Equal efforts = unequal salaries... Wtf?!

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
But suppose men and women are equally qualified for a particular job. Men are commanding $60,000 for the exact same job with the exact same qualifications, and women are getting $40,000.

This means that a company that institutes a police to hire more women will reduce their payroll expenses by $20,000 for every woman they hire, with no loss in work output. Even if they don’t have a policy of hiring women, if they advertise the job as paying $40,000, no men would bother to apply since they can make $60,000 at other companies, but women are just as happy to work at either company.
[/QUOTE]

But why are women satisfied, in this hypothetical case, with working for 20 grand less a year than the men, if they are essentially doing the exact same thing? We’re not talking about pennies here. I’m getting the vibe from these posts that it is the collective fault of all the women on the job market that they have “menial” pay whereas the men get rewarded because they’re 1) not satisfied with the status quo and 2) they’re more apt to negotiate their salaries.

42

There were some cases a few years ago dealing primarily with women in partnership situations - namely law firms and accounting firms. Women who didn’t have children and worked the same long hours were still less likely to make partner (and therefore make more money) than men (even if the men married and had children). Now, because the women didn’t make partner, it isn’t a fair salary comparison - partners make more money. But the discrimination was there. As I recall it was a study on a national level, but this would have been fifteen years ago, its possible this disparity is gone now as well.

Twenty years ago I was one of six people doing a job. The three women all made less than the three men. Two of the women had college degrees, none of the men did. Two of the women had more experience than any of the men, and one of the women had more experience than the least experienced man…but ALL the men made more than the highest paid woman. When I complained, I was told “women go on materity leave” (I wasn’t married and wasn’t planning on having kids in the near future - one of the women was in her 50s) and after that “men have families to support” (one single gay man, one single straight man in the group).

Now, that was long ago, at a company that lost age and race discrimination suits while I was there. But, it was also when the same arguments about “different jobs” and “mommy tracking” were starting to be made and statistics were showing job for job, the wage gap was minimal at best. Which is sort of the issue with stats - if the problem isn’t pervasive, the individual cases can get lost in the stats - but that doesn’t really make any difference when you are the one working for a company that wage discriminates. I’ve no doubt that SOMEWHERE wage discrimination based on gender still exists. I’ve no doubt that its gotten a hell of a lot better than it was 30-40 years ago and seems to be the exception (in the U.S.) now.

43

[QUOTE=indierock82]
But why are women satisfied, in this hypothetical case, with working for 20 grand less a year than the men, if they are essentially doing the exact same thing? We’re not talking about pennies here. I’m getting the vibe from these posts that it is the collective fault of all the women on the job market that they have “menial” pay whereas the men get rewarded because they’re 1) not satisfied with the status quo and 2) they’re more apt to negotiate their salaries.
[/QUOTE]

Of course in real life women aren’t “satisfied” to be making less.

I was presented with a hypothetical. In an industry, men are given a high salary, women are given a low salary for the exact same work with the exact same qualifications. And the argument was that women would have no leverage to change this, they would be forced to accept lower paying jobs, and men would always make more money.

But you don’t seem to understand my point.

If there is a marketplace where men are paid a premium for doing the exact same work, any company that refuses to pay that premium will save a lot of money and get the exact same work done. This means that pretty soon almost every company will refuse to pay the premium and will try to hire only women. And what this means is that the labor market for these qualified women will be tighter, and companies find it more difficult to hire women for $40,000 since every other company is scrambling to hire these people who do the same work for less pay. And this means that wages for women go up, one company decides to offer women $41,000 instead of $40,000 to attract workers away from the other companies. And then $42,000, since making an extra $18,000 in profit is better than hiring a man for $60,000 and making nothing, although not as good as making $20,000 in extra profit.

And suddenly men start to find themselves less desireable, and companies find that the men who were fired from their $60,000 jobs when the company hired $40,000 women come back and offer to work for $59,000, then $58,000.

You see how this works? This is simple economics. Eventually women’s salaries and men’s salaries will converge at exactly equal salaries, because companies generally aren’t interested in paying premiums to certain classes of employees if other classes will do the exact same job for less money. The pay gap will disappear, assuming management at the company cares about making money.

Now, note that this is not always the case. Sometimes you have people making hiring decisions who DON’T care, and who are able to indulge their predjudices freely, because they aren’t held accountable for various reasons.

How many companies do you really think exist, where the hiring manager sits down and looks at two resumes of two equally qualified people, one willing to take the job for $60,000 and the other for $40,000, and they pick the guy who wants the $60,000 salary? Yes, companies pay higher wages for employees with better qualifications, but do they pay higher wages for no good reason? And note that even if some companies really do irrationally pay certain classes of employees more than they have to, that just makes the other classes more desireable to the remaining companies.

This is simple econ 101 supply and demand stuff here.

44

No, I am not a half-wit that doesn’t understand economics, but I might lack in understanding all the nuances. But the hypothetical you’ve presented is not clear-cut case of supply and demand. I’m trying to figure out why there are certain companies that would originally pay this premium to have men work there. Note that I do understand that this undesirable for any company in the long run because their competitors can just hire labor that would do the same job for the same salary, minus the premium of course. And in turn the demand for women that are willing to work for x dollars/year without premium rockets. Companies will try and lure women to their respective workplaces by raising the initial salary gradually, because anything lower than what they were offering the men is still profit.
Sorry if I repeated everything you said, but I still don’t see why there is a higher economic value placed on men in the first place. Maybe I’m completely missing the point here, but I’m really trying to understand. But then again, I don’t think I’ve missed it considering some of the posts on the board: ie, the scandal in the UK and Dangerosas experience.

45

For a number of reasons -[ul][li]Women tend to take time off for child rearing more than men do[]Entrenched sexism, especially historically[]Women are under-represented in jobs that are dangerous, dirty, or involve heavy lifting (as Sam Stone points out)[*]Women tend to be under-represented in well-paying but math-intensive jobs like engineering, because on average women represent a smaller percentage of the pool of people who are good at math (as measured by things like SAT scores) [/ul][/li]
Regards,
Shodan

46

Well, the higher economic value placed on men was due to sexism, I suppose. It certainly is true that in the past both formal and informal barriers prevented women (and blacks, and so on) from taking certain jobs, and perhaps disbelief that the few women who did get those jobs really were “just as qualified” as a man led to lower salaries.

Of course the real problem is comparing qualifications. Some jobs like government or union jobs have pretty rigid rules tying salary to seniority and education. But that wouldn’t work in the computer industry. So comparing senority and education between developers doesn’t differentiate between those who work harder, those who are creative, those who play well with others, and so forth and so on. Or upper management jobs, and so forth and so on. Or any other job that includes a lot of intangible work.

And of course, it was a lot harder in the past for women to get those qualifications. Nowadays women are a majority of medical school graduates, in the past medical schools wouldn’t consider women applicants. So even if a hospital would have hired a woman doctor, even if patients would have accepted a woman doctor, there just weren’t many women doctors available for hire.

47

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
Well, the higher economic value placed on men was due to sexism, I suppose. It certainly is true that in the past both formal and informal barriers prevented women (and blacks, and so on) from taking certain jobs, and perhaps disbelief that the few women who did get those jobs really were “just as qualified” as a man led to lower salaries.

Of course the real problem is comparing qualifications. Some jobs like government or union jobs have pretty rigid rules tying salary to seniority and education. But that wouldn’t work in the computer industry. So comparing senority and education between developers doesn’t differentiate between those who work harder, those who are creative, those who play well with others, and so forth and so on. Or upper management jobs, and so forth and so on. Or any other job that includes a lot of intangible work.

And of course, it was a lot harder in the past for women to get those qualifications. Nowadays women are a majority of medical school graduates, in the past medical schools wouldn’t consider women applicants. So even if a hospital would have hired a woman doctor, even if patients would have accepted a woman doctor, there just weren’t many women doctors available for hire.
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I can’t really see it happening nowadays. You can’t compare the two because women aren’t always in the same jobs as men. Some jobs are dominated by women and a lot of those tend to be lower paying. Now women CEOs get paid as much as men, I’m sure. I can’t imagine female lawyers, or doctors, or engineers getting paid less. University professors, etc. I think we are probably doing pretty well in such areas. However, women dominate a lot of fields like teaching (K-12) and nursing, etc. I think that is where the disparity comes from. Now you might say that some women are overlooked for promotion, which is discrimination, and with promotion comes more money. I think you could make a valid point there, but probably not with regards to salaries alone.

48

Well, CEO is one of those jobs were it’s pretty tricky to compare qualifications. And sexism can still be a factor, but where does the sexism come from?

I can imagine a businesses where the management might be happy to hire female sales staff, but the clients respond better to male sales staff. If salary is based on sales then men are going to make higher salaries in that position, even if on paper qualifications are exactly equal. But since there is an objective basis for the different levels of compensation then the company policy is justified even if it results in women making less.

We have to be very careful to distinguish between exactly equal qualifications, and average salaries. Take for instance High School math teachers. Suppose we found that male High School math teachers across the country make a higher average salary than femal High School math teachers. But…do men have an average higher seniority? Do they have an average higher education level? Does this factor in religious private schools that have people with a religious calling to teach, who might have only a nominal salary? Does it factor in location? Public schools only, or private? And so on and so forth.

We might eventually come to the conclusion that sexist hiring policies were the only remaining explanation for the wage disparity, but even in the exact same job there are all sorts of confounding factors.

49

[QUOTE=Dangerosa]
Twenty years ago I was one of six people doing a job. The three women all made less than the three men. When I complained, I was told…
[/QUOTE]

What you describe is illegal and shouldnt happen-- but what you tried to do about it gives away the reason that it happens: all you did is “complain”. You didn’t quit.
Many women are willing to work for less , because their salary is the extra icing for the family, not the main income. (this was especially true 20-30 years ago)They don’t feel the social pressure to be the breadwinner, and they are content to have a good job with a good but not great salary. Many men are not content with that, so they demand a raise, or ask for a higher starting salary, and if not, they quit.
It may not be fair, but it’s part of human nature. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and you didn’t squeak enough.
(no , it was not fair, and no, I don’t think you should blame yourself, and no I don’t think companies should pay women less. But companies do pay less to people who don’t squeak. That’s why so many jobs are advertised with "please include your salary requirements in your resume)

50

[QUOTE=Shodan]
Women tend to be under-represented in well-paying but math-intensive jobs like engineering, because on average women represent a smaller percentage of the pool of people who are good at math (as measured by things like SAT scores)

Regards,
Shodan
[/QUOTE]

Wow, wait… what?! Is that legit? I mean at some point one has to wonder how much the SATs really convey the truth. But, be it as it may, I am shocked by those numbers.

51

Is it fair? It simply is.

Why do women earn less? They ask for less. Lisa Barron at UC Irvine does research on this subject:

Put simply, women do a poor job of negotiating their salaries.

Now, there is also a potential fallacy in the question - some data shows that women do NOT earn less, once the information has been parsed.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/050321/21john.htm

52

I have no cite, but have seen it frequently stated that women tend to be more likely to “re-invent” themselves. Beyond that, married couples are more likely to move to pursue the man’s career goals, than the woman’s. And women DO quit to raise children more frequently than men.

All of these things lead to higher turn over in the female working population than the male population. Leaving more women in the position of “starting over” in their careers than men.

Not a complete explanation by any means, but I’m convinced it is a factor.

53

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]

Of course, there is an alternative explanation - that black people were always capable of doing the same work as white people but companies simply chose, across the board, not to hire them for the higher level jobs despite their ability.

[/QUOTE]

Actually, there’s an even better alternative explanation. Most, but not all, employers were racist. The non-racist employers (or, at least those whose racism lost out to their greed), started hiring minorities in order to outcompete their competitors, since they could get the same results for less pay. This upset the racist majority, who then used the force of government to delay the shift to equality that the free market would have eventually brought about. Walter Williams discusses this in South Africa’s War Against Capitalism.

I don’t know offhand of any books discussing the phenomenon in the American south, but it’s discussed at length in this podcast. Believe it or not, the free market actually does do a pretty good job of ironing out discrimination.

54

[QUOTE=Shagnasty]
If you have ever worked for a larger company, you will see why such a scenario is unlikely in terms of discrimination. Salaries are cross-checked and negotiated with multiple sources very step of the way beginning with the starting salary. Big companies have all kinds of rules and procedures for this type of thing with salary consultants sometimes being brought in to make sure everything is the way it should be. Males would need to consistently get better performance reviews over time to even pull ahead a little and that doesn’t happen in my experience.
[/QUOTE]
But even the starting salaries chart has ranges and perhaps, as mentioned above, men are more likely to negotiate for the higher end of the range. Then even equal percentage increases will result in the male salary pulling forward more in absolute terms.

[QUOTE=indierock82]
Nobody in this day and age actually believes that women work less or less efficiently than men.
[/QUOTE]
No, but as mentioned, women may be more likely to take time off around a birth, and re-enter the market at a lower level. Or they may be more likely to be the default partner to take personal time when kids are sick or have other obligations.

55

[QUOTE=indierock82]
Or overweight people?
[/QUOTE]
I believe it has been shown that better-looking people do get better salaries than those thought unattractive, lazy, and other negatives associated with overweight people.

Summary of study here

56

[QUOTE=indierock82]
Wow, wait… what?! Is that legit? I mean at some point one has to wonder how much the SATs really convey the truth. But, be it as it may, I am shocked by those numbers.
[/QUOTE]

What else would convey the truth, other than a test consisting of math problems? :dubious:

At the really high end of the spectrum, things look even worse. Men’s average may not be much higher, but they tend slightly more to the extremes in both directions. That means that when you’re starting to look for the top 100 mathematicians in the country, or the top 10, it’s getting very unlikely that you’ll find any women in the group at all.

Explanation.

57

[QUOTE=chappachula]
What you describe is illegal and shouldnt happen-- but what you tried to do about it gives away the reason that it happens: all you did is “complain”. You didn’t quit.
Many women are willing to work for less , because their salary is the extra icing for the family, not the main income. (this was especially true 20-30 years ago)They don’t feel the social pressure to be the breadwinner, and they are content to have a good job with a good but not great salary. Many men are not content with that, so they demand a raise, or ask for a higher starting salary, and if not, they quit.
It may not be fair, but it’s part of human nature. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and you didn’t squeak enough.
(no , it was not fair, and no, I don’t think you should blame yourself, and no I don’t think companies should pay women less. But companies do pay less to people who don’t squeak. That’s why so many jobs are advertised with "please include your salary requirements in your resume)
[/QUOTE]

Actually, I quit and filed an action with the EEOC.

58

[QUOTE=Opus1]
Actually, there’s an even better alternative explanation. Most, but not all, employers were racist. The non-racist employers (or, at least those whose racism lost out to their greed), started hiring minorities in order to outcompete their competitors, since they could get the same results for less pay. This upset the racist majority, who then used the force of government to delay the shift to equality that the free market would have eventually brought about.
[/QUOTE]

I am reminded here of the tale of integration in Major League Baseball. It’s well known that the first black ballplayer in modern baseball history was Jackie Robinson, who joined the Dodgers in 1947.

What’s not as well known is that just a few years prior, Bill Veeck had made a bid to purchase the troubled Philadelphia Phillies, who at that time were owned by MLB and essentially the sports equivalent of wards of the state. Veeck planned, or it is alleged he planned - it’s never really been clear - to stock the Phillies with Negro League stars (there wasn’t any formal rule against black players; it was a gentleman’s agreement.) This would have more or less instantly made the Phillies the greatest baseball team in history; he would have had a team with five to ten Hall of Famers and at least a dozen or more legitimate major league star level ballplayers. It would have been like a European club team today having the Brazilian national squad as their roster.

His purchase was quietly blocked. The other owners simply didn’t want black players upsetting the balance of power. Veeck did, some years later, sign the first black to ever play for an American League team, Larry Doby.

Dunno if that’s relevant, but I do love baseball-related parallels.

59

[QUOTE=indierock82]
Wow, wait… what?! Is that legit? I mean at some point one has to wonder how much the SATs really convey the truth. But, be it as it may, I am shocked by those numbers.
[/QUOTE]

What Malacandra says.

Also, SAT scores are a pretty good predictor of success in university. And a lot of engineering and other math-heavy professions require a university degree.

It’s not politically correct to say it, but men do better at math and spatial relationships. Women, on average, have better verbal skills.

You really didn’t know that?

Lots of laws discriminating against (for example) blacks were put in to prevent blacks from grabbing jobs from protected white folks. Unions were a moving force in imposing those kinds of rules - they wanted to prevent blacks from under-bidding on wages.

Regards,
Shodan

60

[QUOTE=Shodan]
What Malacandra says.

Also, SAT scores are a pretty good predictor of success in university. And a lot of engineering and other math-heavy professions require a university degree.

It’s not politically correct to say it, but men do better at math and spatial relationships. Women, on average, have better verbal skills.

[/QUOTE]

There’s also a correlation with a lack of interest that may or may not be tied to math and spatial relationship skills. In a lot of universities, there are extra incentives for women to be in math, science, and engineering fields; you can get extra scholarship money, and there is more support for women in these fields because they are underrepresented minorities. However, whether it be that society does not encourage women enough to go into these fields (hard to prove in today’s society where women are encouraged to be whatever they want) or that they’re not as capable as men, a lot of women just don’t enter the fields or stay in them through graduation.