Author Topic: Wage gap?  (Read 24717 times)

boarder42

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #50 on: March 12, 2018, 02:15:43 PM »
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.
« Last Edit: March 12, 2018, 02:18:17 PM by boarder42 »

Jrr85

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #51 on: March 12, 2018, 02:56:31 PM »
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.

MrMoogle

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #52 on: March 12, 2018, 03:19:28 PM »
*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.

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #53 on: March 12, 2018, 03:23:28 PM »
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.

Jrr85

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #54 on: March 12, 2018, 03:46:52 PM »
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.

MrMoogle

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #55 on: March 12, 2018, 03:56:20 PM »
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.

shenlong55

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #56 on: March 12, 2018, 03:59:46 PM »


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.

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Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #57 on: March 12, 2018, 04:36:22 PM »
*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.

Jrr85

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #58 on: March 12, 2018, 04:42:52 PM »
*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. 

boarder42

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #59 on: March 12, 2018, 05:07:15 PM »


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.

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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

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #60 on: March 12, 2018, 05:14:55 PM »
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.
« Last Edit: March 12, 2018, 05:18:52 PM by anisotropy »

maizefolk

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #61 on: March 12, 2018, 05:16:18 PM »
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.

AliEli

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #62 on: March 12, 2018, 05:30:52 PM »
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.

GuitarStv

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #63 on: March 12, 2018, 06:16:35 PM »
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.

RetiredAt63

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #64 on: March 12, 2018, 06:25:01 PM »
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.

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #65 on: March 12, 2018, 06:31:38 PM »
*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.

maizefolk

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #66 on: March 12, 2018, 06:58:01 PM »
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.

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #67 on: March 12, 2018, 07:57:54 PM »
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.
« Last Edit: March 12, 2018, 08:02:56 PM by anisotropy »

AliEli

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #68 on: March 12, 2018, 08:22:19 PM »
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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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #69 on: March 12, 2018, 08:29:45 PM »
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.
« Last Edit: March 12, 2018, 09:37:23 PM by Cressida »

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #70 on: March 12, 2018, 09:03:49 PM »
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 argues this point thoroughly.

maizefolk

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #71 on: March 12, 2018, 09:10:57 PM »
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.

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #72 on: March 12, 2018, 09:15:19 PM »
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 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?

PoutineLover

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #73 on: March 12, 2018, 09:26:18 PM »
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.

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #74 on: March 12, 2018, 09:29:28 PM »
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 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.

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #75 on: March 12, 2018, 09:36:32 PM »
@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.

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #76 on: March 12, 2018, 09:49:52 PM »
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.



anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #77 on: March 12, 2018, 10:11:12 PM »
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 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.
« Last Edit: March 12, 2018, 10:15:00 PM by anisotropy »

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #78 on: March 12, 2018, 10:57:28 PM »
@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.


AliEli

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #79 on: March 12, 2018, 11:26:14 PM »
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.

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #80 on: March 13, 2018, 12:52:35 AM »
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.

« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 12:56:04 AM by anisotropy »

FrugalToque

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #81 on: March 13, 2018, 07:05:47 AM »
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.

boarder42

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #82 on: March 13, 2018, 07:18:10 AM »
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.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 07:19:56 AM by boarder42 »

shenlong55

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #83 on: March 13, 2018, 08:26:41 AM »
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.

MrMoogle

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #84 on: March 13, 2018, 08:33:22 AM »
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.

DarkandStormy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #85 on: March 13, 2018, 08:51:42 AM »
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.

GuitarStv

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #86 on: March 13, 2018, 09:00:11 AM »
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.

Jrr85

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #87 on: March 13, 2018, 09:01:05 AM »
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.   

Jrr85

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #88 on: March 13, 2018, 09:14:35 AM »
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.

   

Freedom2016

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #89 on: March 13, 2018, 09:19:27 AM »
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

I'm giving a lecture on this topic at MIT tomorrow night.

« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 09:33:55 AM by Freedom2016 »

boarder42

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #90 on: March 13, 2018, 10:22:26 AM »
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.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 10:32:22 AM by boarder42 »

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #91 on: March 13, 2018, 10:59:41 AM »
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.

maizefolk

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #92 on: March 13, 2018, 11:09:32 AM »
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)?

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #93 on: March 13, 2018, 11:13:10 AM »
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.

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #94 on: March 13, 2018, 11:16:42 AM »
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.

maizefolk

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #95 on: March 13, 2018, 11:21:08 AM »
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!

boarder42

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #96 on: March 13, 2018, 11:33:06 AM »
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. 

GuitarStv

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #97 on: March 13, 2018, 11:34:14 AM »
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.

boarder42

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #98 on: March 13, 2018, 11:44:09 AM »
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.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 11:47:12 AM by boarder42 »

MDM

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #99 on: March 13, 2018, 11:45:27 AM »
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?

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!