Time to dig this back up again, I guess:
There literally is no gender “wage gap”. Firstly, the “wage gap” is a misnomer for the “earnings gap” (using the correct term makes it more clear that the difference is in average overall earning, not in the pay received per hour of the same work), and assuming whatever gap there is is caused by sexism is literally the same logic as the creationist’s ‘god of the gaps’ argument re the fossil record; with that argument, creationists say X couldn’t possibly have evolved into Y, that God was involved. Then when a transitional fossil Z between X and Y is found, the creationist says that God’s influence must actually be between X and Z, and Z and Y. And so on ad infinitum, creating a situation where the creationist will always find a way to convince themselves that they’re correct, despite the ever-increasing amount of evidence against them.
When it comes to the earnings gap, the actual gap that exists, the cause is assumed to be sexism/misogyny in the same way God is assumed to be how different species came about. But then as time goes on, research is done, and more and more of the gap is accounted for via factors that have nothing to do with discrimination/prejudice/etc., the argument changes to 'whatever gap remains unaccounted for, that must be the part caused by sexism/misogyny!"
That portion being due to sexism/misogyny is always based on pure assumption–there is zero hard evidence that instances of sexism (no one argues there is zero of it) comprise a statistically-significant portion (no one being intellectually honest would argue it’s literally zero) of the earnings gap between men and women.
For anyone curious, here’s a list of factors that contribute to the gender earnings gap, from the above link:
- Men disproportionately gravitate towards higher paying occupations in technology and hard sciences (e.g., petroleum engineer).
- Men disproportionately choose higher-risk, higher paying occupations with greater safety risks for occupational injuries and fatalities (e.g., oil field worker, roofer, and logging).
- Men are more willing to work outdoors in uncomfortable, physically demanding work environments (construction, oil field workers, commercial fishing, logging).
- Men are more willing than women to choose demanding, intense jobs where you can’t check out at the end of the work day (e.g., corporate attorney, senior White House staff).
- Men select jobs with higher pay but with lower personal fulfillment (tax accountant).
- Men select jobs with higher financial and emotional risks (e.g., venture capitalist).
- Men are more willing than women to work the worst shifts during the worst hours.
- Men often choose higher paying subfields (e.g., surgery and anesthesiology). <-- the primary reason for the misconception your oft-repeated joke is based on
- Men are more willing to work in dirty or unpleasant environments with minimal human contact (e.g., prison guard, steel worker, truck drivers).
- Men work longer hours per week than women on average.
- Men more frequently than women invest in updating their skills with greater financial payoffs (e.g., master’s degree in computer technology vs. master’s degree in education).
- Men are more likely than women to have more years of continuous experience in their current occupation.
- Men are more likely than women to have more years of recent, uninterrupted experience with their current employer.
- Men work more weeks during the year than women, on average.
- Men are less likely than women to be absent from work (e.g., doctor’s visits, sick days, taking time off when children are sick, etc.).
- Men are more willing than women to tolerate longer commute times.
- Men are more willing to relocate, especially to undesirable locations at their company’s request.
- Men are more willing than women, on average, to travel extensively on the job.
- Men are more willing than women to take the risk of a variable income, e.g., to be paid by commission vs. a fixed salary.
- Men often produce more output, e.g., scholarly research articles for university professors.
Note: None of those gaps above apply universally, but reflect overall gender differences that apply in general and on average.
using the correct term makes it more clear that the difference is in average overall earning, not in the pay received per hour of the same work
no there’s still a gap per-hour for the same work
more and more of the gap is accounted for via factors that have nothing to do with discrimination/prejudice/etc
wow this is news to me i can’t wait to see the explanations
- Fields dominated by men happen to pay more? Why?
- Why are men socially in a position where they can choose these higher risk occupations?
- Construction, oil field workers, logging all seem to have a pretty bad reputation for hostile work environments for women, no? For fishing, see 4.
- Why are men more often in positions where this is possible? What gender difference could there possibly be that could make this the case? What sexual dimorphism has led to this difference? What social expectations have we placed upon women that would lead to this? Personally I haven’t a clue.
- Why are men expected to be the breadwinner?
- Why would higher risks lead to a higher median salary? Also, why are men more likely to take risks?
- See 4
- See 1
- Why?
- See 7
- See 8, 10
- See 10
- See 12
- See 13
- See 14
- See 15
- Why are men more able to relocate than women?
- See 16
- See 6
- Sounds like this is a consequence of being able to work longer hours, in which case, see 18
no there’s still a gap per-hour for the same work
The remaining gap is smaller than the margin of error, once you account for every known factor. For example, a man and woman might both have the same job title at the same company, but if the man was working there for a longer period of time, or opts to work more overtime, etc. etc., then naturally he’s going to get paid more “for the same work”. But about that phrase:
You should understand that, primarily because it’d be absurdly impractical otherwise (no one is going to be examining the individual daily acts of all these people at their jobs), whenever research in this area talks about “same work”, they always mean the same job title. So already, that’s leaving a lot on the table, of which I gave two examples above (experience and amount of hours/overtime worked).
Fields dominated by men happen to pay more? Why?
You have cause and effect backwards. The fields pay more first, then men are shown to gravitate more toward them. This is partly because men tend to be more likely to prioritize raw earning potential over everything else, versus women, who are more likely to prioritize other things, such as time flexibility/convenience (check out the man/woman ratio of graveyard shift jobs for an eye-opener), commute time, etc. And part of the reason for that is the social pressure for men to be ‘the provider’, which may have lessened in recent decades, but is definitely still a factor to a degree.
Another big factor is that, as men are more likely to prefer ‘working with things’, and women are more likely to prefer ‘working with people’, the inescapable fact that ‘things’ scale up to a degree of magnitude that ‘people’ never can, means that the industries that men already tend to favor (STEM), will also be the ones that can scale up and pay more as a result of that. An engineer could be able to manage 1 system now, but be able to manage 10 in the future with technological advances, but even the best nurse on the planet is never going to be able to care for orders of magnitude more people than they can presently.
Why are men socially in a position where they can choose these higher risk occupations?
This is a loaded question. Men aren’t any more “socially in a position” to do so than women. Women are completely free to choose these occupations. But by and large, they simply don’t. The difference in priority I described above is why. Left to make a free choice, men are simply more likely to risk their safety and lives for a bigger paycheck, than women are.
Construction, oil field workers, logging all seem to have a pretty bad reputation for hostile work environments for women, no?
Okay, really now, let’s not pretend there are these throngs of women clamoring to be ‘let in’ to the roofing industry, or the oil fields, and only aren’t working in those fields because of the misogyny of the existing workforce. Please, let’s return to reality here.
Why are men more often in positions where this is possible? What gender difference could there possibly be that could make this the case? What sexual dimorphism has led to this difference? What social expectations have we placed upon women that would lead to this? Personally I haven’t a clue.
Again, it’s choice, not a difference in opportunity. I’m not sure why you’re so hung up on that. Left to their own devices, and given full freedom to choose their professional paths, men and women, by and large, do NOT make the same decisions. In fact, the data has shown that the more egalitarian a society is re sex equality, the more pronounced those differences become (for example, the male skew in engineering tilts harder toward male, and the female skew in nursing tilts harder toward female). This is the opposite of what those who did this research expected to discover, such that it’s literally called the “gender equality paradox”.
Why would higher risks lead to a higher median salary?
Because if you have two jobs that have equivalent pay and prerequisites, but one is more dangerous than the other, no one will choose it over the safer option, obviously. You have to pay more for dangerous jobs, or no one will do them, unless they literally have no other choice.
9 . Why?
This is the ‘working with things’ vs. ‘working with people’ general preference difference between men and women, in action.
Why are men more able to relocate than women?
Once more, you’re twisting things. Point 17 doesn’t say men are more ABLE, it says they’re more WILLING. Difference.
The remaining gap is smaller than the margin of error, once you account for every known factor.
no, it isn’t
it’d be absurdly impractical otherwise (no one is going to be examining the individual daily acts of all these people at their jobs),
you know, other than like researchers
You have cause and effect backwards. The fields pay more first, then men are shown to gravitate more toward them
genuinely very funny that you just wrote over 200 words to restate your original very bad arguments
this is circular af
This is a loaded question. Men aren’t any more “socially in a position” to do so than women.
sorry i made the critical error of “assuming you had an actual point to make”
unless you’re actually out here trying to make a case that FEEEEMAALEESS are just genetically predisposed to being scared of making money
Okay, really now, let’s not pretend there are these throngs of women clamoring to be ‘let in’ to the roofing industry
you’re right the second x chromosome makes them completely incapable of laying tiles upon other tiles
genuinely what point do you think you’re making?
are you actually unironically trying to claim that there aren’t incredibly real social barriers to entry for women trying to get into the construction industry, for example?
Left to make a free choice, men are simply more likely to risk their safety and lives for a bigger paycheck, than women are
wow super weird that the gender class that isn’t expected to care for the next generation for 15-18 years is treated as more sacrificial i wonder how that could have happened i guess science will never know
In fact, the data has shown that the more egalitarian a society is re sex equality, the more pronounced those differences become
i don’t really have anything to say here other than the fact that this just straight up isn’t true
a lot easier to argue for a point when you’re willing to just make shit up, i guess
no one will choose it over the safer option, obviously.
just casually ignoring the side of the risk where you die and make no money, i guess
i actually love that you think everybody can succeed in what is almost by definition the zero-sum game of venture capitalism it’s very sweet
This is the ‘working with things’ vs. ‘working with people’ general preference difference between men and women, in action.
wow i can’t wait to see the evidence that you provide to prove this is genetic and not social predisposition it will turn the field on its head
oh what’s that? you don’t have that evidence
WEIRD
Point 17 doesn’t say men are more ABLE, it says they’re more WILLING.
oh weird please could you link the study that sufficiently justifies men are more willing rather than more able to relocate?
My favorite part of this AEI op-ed (look up the fellows of this august think tank institution if you have a minute) is that the author lists no notes, references, or citations for a single claim in the piece. Now that’s how you do it! Start a Hudson Institute it Heritage Foundation and once you’ve got the banner to put behind a panel of prestigious sounding fellows, bam! You’ve got the patina of credibility! Back it with a couple hundred million in tax-cheat lobbying endowments and you’ve got a stew going baby!
My favourite part of that list is that a bunch of reasons are implicitly gendered. E.g. ‘men are more likely to have had more continuous years of employment…’ - gee I sure wonder why that could be - and apparently there’s just no problem there at all in their mind. 'women are more likely to work shorter hours to pick up the slack do things like raise children and make sure their habitation isn’t a health hazard. Like maybe some of these bullet points aren’t so much counter arguments as exactly the kind of thing we should be targeting when considering the pay gap. Why is it culturally acceptable that women should do all a disproportionate amount of household chores? And let’s also note that there’s also been research that suggests that wages for specialist fields have historically shifted to reflect the balance of men Vs women in the field. Why is teaching so low paid now? Why is software engineering more highly paid. Stupid list, SMH
i will concede to every point in your dumb list: even if everything in there was true, this would still be a systemic problem. so, yeah there is a wage gap.
even if everything in there was true, this would still be a systemic problem
Of which no one can responsibly say anything beyond “a nonzero amount of sexism exists”. Which it obviously does (and in both directions, of course–even I personally have gotten the short end of the stick more than once for being the only male in my department), there will never be literally zero bigotry, sex-related or otherwise. But there is no evidence that there is enough sexism to create an average difference between the sexes large enough to measure, when all known factors for average earnings differences are taken into account (and there are certainly still more non-sex-related factors that we don’t know about and haven’t accounted for yet).
This means two things:
- One can’t intellectually honestly say that sexism is a significant barrier to professional women (in the US, at least, all the stuff I’ve looked into is US-centric), given that the impact of sexism is literally too small to measure.
- There is no “systemic”/top-down solution to the nonzero amount of sexism that is out there. The best to reasonably expect is that we identify and rectify cases of sexism (along with any other kind of unfair discrimination, of course) on the spot as they’re discovered.
you’re right, i guess i didn’t consider:
- we’re clearly genetically predisposed to certain jobs, it’s probably in our DNA, just like capitalism itself
- jobs have set payments that come from nature itself; we don’t invent jobs we just discover them.
- jobs that happen to be discovered by women more naturally have lower payments by sheer coincidence.
- there’s nothing we can do about this
- this set of indisputable facts can be observed with empirical methods and it’s also complete coincidence that this happens to favor the men who are overrepresented in government
- oh hey that’s also just plainly what men are predisposed to do, being in power; women just don’t like being in power which is why they didn’t have voting rights until like last Friday or something.
