Author Topic: Wage gap?  (Read 24732 times)

GuitarStv

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #100 on: March 13, 2018, 11:55:16 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.

Given that we know most men will make more money than women (for a variety of reasons) and that we know these little differences add up a lot over a lifetime, I suspect that it's the smartest thing to do for most couples.

I am furthering the gap in the statistic because the statistic has made that the smartest thing to do financially.  If you're arguing that a woman is likely to make more money than her husband if he stays home with a kid, can you provide your data to support the claim?

My wife has a good paying job.  Opening this lawsuit would probably make her work situation much more uncomfortable and costs of a lawsuit are pretty high.  Most importantly, although I do believe that my wife was discriminated against it (and that other women are as well), this is difficult for me to prove without access to all of the employment records in the company.

Jrr85

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #101 on: March 13, 2018, 12:03:18 PM »
Why wouldn't they? If there were no gendered expectations, I would expect men's and women's behavior to fall along bell curves, and I don't know why those bell curves would be different.

You're being nonsensical.  Not knowing why they would be different doesn't imply they wouldn't be different. 

Why would men generally be bigger, faster, stronger, than women?  Every argument you can make for that could pretty equally be used to justify why women might on average, be more inclined to prioritize family and quality of life and other factors over income and prestige.

It's possible that men and women have no inherent differences in behavioral traits that show up in population wide averages.  But that seems like a crazy position to not only take without any proof, but to take so strongly as to assume that any evidence of potential population wide differences in distribution are evidence of some sort of discrimination or societal brainwashing. 

Which again comes back to the question of why you would take such a position.  I can understand being agnostic.  I can understand thinking it likely that there is some minor or even moderate differences just based on prevalence of sexual dimorphism among animals.  I don't understand a dogmatic belief that there would be no differences if society got out of the way.

This is the "proof by assertion" fallacy. Saying something doesn't make it true.

Put another way: We can all agree that gendered norms and expectations cause men and women to make different decisions. Therefore, absent those norms and expectations, the difference in decisions caused by those norms and expectations would go away.

You're claiming that absent those norms and expectations, men and women would still make some different decisions. I would argue that if you're going to make that claim, then the onus is on you to explain the cause and effect. The only cause you posited above is that men are bigger and stronger than women. I would counter that bigger and stronger people don't make uniformly different decisions than smaller and weaker people, or at least not ones of any social significance.

Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.

Holy snikes. You actually identified the fallacy and then un-ironically engaged in it. 

I am not making any claims other than it seems unwise to try to make the workforce match some arbitrary number without having some evidence to think that number is the "right" number.  You have no reason to think that there is zero differences in distribution of behavioral traits between men and women; it's just what you wish to believe.  And in order to believe it, you have to simultaneously assume that despite different levels of hormones, men and women are exactly the same except for anatomical features and also that every observed difference between population distributions of men and women are the result of societal conditioning that cannot be corrected for. 


 

MrMoogle

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #102 on: March 13, 2018, 12:03:26 PM »
This is the "proof by assertion" fallacy. Saying something doesn't make it true.

Put another way: We can all agree that gendered norms and expectations cause men and women to make different decisions. Therefore, absent those norms and expectations, the difference in decisions caused by those norms and expectations would go away.

You're claiming that absent those norms and expectations, men and women would still make some different decisions. I would argue that if you're going to make that claim, then the onus is on you to explain the cause and effect. The only cause you posited above is that men are bigger and stronger than women. I would counter that bigger and stronger people don't make uniformly different decisions than smaller and weaker people, or at least not ones of any social significance.

Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
I don't think we all agree with your bolded statement.  If that were true, then yes, I would agree with you.  But that would be proof by assertion too :P

I believe: gendered norms and expectations impact the decisions men and women make.  Strength and size do impact certain decisions.  For example even in a perfect society, I would still think more men would work as construction workers than women.

I believe that since women have the baby inside them for 9 months probably influences their decisions about childcare differently than it does for a man.  Yes, the distribution overlap, but I would guess they aren't the same.

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #103 on: March 13, 2018, 12:11:36 PM »
Your post number 6 indicates that there may be measurable differences in how women and men approach work, and then men are promoted because of this.  My wife got better performance reviews for an eight year period and received lower wage increases than me.  We were considered to be at the same pay grade for the 12 years that we worked the same job.  To me, this is indicative of a serious social problem.

You can argue that men who have a more 'womanly' approach to work will also suffer because of this . . . but I'd argue that it's just as fundamentally unfair to those men.  If we have unspoken hiring/promoting practices that take precedent over observed/measured quality of work, that should be made an issue.  If these unwritten practices predominantly impact a minority it is absolutely discriminatory.  To address your other point . . . if taller people make more money regardless of quality of work, that is discriminatory.  If you're a shorter person, you're therefore going to be discriminated against.  It is important to level the playing field so that people rise to the top based on their work and merit, unless you can think of a good argument for shorter people (or women) making less money.

Sorry for the late reply, went to see my dentist buddy, he found no cavity today, yay!

I agree with you that many of these the practices described are fundamentally biased and detrimental to the groups that lack the "prized" qualities. However, we must make the distinction between that and bias based on gender alone. We are not discriminating against ONLY women, rather we are discriminating against all people, both women and men, who lack these traits.

To me, this almost dissolves the validity of gender-based wage/earning gap completely, as we now have identified the underlying causes and the wage differences can rather be explained as trait-based.

We have identified the cause to a problem, yes, it is a problem. But I have no solution for you. These trait-related (normally distributed and compounded by behavior sexual dimorphism) biases came from our evolution history (side note: I am rather convinced of that now, based on the new-born and monkeys studies, feel free to correct me, I change my mind easily if I see arguments supported by data) and as long as our performances are evaluated by people in a social setting, I am afraid the biases will always persist. We can't realistically hope for equality of outcome (wages/earnings) when people are clearly different from the feet up. Nordic countries have tried various policies to lessen the gap (as I mentioned in earlier posts), but the results are disappointing thus far. But like I said, maybe tech can remove the human element altogether and we might achieve the goal that way.

btw..... is that an Alien riding a bike on your pic?

Cressida,

Put another way: We can all agree that gendered norms and expectations cause men and women to make different decisions. Therefore, absent those norms and expectations, the difference in decisions caused by those norms and expectations would go away.

Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.

The difference in decisions DON'T go away. If anything, the new-born and monkey studies show that even in the ABSENCE of gendered norms and expectations, biology seems to have an even bigger role in how we make decisions. And as they say, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution".

I have met your lot before, refuting evidences without even thinking about it, simply because it does not suit your ideological belief. That is no longer intellectual laziness, but is more of an intellectual dishonesty. How is that different from the religious fundamentalists that believe the world was created in 7 days and only 6000 years old? Don't forget, the flat earth society has members all around the globe.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 12:17:24 PM by anisotropy »

boarder42

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #104 on: March 13, 2018, 12:40:09 PM »
so why dont you quit your job and stay home with the kids and let your wife work so you can help skew the statistics the other way? if you're doing the opposite or your wife is carrying more of the burden of your childcare then you're just adding to the disproportionality.  If you truly want to fix it you personally have the power to change part of the statistics.  I can't believe you have this stance that it should be less disproportionate yet are clearly not doing everything you could to skew the collective statistics.  which would be becoming a full time stay at home dad and letting your wife work full time ridiculously long hours to climb the corporate ladder.  Or is that not what you two are choosing to do?

I can answer this question!

My wife is currently working a reduced work week to look after our son.  She is doing this rather than me, because for 12 consecutive years she has always been paid less (except for the first seven months we were employed) for doing the exact same work and the exact same number of hours.  She's not going to get a raise because I stay home . . . so it makes more sense for me to keep working.  I'd be surprised if there weren't many other families in our situation.

Choosing the person who has always made more money to stay home is sub-optimal.

this works for you but i'd submit there are next to 0 families statistically in your same situation(your similarities are far to close to each other to replicate on a large scale that would produce significant data back) - and as i said before i was in your same situation and another employee was getting raises faster than i was we were both males.  your data point is extremely small and isolated and could have everything to do with Dept. and the management of that dept. vs male/female.

but in allowing your wife to stay home you're furthering the gap in the statistic - my comment was steered directly at the poster who wanted to make this go away and if you feel the same you're contributing to the statistic. 

Also if you really feel thats the issue and she was discriminated against i dont see why you havent hired an attorney b/c with the buzz this has in the media you could FIRE tomorrow after they settle to not get their name in the news for this - you have all the data points. Unless all they have to say is different dept's have slightly different payscales based on dept performance. and show a male in her dept who was getting similar or lower raises to hers based on similar to lower performance.

Given that we know most men will make more money than women (for a variety of reasons) and that we know these little differences add up a lot over a lifetime, I suspect that it's the smartest thing to do for most couples.

I am furthering the gap in the statistic because the statistic has made that the smartest thing to do financially.  If you're arguing that a woman is likely to make more money than her husband if he stays home with a kid, can you provide your data to support the claim?

My wife has a good paying job.  Opening this lawsuit would probably make her work situation much more uncomfortable and costs of a lawsuit are pretty high.  Most importantly, although I do believe that my wife was discriminated against it (and that other women are as well), this is difficult for me to prove without access to all of the employment records in the company.

the data in the study that shows the lower pay for female workers in siimilar jobs to their male couterparts falling when they stop working or cut back on work directly shows that the inverse of this is likely true - and if you wanted to complete your social experiment however small it is you could swap roles with your wife to see what happened with your pay and help the statistics out b/c she would continue to get high marks and working more was directly related to womens pay increasing the those studies posted earlier.  You also dont have to dig too far to find the study that shows that the people regardless of sex who spend more time in office are typically promoted and get larger pay raises.  again you believe its discrimination but cant prove it and dont plan to put your money where your mouth is on it so ... ambivolence ... I dont enjoy talking about things til we find what we think the issue is and then not acting on it.  unless you dont truly believe what you're saying - engineers find the problem and fix it - you should have been in HR's office after the first pay raise bias and every year after that asking for the difference. 

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #105 on: March 13, 2018, 12:56:06 PM »
Jrr85 and boarder42 and anisotropy are all saying pretty much the same thing, so I will combine my response.

Here is a premise: The physiological differences between men and women cause men and women to behave reliably differently in socially significant ways.

You guys are taking this on faith. And if it were true, then what I've been saying wouldn't make sense. But this premise has never been proven to be true. If you take this premise to be true, you are making an assumption, not a factual statement.

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #106 on: March 13, 2018, 12:58:33 PM »
Jrr85 and boarder42 and anisotropy are all saying pretty much the same thing, so I will combine my response.

Here is a premise: The physiological differences between men and women cause men and women to behave reliably differently in socially significant ways.

You guys are taking this on faith. And if it were true, then what I've been saying wouldn't make sense. But this premise has never been proven to be true. If you take this premise to be true, you are making an assumption, not a factual statement.

Excuse me? we are taking this on faith when we are the ones with studies to back our conclusions???

You say we are basing this on faith when you can not even give a rigorous critique on the specific studies??
 
LOL WHAT? Are the mods watching this? or am I in trouble again because of my manner?

Mods, especially toque, this sort of trolling behavior needs to end. Please do not allow trolls like this to thrive. Do not lock, simply educate the troll. I am still waiting for contrary evidence from AliEli, thanks.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 01:11:13 PM by anisotropy »

maizefolk

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #107 on: March 13, 2018, 12:59:32 PM »
Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
Ok, I'll bite.

Assuming same-sex marriage becomes non-controversial and thus people can marry whomever without societal pressure, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that 50% of men and 50% of women will not choose same sex partners.  In other words, men's and women's behavior will be reliably different in terms of choosing the sex of their marriage partner.

Is your assumption different?

In addition, we see a number of personality traits which are associated with variation in levels of sex hormones within single-sex populations. On top of that, people have actually done double blind studies where you perturb the level of sex hormones (generally as part of studies on new potential birth control methods in either men or women), and you see changes in some personality traits emerge, letting us parse apart directions of causality.

Are this differences giant? No. Are they likely to explain the gender pay gap? I think it's very unlikely. Are they enough that I am not comfortable agreeing with the assertion that in the absence of social forces, we can be completely confident that the average man and average woman* would show the exact same patterns of decision making? Yup. 

*Given the differences in mean levels of sex hormones between men and women, even though the range of distributions for both sexes are overlapping.

boarder42

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #108 on: March 13, 2018, 01:03:49 PM »
Jrr85 and boarder42 and anisotropy are all saying pretty much the same thing, so I will combine my response.

Here is a premise: The physiological differences between men and women cause men and women to behave reliably differently in socially significant ways.

You guys are taking this on faith. And if it were true, then what I've been saying wouldn't make sense. But this premise has never been proven to be true. If you take this premise to be true, you are making an assumption, not a factual statement.

i see you avoided @MDM 's response and still havent shown any study that counteracts the study presented other than your personal belief of it cant be true.  this is the fucking nature vs nurture arguement basically spun a different way and i think any reasonable human being when looking at the data can conclude that both play a role in it. 

what you're saying doesnt make any sense b/c you're trying to say is that society is the basis for all things people choose to do and i think there is quite a bit of evidence that we're born the way we are and will make choices based on that as well.

When you use always and never you're seldom correct.

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #109 on: March 13, 2018, 01:08:43 PM »
Jrr85 and boarder42 and anisotropy are all saying pretty much the same thing, so I will combine my response.

Here is a premise: The physiological differences between men and women cause men and women to behave reliably differently in socially significant ways.

You guys are taking this on faith. And if it were true, then what I've been saying wouldn't make sense. But this premise has never been proven to be true. If you take this premise to be true, you are making an assumption, not a factual statement.

i see you avoided @MDM 's response and still havent shown any study that counteracts the study presented other than your personal belief of it cant be true.  this is the fucking nature vs nurture arguement basically spun a different way and i think any reasonable human being when looking at the data can conclude that both play a role in it. 

what you're saying doesnt make any sense b/c you're trying to say is that society is the basis for all things people choose to do and i think there is quite a bit of evidence that we're born the way we are and will make choices based on that as well.

When you use always and never you're seldom correct.

Cressida is just trolling now, don't feed them, summon the mod to suspend them. This is a huge part of what is wrong with the world these days, each person has an alternative reality lol. Do you see what happens when we tolerate narratives that are not backed by data?

boarder42

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #110 on: March 13, 2018, 01:33:22 PM »
Jrr85 and boarder42 and anisotropy are all saying pretty much the same thing, so I will combine my response.

Here is a premise: The physiological differences between men and women cause men and women to behave reliably differently in socially significant ways.

You guys are taking this on faith. And if it were true, then what I've been saying wouldn't make sense. But this premise has never been proven to be true. If you take this premise to be true, you are making an assumption, not a factual statement.

i see you avoided @MDM 's response and still havent shown any study that counteracts the study presented other than your personal belief of it cant be true.  this is the fucking nature vs nurture arguement basically spun a different way and i think any reasonable human being when looking at the data can conclude that both play a role in it. 

what you're saying doesnt make any sense b/c you're trying to say is that society is the basis for all things people choose to do and i think there is quite a bit of evidence that we're born the way we are and will make choices based on that as well.

When you use always and never you're seldom correct.

Cressida is just trolling now, don't feed them, summon the mod to suspend them. This is a huge part of what is wrong with the world these days, each person has an alternative reality lol. Do you see what happens when we tolerate narratives that are not backed by data?

you havent been around here long the mod isnt going to suspend someone b/c they arent backing up their opinion with data.  we have whole threads dedicated to mortgage paydowns here.

A Definite Beta Guy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #111 on: March 13, 2018, 01:37:52 PM »
GuitarStv,
I must have misunderstood you, because I thought you were describing the contrary (blatant sexist) evidence I had been searching for (emphasis added):
We were on the same pay scale (were told that the same salary max/min applied), I was higher on the payscale when I started

but after further explanation from you, especially (emphasis added)

When we were both hired out of university, my wife and I started at exactly the same salary.  I wasn't initially paid more, but I received a larger raise pretty much every year. 

I'm sorry for any confusion.  We had the same salary starting, but I made more money at the end of my first seven months there, and this continued for the rest of both our careers - despite me having worse performance reviews.  We worked the same hours, doing pretty much the same work.

All the sudden this reverts back to being less overtly sexist, and becomes more of a case which can be sufficiently explained by post #6. I am disappointed....for real. :(
I totally agree with you that these biases due to perceptions (lower agreeableness and the more assertive people do better tend to do better) are real, which seems to be a case of behavioral sexual dimorphism, but when we think about it, they are not that much different from tall people tend to make more money on average. I would hazard a guess it's more of a evolutionary bias more than a cultural bias. And yes, these tiny biases add up over the long run, but once again, from a purely analytical point of view,  not that different from a male who lacks the same qualities that are more common in men.

Your post number 6 indicates that there may be measurable differences in how women and men approach work, and then men are promoted because of this.  My wife got better performance reviews for an eight year period and received lower wage increases than me.  We were considered to be at the same pay grade for the 12 years that we worked the same job.  To me, this is indicative of a serious social problem.

You can argue that men who have a more 'womanly' approach to work will also suffer because of this . . . but I'd argue that it's just as fundamentally unfair to those men.  If we have unspoken hiring/promoting practices that take precedent over observed/measured quality of work, that should be made an issue.  If these unwritten practices predominantly impact a minority it is absolutely discriminatory.  To address your other point . . . if taller people make more money regardless of quality of work, that is discriminatory.  If you're a shorter person, you're therefore going to be discriminated against.  It is important to level the playing field so that people rise to the top based on their work and merit, unless you can think of a good argument for shorter people (or women) making less money.

I'm pretty much in agreement with you, but as one of the agreeable guys (with a heavy dose of cynicism), I expect this to come mostly of my hide, not the guys that are going to get over-paid.

Like, what's going to happen is that you are going to get your raise, then management is going to review the government-approved-gender-compensation figures, determine women are underpaid, try to correct that on the annual reviews, and then leave little left over in the wage budget for any agreeable males.

You're still going to get paid more than your wife, because business rewards that behavior, full-stop.

Jrr85

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #112 on: March 13, 2018, 01:58:35 PM »
Jrr85 and boarder42 and anisotropy are all saying pretty much the same thing, so I will combine my response.

Here is a premise: The physiological differences between men and women cause men and women to behave reliably differently in socially significant ways.

You guys are taking this on faith. And if it were true, then what I've been saying wouldn't make sense. But this premise has never been proven to be true. If you take this premise to be true, you are making an assumption, not a factual statement.

I can't speak for boarder42 and anisotropy, but you are misinterpreting/misrepresenting what I've said so badly that I question whether you could really be doing so in good faith.   Again, you are the one who not only has blind faith that there is no sexual dimorphism in humans, but such strong blind faith that you want to force the economy to match what your blind faith tells you it should look like. 

I haven't really taken any position except that your position is crazy. 

I could be convinced that there is no difference (although it looks like since everything tried so far shows gendered differences, the only possible routes for proving such would be unethical and impractical).  I could be convinced that there are moderate population level differences.  I could be convinced of anything in between.  I suspect that there are real innate differences in tendencies of men and women when making tradeoffs between family versus work life, risk taking, etc and that the impacts of these differences in distributions are exaggerated because they create something of a positive reinforcement loop.  I'm not about to recommend trying to forcefully rearrange the economy based on my suspicions though.   

GuitarStv

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #113 on: March 13, 2018, 02:02:04 PM »
Your post number 6 indicates that there may be measurable differences in how women and men approach work, and then men are promoted because of this.  My wife got better performance reviews for an eight year period and received lower wage increases than me.  We were considered to be at the same pay grade for the 12 years that we worked the same job.  To me, this is indicative of a serious social problem.

You can argue that men who have a more 'womanly' approach to work will also suffer because of this . . . but I'd argue that it's just as fundamentally unfair to those men.  If we have unspoken hiring/promoting practices that take precedent over observed/measured quality of work, that should be made an issue.  If these unwritten practices predominantly impact a minority it is absolutely discriminatory.  To address your other point . . . if taller people make more money regardless of quality of work, that is discriminatory.  If you're a shorter person, you're therefore going to be discriminated against.  It is important to level the playing field so that people rise to the top based on their work and merit, unless you can think of a good argument for shorter people (or women) making less money.

Sorry for the late reply, went to see my dentist buddy, he found no cavity today, yay!

I agree with you that many of these the practices described are fundamentally biased and detrimental to the groups that lack the "prized" qualities. However, we must make the distinction between that and bias based on gender alone. We are not discriminating against ONLY women, rather we are discriminating against all people, both women and men, who lack these traits.

Agreed.


To me, this almost dissolves the validity of gender-based wage/earning gap completely, as we now have identified the underlying causes and the wage differences can rather be explained as trait-based.

No, I don't agree with this.  That's like saying that people find dark skin menacing, and therefore will be less likely to hire black folks . . . so it's OK that they make less money.  You can't argue that you're not discriminating against a race, but a trait.  It is still discrimination against black people (even if it also discriminates to lesser degrees against spanish, latino, arab, and Jersey Shore folks) despite the fact that it's trait based - because it inordinately impacts black people.


We have identified the cause to a problem, yes, it is a problem. But I have no solution for you. These trait-related (normally distributed and compounded by behavior sexual dimorphism) biases came from our evolution history (side note: I am rather convinced of that now, based on the new-born and monkeys studies, feel free to correct me, I change my mind easily if I see arguments supported by data) and as long as our performances are evaluated by people in a social setting, I am afraid the biases will always persist. We can't realistically hope for equality of outcome (wages/earnings) when people are clearly different from the feet up. Nordic countries have tried various policies to lessen the gap (as I mentioned in earlier posts), but the results are disappointing thus far. But like I said, maybe tech can remove the human element altogether and we might achieve the goal that way.

I don't have a solution either.

I have always wondered if requiring public record of all private employees and the wages they earn would be of benefit though.  Kinda a free market solution.  It's easy to hide wage discrepancies when nobody knows what the next guy over makes.  It becomes a bit harder when you see that every woman in a company is paid 8% less than men in the same position.  This would also maybe empower people who are currently being disadvantaged to ask for more money, with the data to back up the request.



btw..... is that an Alien riding a bike on your pic?

Yes.  Or a Triathlete.  They're both pretty weird species.    :P
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 02:04:10 PM by GuitarStv »

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #114 on: March 13, 2018, 02:28:35 PM »

No, I don't agree with this.  That's like saying that people find dark skin menacing, and therefore will be less likely to hire black folks . . . so it's OK that they make less money.  You can't argue that you're not discriminating against a race, but a trait.  It is still discrimination against black people (even if it also discriminates to lesser degrees against spanish, latino, arab, and Jersey Shore folks) despite the fact that it's trait based - because it inordinately impacts black people.


Well, the counter argument to that would be: The behavioral traits could be retained/learned, some might have a more difficult time than others, but through effort and "choices" the majority of the deficiencies might be overcome. Obviously I don't have data to back this up, just a hypothesis, but isn't that a central purpose of education? We learn good traits that might help us to go further in life.

Skin color... on the other hand, well, I don't think you could change that easily, not within realms of reason.  I can see we actually agree on plenty, but the differences might be vital too lol.

I struggle to see the triathlete, which way is his/her head facing?

Samuel

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #115 on: March 13, 2018, 02:40:54 PM »
I have always wondered if requiring public record of all private employees and the wages they earn would be of benefit though.  Kinda a free market solution.  It's easy to hide wage discrepancies when nobody knows what the next guy over makes.  It becomes a bit harder when you see that every woman in a company is paid 8% less than men in the same position.  This would also maybe empower people who are currently being disadvantaged to ask for more money, with the data to back up the request.

Removing some of the secrecy around pay has almost certainly got to be part of the solution. Paying someone less for no reason other than gender (or race) has been illegal in the US since 1963 but it's nearly impossible to enforce because of the secrecy companies are allowed to keep around their compensation practices (read about Lilly Ledbetter for a good example of someone getting hosed by both biased management and bad laws).

I would stop short of advocating the publishing of individual salaries, but there are ways to require larger employers to track and release aggregated numbers comparing wages across all the relevant variables that would help uncover wage biases, and then create plans to address any problems found. Many northern European countries do it. It's just a political no go for conservatives in the US.

 





GuitarStv

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #116 on: March 13, 2018, 02:42:45 PM »

No, I don't agree with this.  That's like saying that people find dark skin menacing, and therefore will be less likely to hire black folks . . . so it's OK that they make less money.  You can't argue that you're not discriminating against a race, but a trait.  It is still discrimination against black people (even if it also discriminates to lesser degrees against spanish, latino, arab, and Jersey Shore folks) despite the fact that it's trait based - because it inordinately impacts black people.


Well, the counter argument to that would be: The behavioral traits could be retained/learned, some might have a more difficult time than others, but through effort and "choices" the majority of the deficiencies might be overcome. Obviously I don't have data to back this up, just a hypothesis, but isn't that a central purpose of education?

We educate young people so that they have a mental framework which can be used to think later in life.  I believe that attempts to change someone's behavior tend to be incidental rather than intentional.  An awful lot of a person's behaviour is set in stone by the time they get out of being a toddler anyway.  Some of it doesn't appear to something that can be controlled at all in later life (sexual preference, risk tolerance, instant/delayed gratification preference).


We learn good traits that might help us to go further in life.

You're also assuming that the traits that are being promoted are 'good'.  I don't believe that this is the case.  I think that there's something fundamentally wrong with the valuation system related to compensation for work in most places.




I struggle to see the triathlete, which way is his/her head facing?


Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #117 on: March 13, 2018, 02:51:29 PM »
You guys are getting kind of worked up over a pretty mild position I've taken. I'm saying this: If gendered expectations went away, then any differences in men's and women's behavior would be attributable to the physiological differences between them. Since there's no scientific consensus reliably linking physiological differences to differences in behavior, I conclude that there's no reason to expect men's and women's behavior to be different once gendered expectations are removed.

If the scientific consensus changes, then my position will change as well.

I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.

MDM

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #118 on: March 13, 2018, 03:13:59 PM »
I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.
Let's try it this way (see original post for assumptions) : if X% of women choose a man for a marriage partner, do you expect X% of men would also choose a man for a marriage partner?

DarkandStormy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #119 on: March 13, 2018, 03:22:17 PM »
For those that can't read good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too, the phenomenon of wage gap (ie women get paid less than men even though they have the same education and do the same duties) seems to me can be readily explained by people on different pay grades. I have yet to find any studies that display blatant sexism by paying men more than women when they are on the same pay grade. If you are aware of such studies please share I would love to learn more.

Some might argue why aren't more women on the higher pay grades, plenty books and reports have been written regarding the issue, which is not directly related to the "true" wage gap discussion I am hoping to have here.

You're complaining about the presentation of the problem ("wage gap") as if it invalidates the underlying problem you highlight - men, overall, get promoted to higher paying positions than women.  So the problem still exists that we aren't treating women equally in the workplace as it relates to pay grades.

I don't get the point of the post other than to critique the short-attention-span media not detailing this nuance.

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #120 on: March 13, 2018, 03:23:59 PM »
you havent been around here long the mod isnt going to suspend someone b/c they arent backing up their opinion with data.  we have whole threads dedicated to mortgage paydowns here.

lol gold.

seriously though, it's not even about not backing up opinions with data, it's blatant trolling, talk about mod bias lol. Whats that? no I don't have evidence to back up my opinion of mod bias and it is most likely a false claim, but hey, that's no different from what we've just witnessed. I am going to believe that because I want to. lol absurd.


GuitarStv,
Good point, many traits we probably can't change, try as we may.

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #121 on: March 13, 2018, 03:32:07 PM »
I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.

Let's try it this way (see original post for assumptions) : if X% of women choose a man for a marriage partner, do you expect X% of men would also choose a man for a marriage partner?

If that's supposed to be a gotcha, I'm not impressed. Just rewrite it to "if X% of women choose an opposite-sex marriage partner" etc. So no, my assumption is no different.

FrugalToque

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #122 on: March 13, 2018, 03:34:32 PM »
If you all don't stop pretending to know about Evolution, speaking with such certainty on what Biology makes women and men do, as if we really had that level of scientific clarity, I will Summon a Biologist to Crush your Views.

Also, on the subject of our biases: we remove jerks; we tolerate everything but intolerance.

Toque.

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #123 on: March 13, 2018, 03:43:18 PM »
For those that can't read good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too, the phenomenon of wage gap (ie women get paid less than men even though they have the same education and do the same duties) seems to me can be readily explained by people on different pay grades. I have yet to find any studies that display blatant sexism by paying men more than women when they are on the same pay grade. If you are aware of such studies please share I would love to learn more.

Some might argue why aren't more women on the higher pay grades, plenty books and reports have been written regarding the issue, which is not directly related to the "true" wage gap discussion I am hoping to have here.

You're complaining about the presentation of the problem ("wage gap") as if it invalidates the underlying problem you highlight - men, overall, get promoted to higher paying positions than women.  So the problem still exists that we aren't treating women equally in the workplace as it relates to pay grades.

I don't get the point of the post other than to critique the short-attention-span media not detailing this nuance.

Hi DarkandStormy,

Originally I was looking for simple contrary evidence (I still am) to refute my hypothesis that the gender wage gap phenomenon is a second order phenomenon which has its "deeper" cause in personality/behavior traits that spawned from sexual behavior dimorphism. I simply wanted to see if I had missed something in my pursuit to isolate the "gender" premium.

Later on it became a debate about science/data/stats vs post-modern view of facts.

Anyway, I think there's a problem, but to fix the problem properly we need to find the actual cause, not just slap a gender bias sticker on it and call it a day. It's like medicine (I am sort of obsessed with med these days, went to too many talks/seminars), you have symptoms, but you have to identify the actual disease for optimal treatments.

Many people seem to be happy to just stop at gender bias and attempt to "fix" the problem even though the attempts so far have been less than effective (Nordic country examples). Hope this helps.

Toque,
Would you like to comment on the new-born baby and monkeys studies so I know how I got it wrong? Some real biological insight regarding the studies would help me a lot. Thanks.

I also went over the Moss-Racusin study that was central to your Stanford link (pretty much all gender related studies to be honest). My complaint is the sample size is quite small, with minimal "hiring manager" set up too. I still think the study has merits, do you know of any other study with similar premises but better set up? (bigger pool, more variable hiring scenarios, etc). Thanks again.

Gave some thoughts, I agree about intolerance, in general.

ps. just to clarify, does being a jerk include employing the following logic:
a. hi I am a believer in scientific methods
b. no I will not look at any contrary evidence that does not suit my ideology/belief because they must be wrong
c. oh but I am a believer in scientific methods, as long as I agree with the conclusions
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 04:22:55 PM by anisotropy »

Jrr85

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #124 on: March 13, 2018, 03:53:51 PM »
You guys are getting kind of worked up over a pretty mild position I've taken. I'm saying this: If gendered expectations went away, then any differences in men's and women's behavior would be attributable to the physiological differences between them. Since there's no scientific consensus reliably linking physiological differences to differences in behavior, I conclude that there's no reason to expect men's and women's behavior to be different once gendered expectations are removed.

If the scientific consensus changes, then my position will change as well.

I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.

Despite the motte and bailey defense tactic of leaving out the part about rearranging the economy to match your unsupported assumptions, your statement that there isn't a consensus that physiological traits can be linked to behavior (even if it were true, which I would question whether there's really no consensus that levels of testosterone versus estrogen or other hormones are associated with different behaviors), does not mean that it's reasonable to assume that there are zero differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits. 

MDM

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #125 on: March 13, 2018, 04:21:07 PM »
I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.

Let's try it this way (see original post for assumptions) : if X% of women choose a man for a marriage partner, do you expect X% of men would also choose a man for a marriage partner?

If that's supposed to be a gotcha, I'm not impressed. Just rewrite it to "if X% of women choose an opposite-sex marriage partner" etc. So no, my assumption is no different.
One person's gotcha is another person's check to see if a proposed logical framework is supportable.

One can rewrite pretty much any question to change the outcome.  The issue then becomes "does the need to rewrite indicate a trivial or a significant problem with the original hypothesis?"

A good write-up on generating and testing falsifiable hypotheses, even though it is >50 years old, is Strong Inference.

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #126 on: March 13, 2018, 05:14:55 PM »
Despite the motte and bailey defense tactic of leaving out the part about rearranging the economy to match your unsupported assumptions,

I don't want to rearrange the economy. I want to change gendered expectations, and then the economy will rearrange itself.


your statement that there isn't a consensus that physiological traits can be linked to behavior (even if it were true, which I would question whether there's really no consensus that levels of testosterone versus estrogen or other hormones are associated with different behaviors), does not mean that it's reasonable to assume that there are zero differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits

If we concede the former point, on what would you base nonzero "differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits"? If it's not gendered expectations (since we've already got rid of those in the premise), and if it's not physiological differences (because you've temporarily conceded that point), what is it?

maizefolk

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #127 on: March 13, 2018, 05:49:54 PM »
A good write-up on generating and testing falsifiable hypotheses, even though it is >50 years old, is Strong Inference.

That is a great write up which I had not come across before, and took real pleasure in reading. And I would completely agree that the bit quoted below is one of the key realizations that separates purely descriptive fields of science from the kind which can truly help us figure out how the world around us works.

Quote
...there is no such thing as proof in science -- because some later alternative explanation may be as good or better -- so that science advances only by disproofs. There is no point in making hypotheses that are not falsifiable, because such hypotheses do not say anything...

RetiredAt63

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #128 on: March 13, 2018, 06:06:06 PM »
In all this discussion I am reminded of the change in orchestra hiring when candidates played for the hiring people behind a screen.  Suddenly women were hired.  Before no one thought they could play some instruments (cello for one) well.  I forget where I read this, but it was certainly an "aha" moment.

We have all seen the accounts where papers/reports that were identical except for names were judged better if the name was a male name, right?  And online TAs were evaluated better if the name was male, even though they were actually the same person.

And on these forums I have seen people be extremely surprised when someone with a neutral name turned out to be female - they were assumed to be male because of interests and writing style.

All this to say that we all have lots of built-in assumptions that we aren't aware of, they were embedded in us before we were old enough to analyze them.  And they are culture specific - I had an aha moment of my own for one of The Last Jedi characters.

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #129 on: March 13, 2018, 07:07:32 PM »
In all this discussion I am reminded of the change in orchestra hiring when candidates played for the hiring people behind a screen.  Suddenly women were hired.  Before no one thought they could play some instruments (cello for one) well.  I forget where I read this, but it was certainly an "aha" moment.

We have all seen the accounts where papers/reports that were identical except for names were judged better if the name was a male name, right?  And online TAs were evaluated better if the name was male, even though they were actually the same person.

And on these forums I have seen people be extremely surprised when someone with a neutral name turned out to be female - they were assumed to be male because of interests and writing style.

All this to say that we all have lots of built-in assumptions that we aren't aware of, they were embedded in us before we were old enough to analyze them.  And they are culture specific - I had an aha moment of my own for one of The Last Jedi characters.

The Moss-Racusin study definitely falls in this category, likely most known too. I think it has merits, but as I mentioned in my reply to Toque, I wish the set up were more rigorous and the study pool bigger.

The TA-rating study set up was even worse, the four study groups had a grand total of 43 students (table 1 in paper), with each group averaging around 20 students to make the rating (note to people unfamiliar with the process, this is how you critique studies in a scientific manner, you do it from the feet up, starting with experimental design).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269288475_What%27s_in_a_Name_Exposing_Gender_Bias_in_Student_Ratings_of_Teaching

The students were from the university of north Carolina, a better design would be to include another group from elsewhere. Yes it's online, but odds are the students were predominately from North Carolina.

The grading scale itself was also problematic, students were given choice of 1-5, which no choice of scores in between, ie, no 2.5 allowed. In this set up, each score off creates 20% difference in final results. Preferably, the scoring schemes should be at least 1-10.

When you look at the actual data, most people will cry foul on how the "perceived female" TA got the shaft and scored lower than the "perceived male" TA, but COMPLETELY IGNORE the score differences in "real" female and male TA were minimal.

I quote the paper itself:
"When looking at the individual questions as well as the student ratings index, there are no significant differences between the ratings of the actual male and female instructor." pg 298

In fact, the only rating that was "significantly" (that is suspect also) below the mean was the perceived female TA, if it were truly purely gender-based bias, we would expect BOTH perceived and real female TA to receive poor scores. That did not happen. What about the fact that female instructor consistently scored better than the male instructor, which suggested the male instructor was a weaker instructor overall, and partially bears the blame for the perceived female TA's low scores?

This idea is further supported by comparing the histogram (Figure 1), we will notice the perceived male and real female (same person), had very similar scores and the confidence interval (error bars) overlap by quite a bit, we notice the same effect when we compare perceived female and real male (same person), notice the error bars also overlapped.

Most people touting the validity of this study seem to ignore or didn't even notice this, and instead focus on an ideology fueled march.

The results actually suggests that there is some disconnect in terms of quality of students of the perceived female TA group, and the quality of performances between the REAL male and female TAs. Whatever pro gender bias conclusion one can draw from this study is extremely weak.

I know most of you probably don't understand or don't even care why the things I mentioned are important, it is extremely important, because if we hope to fix the problem, we have to identify the right cause, and not just a blanket gender bias sticker in all circumstances.

Don't just group think and follow the crowd. Read the studies yourself, critique the set-up, the method, the data, be a jerk and ask tough questions, that's how we fix things in the long run.

ps.
GuitarStv, recall my suggestion that tech might one day fix the trait-based problem and level the playing field, do you think this might be an experiment to that idea? As the real female TA consistently outscored the real male TA.


« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 07:38:57 PM by anisotropy »

NotJen

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #130 on: March 13, 2018, 10:24:43 PM »
MDM, I’m honestly trying to understand your question here.

Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
Ok, I'll bite.

Assuming same-sex marriage becomes non-controversial and thus people can marry whomever without societal pressure, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that 50% of men and 50% of women will not choose same sex partners.  In other words, men's and women's behavior will be reliably different in terms of choosing the sex of their marriage partner.

Is your assumption different?
I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.
Let's try it this way (see original post for assumptions) : if X% of women choose a man for a marriage partner, do you expect X% of men would also choose a man for a marriage partner?

What do you mean by ‘men and women’s behavior will be reliably different in terms of choosing the sex of their marriage partner’?  If you mean their behavior in relation to current societal expectations, I agree that it will be different in this scenario (but different for both men and women equally).  If you mean there will be a difference in the choices that women make vs men, I don’t understand that.

In your case of 50/50 (my assumption of the percentage would be different, but we’re just guessing here so it doesn’t matter), we get:
50% of women choose men <50% of women will not choose same sex partners>. 50% of women choose women.
50% of men choose women <50% of men will not choose same sex partners>. 50% of men choose men.

Seems like the same behavior between men and women.

Your second question changes the original one, and compare women choosing men (opposite sex partners) to men choosing men (same sex partners), which doesn’t make sense to me.  Although in your 50/50 example, it’s the same outcome.

MDM

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #131 on: March 13, 2018, 11:25:07 PM »
MDM, I’m honestly trying to understand your question here.

Until someone can explain why the anatomical differences between men and women would cause them to make different decisions, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different if gendered norms ceased to exist.
Ok, I'll bite.

Assuming same-sex marriage becomes non-controversial and thus people can marry whomever without societal pressure, I'm comfortable with the working assumption that 50% of men and 50% of women will not choose same sex partners.  In other words, men's and women's behavior will be reliably different in terms of choosing the sex of their marriage partner.

Is your assumption different?
I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.
Let's try it this way (see original post for assumptions) : if X% of women choose a man for a marriage partner, do you expect X% of men would also choose a man for a marriage partner?

What do you mean by ‘men and women’s behavior will be reliably different in terms of choosing the sex of their marriage partner’?  If you mean their behavior in relation to current societal expectations, I agree that it will be different in this scenario (but different for both men and women equally).  If you mean there will be a difference in the choices that women make vs men, I don’t understand that.

In your case of 50/50 (my assumption of the percentage would be different, but we’re just guessing here so it doesn’t matter), we get:
50% of women choose men <50% of women will not choose same sex partners>. 50% of women choose women.
50% of men choose women <50% of men will not choose same sex partners>. 50% of men choose men.

Seems like the same behavior between men and women.

Your second question changes the original one, and compare women choosing men (opposite sex partners) to men choosing men (same sex partners), which doesn’t make sense to me.  Although in your 50/50 example, it’s the same outcome.
Boiled down, Cressida's original hypothesis: "men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different"

I believe that is false, using the counterexample "choice of sex in a marriage partner".  Note the italicized "not" in my first post - perhaps you and I agree?

In other words, I believe women will choose men as marriage partners more often than men will choose men - just as men will choose women more often than women will choose women.

Assuming monogamy and equal numbers of men and women (if for no other reason than it makes the math simpler), the only way men's and women's choices would be equal is if each chose 50% same sex and 50% opposite sex.  I don't believe that would happen, and from what I can tell you don't either, so are we saying the same thing?

If one believes that, statistically speaking, men and women look for different things in a spouse, it's not unreasonable to expect (again, statistically speaking) men and women might look for different things in other areas, e.g., in a career.

In other words, even given absolute equality of opportunity (in which I firmly believe), the demographics of specific work roles may not match the demographics of the overall population - and that's ok.

The pay scales for different work roles is a legitimate subject, but for another discussion.

GuitarStv

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #132 on: March 14, 2018, 07:35:47 AM »
I quote the paper itself:
"When looking at the individual questions as well as the student ratings index, there are no significant differences between the ratings of the actual male and female instructor." pg 298

In fact, the only rating that was "significantly" (that is suspect also) below the mean was the perceived female TA, if it were truly purely gender-based bias, we would expect BOTH perceived and real female TA to receive poor scores. That did not happen. What about the fact that female instructor consistently scored better than the male instructor, which suggested the male instructor was a weaker instructor overall, and partially bears the blame for the perceived female TA's low scores?

"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistantinstructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in thetwo groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be female, regardless of the actual genderof the assistant instructor.

It's possible that the male instructor was worse than the female instructor.  That doesn't really change the findings though.  As mentioned on pg. 298:

"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in the two groups that perceived their instructor to be female, regardless of the actual gender of the instructor."

You would have an argument if the male instructor perceived as male got lower ratings, but that didn't happen.



GuitarStv, recall my suggestion that tech might one day fix the trait-based problem and level the playing field, do you think this might be an experiment to that idea? As the real female TA consistently outscored the real male TA.

I think that in certain fields (distance education could use gender neutral identification for teachers and assistants for example) it may be possible, but that widespread use of computer generated performance evaluation is unlikely to catch on in most of the business world very easily.  As we've already discussed, performance is only a small part of what people are rated on.  If computer generated ratings were given, it wouldn't obviously wouldn't align with what managers want (since they don't currently promote based on performance) . . . and thus would be unpopular.

MrMoogle

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #133 on: March 14, 2018, 07:49:46 AM »
You're complaining about the presentation of the problem ("wage gap") as if it invalidates the underlying problem you highlight - men, overall, get promoted to higher paying positions than women.  So the problem still exists that we aren't treating women equally in the workplace as it relates to pay grades.

I don't get the point of the post other than to critique the short-attention-span media not detailing this nuance.
Fewer women in higher paying positions does not necessarily mean we aren't treating women equally.  Fewer hours and less flexibility of those hours would also lead to less promotions, and it has already been mentioned that women do those things.  I'm not saying there's not a problem, I'm saying it's not obvious to me.


You guys are getting kind of worked up over a pretty mild position I've taken. I'm saying this: If gendered expectations went away, then any differences in men's and women's behavior would be attributable to the physiological differences between them. Since there's no scientific consensus reliably linking physiological differences to differences in behavior, I conclude that there's no reason to expect men's and women's behavior to be different once gendered expectations are removed.

If the scientific consensus changes, then my position will change as well.

I didn't address MDM's comment because it doesn't make any sense to me.
Is there scientific consensus that physiological differences does not lead to behavioral differences?

https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2013/oct/06/male-brain-versus-female-brain
Quote
Subtle observable differences exist between male and female brains, but how exactly these relate to differences in behaviour is unknown.
"Unknown" is not the same as "does not exist." 

t185

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #134 on: March 14, 2018, 07:59:20 AM »

The Bureau of Labor Statistics did a pretty exhaustive study of this issue in 1996 (Clinton era) and concluded virtually all, if not all, of the gap was due to choice of profession, hours worked, years out of the labor force.

There's another even easier way to dispel this myth.  Why someone doesn't just start up a company to hire all these underpaid people and make an absolute killing from having the same output but lower labor costs that the competition? 

Presumably it's because capitalists are so sexist that they don't like money (i.e., investment returns)?

LOL

 "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." John Adams

FrugalToque

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #135 on: March 14, 2018, 08:01:59 AM »
Quote
Subtle observable differences exist between male and female brains, but how exactly these relate to differences in behaviour is unknown.
"Unknown" is not the same as "does not exist."

Of course not.  That's not the point.  The point is that we have no good way of telling how human beings actually differ, between male and female brains, given the amount of cultural baggage we load kids up with, basically starting at birth.

Now, if you want, you can go back and forth:
1) "There's no way you can know what difference it makes."
2) "There's no way you can say there's no difference."

No shit.  Move along.

Toque.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2018, 09:01:49 AM by FrugalToque »

NotJen

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #136 on: March 14, 2018, 08:17:14 AM »
Boiled down, Cressida's original hypothesis: "men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different"

I believe that is false, using the counterexample "choice of sex in a marriage partner".  Note the italicized "not" in my first post - perhaps you and I agree?

In other words, I believe women will choose men as marriage partners more often than men will choose men - just as men will choose women more often than women will choose women.

Assuming monogamy and equal numbers of men and women (if for no other reason than it makes the math simpler), the only way men's and women's choices would be equal is if each chose 50% same sex and 50% opposite sex.  I don't believe that would happen, and from what I can tell you don't either, so are we saying the same thing?

If one believes that, statistically speaking, men and women look for different things in a spouse, it's not unreasonable to expect (again, statistically speaking) men and women might look for different things in other areas, e.g., in a career.

In other words, even given absolute equality of opportunity (in which I firmly believe), the demographics of specific work roles may not match the demographics of the overall population - and that's ok.

The pay scales for different work roles is a legitimate subject, but for another discussion.

No, we do not agree.

I believe the following statement is in agreement with Cressida's hypothesis.  Men and women's behavior is not different in the case you described here:

Quote
In other words, I believe women will choose men as marriage partners more often than men will choose men - just as men will choose women more often than women will choose women.

That's the same as saying: women will choose opposite-sex partners more than same-sex partners - just as men will choose opposite-sex partners more than same-sex partners.

Seems like the same behavior to me.

Quote
Assuming monogamy and equal numbers of men and women (if for no other reason than it makes the math simpler), the only way men's and women's choices would be equal is if each chose 50% same sex and 50% opposite sex.  I don't believe that would happen, and from what I can tell you don't either, so are we saying the same thing?

That's one way to be equal, but not the only way.  Another way to be equal is to say that women choose same sex partners 25% of the time and men choose same sex partners 25% of the time.  Equal.  I do believe this will happen, though I have no idea what the actual percentage will be.

A% of people will choose opposite-sex partners.
B% of people will choose same-sex partners.
C% of people will choose to not marry.
D% of people will choose some option I have not considered.

A+B+C+D = 100%

I do not believe that these percentages will differ significantly when viewed as male vs female.

Quote
If one believes that, statistically speaking, men and women look for different things in a spouse

I don't believe your example contains any reference to "men and women looking for different things in a spouse".  Your example appears to be about sexual orientation, which may be why I am completely confused by your argument here.

J Boogie

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #137 on: March 14, 2018, 10:16:06 AM »
So to sum it up, in the absence of proof, we can only speculate whether men and women would behave differently if the slate were wiped clean and there were no cultural norms regarding gender differences.

There are studies and examples we can point to that might support our speculations, but we don't really know.

I'm all for making strong arguments in favor of viewpoints. I think what's getting tiresome here is that certain studies and examples are being trotted out as conclusive proof rather than evidence that could reasonably be interpreted to support a viewpoint.


anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #138 on: March 14, 2018, 10:19:45 AM »
I quote the paper itself:
"When looking at the individual questions as well as the student ratings index, there are no significant differences between the ratings of the actual male and female instructor." pg 298

In fact, the only rating that was "significantly" (that is suspect also) below the mean was the perceived female TA, if it were truly purely gender-based bias, we would expect BOTH perceived and real female TA to receive poor scores. That did not happen. What about the fact that female instructor consistently scored better than the male instructor, which suggested the male instructor was a weaker instructor overall, and partially bears the blame for the perceived female TA's low scores?

"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistantinstructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in thetwo groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be female, regardless of the actual genderof the assistant instructor.

It's possible that the male instructor was worse than the female instructor.  That doesn't really change the findings though.  As mentioned on pg. 298:

"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in the two groups that perceived their instructor to be female, regardless of the actual gender of the instructor."

You would have an argument if the male instructor perceived as male got lower ratings, but that didn't happen.


Morning GuitarStv,
I am slightly confused.

"Students in the two groups that perceived their assistant instructor to be male rated their instructor significantly higher than did the students in the two groups that perceived their instructor to be female, regardless of the actual gender of the instructor."

When we look at the actual scores and histogram, we see there really is only one outlier (perceived female), with only four groups, perhaps the word outlier is an overreach. The other three were roughly on par, with the perceived male and actual female (same person) both scoring higher than actual male. ie, The female TA scored consistently higher regardless of identities.

If it were truly gender biased, wouldn't we expect both the actual and perceived female TA to score lower than the male identities? Am I missing something?

I am going to try to do some stats to see which creates bigger differences:

1. actual female + perceived female vs actual male + perceived male (gender based)
2. actual female + perceived male vs actual male + perceived female (person based)

ps. we also have to remember, the student groups (likely A and B) that graded the perceived female could also be a cause of discrepancies, as the experiment set up did not allow the other student groups (C and D) to vote for female identities.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2018, 10:29:25 AM by anisotropy »

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #139 on: March 14, 2018, 10:24:22 AM »
So to sum it up, in the absence of proof, we can only speculate whether men and women would behave differently if the slate were wiped clean and there were no cultural norms regarding gender differences.

There are studies and examples we can point to that might support our speculations, but we don't really know.

I'm all for making strong arguments in favor of viewpoints. I think what's getting tiresome here is that certain studies and examples are being trotted out as conclusive proof rather than evidence that could reasonably be interpreted to support a viewpoint.

Hi Boogie,
The "proof" are in the studies, we just have to discover them, no one (unless it comes with a massive dose of narrative) will spoon feed it to us.

If you don't like a particular interpretation you can certainly look at the studies and critique them to discover their shortcomings, much like some had done here. Just because the studies show conflicting answers doesn't mean the answer is unknowable, the studies are not created equal.

If some studies' conclusions remain unchallenged, wouldn't you think those studies have a stronger inclination to be closer to how things actually work?
(I am referring to the two day baby and monkeys studies, which so far have had no critique)
« Last Edit: March 14, 2018, 10:32:18 AM by anisotropy »

PoutineLover

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #140 on: March 14, 2018, 10:44:14 AM »
So to sum it up, in the absence of proof, we can only speculate whether men and women would behave differently if the slate were wiped clean and there were no cultural norms regarding gender differences.

There are studies and examples we can point to that might support our speculations, but we don't really know.

I'm all for making strong arguments in favor of viewpoints. I think what's getting tiresome here is that certain studies and examples are being trotted out as conclusive proof rather than evidence that could reasonably be interpreted to support a viewpoint.

Hi Boogie,
The "proof" are in the studies, we just have to discover them, no one (unless it comes with a massive dose of narrative) will spoon feed it to us.

If you don't like a particular interpretation you can certainly look at the studies and critique them to discover their shortcomings, much like some had done here. Just because the studies show conflicting answers doesn't mean the answer is unknowable, the studies are not created equal.

If some studies' conclusions remain unchallenged, wouldn't you think those studies have a stronger inclination to be closer to how things actually work?
(I am referring to the two day baby and monkeys studies, which so far have had no critique)
I read the methodology of the baby study and there's no way it can be used to infer population wide differences between men and women, and even if it was a good study, it still doesn't justify paying women less for the same work.
They had a woman with a neutral face vs a scrambled nonsense face mobile, and timed the number of seconds the baby looked at either one. There weren't that many babies included, and a whole bunch were tested but excluded for crying too much or falling asleep. The conclusion was supposedly that the girl babies would rather look at the face than the weird scrambled thing, but the difference was pretty small and it's a pretty specific thing to look at that can't really be extrapolated to real world circumstances.
Here's a critique if you're interested: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=261

anisotropy

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #141 on: March 14, 2018, 10:48:29 AM »
So to sum it up, in the absence of proof, we can only speculate whether men and women would behave differently if the slate were wiped clean and there were no cultural norms regarding gender differences.

There are studies and examples we can point to that might support our speculations, but we don't really know.

I'm all for making strong arguments in favor of viewpoints. I think what's getting tiresome here is that certain studies and examples are being trotted out as conclusive proof rather than evidence that could reasonably be interpreted to support a viewpoint.

Hi Boogie,
The "proof" are in the studies, we just have to discover them, no one (unless it comes with a massive dose of narrative) will spoon feed it to us.

If you don't like a particular interpretation you can certainly look at the studies and critique them to discover their shortcomings, much like some had done here. Just because the studies show conflicting answers doesn't mean the answer is unknowable, the studies are not created equal.

If some studies' conclusions remain unchallenged, wouldn't you think those studies have a stronger inclination to be closer to how things actually work?
(I am referring to the two day baby and monkeys studies, which so far have had no critique)
I read the methodology of the baby study and there's no way it can be used to infer population wide differences between men and women, and even if it was a good study, it still doesn't justify paying women less for the same work.

No poutine! I never meant to use it as an excuse to pay women less, I don't think that's right!

I bring it up because I think study supports there are inherent and biological differences between male and female. But to see your point, do you think it's because the sample size was too small? Being 102 only

If that were the case, what about Su et al 2009, sample size exceeds 500,000 and got similar results.

ps. thanks for the critique link.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2018, 10:57:04 AM by anisotropy »

Jrr85

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #142 on: March 14, 2018, 10:56:13 AM »
Despite the motte and bailey defense tactic of leaving out the part about rearranging the economy to match your unsupported assumptions,

I don't want to rearrange the economy. I want to change gendered expectations, and then the economy will rearrange itself.
  So you don't want to enact any changes in law or regulation?  All you want to do is argue without any government coercion that we are pigeonholing people based on gender and we should stop?  I'm skeptical of that, but great, if true. 


your statement that there isn't a consensus that physiological traits can be linked to behavior (even if it were true, which I would question whether there's really no consensus that levels of testosterone versus estrogen or other hormones are associated with different behaviors), does not mean that it's reasonable to assume that there are zero differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits

If we concede the former point, on what would you base nonzero "differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits"? If it's not gendered expectations (since we've already got rid of those in the premise), and if it's not physiological differences (because you've temporarily conceded that point), what is it?

I'm not sure if you're trolling or not.  Ignoring the appeal to authority (whether there is a scientific consensus doesn't change reality), do you really not see the blatantly obvious bad logic that it takes to equate the lack of a consensus on a belief that gender is linked to the population distribution of certain behavioral traits does not equate that there is a consensus that gender has no link to the population distribution of certain behavioral traits. 

Jrr85

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #143 on: March 14, 2018, 11:10:02 AM »
Boiled down, Cressida's original hypothesis: "men's and women's behavior would not be reliably different"

I believe that is false, using the counterexample "choice of sex in a marriage partner".  Note the italicized "not" in my first post - perhaps you and I agree?

In other words, I believe women will choose men as marriage partners more often than men will choose men - just as men will choose women more often than women will choose women.

Assuming monogamy and equal numbers of men and women (if for no other reason than it makes the math simpler), the only way men's and women's choices would be equal is if each chose 50% same sex and 50% opposite sex.  I don't believe that would happen, and from what I can tell you don't either, so are we saying the same thing?

If one believes that, statistically speaking, men and women look for different things in a spouse, it's not unreasonable to expect (again, statistically speaking) men and women might look for different things in other areas, e.g., in a career.

In other words, even given absolute equality of opportunity (in which I firmly believe), the demographics of specific work roles may not match the demographics of the overall population - and that's ok.

The pay scales for different work roles is a legitimate subject, but for another discussion.

No, we do not agree.

I believe the following statement is in agreement with Cressida's hypothesis.  Men and women's behavior is not different in the case you described here:

Quote
In other words, I believe women will choose men as marriage partners more often than men will choose men - just as men will choose women more often than women will choose women.

That's the same as saying: women will choose opposite-sex partners more than same-sex partners - just as men will choose opposite-sex partners more than same-sex partners.

Seems like the same behavior to me.

Quote
Assuming monogamy and equal numbers of men and women (if for no other reason than it makes the math simpler), the only way men's and women's choices would be equal is if each chose 50% same sex and 50% opposite sex.  I don't believe that would happen, and from what I can tell you don't either, so are we saying the same thing?

That's one way to be equal, but not the only way.  Another way to be equal is to say that women choose same sex partners 25% of the time and men choose same sex partners 25% of the time.  Equal.  I do believe this will happen, though I have no idea what the actual percentage will be.

A% of people will choose opposite-sex partners.
B% of people will choose same-sex partners.
C% of people will choose to not marry.
D% of people will choose some option I have not considered.

A+B+C+D = 100%

I do not believe that these percentages will differ significantly when viewed as male vs female.

Quote
If one believes that, statistically speaking, men and women look for different things in a spouse

I don't believe your example contains any reference to "men and women looking for different things in a spouse".  Your example appears to be about sexual orientation, which may be why I am completely confused by your argument here.

You are ignoring Cressida's stated belief, which is that the only reason there is any difference between male and female behaviors is society's gendered expectations.  For that to be true, that would mean that if we could successfully remove society's gendered expectations, male and females would be equally likely to choose a male spouse.  Cressida's argument is that the only reason ~95-97% of men prefer a female spouse (or sexual companion since not everybody wants a spouse at all) is that society has trained them to.  I think people are understandably skeptical of that argument, even if they would concede that societal expectations do have enough influence to move the needle some. 

MrMoogle

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #144 on: March 14, 2018, 11:15:53 AM »
Quote
Subtle observable differences exist between male and female brains, but how exactly these relate to differences in behaviour is unknown.
"Unknown" is not the same as "does not exist."

Of course not.  That's not the point.  The point is that we have no good way of telling how human beings actually differ, between male and female brains, given the amount of cultural baggage we load kids up with, basically starting at birth.

Now, if you want, you can go back and forth:
1) "There's no way you can know what difference it makes."
2) "There's no way you can say there's no difference."

No shit.  Move along.

Toque.
I'm arguing that Cressida shouldn't then "conclude that there's no reason to expect men's and women's behavior to be different once gendered expectations are removed."

It's unknown so either are possible, why make the assumption that only one is possible? 

Quote
No shit.  Move along.
I'm not sure why you are being so dismissive.  By removing that assumption, most of Cressida's argument falls apart.  That seems like something that should be pointed out.

PoutineLover

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #145 on: March 14, 2018, 11:19:19 AM »
So to sum it up, in the absence of proof, we can only speculate whether men and women would behave differently if the slate were wiped clean and there were no cultural norms regarding gender differences.

There are studies and examples we can point to that might support our speculations, but we don't really know.

I'm all for making strong arguments in favor of viewpoints. I think what's getting tiresome here is that certain studies and examples are being trotted out as conclusive proof rather than evidence that could reasonably be interpreted to support a viewpoint.

Hi Boogie,
The "proof" are in the studies, we just have to discover them, no one (unless it comes with a massive dose of narrative) will spoon feed it to us.

If you don't like a particular interpretation you can certainly look at the studies and critique them to discover their shortcomings, much like some had done here. Just because the studies show conflicting answers doesn't mean the answer is unknowable, the studies are not created equal.

If some studies' conclusions remain unchallenged, wouldn't you think those studies have a stronger inclination to be closer to how things actually work?
(I am referring to the two day baby and monkeys studies, which so far have had no critique)
I read the methodology of the baby study and there's no way it can be used to infer population wide differences between men and women, and even if it was a good study, it still doesn't justify paying women less for the same work.

No poutine! I never meant to use it as an excuse to pay women less, I don't think that's right!

I bring it up because I think study supports there are inherent and biological differences between male and female. But to see your point, do you think it's because the sample size was too small? 102 only
Yes, the sample was too small, and I think the design was flawed because of the surreality of the sample "thing" they used to compare to a face.
But on a larger scale, I don't think that whether or not biological differences exist is the real issue with the wage gap. I believe that diversity is important in organizations, and any company that doesn't have a variety of genders, races, ages and abilities is limiting their competitiveness. Studies have shown that mixed gender boards perform better than all male ones, and I think that the more different perspectives you include in your decision making, the more likely it is that you'll create and sell a more appealing product and have a more productive workforce. By not compensating women as much as men, companies are choosing to value only one sort of view, and making it more likely that women will leave for various reasons, which is not only bad for the women, it's bad for them. Individual people have their own traits and skills, but by attributing certain characteristics as either male or female, and then assigning different values to those characteristics, you are elevating one gender over the other.
Whether or not women in general are less assertive than men in general has very little to do with how individual people behave, and those broad stereotypes impact how we relate to others, and our assumptions about them. I don't believe that women are inherently less assertive, but when they act assertively they are called bossy or bitchy, and those are seen as negatives, while assertive boys are called leaders. All people, especially men, and especially men in positions of power, should be doing a lot of personal work to examine their own biases and see how that might be impacting their perceptions of and interactions with women.
To me the contributing factors of the current wage gap would be some of the following common perceptions:
1) men are seen as breadwinners, women as homemakers, so his wage needs to be higher
2) longer hours=better employee
3) women aren't as ambitious as men
4) women are going to have babies and take lots of time off to care for their families

Some fixes would be
1) recognizing that men and women can contribute equally to the household, both financially and chores at home
2) productivity matters more than hours at the office
3) some people are more ambitious than others, but it isn't because of their gender
4) pregnancy is like sick leave for any other reason, and men and women take equal shares of the childcare duties, including a portion of parental leave for dads becoming normalized and expected

Also, make salaries and raises transparent so it's harder to hide discrimination

Not saying the fixes are easy or fast, and they require both legislation and societal changes, but they are worthwhile changes to make if we want a more equal society

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #146 on: March 14, 2018, 11:21:32 AM »
Despite the motte and bailey defense tactic of leaving out the part about rearranging the economy to match your unsupported assumptions,

I don't want to rearrange the economy. I want to change gendered expectations, and then the economy will rearrange itself.
  So you don't want to enact any changes in law or regulation?  All you want to do is argue without any government coercion that we are pigeonholing people based on gender and we should stop?  I'm skeptical of that, but great, if true. 

Dude. I've said, multiple times, that what I want is for there to be no gendered norms and expectations. OF COURSE I'm not calling for laws and regulations to end gendered norms and expectations. Societal norms and expectations aren't established by laws and regulations. Is this a real question?



your statement that there isn't a consensus that physiological traits can be linked to behavior (even if it were true, which I would question whether there's really no consensus that levels of testosterone versus estrogen or other hormones are associated with different behaviors), does not mean that it's reasonable to assume that there are zero differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits

If we concede the former point, on what would you base nonzero "differences in population wide distributions of behavioral traits"? If it's not gendered expectations (since we've already got rid of those in the premise), and if it's not physiological differences (because you've temporarily conceded that point), what is it?

I'm not sure if you're trolling or not.  Ignoring the appeal to authority (whether there is a scientific consensus doesn't change reality), do you really not see the blatantly obvious bad logic that it takes to equate the lack of a consensus on a belief that gender is linked to the population distribution of certain behavioral traits does not equate that there is a consensus that gender has no link to the population distribution of certain behavioral traits.

I'm not going to respond to this because the language is too tortured for me to parse, and I'm not interested in putting in the time to figure it out. I've stated my position more than once, and I don't think it's hard to understand.

Cressida

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #147 on: March 14, 2018, 11:24:22 AM »
Cressida's argument is that the only reason ~95-97% of men prefer a female spouse (or sexual companion since not everybody wants a spouse at all) is that society has trained them to.

That's not my argument, and the record shows that it's not.

MDM

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #148 on: March 14, 2018, 11:24:50 AM »
No, we do not agree.

I believe the following statement is in agreement with Cressida's hypothesis.  Men and women's behavior is not different in the case you described here:

Quote
In other words, I believe women will choose men as marriage partners more often than men will choose men - just as men will choose women more often than women will choose women.

That's the same as saying: women will choose opposite-sex partners more than same-sex partners - just as men will choose opposite-sex partners more than same-sex partners.

Seems like the same behavior to me.

Quote
If one believes that, statistically speaking, men and women look for different things in a spouse

I don't believe your example contains any reference to "men and women looking for different things in a spouse".  Your example appears to be about sexual orientation, which may be why I am completely confused by your argument here.
Ok, I agree with you that we don't agree.

To me, "choosing the opposite" is not "same behavior," it's different behavior.  Vive la différence if one is so inclined.

Whether the difference in choosing the sex of a marriage partner indicates that, even in a world in which career choice is unconstrained by societal expectations, men and women might statistically choose different careers, is another question.  How one should be compensated in different careers is yet another question.

But if we don't agree on whether "same = same" or "opposite = same", we might be talking past each other

PoutineLover

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Re: Wage gap?
« Reply #149 on: March 14, 2018, 11:28:52 AM »
@MDM are you being deliberately obtuse or do you truly believe that homosexuality in men=heterosexuality in women?