Let's debate equal pay for women

Great Debates
21

Since you’re too tired, I’ll help you out. This study appears to be seriously flawed. It mentions several times that it is “not an academic-
level study”. The following is particularly troubling:

[emphasis mine]

This is a fatal flaw in the data. Without normalizing experience and job-level (and education, which doesn’t even seem to be mentioned), there is no way to accurately compare men’s and women’s salaries. Women could, on average, have less experience, less seniority, less education, and fewer hours worked than men for any number of reasons. They may, on average, want to spend more time at home, take more time off for family reasons, etc. In fact, the study makes reference to the fact that more women managers work part-time, a factor that in and of itself could account for a discrepancy in average salaries betwen men and women. Surely noone expects women to be paid as much for part-time work as men are paid for full-time work.

These studies need to adjust for all these factors, and unfortunately, they tend not to do so.

22

I don’t deny any of that. But this doesn’t mean that the studies are useless. At a minimum, studies such as this point directly to the questions that we need to ask–questions exactly like the ones that are suggested by your comments.

Do women, in fact, “have less experience, less seniority, less education, and fewer hours worked than men”? Do they “want to spend more time at home, take more time off for family reasons, etc.”? If we can answer these questions, then we can really make sense of discrepancies in pay between the sexes.

Of course, the other alternative is to completely miss the point, like our friend Martin Hyde, who start with a rant about the lack of accurate studies, but has now revealed that he’s actually more concerned about creeping socialism and about the sort of solutions that “people might advocate.”

Lovely set of non-sequiturs there. I don’t recall anyone in this thread saying that nurses should be paid as much as doctors. Nor do i recall anyone advocating “steering” people into particular occupations. We are simply concerned to find out whether there are discrepancies between the sexes, and how those discrepancies might be explained.

23

Again, lovely way to contribute to the discussion, blatant assholism and carpet statements about how much another person understands (something you could not possibly know.)

What I’m saying, since I guess I did not phrase it with enough exactitude for you, is that ultimately if we come to the point where we see that women are making less because of life choices, we end up with crackpot ideas to create equality.

It is certainly not outside the realm of possibility that we will start to see women given preferential admissions (in fact this already happens) to engineering colleges, or medical schools, simply because they have two X chromosomes and other people with that similar condition tend to not choose the same career path as them.

Again, feel free to advocate all the studies you want. But unless a study shows that women are making less at the exact same jobs, then there is absolutely nothing that should be done.

It is not the place of anyone to steer career paths, there shouldn’t be ANY remedies to “correct” the problem of women choosing lower paying jobs. Period.

24

While I agree that such questions ought to be asked, it’s premature to form conclusions about such things before the question has even been addressed. For example, there seems to be evidence that perhaps women chose to work part-time, moreso than men. So to conclude that women are being discriminated against because they make this choice, is illogical. Surely you don’t believe that they should have their freedom to choose taken away.

You can’t just take a flawed study that failed to control for a particular thing, and say, “Well that thing needs to be looked into also.” That may be, but you still have to control for it in the study.

The problem is that we often see studies such as this one being misrepresented. People have blurred the distinction between the concept of equal pay for equal work, and average pay with respect to gender. Perhaps BOTH are issues that might be looked into, but no purpose is served by conflating them. DrDeth covered it really well, with concrete examples. You can’t just average out men’s and women’s pay and claim that discrimination exists. If you want to study why people make the choices they do, o.k., but it has to be a seperate study.

And I submit that any study that purposely downplays or omits pertinent information in fact IS useless.

25

I’ve looked at wage statistics from Norway. The statistics are sorted by industry, category of job, age, and education. Both basic wages and overtime compensation are given, so differences in working time is taken into account (with the possible exeption of high level jobs in some businesses, where separate overtime compensation might not be given). In every single category I’ve looked at, men earn more than women.

A few specific examples (6.7 Norwegian kroner = 1$, 8.3 Nkr = 1 Euro):[ul][li]Full-time employees in central government, tertial education 4 years or less: [/li]Basic salary (“salary according to scale” in the table): Men 26 280 Nkr, women 25 683 Nkr. (When including overtime and additonal allowances the numbers are 28 414 and 26 119.)
[li]Full-time employees in public maintained schools, secondary education teachers with a higher university degree:[/li]Basic salary men: 31 737, women: 30 856 (including overtime etc: 32 944 and 31 817)
[li]Full-time employees in the ICT-sector, clerks:[/li]Basic salary men: 21 153, women: 20 196 (including overtime etc: 22 021 and 20 629)[/ul]
It would have been better if the statistics had been even more specific. There are no tables which take into account gender, age, business, educational level and occupational group at the same time. But I can take a single industry, say wholesale and retail trade, and find that:[ul][li]Men earn more than women when comparing different occupational groups[/li][li]Men earn more than women when comparing different levels of education[/li][li]Men earn more than women when comparing different ages[/ul][/li]Given this, I’m hardly taking a great leap of imagination when concluding that it’s exceedingly likely that men in general earn more than women with the same occupation, education and age. In other words: In Norway, where where we tend to see ourselves as world champions in gender equality, and where we have laws in place to prevent gender discrimination, there’s a very good chance that possesion of a penis will get you a wage increase. Does anyone want to bet that the situation is better in other countries?

26

If we see that men tend to earn more than women, we can conclude that either

(a) equal pay for equal work/like work legislation is not in place or is not enforced, or

(b) such legislation is in place and is in force, and the discrepancy is due to the fact that men and women are not doing equal or like work.

If we’re exploring possibility (b) and we find that the discrepancy is not accounted for by age differences, educational differences, or other factors, we have to admit that it is accounted for by factors for which we haven’t controlled; e.g. if women of the same age as men and employed in the same capacity are paid less than men, it may be that they tend to have lower seniority or experience because their careers are more likely to have been interrupted.

The bottom line may simply be that women tend to earn less than men because they tend to make choices with respect to their careers which society does not value (at least in terms of paying them) as much as it values the choices which men tend to make.

Is this a problem? It may or may not be. Both the men and the women may be making the choices which maximise their own satisfaction, but women may tend to derive less satisfaction from money and more from other factors than men do. If in fact that is the case, then we should expect women to receive less pay than men.

Of course, all of this is an ideal model. Our very first assumption, that equal pay legislation is in place and is enforced, is probably not entirely correct in any society. And the assumption that men and women are freely making the choices which are reflected in their earnings is also a fairly theoretical ideal. Both men and women are constrained by culture, upbringing and other circumstances in their ability to make the choices which will maximise their own welfare.

But we cannot assume that, simply because women tend to earn less, they are more constrained or less free to make choices which maximise their own satisfaction or welfare. That would be to equate satisfaction/welfare with earnings, which would be a very silly equation. It’s entirely possible that in fact the men are more constrained than the women, and are forced into less satisfying choices – e.g. we offer high pay for unpleasant, difficult or strenuous jobs, and men are more disposed to pursue those jobs because of the obligation they feel to achieve material success/to provide materially not just for themselves but for others.

It is the case that men tend to enjoy poorer health, suffer more from stress and die younger then women, so it can’t be assumed that simply because they have higher earnings, they enjoy a better life, or that we would be making women’s lives better if we arranged matters so that they tended to make choices which earned them incomes comparable with men’s incomes. We might well be making them worse off.

The key to our policy here, surely, should be to maximise the freedom of both men and women to make the choices that are best conducive to their own welfare. If we succeed in this policy, we should expect people to make a diversity of choices with a diversity of outcomes, and if we find that men and women tend to make different choices with different outcomes, it doesn’t necessarily follow that either men or women are beiong discriminated against.

27

No, that is not an accurate conclusion at all. It is not even logical. Each of these variables has several plausible explanations as to why there might a difference between in wages between men and women that is not the result of discrimination. Most importantly, these were studied as independent variables. You cannot conclude that males and females in the same occupation, education and age group still have a discrepancy because the way the data is presented is not in a form that allows that.

To find out if males make more than females, you have to have study that selects males with a given occupation (being very specific; see the teacher example above), education level, age group, work status (part-time or full-time); years of experience, breaks in employment, number of overtime hours worked for hourly employees with females matching these same characteristics. Repeat for all jobs.

Are you starting to see the problem? These studies are difficult to do but that is the only way that we can know the real answer.

28

No, actually, we don’t. But thanks for trying anyway.

What i’ve been saying is that we need to examine whether women are, in fact, making such life choices, or whether their over-representation in lower-paying jobs is the result of discriminatory practices. As i made quite clear before, if the former turns out to be the case, and women’s presence in lower-paying jobs really can be explained by simple personal preferences, then that’s OK. If, on the other hand, we end up finding that women are being pushed out of certain occupations or positions, or into certain positions and occupations, then maybe we need to ask why that is happening.

No, i don’t believe that their right to choose should be taken away. I’ve made that quite clear on more than one occasion now. I guess i just feel that issues of gender equality in the workplace need to address more than just the issue of equal pay for equal work, even though that is an extremely important aspect. We need to ask whether women are making such “choices” because it’s what they really want, or whether they are being pressured into them by societal expectations (e.g., that a woman still does most of the houework, even when she has a paying job) and the belief that they cannot get higher-paying jobs. Does, for example, the under-representation of women at the management level reflect the personal choices of women in the workforce, or is it a response to men’s beliefs that there’s no point in promoting women because they’re just going to go off and have babies later on anyway?

29

The problem in most of these studies is that they try to use age as an equalizer rather than years of experience. And the result is that a woman who admirably takes off for a few years until their kid is in kindergarten is going to hurt the women’s statistics.

30

msmith537, your replies to my points blow everything way out of proportion. One bigwig sees a slacker turn her office into wedding central, and suddenly the ‘perception’ is going to be that all women will turn into slackers if they get engaged, so let’s pay them less than a man who does the exact same job? WTF? That kind of corporate thinking went out in the 70s. The reasons for inequal pay these days are much more complex.

Sorry if I thought you were agreeing with the practice of women get less pay for the same job, but when you wrote “To a certain extent there is a basis for this kind of thinking” it seemed to imply that it’s somehow ok to punish people in advance, for something they might do (instead of firing or demoting someone when they actually turn into a slacker).

catsix, your demands for “proof” are ridiculous. BrainGlutton established those statements as the basis for this debate, and my post was based on those same statements. Also, at one point you actually requested proof of a theory…and not just a theory, but one that I didn’t even propose in the first place. :rolleyes:

31

You think so? There are plenty of companies where when a woman gets pregnent she finds that opportunities start to pass her by. It’s not that they are considered “slackers”. I think that the perception is that they will either leave the company altogether or not work crazy overtime to get the job done. I would also guess that this tends to happen more in high-pressure traditionally male-dominated industries like financial services.

I was not attempting to justify this thinking, merely state a possible reason this type of thinking develops.

You are correct that it is more complex. It’s not like there is a room full of white-haired gentlemen conspiring. It takes a more subtle form - “I could give this project to Lisa but she’s going on maternity leave, I’ll give it to Dave instead”. All of a sudden, “Dave’s” career is taking off because of the success of his project while Lisa comes back to her old job doing whatever.

IMHO, it’s much tougher if not impossible to legislate against this kind of descrimination.

32

I think this is spot on. And it’s why simply focusing on “equal pay for equal work” is not enough. Employers have generally been very good about ensuring that women get the same pay when they do the same work as men, and have the same qualifications. And one of the reasons that they’ve been very good about this is that it’s something that’s relatively easy to detect. If a woman has the same position as a guy, and the same qualifications, and is doing the same work, and is getting paid less, then it’s a pretty cut-and-dried case.

On the other hand, if women are denied positions or promotions because of fears about them leaving to have kids, etc., that’s something that’s very hard to detect and even more difficult to prove. And, as msmith says, it’s not some deep, dark conspiracy theory; rather it’s a loose set of expectations and stereotypes and perceptions that can, at times, add up to unfair hiring and promotion practices.

33

But the study you cited does not address that issue either. It just makes glib assertions about “glass ceilings” without bothering to determine if such a thing really exists. It’s assuming its conclusion. There are at least 3 issues here, which need to be considered seperately.

  1. Are women paid less than men for the exact same job, with the same education, experience, seniority, and hours worked? (This could possibly be rectified by enforcing legislation.)

  2. Do employers unfairly block women from advancement within a particular occupation? (More difficult to answer - i.e. how do you differentiate statistically between women who were denied a promotion, and those who chose not to accept one, or did not actively seek one? But also could be solved by enforcing laws.)

  3. Are women forced into certain roles by societal expectations? (A much more complex and intractable problem - i.e., do we force parents to raise their children in a particular way? How would we solve this problem, if it exists?)

If you throw all 3 questions into the mix, and don’t consider how each issue affects the others, you aren’t going to get a coherent answer to any of them.

34

In all these examples women are making at least 95 cents on the dollar compared to men. In the NOW stduy they quoted 73 cents on the dollar. Which do you believe is more accurate?

35

They’re talking about 2 different countries.

36

Jesus H. Christ, can you get over that study already? The points i’m making are general ones, not ones specific to that study.

I’m not wedded to that study as an example of all that is good about wage research, and i never said that i was.

If you’ll look at the post, you’ll see that the purpose of linking to the study in the first was simply to correct BrainGlutton’s misperception regarding the way that NOW presented its findings.

37

(Bold formatting added by me)

Now you’re talking about two different things: what happens once a woman is actually pregnant (or engaged, to use your previous example) is completely different from all women being paid less just because they might become pregnant or engaged.

As a single, professional woman in my early 30s with no foreseeable plans to start a family, I have mixed feelings about the way women may or may not be treated once they become pregnant. However, I have very strong feelings about a potential employer looking at me and thinking (consciously or not): “hmm, she might get married and want a baby while she’s working here, so to offset that potential downtime I’m just going to offer her a lower salary than if she were a man.”

See the difference?

38

I understand, but the study in Norway campared the salaries of men & women in the same industries doing similar jobs. I was curious if the person that referenced that study thought the same held true in the US, that women in general make 73 cents per dollar (the Now Study) & women in similar positions with men made 95 cents per dollar. I have no idea what the working situation for women is in Norway compared with the US.

Working in Local Government with all the salary ranges public knowledge I do not have any experience with this topic. My wife has worked for a couple large corporations & has complained before about the inequities in pay for women compared to men.

39

All this is moot. Don’t you people know “women only work for ‘pin money,’ anyway? Their husbands make the real money.” (Actual quote of a former boss of my wife’s)

40

No need to blow a gasket, honey. If you agree with my criticism of the study, then you should have just said so in the first place, instead of this, “Well the study is still useful because ‘points’ to the questions we need to ask” fucking nonsense. Jesus H. Christ, indeed. :rolleyes: