# How much will the pay differences between men and women change? Or will it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 7, 2018, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028 "2018-01-07T04:31:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/21 "2018-01-08T22:59:14Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I disagree. > > If work was just trying to punch a wall or something, then I would expect more men would succeed, because they’d be willing to smash up their hands to be impress others and get girls. Sure. > But modern work is (usually) much more complicated, and in most cases a desire to impress others is insufficient to even get you through the day, let alone to the very top: you have to develop a passion for the work itself. > > I’m fortunate enough to work in a 50:50 gender split office, and senior management is equally split too. When I look at those people who got the senior positions I don’t see a personality of wanting to show off; they’re people who really like what they do and are very disciplined. I don’t know if you understood my argument. My argument was that for a man, increasing your socioeconomic status increases your mating odds. For women, if anything it can decrease them assuming a woman wants a man of equal or higher SES. If she has high SES, then her pool of potential mates is smaller and more competitive. In a way, it is like being upset that the rates of anorexia are not 50/50 between the genders, or being upset that men commit more serious crimes than women (men commit serious crimes to obtain SES in the form of wealth and reputation to increase their mating odds). Part of it is just the way we are wired by evolution. Men’s reproductive success is predicated on socioeconomic status more than womens. Women’s reproductive success is predicated more heavily on appearance than mens. As a result, you’d expect on average for men to care more about their SES and women to care more about their appearance. So men have higher SES (and higher violent crime rates), women have higher rates of eating disorders. It is what it is. Granted, any woman who wants to succeed should be given the opportunity w/o discrimination. But I don’t know what role discrimination plays in women earning less. Women nowadays earn about 50% more tertiary degrees than men (~150 female degrees for every ~100 male degrees), so they can’t be that oppressed. As the graph I posted show, women only work 44% of all hours (compared to 56% for men) and women only make up 8% of workplace deaths compared to 92% for men. If women want to be paid equally, those numbers have to become 50/50. Men are also more likely to study lucrative vocations in college or training than women are. > **[Looking for a lucrative major? Follow the men.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/18/the-most-lucrative-college-majors-for-men-and-women-charted/?utm_term=.25e9446be0ca)** > > How the majors women choose may affect their earnings Much of the pay gap is due to women working shorter hours at safer, less lucrative jobs. I don’t know if that can be socialized or legislated out. I don’t know what role sexism or oppression of women plays in the modern economy. I’m sure it plays a role, but I don’t know what. My point is that, as a class of people, men have more rewards for pursuing high socioeconomic status than women do (men’s mating lives see more rewards than women’s do for having high SES, a woman as ugly as Trump couldn’t say ‘I’m rich and famous’ to attract high quality mates the way a man like Trump can use his SES to compensate for his poor looks), so on average men will have higher socioeconomic status. Women now make up 50% of medical students, and good for them. So maybe I’m wrong. But in a field like nurse anesthesiology, over 40% of them are men despite men making up less than 10% of all nurses. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/22 "2018-01-08T23:33:00Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Point here is that, for whatever reason, in our culture (here in Canada and presumably also in the US) - they haven’t. In contrast to these other countries, in these countries women tend to, for whatever reason, work less and interact with family more than men – or at least, that is the case in the legal profession. > > Whether they merely “want” or are “required” (by cultural or other factors) to work less, it seems to me, is debatable. > > (Note that this doesn’t imply leaving the workplace altogether - just not doing the stuff required to make _partnership_. If you deal with in-house counsel, you quickly find out that a majority are female.) > > Is the “fix” then to make them do so - whether they want to or not? To create the “necessity” you speak of? It’s sort of a “which comes first the chicken or the egg problem?” Do women earn less because they work fewer hours and do more of the family work or do they do more of the family work and work fewer hours because they already earn less ? Do they really want to take on the family work and work fewer hours- or is it that too few men are willing to share the work? Because this > [@](#): > > women as well as men would have to choose a life in which taking an active role in raising one’s family was more secondary is not actually true. It would also work if it was socially unacceptable for men to expect to have a family while not being actively involved in family life. Which would very likely be the most effective way to change the nature of partnership. Most men (like most women) want to have a family - and if they had to choose between a single-minded focus on work or having a family, I suspect most would choose the family. Enough of them do that, and it will change the jobs that currently don’t allow for family life. But right now, men really don’t have to choose- it’s socially acceptable for them to focus on their career and leave the home front to their wife in a way that it is not socially acceptable for women to do. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/23 "2018-01-09T01:24:13Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > As far as I know, I haven’t said I knew what the “fix” would be - except to point out that in the specific case of legal partnership, there isn’t really a good “fix”. . When you said, “In order to redress this balance, so that you get an equality in pay, you’d have to create an equality of choices - that is, women as well as men would have to choose a life in which taking an active role in raising one’s family was more secondary.” Is “redressing this balance” not a proposed solution? > [@](#): > > Aren’t these two sentences - somewhat contradictory? Nope. You’re insisting women have a choice: put family first and make less money or put work first and make more money. I’m saying when men put work first, women don’t GET a choice. And Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden recognize that family over work is a necessity, not a (bogus) choice, so they’ve set up labor laws that impel men AND women to put family over work. > [@](#): > > Point here is that, for whatever reason, in our culture (here in Canada and presumably also in the US) - they haven’t. In contrast to these other countries, in these countries women tend to,\*\* for whatever reason\*\*, work less and interact with family more than men – or at least, that is the case in the legal profession. (Bolding mine.) The “whatever reason” is that they don’t have a choice. SOMEBODY has to. And let’s agree not to use the legal profession as a representative sampling. At less than .4% of the population in both the US and Canada, what’s true in the legal profession is not necessarily what’s true in the stocking-store-shelves profession or the teaching profession or most other segments of the economy. > [@](#): > > Without such change, you won’t see income equality. So the issue is - is income equality a goal worth the friction required to enact that social change? In short, should we, if possible, model our societies on those of Scandinavian nations that frequently top the equality charts? Sounds great to me. If there’s “friction,” I doubt much of it will be coming from women. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/24 "2018-01-09T01:24:20Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I don’t know if you understood my argument. My argument was that for a man, increasing your socioeconomic status increases your mating odds. For women, if anything it can decrease them assuming a woman wants a man of equal or higher SES. If she has high SES, then her pool of potential mates is smaller and more competitive. Yes I understood that just fine. I just think that these kinds of “stands to reason” extrapolations need to be questioned. If all you are saying is that men feel greater need to achieve SES therefore choose lucrative industries to go into, then that seems a reasonable proposition. I’d hesitate to say it’s \*true \*yet though, just because there are so many other factors that affect choice of career. OTOH if the proposition is that men will tend towards _greater success in the workplace_, I find that more dubious because that desire for success ISTM is insufficient motivation. Pretty much _everyone_ wants the respect and admiration of others; that’s fundamental for all humans, not something that’s going to give you an edge. > [@](#): > > In a way, it is like being upset that the rates of anorexia are not 50/50 between the genders, or being upset that men commit more serious crimes than women (men commit serious crimes to obtain SES in the form of wealth and reputation to increase their mating odds). Firstly, who is upset? Secondly, I don’t agree with your hypothesis in brackets. I think there are a number of more plausible explanations such as that men are more violent, or that culturally men are expected to take risks and be less afraid of danger. > [@](#): > > As the graph I posted show, women only work 44% of all hours (compared to 56% for men) and women only make up 8% of workplace deaths compared to 92% for men. If women want to be paid equally, those numbers have to become 50/50. Disagree. I think some pay gaps will always exist for the reasons that **Novelty Bobble** elucidated, but I don’t think things like workplace deaths are the critical factor. The vast majority of jobs in the west are very safe. So even if few women want to be Shark Tamers or whatever, it’s statistical noise. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/25 "2018-01-09T02:24:53Z")
We can safely shitbin the evopsych just-so theories unless someone has some actual science to bring to the table. But I doubt there’s much out there to suggest a genetic driver to motivate attaining high SES, let alone a sex-linked one. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/26 "2018-01-09T02:35:11Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > You’re insisting women have a choice: put family first and make less money or put work first and make more money. I’m saying when men put work first, women don’t GET a choice. Why not? If it’s a choice that both partners make together, then they get a choice. It’s not like a man must choose first and a woman must pick up the pieces. Things may work out that way because of sexism, but it doesn’t have to. Two of my friends who married each other are a low-paid teacher and a high-paid emergency room physician working typical emergency room hours. They, together, make choices about career prioritization and childcare, and that’s ok. > [@nelliebly](#): > > And Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden recognize that family over work is a necessity, not a (bogus) choice, so they’ve set up labor laws that impel men AND women to put family over work. I prefer that my government not impel my family’s choices. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/27 "2018-01-09T03:07:34Z")
I worked with a woman who quit a good paying job for another one that allowed a better schedule. Why? Because it took so much time away from her family that one time when she went to pick up her son from daycare, he didnt want to go with her. And he was calling the teacher “Mommy”. Well no wonder since the boy was in daycare most of the time (7 am to 5 pm) and when he was home the Mom was too stressed out to spend much time with him. No career is worth that. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/28 "2018-01-09T13:02:25Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > I’m saying when men put work first, women don’t GET a choice. You will have to explain that to me, why do you assume the man’s choice automatically overrides the women’s choice? You seem to be accepting that the power in a relationship is always with the man, why? ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/29 "2018-01-09T13:36:36Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I worked with a woman who quit a good paying job for another one that allowed a better schedule. Why? Because it took so much time away from her family that one time when she went to pick up her son from daycare, he didnt want to go with her. And he was calling the teacher “Mommy”. Well no wonder since the boy was in daycare most of the time (7 am to 5 pm) and when he was home the Mom was too stressed out to spend much time with him. That’s not just a problem for women. Its a real one for men as well. Daycare is all well and nice, but amazingly parents want to spend time with their children. I know at least three women who have taken less hectic schedules so that they could see their kids more than occasionally. Another couple who have not had kids for this reason. Hell, even amongst men, a major cause of job dissatisfaction\* is the hours which impede on family life, although for some reason for men its considered bad form to make too much hullabaloo about it. The workplace needs to change, social structures and technology has passed it by. “Daycare” is no panacea, long term. > [@](#): > > No career is worth that. 😛 Careful you are on the Dope, not a popular opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Crazy\_Canuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazy_canuck/32/5282_2.png) [@Crazy\_Canuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazy_Canuck)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/30 "2018-01-09T18:28:32Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Disagree. I think some pay gaps will always exist for the reasons that **Novelty Bobble** elucidated, but I don’t think things like workplace deaths are the critical factor. The vast majority of jobs in the west are very safe. I apologize, as I am going to go off on a bit of a rant here. Per OSHA, on average 13 people die in the workplace every day in the united states alone. 4,836 people died in the workplace in 2015. Out of every 100 workers, 3 had have a workplace injury, or about 2.9 million injures per year. So first off, we obviously have different ideas about what “very safe” means. I’ve worked on oil rigs. I saw a guy get his right hand crushed into meat jello on a rig once. I’ve worked in a coal mine, and I saw the old hands hacking up black phlegm while looking decades older than they actually were. These jobs are dirty, in remote locations, and dangerous. As a result, they pay much more money than comparable jobs that are less dirty, dangerous, or don’t involve working 18 hour days for two months straight. You know what I didn’t see while working those jobs? Women. Now, I will concede that the toxic masculinity on some of those jobs is at least partially responsible for women self-selecting out of these industries. However, even with free training and the industry itself trying to recruit more women, most women IME simply are not interested in sacrificing their health or possibly their life just to make more money. Whether the root cause is genetic or social is debatable, but the fact that\* in general \* women make different career choices than men is not. This is my issue when it comes to the whole gender pay gap. Women want equality, and I support that. However, they only seem to want equality when it comes to high-prestige safe office jobs with regular hours. When it comes to jobs that may be dirty and dangerous but pay very well, women don’t seem to care about equality near as much all of a sudden. This is absolutely part of the pay gap problem, and I don’t think it can or should be hand-waved away that easily. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/31 "2018-01-09T19:03:22Z")
Dangerous jobs actually don’t pay a premium and are irrelevant to the wage gap discussion. Even more so when discussing pay for similar work, which doesn’t even put a miner against an office worker. [https://www.bls.gov/if/oshwc/cfar0020.pdf](https://www.bls.gov/if/oshwc/cfar0020.pdf) [http://time.com/money/3430567/most-dangerous-jobs-what-pay/](http://time.com/money/3430567/most-dangerous-jobs-what-pay/) ---
**Author:** ![Crazy\_Canuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazy_canuck/32/5282_2.png) [@Crazy\_Canuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazy_Canuck)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/32 "2018-01-09T20:05:32Z")
Firstly, your first link is broken. The correct link is [www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfar0020.pdf](http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfar0020.pdf). It doesn’t mention wages at all, so I’m not sure why you think this proves your point. The second is a fluff piece without citations whose methodology didn’t convince me. Here’s my counter-cite, from [Job Safety - Econlib](http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/JobSafety.html) > [@W. Kip Viscusi](#): > > Since the time of Adam Smith, economists have observed that workers demand “compensating differentials” (i.e., wage premiums) for the risks they face. The extra pay for job hazards, in effect, establishes the price employers must pay for an unsafe workplace. Wage premiums paid to U.S. workers for risking injury are huge; they amount to about $245 billion annually (in 2004 dollars), more than 2 percent of the gross domestic product and 5 percent of total wages paid. ---
**Author:** ![HelenGawn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a88e4f/32.png) [@HelenGawn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HelenGawn)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/33 "2018-01-09T20:54:33Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > The payroll officer for my former employer (about 400 employees) said men had on average more than twice the accrued sick leave that women had, and I _don’t_ think it was because women were staying home with slight colds or menstrual cramps. I’m not suggesting dads don’t stay home with sick kids, merely that on average women are more likely to do so. One factor may be that women are more likely to have sole physical custody in divorce cases. And it’s not that the people making these assumptions are all male: female bosses make them, too. People in high-level positions tend to take less leave than lower-level workers.\* This is because of the assumption that taking more will hinder their chances for advancement. Plus, the less time you are off, the less vital to the employer your job is perceived as, making it a higher candidate for elimination. \*I had a boss who accumulated 600 hours of paid vacation before the company began limiting the amount carried over. He was given a deadline for using or losing. He worked from home at least one day a week for the entire time, plus took actual vacations of a few days. He still forfeited almost half those hours. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/34 "2018-01-09T21:14:12Z")
> [@Crazy\_Canuck](#): > > Firstly, your first link is broken. The correct link is [www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfar0020.pdf](http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfar0020.pdf). It doesn’t mention wages at all, so I’m not sure why you think this proves your point. The second is a fluff piece without citations whose methodology didn’t convince me. > > Here’s my counter-cite, from [Job Safety - Econlib](http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/JobSafety.html) The point is that most of those jobs pay below average. The ones that don’t are: [ul] [li]Police[/li][li]Electricians[/li][li]Pilots[/li][li]Structural metal workers[/li][li]Electric power line installers[/li][/ul]Which I’m eyeballing at only about 2 million workers, if that. Even if I missed one or two, that’s out of nonfarm payrolls approaching 150 million. Yes, men are more likely to work more dangerous jobs, but these are mostly occupations that pay less than average. And again, occupational choice has nothing to do with equal pay for equal work. ---
**Author:** ![HelenGawn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a88e4f/32.png) [@HelenGawn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HelenGawn)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/35 "2018-01-09T21:16:51Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Consider a couple graduating together from a prestigious law school, and taking highly paid jobs at firms that demand long hours. The evidence suggests they’re likely to begin at similar salaries. But a few years later, Goldin says, one of them—more likely the woman—may decide to leave for a smaller practice with fewer hours and more flexibility in scheduling. In that new job, research suggests, she’s likely to earn less per hour than her partner. Goldin calls this phenomenon non-linearity, or a part-time penalty: the part-timer works half the time her partner does, but earns less than half his salary. The discrepancy tends to increase over time for other reasons. If (as is common given women still “marrying up”) the man graduates a couple of years earlier. With the earlier start on a career, he will make a higher salary in the beginning. As years go by, that difference will multiply, as any opportunity to advance his greater income trumps advancing her lesser.\* Besides the age gap, when one partner, usually the male, strikes out on his own, the other nearly always takes a lower paying but steadier job - not least for the employer-provided health insurance. I’ve known lots of women in that position. \*I was in such a relationship myself. Every time my boyfriend advanced in his career it involved a move. I had the choice of joining him at the cost of my own advancement, or breaking up. The more this happened the less able I was able to support myself. (I finally realized he was the one who wanted the high life at the cost of having time to enjoy it, so fuck it. ) ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/36 "2018-01-09T21:34:16Z")
> [@HelenGawn](#): > > The discrepancy tends to increase over time for other reasons. If (as is common given women still “marrying up”) the man graduates a couple of years earlier. With the earlier start on a career, he will make a higher salary in the beginning. As years go by, that difference will multiply, as any opportunity to advance his greater income trumps advancing her lesser.\* I’m experiencing this. After years of consistently dating older women I married a younger one. When she finished her degree I already had work experience with concomitant pay raises. Disrupting my job hits our income much more than disrupting hers. Now we’re not solely maximizing income, but it does factor into the equation when we’re making career decisions. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/37 "2018-01-09T22:05:55Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > Dangerous jobs actually don’t pay a premium Dangerous jobs pay a premium, when comparing workers of similar qualities like education levels. If your interest is equal pay for equal work, then this won’t be relevant to you. But the raw wage gap is that the average woman earns around 77% of what the average man earns, and for relatively lower-skilled workers, a big part of that raw difference in their pay is the difference in their choice of relative jobs. Men without a college education take up the more dangerous work, and are compensated for that. > [@Ruken](#): > > and are irrelevant to the wage gap discussion. This is not remotely true. Plenty of people cite the 77% (raw wage gap) as something that’s of deep concern, and the majority of that raw gap is due to differences in job choice and skill level and (yes) danger of the job. Women without a college education tend to choose safer work, and that contributes to the raw gap before those other factors have been controlled for. > [@Ruken](#): > > Even more so when discussing pay for similar work, which doesn’t even put a miner against an office worker. Without controlling for anything, women earn around 77% of what men earn. After controlling for factors like experience, education, job description, choice of industry, etc., a woman with equivalent measurables earns around 95% of what a man earns. The average gap goes from the raw figure of 23% to around 5% for people with measurably identical jobs. People with different ideological perspectives will immediately start interpreting things differently after the basic facts are acknowledged. For example, a gap of 5% when controlling for observable factors doesn’t mean sexism is only responsible for that 5% and for nothing else. Attainment of those measurables can itself be subject to bias and oppression. Women might not achieve the same level of measurable skills attainment because of sexism. Of course, many conservatives would then turn around and say that the 5% only exists because of the limits of what we can measure. If we could control for “everything” relevant, then that 5% might decrease even further. I think that latter argument is silly, but basic data analysis isn’t going to make it go away. It would require better arguments, or better data. The point here is that we need to be precise about what we’re comparing. If we’re talking about the average woman earning 77% that the average man earns, then yes, job choice is indisputably a factor in that raw wage gap. It absolutely leaps out of the data, even for highly educated workers. Women are at parity in medical schools, for example, but the more “nurturing” specialities are overwhelmingly more likely to be women, like pediatrics (75% women) or gynecology (85% women) rather than radiology (27% women). It’s easy to guess which pays more. Is job choice something that’s subject to sexism? Definitely, especially the “good old boy’s” culture that perpetuates itself. But to what extant? That’s a much, MUCH harder question. It’s why ideology tends to take over at this point. Why are women without a college education much less likely to take on dangerous work? Where does that preference come from? Differences in risk aversion? Risk aversion is something that’s definitely different by gender. But where does THAT difference come from? Is it culture, or something deeper? Does it even MATTER if it’s which? Are culturally inculcated preferences somehow not legitimate? There are legitimately a lot of hard questions here. I don’t see how anyone can look at the wave of sexual misconduct from men over the last year and decide that bias can’t possibly be an issue in the workplace, even if they’re too oblivious to see it around them, but even with that established, there are hard questions here, even about the raw wage gap compared to the gap for equivalent positions. > [@Ruken](#): > > [/LIST]Which I’m eyeballing at only about 2 million workers, if that. Even if I missed one or two, that’s out of nonfarm payrolls approaching 150 million. Yes, men are more likely to work more dangerous jobs, but these are mostly occupations that pay less than average. The point is that they pay more even than safer jobs at the same relevant skill level. > [@Ruken](#): > > And again, occupational choice has nothing to do with equal pay for equal work. But the wage gap is about more than equal pay for equal work. The raw gap is about the fact that women on average earn around three quarters of men on average. A huge part of that raw gap is job choice. This is absolutely relevant to the topic. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/38 "2018-01-09T23:20:08Z")
I know there’s a lot of pay disparity at my work, but it has everything to do with when you were hired. I was a fool and changed jobs in 2008, during the financial crisis and basically had to take what was offered with no negotiating at all. There was a glut of people in middle management jobs of people that were hired during the dot com madness and they were making above market salaries. Their ranks have just now started to thin out the past couple of years with lots of organisation changes, retirements, and jobs being relocated to other parts of the country. I’m stunned to see how much new hires are making now at my company, but again, it’s a 4 percent unemployment world and many of my company’s offices are located in areas with strong competition for talent. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/39 "2018-01-10T13:39:27Z")
**Hellestal** , we can certainly look at the entire population if you want, although it’s not exactly mysterious when BLS publishes wages and populations by occupation. But even then, dangerous jobs are not contributing to the greater gap. The list we have from BLS of deadliest jobs is also mostly a list of low-paying jobs. If we exclude that entire list, even the high-paying ones like pilots and police, the median weekly wage for men goes up. Now that list is old and incomplete. It only shows the 20 jobs with the most deaths; maybe we’re missing something profound in death jobs #21-30. But until we see better numbers, we cannot reject **Mijin** ’s hypothesis (which serves as a decent null) that workplace deaths are not a critical factor in the overall wage gap. It does, however, suggest that many jobs have a combination of low pay _and_ poor working conditions, which may stir the liberal feels in those of us with such proclivities. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028/40 "2018-01-10T17:11:39Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > **Hellestal** , we can certainly look at the entire population if you want, although it’s not exactly mysterious when BLS publishes wages and populations by occupation. But even then, dangerous jobs are not contributing to the greater gap. The list we have from BLS of deadliest jobs is also mostly a list of low-paying jobs. If we exclude that entire list, even the high-paying ones like pilots and police, the median weekly wage for men goes up. Now that list is old and incomplete. It only shows the 20 jobs with the most deaths; maybe we’re missing something profound in death jobs #21-30. In order to understand how risk of death contributes to pay, we cannot look at a list of jobs, wages, and dangers. We have to _isolate_ the effect of job danger. This requires a multiple regression using a dataset with a large number of workers, including their skill levels. We would have to regress wages (or commonly, log wages) against a list of control variables for the workers (e.g. age, education, experience). With those controls in place, we also need to add a variable of interest to the regression, in this case something like the risk-of-death for a job. Only after _the controls have been held constant_ with a multiple regression, can we start to predict how job risk influences wages for workers of similar skill levels. There is a helluva lot of work on this. A simple list of jobs isn’t anything close to sufficient for this kind of analysis The observation that undesirable jobs have to pay more goes back, literally, centuries. It’s the most basic economics possible. But fair enough, for those who want something more than the intro theory, preferring modern data analysis, the modern empirical work on this topic goes back many decades. Risk of death has been shown in empirical studies (in actual multiple regressions, not just simple lists of jobs) to be a significant factor in wages. It is NOT the most significant factor for wages, not by a long shot. That is worker skill and education and job preference, beyond any question. But it’s still relevant. Two workers of the same skill level, with the same choice of jobs in front of them, will have different wages based on the relative risk of their job. The more dangerous job has to pay more to entice such a worker away from the safer option. Men do the overwhelming majority of these jobs. > [@Ruken](#): > > But until we see better numbers, we cannot reject **Mijin** ’s hypothesis (which serves as a decent null) that workplace deaths are not a critical factor in the overall wage gap. I haven’t personally been arguing that risk of death is a “critical factor”. Just that it measurably contributes. You have been denying that it is a factor at all, and that is quite simply false. Risk of death pays a premium (again: for workers at similar skill levels) and men are the OVERWHELMING majority of those jobs. It’s a factor. It’s not the most “critical” factor. Not at all. Not even close. The most critical factor, by far, is industry and job choice, even regardless of the risk on the job. Women tend to choose jobs that pay less, like the medical school specializations mentioned above. There is a massive college wage premium, and women are now the clear majority of college graduates. But they still choose majors in lower-paid fields (e.g. social work, education), whereas the highest paid majors (e.g. petroleum engineering) are overwhelmingly chosen by men. This does NOT mean that sexism is necessarily irrelevant in how women get socialized and steered into lower-paying industries, and lower-paying specialities within industries. But it’s a huge complication to have to separate genuine preference from avoidance of toxic work environments. > [@Ruken](#): > > It does, however, suggest that many jobs have a combination of low pay _and_ poor working conditions, which may stir the liberal feels in those of us with such proclivities. The majority of jobs with poor working conditions tend to have relatively lower pay, compared to those with extensive education and skills. The two tend to go together. People with extensive education and job skills can negotiate and enjoy not only higher wages, but better conditions. This isn’t just true individually, but internationally and historically. As nations get richer, their citizens get safer jobs. Workplace safety doesn’t correlate strongly with workplace regulation – it correlates with _wealth_. The lesson here is clear: if we want better job conditions, we need to increase the wealth of nations. One common conservative response to, well, just about any suggested change is “Human nature! Can’t be changed! Just have to deal with it!” That is not, I would suggest, an especially helpful way of approaching societal change. But there is a mirror-image mistake that tends to show up on the more extreme parts of the left (and I am NOT saying you have personally exhibited this) that implies that people’s preferences have no relevance at all for public policy, or worse, that human nature does not even exist. That’s just fucking stupid, but a lot of supposedly highly educated progressives spout stuff like that. I’m a liberal, and I want to improve conditions and change things for a better. And the proper liberal way to do that is to try to _understand_ people’s preferences in order to help us improve things. That means legitimately trying to understand why women choose the jobs that they do. This includes understanding why less educated women avoid the more dangerous jobs that are available, and ALSO why college women choose the majors that they do. This choice of major legitimately is a “critical factor”, much bigger than job risk. But how much of that is legitimate preference, and how much toxic environment? Anecdotes don’t help with this, not with the relative proportions on a societal level. We need quality datasets to do quality empirical work, but we’re dealing with aspects of the human experience that are inherently difficult to measure. It’s tricky. It’s possible to start to improve the toxic environments that are out there in the world – this last year has, finally, seen some legitimate beginnings of progress on that score – while also accepting that preference, even if it’s socialized preference, can still be legitimate and worthy of respect. It’s important to respect people’s freedom to choose for themselves what kind of life they want to lead. The whole point of improving the world is to give people more desirable choices, not to tell them that they choices that they freely make are wrong. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-will-the-pay-differences-between-men-and-women-change-or-will-it/806028.md?page=3)