# Gender Pay Gap **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 20, 2019, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255 "2019-05-20T20:50:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/21 "2019-05-20T23:07:56Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > This is a huge hijack. If you want to talk about teacher pay, I am happy to do that, but this thread is not the place for it. You introduced teacher pay and the justification of paying teachers with more degrees and tenure higher pay. I didn’t. But considering that gender pay difference in teaching is probably miniscule compared to the broader economy. I agree we shouldn’t let the education system detract from this discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/22 "2019-05-20T23:10:43Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > So do men have more potential because they are less likely, statistically, to need to take maternity leave or leave to stay home with kids? I would say no. Again, potential should be seen through the employees current performance. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/23 "2019-05-20T23:13:07Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > You introduced teacher pay and the justification of paying teachers with more degrees and tenure higher pay. I didn’t. > > But considering that gender pay difference in teaching is probably miniscule compared to the broader economy. I agree we shouldn’t let the education system detract from this discussion. I didn’t. rsat3acr did. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/24 "2019-05-20T23:14:07Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …“value to society” is measured only by how much money people get paid? Mothers objectively have less value than politicians? This is by definition? Can you share that definition with us? Mothers are volunteers. In actual fact the notion that wages accurately reflect value is a complete and total lie, as can be evinced by pretty much everything. No CEO produces that much value; no unpaid intern produces that little. Wages are really just price stickers on labor, and labor is priced based on free market forces modified by price fixing and organizational bureaucracy. When people (or an entire career) are underpaid relative to the value they provide their employer it’s because market forces allow their employer to get away with it: somebody else is willing to do the job for less. Higher paid positions are higher-paid merely because the people working in that field _expect_ a higher pay, and the employers can’t reliably find competent people to work in (and stay in) those jobs for a lower wage - or feel it’s not worth their bother to fire all their current people and hire (and train) potentially-incompetent scabs. If women are getting paid less than men for comparable work in a comparable field, the cause is (in my guesstimation) probably a combination of men preferring to hire men and thus having a lower interest in hiring (or promoting) female workers - and of women realizing that the hiring market is skewed against them and thus lowering their expectations - which employers are happy to take advantage of. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/25 "2019-05-20T23:14:20Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/26 "2019-05-20T23:19:46Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Mothers are volunteers. …when measuring “value to society” why would that matter? ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/27 "2019-05-20T23:20:42Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > If women are getting paid less than men for comparable work in a comparable field, the cause is (in my guesstimation) probably a combination of men preferring to hire men and thus having a lower interest in hiring (or promoting) female workers - and of women realizing that the hiring market is skewed against them and thus lowering their expectations - which employers are happy to take advantage of. I agree with this, as for why it continues to happen. It is in the best interest of companies to pay for performance, and it is statistically non-plausible to believe that men are higher performers across the board than women. Managers that continue to inappropriately pay and not promote women that are higher performers should be fired. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/28 "2019-05-20T23:22:20Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …“value to society” is measured only by how much money people get paid? Mothers objectively have less value than politicians? This is by definition? Can you share that definition with us? Yes, if a given profession gets paid more, society, more accurately the economy, values that work more. The delta is calculated by subtracting one from the other. Pricing is one of the greatest ways to signal value. > [@MandaJo](#): > > So do men have more potential because they are less likely, statistically, to need to take maternity leave or leave to stay home with kids? [Maybe?](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap-is-largely-because-of-motherhood.html) > [@](#): > > When men and women finish school and start working, they’re paid pretty much equally. But a gender pay gap soon appears, and it grows significantly over the next two decades. > > So what changes? The answer can be found by looking at when the pay gap widens most sharply. It’s the late 20s to mid-30s, according to two new studies — in other words, when many women have children. Unmarried women without children continue to earn closer to what men do. > > The big reason that having children, and even marrying in the first place, hurts women’s pay relative to men’s is that the division of labor at home is still unequal, even when both spouses work full time. That’s especially true for college-educated women in high-earning occupations: Children are particularly damaging to their careers. If there was no concern whatsoever about equality, morality, or you know, following the law, it wouldn’t make sense to hire anyone who gets extra legal protection for things like maternity, protected classes, reasonable accommodations, etc. All of those things make those employees more expensive to hire. I had a boss once tell me that when he hires, people with the 3 Ms are the best employees - Married, Mormon, with a Mortgage. I was kind of shocked he’d say that out loud. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/29 "2019-05-20T23:24:53Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …when measuring “value to society” why would that matter? Because “value to society” has precisely nothing to do with how much people get paid. Plus, who exactly would the mother’s employer be? I’m thinking, herself. She’s self-employed. The average mother presumably sets her ‘wages’ (frivolous spending money) and ‘benefits’ (bonbons in the bathtub time) the same way any other self-employed person of her level of responsibilty and organizational acumen would. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/30 "2019-05-20T23:31:37Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > [Maybe?](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap-is-largely-because-of-motherhood.html) > > If there was no concern whatsoever about equality, morality, or you know, following the law, it wouldn’t make sense to hire anyone who gets extra legal protection for things like maternity, protected classes, reasonable accommodations, etc. All of those things make those employees more expensive to hire. I had a boss once tell me that when he hires, people with the 3 Ms are the best employees - Married, Mormon, with a Mortgage. I was kind of shocked he’d say that out loud. How do you feel about equality, morality, and following the law? You say you were surprised he’d “say that out loud”, which implies the sentiment didn’t surprise you, just the public expression of it. When you hire people, do you avoid hiring women you judge likely to need maternity leave in the future? Would you approve of an employer who did? ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/31 "2019-05-20T23:43:18Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > How do you feel about equality, morality, and following the law? You say you were surprised he’d “say that out loud”, which implies the sentiment didn’t surprise you, just the public expression of it. When you hire people, do you avoid hiring women you judge likely to need maternity leave in the future? Would you approve of an employer who did? Of course not. I think it’s wrong, not to mention illegal. I’ve worked in a lot of big companies and seen quite a bit of activity that is questionable. Even where this even happened the workforce was pretty evenly distributed by gender, and ethnicity so I can’t say if that individual expression translated into hiring decisions. It was my first job after college so I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. Now that I’m further in my career, I have hired many dozens of people and I can’t say it’s ever been a consideration for me. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/32 "2019-05-20T23:45:41Z")
Let’s talk tenure and education. For tenure, assume that the starting pay rate is static after accounting for inflation, and that decent performers get a 1% raise per year, You’re doing pay review with two people, one with 1 year tenure and another with five years. The five year person makes 4% more (more after compounding) than the one year person. How do you propose to level this? Give the 1 year person a whopper? Take money away from the five year person? As for education, typically those with more education get hired into higher level jobs. But if that does not happen, and you don’t give a premium for a Masters, for instance, all the people with Masters are going to go to your competitors. I’ve never done salary review at a place where degrees count after hiring, but they sure as hell count at hiring, and the increment in pay stays around for a long, long time. As for accurately measuring performance, I can only think you’ve never been too involved in performance reviews. I’ve done some that made me feel good - but I’ve also done some that made me feel dirty afterwards. In fact one was bad enough that I started looking for a new job. This was not my review - this was being involved, as a manager, in reviewing the employees in our department. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/33 "2019-05-20T23:51:10Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Because “value to society” has precisely nothing to do with **how much people get paid.** …you should be telling Bone that, not me, as he is arguing precisely this. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/34 "2019-05-20T23:58:29Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …you should be telling Bone that, not me, as he is arguing precisely this. Yeah, I noticed that, but you’re the one who actually asked me, so you got the love. The notion that wages are representative of value to society is absurd, and I’d be happy to baselessly assert that to anybody who asks. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2019, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/35 "2019-05-20T23:58:31Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Let’s talk tenure and education. > For tenure, assume that the starting pay rate is static after accounting for inflation, and that decent performers get a 1% raise per year, > You’re doing pay review with two people, one with 1 year tenure and another with five years. The five year person makes 4% more (more after compounding) than the one year person. How do you propose to level this? Give the 1 year person a whopper? Take money away from the five year person? > > As for education, typically those with more education get hired into higher level jobs. But if that does not happen, and you don’t give a premium for a Masters, for instance, all the people with Masters are going to go to your competitors. > I’ve never done salary review at a place where degrees count after hiring, but they sure as hell count at hiring, and the increment in pay stays around for a long, long time. > As for accurately measuring performance, I can only think you’ve never been too involved in performance reviews. I’ve done some that made me feel good - but I’ve also done some that made me feel dirty afterwards. In fact one was bad enough that I started looking for a new job. This was not my review - this was being involved, as a manager, in reviewing the employees in our department. Tenure: If the two individuals have the exact same job, then employee #2 would be hired in at the same salary in year 4 that employee #1 has, since that’s the current market for that role and job. So when the time came in year 5 to consider raises, then performance of both would be considered. Education: If the person with the Masters degree doesn’t merit a more differentiating role with a higher comp, then I don’t care if my competitor hires them. Degrees alone shouldn’t get you higher pay. A person with a higher degree should be capable of more responsibility, the ability to create more value. If they can’t, they shouldn’t get higher pay. I am responsible for leading over 200 people around the world at my company. I am very capable of conducting and evaluating performance reviews. I am more critical of supervisors and other leaders of people in my expectations of them. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2019, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/36 "2019-05-21T00:07:44Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > Yes, if a given profession gets paid more, society, more accurately the economy, values that work more. …“society” and “the economy” are two very different things. You are making a different argument now. Are you talking about “value to society” or “value to the economy?” Can you concede that “value to society” is poorly measured by how much people are paid? > [@](#): > > The delta is calculated by subtracting one from the other.\*\* Pricing is one of the greatest ways to signal value.\*\* Except that it isn’t. It signals what **the people who have the money and have the power to employ people** value, not society and not the economy. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2019, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/37 "2019-05-21T00:13:02Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Yeah, I noticed that, but you’re the one who actually asked me, so you got the love. …I asked you because you challenged me. It seems clear now thought that your entire point had absolutely nothing to do with what I said. > [@](#): > > The notion that wages are representative of value to society is absurd, and I’d be happy to baselessly assert that to anybody who asks. I didn’t ask you anything but you felt the need to challenge me anyway. So please, feel free to challenge people that “don’t ask you anything”, because you’ve demonstrated you are perfectly capable of doing that. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2019, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/38 "2019-05-21T00:18:49Z")
There are few cases where women are paid less than men for performing equal work, and most of it is clustered at the lower end of the economic scale. It accounts for very little of the overall difference in pay for men and women. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2019, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/39 "2019-05-21T00:40:39Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > There are few cases where women are paid less than men for **performing equal work** , and most of it is clustered at the lower end of the economic scale. It accounts for very little of the overall difference in pay for men and women. …Hollywood movies stars are not clustered at the “lower end of the economic scale” and women are paid less than men not because they don’t perform “equal work” (they often do) : but because of their perceived “value” to a production. When the actors came into reshoot scenes for “All the Money in the world” Michelle Williams (who was top billed) got paid a $1000: her co-star Marc Wahlberg got paid [1.5 millions dollars](https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/01/09/exclusive-wahlberg-paid-1-5-m-all-money-reshoot-williams-got-less-than-1-000/1018351001/). And they both had the same agent. So I don’t think your premise holds water. But if you’d like to make a case for it feel free to present some evidence. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2019, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255/40 "2019-05-21T01:18:02Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …“society” and “the economy” are two very different things. You are making a different argument now. Are you talking about “value to society” or “value to the economy?” Can you concede that “value to society” is poorly measured by how much people are paid? > > Except that it isn’t. It signals what **the people who have the money and have the power to employ people** value, not society and not the economy. I’m using the terms synonymously, but I more mean the economy. Society was the word choice I was responding to so I mirrored it. Feel free to substitute the economy. I guess we’ll have to disagree on what money represents then. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-pay-gap/834255.md?page=3)