> Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that women were paid 79 cents for each dollar a man was paid. Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar.<p>This is not supported by the evidence. See, for example, this article by Christina Hoff Sommers (<a href="http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/" rel="nofollow">http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/</a>):<p>"No matter how many times this wage gap claim is decisively refuted by economists, it always comes back. The bottom line: the 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure or hours worked per week. When such relevant factors are considered, the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing."
> Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that women were paid 79 cents for each dollar a man was paid. Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar.<p>What do they mean "even" after controlling for those factors? Why <i>wouldn't</i> you control for those factors -- the comparison is meaningless otherwise.
>Study after study demonstrates that women are paid less than men in the United States.<p>I wish some of these studies are cited because if you are telling me that I could hypothetically be able to hire someone who is able to do the same job, for less money (like the fabled 79%), I would gladly take them up on the offer. Unfortunately it doesn't exist except in delusional minds. This is the free market, not some global male conspiracy.
As an aside, isn't that question inherently just flat out wrong?<p>Q: 'What's your current salary?'<p>A: 'Why does it matter? What am I worth to you?'
> When it comes to making pay decisions, we anchor too much on someone’s current salary instead of what the job is worth. Imagine hiring two accountants. One (call her Eliza) currently makes $50,000 and the other (Alexander) makes $58,000. And let’s say the average accountant in your company makes $60,000. It feels natural to offer Alexander a salary of $60,000, just like everyone else gets. But for most managers, it feels wrong to give Eliza the same salary. After all, that’s a $10,000 raise! Wouldn’t that be unfair to Alexander, who only got a $2,000 raise? And why not save a few bucks by paying people based on their past salaries?<p>What? No. Who thinks this way? The role at your company has a $60k salary. People you hire for that role get $60k, no matter how much they were being paid in the past.<p>Is this really a difficult concept for people?
I think where a lot of technical people get fleeced in compensation discussions is they let themselves get into a 1:1 personal discussion where they feel compelled to agree on the spot. Most business deals are worked out at a distance once the in person meetings are out of the way.<p>Treat this the same way you might go over a lease for office space. Let them make the initial offer (they have much better data about market rate and what they are willing to pay, you don't and may box yourself into a lowball position). Then take some time to figure out if it works, and take the comp discussion offline.<p>Keep the negotiation about compensation in writing. There are a million ways for an experienced negotiator to manipulate you in a live conversation. Break things down (salary, PTO, equity, 401k match, telework, other hard benefits), and figure out where they'll budge. And remember, it's not about being greedy, you'll be locking in your pay for 1-2 years, and you're doing your job of negotiating a good deal for you and your family. If someone doesn't respect that, that's a big red flag right there.
Presume you were born a slave. Your family had been slaves for 5 centuries. Slaves are taught in early childhood that walking is always the "honourable" thing to do - only free people ride. Slaves also never fight back in an argument, always give way, always put other people's needs first, shrink their own presence as much as possible, etc.<p>Even when you earn your freedom, your instinct when anyone asks for riders would be to walk. You have to unlearn multiple anti-patterns of freedom and it is a conscious effort every single day to keep up your guard. When someone rejects you, you never know if it is because of the specific task you completed, or an anti-pattern, or your past slave roots. 30% of your brain goes towards self-correcting and self-consciousness, leaving only 70% to focus on a task. That means only slaves that sport an IQ of 130 to keep up with a non-inhibited free person. Furthermore, every single one of your elderly and senior Slave relatives scolds you every time you do a free person action, for not honouring your heritage. On top of that, some unknown percentile of free people cannot see themselves taking orders from a former slave in a higher position than them at work. Add insult to injury, because it is very obvious you are a slave (all slaves have an extra body part) a mistake is instantly attributed to your slavehood, further adding to the bias libraries of free people and to your own self-consciousness. Forgot to mention, you still have to do 100% of your slave duties in 50% of your time as a free person. It is a HUGE f-ing hill to climb.<p>However since slaves have carried half of humanity's domestic needs for the past 5 centuries, they've also built up tremendous self-discipline and other valuable muscles required to survive that darn hill. The moment they are able to apply their freedom and start thinking and acting like independent enterprising people is the moment they solve all mundane unnecessary inefficiencies they have been doing to "honor" the heritage of servitude. Humanity gets half of its productivity back, and uses the brainpower to deploy to more important things than walking. Before that point you're feeding 100 people but get the productivity of 50. After that point, you are getting 100 at the productivity of 200 for the same feeding costs. Add the exponential growth of knowledge and tech and developed technology might beat an extinction level event to save itself one day because of the acceleration. Conditioning and history aught to teach us to stop treating other humans as inferior and to build systems that apply the intellect of every one of us. The alternative is a waste.
Aside from arguing about whether there is some kind of feminist misinformation campaign regarding the size of the pay gap, does anyone want to talk about the effect of "what's your current salary" on the pay gap?
I never answer this question. I always answer with my salary expectations and push back if the recruiter is trying to play hardball. Answering gives them leverage over you.
Whatever your feelings on the existence (or not) of the "gender pay gap" the process the article describes seems perfectly fair. I think people are getting hung up on the gender part and not seeing the "fair pay" system they've apparently setup.
I'm wondering why people don't respond with something like "My past salary is confidential, my asking salary is XYZ" and//or "What is the budget window for this position".
I don't understand this 'gender pay gap' concept at all. Whatever figure my compensation is is, to a large extent, quite arbitrary. Sure there's a general sense of what range I should expect my salary to be in, based on my experience/location/etc, but really the final figure comes down to whatever number gets thrown out and accepted in negotiation.<p>So if you poll half a workforce who are male, and poll half a workforce who are female, and discover that their pay doesn't line up... why would you be surprised?