When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

Still not sure what to believe on this issue.<p>Some points of discussion are (unrelated to article):<p>1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn&#x27;t white&#x2F;male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits?<p>2. Women are less likely to negotiate salary and assert themselves, as women in general are more agreeable than men. Is this behavior based in biology or is it social construct?<p>3. Women tend to choose lower paying jobs, such as teacher, caregiver etc. In general women tend to care about people, while men care about things (STEM). Again: biology or social construct?<p>For example in Sweden, which is doing it&#x27;s best to increase gender equality, sex differences between men and women maximized <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jamda.ub.gu.se&#x2F;bitstream&#x2F;1&#x2F;833&#x2F;1&#x2F;scb_eng_2014.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jamda.ub.gu.se&#x2F;bitstream&#x2F;1&#x2F;833&#x2F;1&#x2F;scb_eng_2014.pdf</a><p>So perhaps occupation differences are healthy and natural. Of course, in Sweden engineers don&#x27;t earn 300% more than teachers, so it&#x27;s not a huge problem like in the USA.<p>The logical solution would be to increase pay in women dominated professions. But this kind of thing spits in the face of capitalism.<p>It&#x27;s a tough problem to solve, and I still have no idea how to go about solving it.<p>EDIT: Additional explanations

I hate these kinds of statistics because all they say is &quot;If we discount all the things creating the pay gap, basically no pay gap exists&quot;. Industries typically inhabited by women getting paid less? Predominantly male&#x2F;female industries suddnely decreasing&#x2F;increasing in average pay when women&#x2F;men enter it? Women having a lesser likelihood of getting promoted? Women having a lower likelihood of getting hired for higher-paying positions (recruiter biases)? Those are <i>some</i> of the reasons

Women don&#x27;t advance in rank as fast as men, and so end up being paid less. Thus article doesn&#x27;t refute that because it admits that level is factor in the pay gap.<p>As to why women don&#x27;t advance as fast ... my opinion is that it&#x27;s primarily motherhood that does it. It puts a career on hold for 6 months times the number of children, and women are socially expected to be primary caregivers so they feel pressured not to work long hours (and so advance less). Before they get pregnant employers will suspect impending motherhood and offer fewer opportunities so as to rely less. It&#x27;s not fair, but it is how it is.

The &quot;for the same work&quot; piece of it rings hollow and is fighting a battle that didn&#x27;t need to be won. It&#x27;s enough to get across the point that women are socialized into lower paying roles and held back professionally because of child care obligations.<p>My daughter is four. Her summer camp has all sorts of course choices every week. So I signed her up for &quot;little engineers,&quot; &quot;little scientists,&quot; etc. (There was also princess and fairy-related options.) Fast forward a couple of weeks and she&#x27;s the only girl in &quot;tech machines.&quot; I had to flip out at my wife, au pair, mother in law, etc. not to let anyone hint to her that there might be anything unusual or undesirable about this.<p>These are four year olds, they have no preferences. It&#x27;s purely parents projecting gender roles onto their kids. My kid is super into princesses and fairies, but also comes home every day with a new project and says it was &quot;the best day ever&quot; because she learned about buoyancy or whatever.

Personally I think the biggest caveat avoided &quot;when job differences are accounted for&quot; is the care of children. Women, by-and-large, really get hosed with the negative externalities of having children (time off, career halting, etc). Most Western countries are not generous or equitable by half, and the USA is downright savage.

I always wonder when they say &#x27;Same work&#x27; do they mean same output, or same job title? I&#x27;ve seen this argued both ways in the US and have no idea what to believe anymore.

It hardly seems like a fair measure of pay gap if you don&#x27;t take into account disparities in promotions.<p>At the same level, company and function the pay gap is small. Yet, women are stuck in lower-ranked positions in greater proportion for some reason.

This rigged need to prove the same work is being paid the same always rings pretty hollow for me.<p>In my first corporate job I was the most technical employee by far, I did the work of far senior roles because my managers were wise to use a lot of my technical skill to get complex work done all the while having HR tell me I didn&#x27;t have enough years and experience to have the higher paying job title.<p>Just because someone has the job title they have and the pay to go with it often has nothing to do with the work they do.<p>In both directions.

Perhaps companies who hire more women are companies that pay less generally. They are hiring women because they are cheaper.<p>Perhaps jobs that pay less are less attractive to men who can be better paid at some other job, so these jobs attract more women.<p>If the above is true, then there is indeed a &quot;pay gap&quot;, but it is not the consequence of any systemic sexism.

Relevant remark by John Carmack (ignore the poor YouTube title): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vzmbW4ueGdg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vzmbW4ueGdg</a>

If you reached limit of article views, here is the link to google around the soft pay wall:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=Are+women+paid+less+than+men+for+the+same+work" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=Are+women+paid+less+than+men...</a><p>(Click on first link from economist.com)

How unsurprising. Firstly, for most professions there are plenty of resources documenting what typical salaries are for degree&#x2F;experience, so if you end up making less than that, well that seems like that is on you.<p>It flies in the face of economic common sense that if you could hire an equally skilled women and they would consistently accept 75% the pay as a man, then companies would have taken advantage of that fact. Just like they do with lower paid immigrant workers.

Generally speaking the problem isn&#x27;t that <i>individuals</i> get paid less.<p>It&#x27;s systemic issues - which are harder to fix.<p>For example: women <i>as a whole</i> are less likely to be in higher paying jobs in STEM roles. Or CEOs. Or high level Politicians. Why? Multiple reasons but the overall point is there is <i>institutional</i> and <i>social</i> pressure (mostly unconscious or learned) for women to avoid those fields.<p>So the average gets lowered.<p>This is also true of socially acceptable behaviors causing issues: women are usually less comfortable pushing for raises for example. Or negotiating for a higher initial salary after an interview.<p>So the average gets lower.<p>Then we get to what is the more contentious issue (at least… in places like HN) - community behavior. It&#x27;s inarguable that many STEM fields have a very hostile default behavior that women (even if it&#x27;s not directed at them) find unpleasant enough to avoid. The level of drop outs of women in tech due to this is very high.<p>This is the point that usually is the &quot;sexism in tech&quot; conversation.<p>But arguably that&#x27;s just a symptom of the previous problems.

I think the whole issue of &quot;unequal pay&quot; seems very made-up and political and does not make any sense at all, at least in any way anyone can do anything about it... bear with me while I try to explain it.<p>Lets say there are differences in how much certain demographics of people get paid over another. Lets take short vs tall people or black vs white or with blood groups positive vs negative. Lets say that there is a difference in average pay for people with positive blood groups vs negative blood groups. So what? It could be completely arbitrary or there could be an underlying cause that makes employers pay one type of blood group over another. Either way, why should an employer pay any more than what they think the position is worth as long as someone is willing to voluntarily work for that amount of money? What&#x27;s in it for any employer to pay more than the employee negotiated to work for?

I&#x27;m curious if they also included benefits and likelihood of men vs women leaving the company or going on sick or extended maternity&#x2F;paternity leave.<p>I know I have my own anecdotes about this, but I&#x27;d like to see some hard data.

does anyone have any studies on breaking this down further to pay per hour? as men generally are seen as working more hours which could lead to why they get more pay too

Accounting for all job differences is a hell of a claim.

Before all the thought experiments, which I&#x27;m sure will ensue below, I just want to ask. Is it possible that men and women are actually different?<p>(The `flag` button above to mod this comment into oblivion.)

&gt; <i></i>Although the average woman’s salary in Britain is 29% lower than the average man’s, the bulk of that gap results from differences in rank within companies, firms’ overall compensation rates and the nature of the tasks a job requires.<i></i><p>If Software Engineer II makes less than Software Engineer III, and women of equivalent skill and experience to men have a significantly higher chance of being Software Engineer II than III, then the wage gap exists for &quot;the same work&quot;.<p>This is particularly difficult to measure, but still possible with proper diligence, because rank throughout a career is a compounding advantage.<p>P.S. disable javascript to get past the paywall

Is anyone aware of the existence of similar data for the US?

Wow, the globalist Economist saying that is really something.

This whole debate about gender pay is based on the flawed assumption that marriage is not an integral part of human society. Humanity has functioned since time immemorial with marriage as a fundamental human institution. Sure, it&#x27;s not honored in many cases, but by and large it is a part of human social fabric. Today, however, we are experimenting with disposing of time tested marital roles, instead expecting both spouses to do the same things. Business 101 would instruct you to pick a partner with an opposite skill set from what you have and each work on what they are good at. Yet today we reduce efficiency by having both man and woman split both tasks, or worse, do the task both by him or herself.<p>It&#x27;s time that we start considering the family as a unit again.

The whole point is that society systematically undervaluing women-dominated professions <i>is sexism.</i> It makes sense that the pay gap disappears when the job differences go away, because the job differences <i>are</i> the pay gap.<p>A good example is teaching. Teaching is an incredibly valuable job. It&#x27;s also dominated by women. It also happens to be way, way underpaid.<p>It embarrasses me to see this on HN.

When adjusted for factors such as hiatuses for raising kids, the answer is &#x27;no.&#x27;

The trick to advancing your cause, is to do more than whine incessantly about it.

In other words, &quot;When we are looking to eliminate pay gap from data, job differences seems to be the right place to look&quot;.