As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

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As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by Benny the Ball »

What with the debate over the pay gap and its causes, I came across a NYT article addressing a possible underlying issue: That work commonly associated with women simply isn't valued as highly as men. (Quoting the article here for convenience, though a bunch of relevant studies are linked to in the text itself so visiting the page is recommended)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upsho ... .html?_r=2
As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Economic View

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER MARCH 18, 2016
Women’s median annual earnings stubbornly remain about 20 percent below men’s. Why is progress stalling?

It may come down to this troubling reality, new research suggests: Work done by women simply isn’t valued as highly.

That sounds like a truism, but the academic work behind it helps explain the pay gap’s persistence even as the factors long thought to cause it have disappeared. Women, for example, are now better educated than men, have nearly as much work experience and are equally likely to pursue many high-paying careers. No longer can the gap be dismissed with pat observations that women outnumber men in lower-paying jobs like teaching and social work.

A new study from researchers at Cornell University found that the difference between the occupations and industries in which men and women work has recently become the single largest cause of the gender pay gap, accounting for more than half of it. In fact, another study shows, when women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines — for the very same jobs that more men were doing before.

Consider the discrepancies in jobs requiring similar education and responsibility, or similar skills, but divided by gender. The median earnings of information technology managers (mostly men) are 27 percent higher than human resources managers (mostly women), according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. At the other end of the wage spectrum, janitors (usually men) earn 22 percent more than maids and housecleaners (usually women).

Once women start doing a job, “It just doesn’t look like it’s as important to the bottom line or requires as much skill,” said Paula England, a sociology professor at New York University. “Gender bias sneaks into those decisions.”

She is a co-author of one of the most comprehensive studies of the phenomenon, using United States census data from 1950 to 2000, when the share of women increased in many jobs. The study, which she conducted with Asaf Levanon, of the University of Haifa in Israel, and Paul Allison of the University of Pennsylvania, found that when women moved into occupations in large numbers, those jobs began paying less even after controlling for education, work experience, skills, race and geography.

And there was substantial evidence that employers placed a lower value on work done by women. “It’s not that women are always picking lesser things in terms of skill and importance,” Ms. England said. “It’s just that the employers are deciding to pay it less.”

A striking example is to be found in the field of recreation — working in parks or leading camps — which went from predominantly male to female from 1950 to 2000. Median hourly wages in this field declined 57 percentage points, accounting for the change in the value of the dollar, according to a complex formula used by Professor Levanon. The job of ticket agent also went from mainly male to female during this period, and wages dropped 43 percentage points.

The same thing happened when women in large numbers became designers (wages fell 34 percentage points), housekeepers (wages fell 21 percentage points) and biologists (wages fell 18 percentage points). The reverse was true when a job attracted more men. Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige.

While the pay gap has been closing, it remains wide. Over all, in fields where men are the majority, the median pay is $962 a week — 21 percent higher than in occupations with a majority of women, according to another new study, published Friday by Third Way, a research group that aims to advance centrist policy ideas.

Today, differences in the type of work men and women do account for 51 percent of the pay gap, a larger portion than in 1980, according to definitive new research by Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn, economists at Cornell.

Women have moved into historically male jobs much more in white-collar fields than in blue-collar ones. Yet the gender pay gap is largest in higher-paying white-collar jobs, Ms. Blau and Mr. Kahn found. One reason for this may be that these jobs demand longer and less flexible hours, and research has shown that workers are disproportionately penalized for wanting flexibility.

Of the 30 highest-paying jobs, including chief executive, architect and computer engineer, 26 are male-dominated, according to Labor Department data analyzed by Emily Liner, the author of the Third Way report. Of the 30 lowest-paying ones, including food server, housekeeper and child-care worker, 23 are female dominated.

Many differences that contributed to the pay gap have diminished or disappeared since the 1980s, of course. Women over all now obtain more education than men and have almost as much work experience. Women moved from clerical to managerial jobs and became slightly more likely than men to be union members. Both of these changes helped improve wage parity, Ms. Blau’s and Mr. Kahn’s research said.

Yes, women sometimes voluntarily choose lower-paying occupations because they are drawn to work that happens to pay less, like caregiving or nonprofit jobs, or because they want less demanding jobs because they have more family responsibilities outside of work. But many social scientists say there are other factors that are often hard to quantify, like gender bias and social pressure, that bring down wages for women’s work.

Ms. England, in other research, has found that any occupation that involves caregiving, like nursing or preschool teaching, pays less, even after controlling for the disproportionate share of female workers.

After sifting through the data, Ms. Blau and Mr. Kahn concluded that pure discrimination may account for 38 percent of the gender pay gap. Discrimination could also indirectly cause an even larger portion of the pay gap, they said, for instance, by discouraging women from pursuing high-paying, male-dominated careers in the first place.

“Some of it undoubtedly does represent the preferences of women, either for particular job types or some flexibility, but there could be barriers to entry for women and these could be very subtle,” Ms. Blau said. “It could be because the very culture and male dominance of the occupation acts as a deterrent.”

For example, social factors may be inducing more women than men to choose lower-paying but geographically flexible jobs, she and Mr. Kahn found. Even though dual-career marriages are now the norm, couples are more likely to choose their location based on the man’s job, since men earn more. This factor is both a response to and a cause of the gender pay gap.

Some explanations for the pay gap cut both ways. One intriguing issue is the gender difference in noncognitive skills. Men are often said to be more competitive and self-confident than women, and according to this logic, they might be more inclined to pursue highly competitive jobs.

But Ms. Blau warned that it is impossible to separate nature from nurture. And there is evidence that noncognitive skills, like collaboration and openness to compromise, are benefiting women in today’s labor market. Occupations that require such skills have expanded much more than others since 1980, according to research by David J. Deming at Harvard University. And women seem to have taken more advantage of these job opportunities than men.

Still, even when women join men in the same fields, the pay gap remains. Men and women are paid differently not just when they do different jobs but also when they do the same work. Research by Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist, has found that a pay gap persists within occupations. Female physicians, for instance, earn 71 percent of what male physicians earn, and lawyers earn 82 percent.

It happens across professions: This month, the union that represents Dow Jones journalists announced that its female members working full time at Dow Jones publications made 87 cents for every dollar earned by their full-time male colleagues.

Colleen Schwartz, a Dow Jones spokeswoman said, “We remain absolutely committed to fostering an inclusive work environment.”

Certain policies have been found to help close the remaining occupational pay gap, including raising the minimum wage, since more women work at the lowest end of the pay scale. Paid family leave helps, too.

Another idea, Ms. Liner of Third Way said, is to give priority to people’s talents and interests when choosing careers, even if it means going outside gender norms, for instance encouraging girls to be engineers and boys to be teachers. “There’s nothing stopping men and women from switching roles and being a maid versus a janitor except for social constructs,” she said.
Correction: March 27, 2016

An Upshot article last Sunday about the gender pay gap misstated the percentage of the gap that two Cornell economists said could be attributed to pure discrimination. They determined it was 38 percent, not 9 percent.
Alternately known as gender pollution, and also results in fewer men showing interest in a field as more and more women enter it...so basically the grownup version of cooties. :roll:

I decided to look up this subject after stumbling across a series of anecdotal posts detailing this very phenomenon, which was also a rather eye-opening experience:
http://oneshortdamnfuse.tumblr.com/post ... h-birdhead
internetgoose wrote:I’m gonna depress the hell out of all of you. ready? ok go

so, that “stop devaluing feminized work post”

nice idea and all

but the thing is, as soon as a decent number of women enter any field, it becomes “feminized,” and it becomes devalued.

as women enter a field in greater number, people become less willing to pay for it, the respect for it drops, and it’s seen as less of a big deal. it’s not about the job- it’s about the number of women in the job.

observe what happened with biology. it’s STEM, sure, but anyone in a male-dominated science will sneer at the idea of it being ‘for real,’ nevermind that everyone sure took it more seriously when it was a male dominated field. so has happened with scores of other areas; nursing comes to mind

so the thing is, it’s not the work or the job that has to be uplifted and seen as more respectable. it will never work out, until people start seeing women as respectable

but there’s a doozy and who the fuck knows if it’s ever happening in my life time
pyrositshere wrote:“observe what happened with biology. it’s STEM, sure, but anyone in a male-dominated science will sneer at the idea of it being ‘for real,’ nevermind that everyone sure took it more seriously when it was a male dominated field.”

Personal anecdote time! I’m in a biology graduate program. An acquaintance wanted to introduce some guy to me because his son was thinking about becoming an undergrad science major. When he found out I was in the biology department, he grinned and said, “Well, I guess that’s kind of related to science.”

I gave him what I hope was an icy look and said, “Isn’t it strange how men outside the field started saying that right around the time biology majors shifted from mostly male to mostly female?”

The guy got this look on his face like he was about to play the “just a joke” card, and then an older woman who had been standing nearby, talking to someone else, turned to me and said, “The same thing happened with real estate.” She went on to explain that, over the course of the career, the male-to-female ratio among real estate agents had dropped, and the pay and “prestige factor” of that job dropped along with it.
birdhead wrote:This is also famous for happening to teaching. Keep an eye on medicine over the next fifteen years and watch as it becomes less prestigious and less well-paid.
hazeldash wrote:It also happened to secretarial/administrative work - in the 19th century, clerical work was utterly respectable and seen as requiring quite a lot of talent and skill (which it still does!) but then along came the typewriter and women entering the field and HEY PRESTO “she’s just some secretary”
princess-siddnttety wrote:at my university, chemical engineering, or chem eng, was often referred to as “fem eng” why? because it’s an exact 50/50 ratio of women to men, which clearly makes it too feminine. in the 70s/80s chemical engineering was one of the most important and hardest engineering fields (plastics! pulp and paper! OIL) but now that there are more women in the field it’s considered an easier field, in comparison to other fields.

for example, i once heard a girl in mech eng list some of the engineering fields in the order she thought was hardest to easiest. you know what it was? electrical, mechanical, chemical. it’s absolutely no surprise that this list is also a handy ordering of fewest women in the field to most women in the field.

AND, another point! this happens the other way around too. computer science related fields used to be dominated by women, which made it not very important (switchboard operators? yup). once men started taking over the field, well that’s when the big money and prestige came in.
oneshortdamnfuse wrote:The field of anthropology, which is becoming female dominated from what I can see, has been determined to be useless by some. (I’ve even had girls in STEM fields tell me I don’t study a “real science” so how’s about that internalized misogyny for ya) When I was majoring in anthropology, Gov. Rick Scott determined that Florida didn’t need any more anthropologists and wanted to reduce funding to programs and increase funding to STEM programs. While not considered a STEM field, anthropologists have contributed to the research behind STEM programs and provide a wide variety of services to Florida alone. A team of anthropologists created a powerpoint “This is Anthropology” to talk about dozens of programs and services they contribute to in Florida which include healthcare programs, education programs, disaster relief, forensic investigation, environmental programs and conservation efforts, research for fortune 500 businesses, agricultural programs, immigration programs, programs and services for the elderly, etc. I’m also in the field of education, and we’re constantly made out to be overpaid (we’re not) and made out to be incapable of doing our jobs without very strict guidance.

It’s all very insulting, really. No matter what we study. No matter what we do to earn a living. It will never be good enough.
But of course this phenomenon certainly isn't universal. For example, Women account for 40% of the engineering workforce in China and a whopping 58% back in the days of the USSR. I wonder how conservative naysayers who dismiss this sort of thing and assert that women simply aren't inherently predisposed to gravitating towards "manly" STEM fields would explain this...clearly it's the result of evil godless commie mind-control rays meant to prevent women from assuming their god-ordained role of being barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. :D
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by biostem »

The whole paygap thing is bunk - it doesn't compare people in the same job, with the same education, experience, working the same hours, and so on; It only compares all men and all women.

As for wages dropping as more women enter the workforce, I chock that up to women willing to work for less, or a simple matter of more people applying for these positions, thus the demand for workers dropping. There is also a not-insignificant discrepancy between women's aggressiveness with negotiating for pay vs that of men's...
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by FTeik »

Wait, does the pay-decline affect all people in a certain job or is it just, that the females get paid less than their male counterparts?

[sarcasm] I guess it is only a matter of time until the best paid and most respected job will be construction-worker or drainer. [/sarcasm]
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by Broomstick »

Nope, some of us women have snuck into construction, too.
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

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biostem wrote:As for wages dropping as more women enter the workforce, I chock that up to women willing to work for less, or a simple matter of more people applying for these positions, thus the demand for workers dropping. There is also a not-insignificant discrepancy between women's aggressiveness with negotiating for pay vs that of men's...
So.. you're saying gender discrimination doesn't exist, just can't possibly exist?
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Leonard Nimoy.

Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy

Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by K. A. Pital »

biostem wrote:The whole paygap thing is bunk - it doesn't compare people in the same job, with the same education, experience, working the same hours, and so on; It only compares all men and all women.

As for wages dropping as more women enter the workforce, I chock that up to women willing to work for less, or a simple matter of more people applying for these positions, thus the demand for workers dropping. There is also a not-insignificant discrepancy between women's aggressiveness with negotiating for pay vs that of men's...
Or maybe, just maybe, women aren't willing to work for less but have no choice not to; the single-earner household with a non-working member nowadays is much poorer in relative terms than before. So women cannot "sit it out" but cannot get decent pay either. Demand for workers isn't really dropping if the capitalists made the women of most industrial nations enter the workforce one way or another.
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by biostem »

Broomstick wrote:
biostem wrote:As for wages dropping as more women enter the workforce, I chock that up to women willing to work for less, or a simple matter of more people applying for these positions, thus the demand for workers dropping. There is also a not-insignificant discrepancy between women's aggressiveness with negotiating for pay vs that of men's...
So.. you're saying gender discrimination doesn't exist, just can't possibly exist?
No, I'm saying that gender discrimination regarding pay does not exist, when you take into account all relevant factors, on the macro-level. Sure, there may be some outlying cases where a particular person doing the hiring is a sexist asshole, but that in no way represents any sort of systematic/institutional sexism.
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by biostem »

K. A. Pital wrote:
biostem wrote:The whole paygap thing is bunk - it doesn't compare people in the same job, with the same education, experience, working the same hours, and so on; It only compares all men and all women.

As for wages dropping as more women enter the workforce, I chock that up to women willing to work for less, or a simple matter of more people applying for these positions, thus the demand for workers dropping. There is also a not-insignificant discrepancy between women's aggressiveness with negotiating for pay vs that of men's...
Or maybe, just maybe, women aren't willing to work for less but have no choice not to; the single-earner household with a non-working member nowadays is much poorer in relative terms than before. So women cannot "sit it out" but cannot get decent pay either. Demand for workers isn't really dropping if the capitalists made the women of most industrial nations enter the workforce one way or another.
You are going to have to demonstrate that women "cannot get decent pay either" - prove to me that a woman, with the exact same skills and experience as a man, won't get the same pay he would, (also assuming similar negotiating skills when working out the details of said employment).

Now, if you're arguing that a woman, who had to put off higher education or experience in her area of expertise, due to having and caring for a child, won't make as much as a man who didn't have to do that, then it, well, has to do to less job experience and/or training...
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

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biostem wrote:You are going to have to demonstrate that women "cannot get decent pay either" - prove to me that a woman, with the exact same skills and experience as a man, won't get the same pay he would, (also assuming similar negotiating skills when working out the details of said employment).
The evidence for which you're asking is literally contained within the post you to which you replied. Maybe you could try presenting some evidence for your assertion that no pay gap exists?
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

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Terralthra wrote:
biostem wrote:You are going to have to demonstrate that women "cannot get decent pay either" - prove to me that a woman, with the exact same skills and experience as a man, won't get the same pay he would, (also assuming similar negotiating skills when working out the details of said employment).
The evidence for which you're asking is literally contained within the post you to which you replied. Maybe you could try presenting some evidence for your assertion that no pay gap exists?
Apparently you don't understand how discourse works - you must prove that something DOES exist, not that something doesn't. I don't have to prove that god doesn't exist, and I don't have to prove that I am not a racist - you must prove that something is true or shut the fuck up.
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by Terralthra »

There is a giant article about the pay gap, including things such as:
The study, which she conducted with Asaf Levanon, of the University of Haifa in Israel, and Paul Allison of the University of Pennsylvania, found that when women moved into occupations in large numbers, those jobs began paying less even after controlling for education, work experience, skills, race and geography.
Still, even when women join men in the same fields, the pay gap remains. Men and women are paid differently not just when they do different jobs but also when they do the same work. Research by Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist, has found that a pay gap persists within occupations. Female physicians, for instance, earn 71 percent of what male physicians earn, and lawyers earn 82 percent.
If you're looking for this article and the accompanying study showing a gender pay gap exists, I suggest you try scrolling up. It's a little embarrassing that you apparently didn't read the article to which you replied, but that's on you, not on me.
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

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Terralthra wrote:There is a giant article about the pay gap, including things such as:
The study, which she conducted with Asaf Levanon, of the University of Haifa in Israel, and Paul Allison of the University of Pennsylvania, found that when women moved into occupations in large numbers, those jobs began paying less even after controlling for education, work experience, skills, race and geography.
Still, even when women join men in the same fields, the pay gap remains. Men and women are paid differently not just when they do different jobs but also when they do the same work. Research by Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist, has found that a pay gap persists within occupations. Female physicians, for instance, earn 71 percent of what male physicians earn, and lawyers earn 82 percent.
If you're looking for this article and the accompanying study showing a gender pay gap exists, I suggest you try scrolling up. It's a little embarrassing that you apparently didn't read the article to which you replied, but that's on you, not on me.
And I've read numerous articles that debunk it, so where do we stand?
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by K. A. Pital »

First article - no substance, false claim that men and women have different pay in different fields (as opposed to same field). Written by oligarch lapdogs for the ultra-rich propaganda outlet otherwise known as "Forbes". Not a peer-reviewed study.

Second article - geographical factors which are not explained in-depth. No peer-reviewed study.

Third article talks about the narrowing of the gap. No support to your claims that there is no gap after all factors are taken into accout.

Fourth - again the claim that it is field differences that cause the gap when the exact same claim is demolished by the OP's study of how same-field occupations start paying less when women enter the workforce (as opposed to them choosing low-paid jobs in the first place).

Try harder. That's not a place where some huffpo jorn passes for a well-made argument.
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by biostem »

No, you're right - it HAS to be sexism... it's the patriarchy! It's all those evil misogynists! I've been found out. I must report this to the other patriarchs!


Or... the NY Times is pushing their own agenda...
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by K. A. Pital »

Why shouldn't it be sexism? Why add entities without necessity? If sexism can explain it and explains also the differences that occur in the same-field occupations, it has to be accepted as a valid explanation. Even if it does make you scream at me for no particular reason.
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by Terralthra »

I only had to click one of your links to discover that you're peddling bullshit.

From your own article which you claim supports the idea that the pay gap is bullshit:
Even though wage inequality has become less significant for younger women, the gender pay gap still exists and reportedly becomes wider with age. On average, women still get paid just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns doing the same work.

The pay divide is even greater in finance jobs. A woman financial manager earns 66 cents for every dollar a man earns to do the same job. And while women are gaining ground in obtaining degrees, a 40 percent salary gap exists between men and women with MBAs, 10 to 15 years into their careers.
Should i click on the others? I mean, c'mon, man, you cited an article claiming some 25% of women earn more than their husbands. Can you do math? That means 75% of women earn the same as their husband or less, and it also made no attempt to correlate the wives'/husbands' jobs to see if say, the 25% of women were in higher-paying fields, and if their husband were in the same field he'd be making more.

Your evidence is shit.
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by Crown »

Terralthra wrote:
Even though wage inequality has become less significant for younger women, the gender pay gap still exists and reportedly becomes wider with age. On average, women still get paid just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns doing the same work.

The pay divide is even greater in finance jobs. A woman financial manager earns 66 cents for every dollar a man earns to do the same job. And while women are gaining ground in obtaining degrees, a 40 percent salary gap exists between men and women with MBAs, 10 to 15 years into their careers.
Should i click on the others? I mean, c'mon, man, you cited an article claiming some 25% of women earn more than their husbands. Can you do math? That means 75% of women earn the same as their husband or less, and it also made no attempt to correlate the wives'/husbands' jobs to see if say, the 25% of women were in higher-paying fields, and if their husband were in the same field he'd be making more.

Your evidence is shit.
The operative word in what you quoted was earn. No one denies that women (even for same jobs, although as biostem pointed out the original study didn't differentiate between jobs) earn less then men, the argument is if they get paid less then men for equal work.

If any moron genuinely believes that multi-national corporations are aware that they can reduce their wage bill by 23% overnight by just hiring women and somehow haven't done this then I've got some magic beans to sell you.

How fucking gullible are you?

Christina Hoff Summers has debunked this fucking repeatedly, when you use proper controls of looking for like for like, the 2009 Labor Department study showed that the 'pay gap' was between 4.8% to 7%. And even this you wouldn't attribute to sexism outright.
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Crown
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by Crown »

K. A. Pital wrote:First article - no substance, false claim that men and women have different pay in different fields (as opposed to same field). Written by oligarch lapdogs for the ultra-rich propaganda outlet otherwise known as "Forbes". Not a peer-reviewed study.
Explain to me comrade why the filthy Aristocracy and their despicable Bourgeoisie foot soldiers haven't immediately fired all the proletariat men and hired all proletariat women if they could actually save 23% on labour costs? :lol:
K. A. Pital wrote:Why shouldn't it be sexism? Why add entities without necessity? If sexism can explain it and explains also the differences that occur in the same-field occupations, it has to be accepted as a valid explanation. Even if it does make you scream at me for no particular reason.
Why shouldn't it be women are poorer negotiators? Why add entities without necessity? If women being bad at negotiating can explain it and explains also the difference that occur in the same-field occupations, it has to be accepted as a valid explanation. Even if it does make you scream at me for no particular reason. :D
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Η ζωή, η ζωή εδω τελειώνει!
"Science is one cold-hearted bitch with a 14" strap-on" - Masuka 'Dexter'
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by Crown »

Oh, and relevant from the BBC
The Beep wrote:Working fathers get 21% 'wage bonus', TUC study suggests
Full-time working fathers out-earn their childless counterparts by more than a fifth, research suggests.

On average, fathers working full time get a 21% "wage bonus", the study based on 17,000 workers aged 42, concluded. Fathers living in Britain with two children earned 9% more than those with just one, says the research by centre-left think tank IPPR for the TUC.

Full-time working mothers of the same age saw a "wage penalty", earning 11% less than their childless colleagues. The report said the reasons for the "fatherhood bonus" were not clear, though they were likely to relate to hours worked, increased effort and positive discrimination.

It cited official labour market statistics showing full-time working men with dependent children worked on average half an hour longer each week than men without children. It noted the same statistics showed that full-time working women with children worked about an hour less a week than those without children.

It also referred to a study which suggested there was a "long-term scarring effect" on the future earnings of women who initially take on part-time responsibilities when they return to work after maternity leave. It said analysis based on fathers in the US found that increased work effort accounted for 16% of the fatherhood bonus.

The TUC said international studies cited in the report found that CVs from fathers were scored higher than identical ones from non-fathers. In contrast, it said, CVs from mothers were marked down against those from childless women.

While mothers working full-time were on average found to have suffered a "wage penalty" compared with their childless female colleagues, older mothers were said to be paid 12% more. This was said to be because woman who gave birth when they were over 33 often had already developed their skills and were more likely to return to full-time work soon after maternity leave.

Current attitudes

It said the research reflected assumptions that fathers were the main breadwinners while mothers were expected to fit in work around looking after their children. "It says much about current attitudes that men with children are seen as more committed by employers, while mothers are still often treated as liabilities," said TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady.

The research also addressed legislation surrounding parental leave.

"Financial considerations will be a major factor in decisions about who works and who cares," it said. "The low statutory pay available during shared parental leave will mean the highest earners - who are disproportionately male - go back to work by default, further entrenching gender gaps in employment, pay and representation."

The report used data from the 1970 British Cohort Study which follows the lives of more than 17,000 people born in England, Scotland and Wales in a single week of 1970. Studies have consistently shown that men earn more than women, regardless of whether they are parents or not. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in November that the gap between men and women's pay for full-time workers was 9.4% in April 2015, compared with 9.6% in 2014.
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Terralthra
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by Terralthra »

Crown wrote:
Terralthra wrote:
Even though wage inequality has become less significant for younger women, the gender pay gap still exists and reportedly becomes wider with age. On average, women still get paid just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns doing the same work.

The pay divide is even greater in finance jobs. A woman financial manager earns 66 cents for every dollar a man earns to do the same job. And while women are gaining ground in obtaining degrees, a 40 percent salary gap exists between men and women with MBAs, 10 to 15 years into their careers.
Should i click on the others? I mean, c'mon, man, you cited an article claiming some 25% of women earn more than their husbands. Can you do math? That means 75% of women earn the same as their husband or less, and it also made no attempt to correlate the wives'/husbands' jobs to see if say, the 25% of women were in higher-paying fields, and if their husband were in the same field he'd be making more.

Your evidence is shit.
The operative word in what you quoted was earn. No one denies that women (even for same jobs, although as biostem pointed out the original study didn't differentiate between jobs) earn less then men, the argument is if they get paid less then men for equal work.

If any moron genuinely believes that multi-national corporations are aware that they can reduce their wage bill by 23% overnight by just hiring women and somehow haven't done this then I've got some magic beans to sell you.
The study quoted in the OP, showing significant decreases in wages in fields as women enter them, indicates that corporations and other entities are doing exactly that. So, excellent job proving my point.
Crown wrote:Christina Hoff Summers has debunked this fucking repeatedly, when you use proper controls of looking for like for like, the 2009 Labor Department study showed that the 'pay gap' was between 4.8% to 7%. And even this you wouldn't attribute to sexism outright.
I'm not going to take an article by a philosophy professor working for one of the longest-lived conservative and reactionary think tanks at face value. If you do, the more fool you.
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by Terralthra »

Another interesting study about this. Why are women "bad negotiators"? Because people lie to them more.
Researchers at the University of California–Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania asked MBA students to participate in role-plays of face-to-face negotiations. The faux negotiation took the form of a real estate deal, where one student played the role of the buyer’s agent and the other the seller’s agent. The seller’s agent was directed to sell to someone who wanted to keep the property for residential purposes, but the buyer’s agent knew that the client planned to turn the seller’s property into a tourist hotel and had been explicitly instructed not to tell the seller this information. Thus, the student playing the role of buyer’s agent had to decide whether to tell the truth, or to lie.

“We found that in the role-play, people were significantly more likely to blatantly lie to women,” says Laura Kray, the lead author of the study. “To women, for instance, the buyer’s agents would say, ‘They will be luxury condos,’ but to men, they would say, ‘I can’t tell you.’ ” After the negotiation, students were asked to disclose whether they lied. Both men and women reported lying to women more often. Twenty-four percent of men said they lied to a female partner, while only 3 percent of men said they lied to a male partner. Women also lied to other women (17 percent), but they lied to men as well (11 percent). Perhaps even more telling: People were more likely to let men in on secrets. “Men were more likely to be given preferential treatment,” says Kray. In several instances, buyer’s agents revealed their client’s true intentions to men saying, “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but … ” This sort of privileged information was never offered to women.
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by Guardsman Bass »

You realize that undermines your claim that the pay gap is somehow not motivated by sexism, don't you? In fact, it's worse - it means that the "controls" designed to shrink the 23% figure are tinged with it as well, since women get hit with a set of punishing norms regarding working and child-care.
Crown wrote:Explain to me comrade why the filthy Aristocracy and their despicable Bourgeoisie foot soldiers haven't immediately fired all the proletariat men and hired all proletariat women if they could actually save 23% on labour costs?
Gee, it's almost as if firms can be full of discriminatory individuals and a discriminatory culture. I'll have to go remind black folks that discrimination against them in employment doesn't exist either, because obviously all companies realize the ridiculousness of reducing your pool of potential job candidates and clearly don't do so.
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Me2005
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by Me2005 »

To me, this could actually point to a different, but still real, issue. As more women enter a field, there are more total qualified candidates to take jobs in that field then there were when just men were in it, so the workers in that field becomes less valuable. It seems possible that existing male workers continue to earn their old larger salaries, while new male and female workers earn less.

I think this is substantiated, but haven't seen any research into it so am just going of other information and experience, by the relative pay drop of employees vs. company earnings since the end of WWII. Pay apparently should have risen much more than it has (I've heard numbers calling for basically doubling most people's pay); this could be explained because companies can hire from twice as many people in the workforce. Meanwhile, no one is raising the children now and both parents frequently must work to pay the bills, or the parent with the higher-paying job works while the other stays home, or one takes an odd-schedule so they can cover, or grandparents step in, or the parents have to sacrifice some of their earnings to pay someone to watch the children further diminishing buying power, or etc.
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Re: As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

Post by Benny the Ball »

Maybe women not being as aggressive/good at negotiating has more to do with there being more consequences for negotiating agressively than men due to stereotypes that are still pervasive in this day and age? (And yes, that article does link to studies that back up that notion) And women need an additional degree to earn as much over a lifetime as men with a lower degree, and "A woman would need a doctoral degree, for instance, to earn the same as a man with a bachelor’s degree, and a man with a high school education would earn approximately the same amount as a woman with a bachelor’s degree." Or maybe women still facing huge amounts of sexual harassment in all sorts of fields could be another proof positive of widespread misogyny in the workplace:



(Unless of course anyone wants to dismiss all the women with horror stories as nothing but a bunch of lying sluts and whores who go around falsely accusing innocent men of sex crimes)

Clearly there's all sorts of underlying factors that contribute to this issue that aren't easily solved by anything so simple as an "equal pay act"...really makes "godless commie mind control rays" seem like the best and most efficient solution. :D
Last edited by Benny the Ball on 2016-04-28 01:36pm, edited 2 times in total.
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