WSJ: The ‘Wage Gap’ Myth That Won’t Die

interesting article in the WSJ (link inside post): "The ‘Wage Gap’ Myth That Won’t Die"

I have yet to see a case in my own life when someone, esp. a woman, was discriminated against because of her gender so this article makes sense to me. what have your experiences been?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wage-gap-myth-that-wont-die-1443654408

 

It is probably the culture that teaches women to be cute and dumb and take up easy and non-competitive majors. In my upper level math classes, female-male ratio is literally 1/10. When I sat down in my first class, I had a feeling like wtf is going on here??? where did the women go?

It ain't what you know, it's who you know
 

I graduated with a computer science degree. In all of the engineering departments at graduation, I think there was something like 2-3 females graduating. In the nursing and teaching programs though? Just about all of them were women.

make it hard to spot the general by working like a soldier
 

Yes. This is what was so discouraging when I was growing up. The longer I stayed in STEM, the less girlfriends I had, because it is so hard to find girls with similar interests. One of my professors (male) even commented that if I would continue on I wouldn't have problem getting married. The gender gap in stem is huge and that's what's contributing to the pay gap.

It ain't what you know, it's who you know
 

I think largely a myth. Though, in certain fields where you must demand raises/high comp - men probably do get paid more because as a whole are more aggressive when it comes to things such as comp. Maybe for these sectors you can say its unfair to essentially reward a more demanding personality type vs. another regardless of gender. However in the 90+% of jobs out there this isn't an issue and I think the wage gap is largely a myth.

 

This. Combined with the fact that female participation in the work force in a part-time or casual capacity tends and career interruption for new mothers. Legally speaking any wage gap between genders is illegal, so the difference comes down moreso to statistical differences.

Also the wage gap appears to be decreasing in younger samples.

Associate at Family Office "Investing is not a game of Possibilities but of Probabilities."
 

you are using very loaded language here but here are my thoughts:

"Are you implying that because you haven't seen it, it does not exist?" Are you saying that because I haven't seen it, it definitely must exist?

"You hear the way your colleagues talk about women." Are you seriously suggesting that no woman has ever bad-mouthed a man?

"many woman are socialized to prefer/take lower paying careers or not negotiate salaries" why can't they have actually made that choice being fully aware of the trade-offs?

 
MBA_Junkie:

you are using very loaded language here but here are my thoughts:

"Are you implying that because you haven't seen it, it does not exist?"
Are you saying that because I haven't seen it, it definitely must exist?

"You hear the way your colleagues talk about women."
Are you seriously suggesting that no woman has ever bad-mouthed a man?

"many woman are socialized to prefer/take lower paying careers or not negotiate salaries"
why can't they have actually made that choice being fully aware of the trade-offs?

Oh snap!

Check your privilege.

 

"I have yet to see a case in my own life when someone, esp. a woman, was discriminated against because of her gender so this article makes sense to me"

If you haven't seen it, that's great. Lots of guys are really cool to work with.

After talking to a lot of women, friends, classmates,etc., over the years, I know it's pretty common. That's all.

These are women who are attractive, as well as not as attractive, feminine, or more tomboyish... all types. not the unserious ones who flirt with superiors,etc. Friends who started in M&A at GS and now work at top mega HFs.

I'm not saying its relentless and everywhere. It's just a big surprise for a lot of us who grew up in the top of our classes, having good experiences in high school and college and then you get into the working world and have a bunch of mad men type experiences.

I agree with you that the wage gap probably doesn't come much from discrimination though.

 

Isn't the only way to analyze if a wage gap exists is to look at the actual hourly wage (or salary divided by 2000-2080 hours) for a man and a woman in the exact same job with the exact same background?

If people say there is a gap because a woman who makes $15/hr and works 1500 hours in a year makes less than a man who makes $15/hr and works 2000 hours in a year, that's a pretty flawed way of thinking.

The only fair comparison would be the actual $15/hr wage they are paid for their time. Their time is valued equally, therefore there is no wage gap.

Other considerations should include negotiation. Men are more likely to negotiate for higher pay, and thus if both a man and woman are offered the exact same pay for a job, but the man negotiates for more, that is not supportive of a wage gap since the only difference in pay is due to something the man did that the woman did not.

 
OverTheHedge:
Men are more likely to negotiate for higher pay, and thus if both a man and woman are offered the exact same pay for a job, but the man negotiates for more, that is not supportive of a wage gap since the only difference in pay is due to something the man did that the woman did not.

I can corroborate this. My own employer found that women were being promoted internally at rates lower than that of men. Drilling down more into the data, they discovered that out of those who asked for promotions, women and men were promoted at equal rates. Therefore, women were more reticent to ask for promotion than men were.

This gets really interesting because the "men negotiate more often than women" inequality can actually be eradicated through choice architecture. What my company did to avoid this was simply send an email to the entire company that stated "men and women who ask for promotion get promoted at equal rates." Boom, no more inequality in promotion rates by gender—women started asking for promotion at the same rates as men.

I've also heard that instead of using the word "negotiate," using the phrase "ask for a higher salary" eliminates this gap. Unfortunately, I forgot where I read that.

 

I'm female and I think it is indeed a myth. I have never seen females being discriminated against for being female here in London Finance. On the contrary, males actually do get discriminated. E.g. for every female applying to analyst jobs there are on average 3 males applying, yet some major banks hire 50/50. If it would be the other way around..

 

In the majority of my upper division biological science classes there was a much larger ratio of women to men. I'm in dental school now and it is almost an equal ratio of men to women but there are still more men. Generally, as a society, we are seeing far more women than men pursuing upper level education and the boys are being left behind. Its sad that people still think that women don't have the same opportunities and in their blind fight for "equality" the boys are suffering.

 

She admits that even on the metric of a 40hr work week women earn 9:10 to men. It's a complex issue, and perhaps state-sponsored oversight will not help much, but seems simplistic to just say it's a myth. Also prejudice and bias need not be intended to be present.

 

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