambiguous and hard to predict. Usually you can ballpark it, but should it take 2 hours or 4 hours, it just depends on what you find when you start working it.
So, if employers are paying more for a behavior that men are more likely to exhibit but that does not actually improve productivity is that not sexism?
I get that paying for productivity is difficult, but I think making flexibility the standard rather than the exception (whether through social pressure or legislation) would help to even things out a bit more.
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The topic has been locked due to way, way too much spinning around and moderation effort.
As much as I'd like to let this go around and around forever, it's not getting anywhere, and it's doing very little to contribute to our core purpose of facilitating early retirement.
Toque.