Men vs Women Pay Pap

[roo_ster]

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/03/31/why-has-salary-parity-still-not-happened/ambitious-women-should-be-prepared-to-work-60-hour-weeks

A serious dialogue about parity in the workplace can begin only when we liberate ourselves from the widely propagated but utterly false assertion that “for the same work, women receive 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.” The 23-cent wage gap does not take into account the factors that justify different pay, like occupation, education, tenure on the job, and hours worked per week.

Unfortunately, some activist groups cling to the wage gap, insisting that women earn less than men even after controlling for the relevant variables. For example, the AAUW’s "Graduating to a Pay Gap" report classifies "social science" as one college major and reports that, among such majors, women earn only 83 percent of what men earn. Horrifying—until you notice that "social science" includes both “economics” and “sociology.” Economics majors (66 percent male) have a median income of $70,000; for sociology majors (68 percent female) it is $45,000.
...
Talented young women who aspire to be rich and powerful would be advised to major in economics or electrical engineering rather than psychology or social work. They should be prepared to work 60 hours a week at the office rather than combining shorter hours with home, family, and other pursuits they find fulfilling. Those who stick with this course will find that their W-2s are equal to those of their male counterparts.

Actually, since there are few such women and every tech firm wants to be as duh-verse as possible, women with engineering degrees are paid better than similarly qualified men.  These gals are quite satisfied with the situation until they get married and want to have kids...and then realize their engineer husband is getting rogered.  Which means they and their kids are also getting rogered.  Talked that one over with both husbands and wives in this industry.  Talk about a perception change...

[RevDisk]

If you want to earn above $60k at a young age, you have to be either very talented/skilled or be willing to work long hard hours.

I'm obviously more familiar with the IT world, but it can be quite brutal. You're expected to have a diverse set of skills and knowledge, which are constantly increasing and changing. The hours can be long, and the work can need to be very precise.

[AZRedhawk44]

If you want to earn above $60k at a young age, you have to be either very talented/skilled or be willing to work long hard hours.

I'm obviously more familiar with the IT world, but it can be quite brutal. You're expected to have a diverse set of skills and knowledge, which are constantly increasing and changing. The hours can be long, and the work can need to be very precise.

There are exceptions to every rule, and I've met a grand total of two women that prove an exception to this, but:

Women suck at IT.


Women do well as project managers and situations where high-view multitasking is the normal workflow.  But when it comes to software development or datacenter support, women are terrible at it.  When it comes to managing the number of bytes transferred for each data connection, troubleshooting network socket negotiation issues, configuring firewalls and routing tables or managing system memory, women don't do these things well.

Fairly certain that also would translate to engineering or economics, as well as construction or auto maintenance. 

[Fitz]

There are exceptions to every rule, and I've met a grand total of two women that prove an exception to this, but:

Women suck at IT.


Women do well as project managers and situations where high-view multitasking is the normal workflow.  But when it comes to software development or datacenter support, women are terrible at it.  When it comes to managing the number of bytes transferred for each data connection, troubleshooting network socket negotiation issues, configuring firewalls and routing tables or managing system memory, women don't do these things well.

Fairly certain that also would translate to engineering or economics, as well as construction or auto maintenance. 

My last system engineer in my detroit location was a woman.

When she quit, i was not upset with it, other than the timing.

[Scout26]

That's because, for the most part, women's brains are wired differently then men. 

Women talk in "Spider Webs".  Jumping from one mostly unrelated point to the next, to the next. Their conversations resemble spider webs and most men just stand there and have no idea where they are going as the topics are constantly jumping and changing.   They will start off on one thing, and then go off on 20+ tangents before finally circling back to the original topic.

Men are Linear.  We talk "A", then "B", then "C", which is why "D".   That we can follow.

IT requires Linear Thinking.     

[Nick1911]

I'm inclined to believe that a good bit of it is cultural.  We buy boys erector sets, lego's, go carts etc, and girls barbies, dollhouses, makeup, etc; then wonder why STEM careers are dominated by men.

[AZRedhawk44]

My last system engineer in my detroit location was a woman.

When she quit, i was not upset with it, other than the timing.

I remember one co-worker I had that was a woman, at a local school district, when I was a lowly PC tech.

I saved her life one day when she grounded HERSELF and then was using a CRT discharge rod on an old fashioned CRT monitor to discharge the flyback capacitor to... ground (herself).  Stopped her about 3 seconds shy of that cardiac episode.

She liked to talk about how much she helped her husband do web programming.  Everyone in the room busted up laughing when I asked whether roast beef or tuna was more helpful to him.  Asked her to write a simple static HTML page with one sentence on it and publish it to an Apache server.  Couldn't do it.

She is NOT one of the exceptions in my mind.

The two exceptions I have in my mind... one is an Oracle DBA, and the other is a logic major that the CIA tried to recruit out of college, but she also ended up gravitating to relational databases (Access, MS-SQL, and using them in Human Resources.  Implementation consultant at PeopleSoft.).  Both are set/pattern minded people.  And have very cogent, rational thinking processes.  Both tend to have more guy friends than girl friends.

ETA:  But the quote bolded by roo_ster is very telling and true in my anecdotal experiences:  Jobs that have on-call and high-demand hours are indiscriminate in their pay differential between men and women.  But most women don't want to be on-call or work high-demand hours.  Hence, women do the project management mother hen HR nurturing jobs that have less mission critical nature to the enterprise, and men do the high-availability precision work with less tolerance for error.

[BlueStarLizzard]

And one wonders why more woman don't come around here.
 

[Tallpine]

I'm inclined to believe that a good bit of it is cultural.  We buy boys erector sets, lego's, go carts etc, and girls barbies, dollhouses, makeup, etc; then wonder why STEM careers are dominated by men.

I could have bought my daughters toy dump trucks and they would wrap them in a blanket and carry them around like babies. 

[roo_ster]

In line with my OP, I have worked with a few exceptional tech gals.  One started her work life with a masters in math, so she was obviously no dummy.  She is the breadwinner of the household, her husband just was unable to bring in the bucks like she did.  She is recognized by her peers as sharp and puts in the hours to accomplish good things. 

But, she wished the earning roles were reversed in her marriage after they had two kiddos.  Especially because they bought enough house that his income couldn't cover all the bills.

[MechAg94]

The women I work with are most always female engineers.  If they have a good head on their shoulders, they have no problem finding work.  I seen some that were very good and some that weren't; same as men. 

Where I see very few women is in the hands on fields such as plant operators, instrument technicians, electritians, mechanics, etc.  Partly those jobs are more physical, but I think a good bit of it is cultural.  You just don't see most women looking to start careers in those areas. 

[Tallpine]

I worked with a lady software engineer down in SD.  She was pretty smart, but in a few weeks I figured out some tricks with Rhapsody in C++ that she didn't know after some years, and didn't even comprehend when I tried to explain it.

Of course, some of the guys that I worked with were total idiots.   

[LadySmith]

And one wonders why more woman don't come around here.
 

Except for the occasional "women are stupid", "women can't drive", and "women make no sense" threads, this is a pretty good place to hang out. 

[BlueStarLizzard]

Except for the occasional "women are stupid", "women can't drive", and "women make no sense" threads, this is a pretty good place to hang out. 

What's funny is they'll say all that, but not one would dare say "woman can't shoot".

*snicker*

[zahc]

I think people in this thread are painting with some broad brushes (no offense intended), but I do agree with the premise that the male-female pay gap is fictional. In my experience, it's probably the reverse. For the same job, I think women probably make more than men. Which is natural, given that they are so much prettier, so demand is higher, and they are in shorter supply, so supply is lower. However, the very high end of the pay scale is dominated by men, and men have longer careers, and men have fewer options than women, thus as an aggregate population, it can appear that men make more than women, if you suck at statistics...or if you are good at using statistics to warp the facts to suit your message.

This is not limited to salary. It's the same even with sports...the very highest levels are always dominated by men, but in reality-land where I live, physical capability between men and women is much more even, and there are many men who are in worse shape than many women. It's even possible, very possible, for women on average to be stronger than men, but still not show up at the highest level of sports...because the highest level of sports is always filled with outliers.

[makattak]

I'm inclined to believe that a good bit of it is cultural.  We buy boys erector sets, lego's, go carts etc, and girls barbies, dollhouses, makeup, etc; then wonder why STEM careers are dominated by men.

That's because the prevailing culture has told you there's no difference between men and women. (I'd call it liberal public school indoctrination.)

First, there's a reason there are common male and female traits that span every single known culture.

Secondly, you've never had children. The differences are VERY clear from even before they are born.

Now, the reason I point out you've never had children is not because it makes you incapable of commenting on this, but because, as with most liberal indoctrination, it has problems when faced with reality. Children make many indoctrinated by our school system (it's all programming by our sexist culture!) face the realities of human nature (and the nature of the sexes.)

[roo_ster]

That's because the prevailing culture has told you there's no difference between men and women. (I'd call it liberal public school indoctrination.)

First, there's a reason there are common male and female traits that span every single known culture.

Secondly, you've never had children. The differences are VERY clear from even before they are born.

Now, the reason I point out you've never had children is not because it makes you incapable of commenting on this, but because, as with most liberal indoctrination, it has problems when faced with reality. Children make many indoctrinated by our school system (it's all programming by our sexist culture!) face the realities of human nature (and the nature of the sexes.)

This.  

The "gender gap" is small potatoes relative to the "marriage gap," voting pattern-wise.  Many of one's paper theories about so many things get torn down by toddlers and stained with baby poop and flung spaghetti.  Also one of the reasons for anti-marriage policies being pushed by the left for decades.

What's funny is they'll say all that, but not one would dare say "woman can't shoot".

*snicker*

Because most of us who have shot with women observe their relative competence at the shooting range is no greater or lesser than men's, controlling for experience(1).  Those of us in STEM occupations also see the relative lack in that realm.  This despite huge incentives for women to jump on board from public high school programs, college admissions & engineering dept folk desperate to get a few women in the dept, to corporations that actively recruit and pay more to women with equivalent skill sets. 

Reality is what it is.  What is annoying is the carping about how women are not paid as much as men by the designated whiners.  How many men run around sniveling about how unfair it is that so many more men are incarcerated relative to women?  If they did, they'd be verbally slapped about the head for being nincompoops. 




(1) Last gal I took shooting went from "never shot anything, ever" to "busting out the X-ring" at 3 yards and "all COM at 15 yards" in a mere two hours.  No dummy, she.

[RevDisk]

There are exceptions to every rule, and I've met a grand total of two women that prove an exception to this, but:

Women suck at IT.

http://xkcd.com/385/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

That should explain the second statement quite handily.

There are physical and cognitive differences between men and women. Overall intelligence however is basically equal, with an interesting variance on the male side. Males tend to have a less pronounced bell curve. Shockingly, apparently there are a very large number of both very stupid and very smart men. But that might be the perception issue at hand. You have that large pool of individually very smart men likely to work in IT, and ignore the very large pool of very dumb men not likely to work in IT. Mean IQ scores between men and women vary little, a couple points in either direction.

That's the biology, strictly with intelligence. Culturally? We push folks in certain directions. One of the female scramjet engineers I know at Pratt used to work at a gun shop part time in college. While men often implied they'd prefer to talk to a man about firearms, plenty of women flat out said it. Women can say some pretty misogynistic stuff. Care to guess how many times her family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, etc have asked her when she's going to have kids? Or when she's going to "settle down"?

Add in the general attitude shown here in this thread. "Wimmin can't design no supersonic combustion ramjet! They should be at home cooking, not trying to run no fluid dynamic computations."

Plus, there's usually no expectation FOR women to sacrifice their lives and sanity for often thankless work. One of our cultural things is "Men should work hard, or they are not a good man." I subscribe to that too much my own self. I often wonder why someone would want to work 80+ hour weeks, even as I do so myself. You can't be on the cutting edge without putting in a lot of work. Study, individual exploration and learning, certs, degrees, long hours building up one's resume, etc.

We push women less to do this. And apparently, plenty of women capable of doing it don't want to. Therein, in my opinion, is the wage gap. You have less women that want to put up with the BS, put in the long thankless hours, and sacrifice so much for excellence in one narrow area (that tends to corresponding high pay). I have no claim to know whether this is genetic, cultural or otherwise. It's just what I've seen.

[makattak]

What's funny is they'll say all that, but not one would dare say "woman can't shoot".

*snicker*

Women aren't stupid. Women think differently than men (as in, the way there brain functions is different), and on average are smarter than men. Men, however, tend to populate far more of either side of the bell curve, resulting that the smartest tend to be men as well as the dumbest. As for women can't drive, I know the statistics that women are on average safer drivers than men... it's those OLD PEOPLE who can't drive.

[Balog]

In more "progressive" countries where women are the most free to choose, they tend even more towards those gender roles traditionally assigned to women. This despite the cultural hostility to those roles. http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/what-lean-in-misunderstands-about-gender-differences/274138/

[erictank]

The women I work with are most always female engineers.  If they have a good head on their shoulders, they have no problem finding work.  I seen some that were very good and some that weren't; same as men. 

Where I see very few women is in the hands on fields such as plant operators, instrument technicians, electritians, mechanics, etc.  Partly those jobs are more physical, but I think a good bit of it is cultural.  You just don't see most women looking to start careers in those areas. 

I've been an operator in a water plant (currently, for ~7 years now), and was a control-room operator at a nuclear power plant (that's reactor-operator type, though I hadn't taken the class to get my NRC license when I left, after 8 years). There was one-count-her-ONE operator at North Anna, that whole time (she started a little while after me and should have gotten her NRC license, if she's still there. Older woman, must be pushing 60 by now); there are NONE at Griffith.

They don't (generally) seem to want to get into that culture, nor the rotating-shift-work-12-hour-shifts. Not that I blame them on the latter - working on a way out of that myself.

[BlueStarLizzard]

OK, first things first. My two posts in this thread where directed at the tone of several post made, not the OP.

I'm not naming names, but yes, they were some sexist posts. Generalizing all woman based on your rather limited experances is sexist, and implying that woman cannot think in a rational manner is sexist.
Don't expect me to pull my punches with you guys, just because I'm willing to throw punches at sexism rampant amoung the females in this country.

As too the OP. I've been skeptical of the whole pay gap theroy for a long while. Not because it doesn't happen or never happened, but because it fails to take into account a lot of factors that are biological, as well as just plain old commen sense.

First off, woman have babies. Someone has too procreate the earth, and since I don't see you guys stepping up on that whole thing, we have a division right there.
The process to have a child automatically is going to cut into a womans ability to work and make money. Caregiving duties are going to cut into another chunk of time (and, too be fair, in this modern world, this is also going to cut some hours for fathers as well)

Secondly, I think a lot more woman of my generation may be saying "screw it. I'm not pulling the stupid crap my mother did."
Because, it is insane to think you can have a fast paced, high flying career, be a wife AND actually spend some time with ones spawn.
Some woman can pull it off. They are probably as few and far between as those really great male IT specilists.

I think a lot of the outrage over this perceved pay gap is part of the whole ideal of my mothers generation and subsiquent generations of woman that you can have your cake and eat it too. They refuse to acknowledge that, yes, there are only 24 hours in a day, indeed, pregency is PHYSICALLY a strain and raising a child, holding a job and having a life are all time commitments.
Everyone (male, female, hermaphrodite, EVERYONE) has to make choices about how to spend their time and what things they want and what they have to put aside as an "if only I had the time."

And since a lot of women want kids, a lot of woman are going to end up in less time demanding feilds, making less money and all that jazz. It's not sexism. It's freaking time management. Unfortunatly, some woman (and "elightened modern" men) fail to understand that making babies isn't a highly paid feild of employment (actually, I belive it's working for a loss) and they want to bitch about it.

There really was once a time when woman did make less money for the same exact job as a man. I honestly don't think it happens anymore. That's a battle that's been fought and won. So have a lot of the other examples of sexism in the workforce. Now we have the insistance that womans lib is still this huge issue because someone just doesn't know how to let go, move on and accept that the majority of the battle is won.

[Neemi]

nor the rotating-shift-work-12-hour-shifts

There's plenty of women who don't mind that kind of schedule - nurses, for example.

But I agree - I don't know many women in IT. I know a handful of female engineers but now that they've started having kids most have quit working.

[Tallpine]

I don't know many women in IT.

Maybe they're just smart enough to do something else?   

[kgbsquirrel]

Except for the occasional "women are stupid", "women can't drive", and "women make no sense" threads, this is a pretty good place to hang out. 

Then this should make you feel better.

One of the people I had the privilege of getting to know at my last job was Pamela Strong. Grew up in a household where she was around such figures as Fermi and Seaborg, and referred to Einstein and Von Braun as "Uncle Albert" and "Uncle Werner." Biochemist by trade, holds patents for several drugs to include part of the current HIV cocktail, developed the RAM skin on the B2 bomber and then until recently was the head engineer for composite materials used in the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. And she speaks with a German accent.

Beat that with a stick.