Equal Pay for Equal Work

[moda0306]

This is a topic that has bugged me for a while.  I don't want to turn this into a big anti-woman thread or anything, but there are a couple points I'd like to get more informed on.

1) On what basis have we determined that "equal pay for equal work" is even a right to begin with (beyond government employment)?  Pay is simply a negotiable term of a contract.  Like all negotiable terms, there can be some price inefficiency due to people's subjective biases.  We don't enforce most of these biases with government regulations.  Why is "pay" so special?

2) Are women truly paid anywhere close to 77% on the dollar of men?  I've often heard that this is a myth, and while I believe it's likely that there is some gender-based pay disparity for equal work, I'd be surprised if it's anywhere NEAR this much.

Thoughts?  Anyone with better research than myself?

We can leave broader men v women discussions out of this, if you don't mind. I'd like to stick to the concepts of whether equal pay is even a reasonable "right" to assert upon others, and what an accurate pay gap actually is.

[Tortoise]

If a male/female pay disparity exists for "equal work" in a given industry, it is most likely due to the fact that there is more risk associated with having a female employee due to temporary and sometimes indefinite/permanent maternity leave.

That risk of maternity leave may very well manifest itself as a difference in average pay offered to females vs. males.

[moda0306]

Tortoise,

I agree with that being a possible reason... but do you REALLY think that there is NO systemic gender bias beyond the calculated risk?  I've been in a lot of business environments and get a very "old boy club" feel to it.  There's a lot of general sexism out there that I can't imagine doesn't manifest itself in gender pay gaps.

However, that says nothing of degree, nor does it say anything of whether a gap is even an enforceable government concern.

[MachineGhost]

We can leave broader men v women discussions out of this, if you don't mind. I'd like to stick to the concepts of whether equal pay is even a reasonable "right" to assert upon others, and what an accurate pay gap actually is.

I think women not getting paid their worth is the same as slaves not being paid their worth.  In both cases, the cause is coercively institutional and requires a different coercive action to remedy.

[Mark Leavy]

Scott Adams (of Dilbert Fame) very recently posted a thoughtful review on this topic.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1140555296 ... -workplace

[Pointedstick]

Do we know that this is actually a discrimination problem and not simply masking different work trends, e.g. women working less, not negotiating as much as men, taking multi-year breaks in the middle of their careers to raise children, working more part-time jobs, etc?

For example, this website says that the average number of work hours per week for women is 35.5, vs 41.3 for men. So women work 86% as much as men, which goes a long way toward explaining the "women make 77% as much money as men" discrepancy. It also shows that women are more likely to work part-time, and part-time jobs are just inherently likely to be less rewarding on a per-hour basis than full-time jobs. That could do it too. Then of course there's the additional factor that many of the top-paying careers (business management, entrepreneurship, hard sciences, engineering, tech, skilled trades) tend to attract men in far greater numbers than women, who are statistically over-represented in such lower-paying jobs as secretary, social worker, nurse, and teacher (source, which is fascinating)

Not that I don't think that workplace discrimination doesn't exist. But it seems like a stretch to blame it on 100% of the discrepancy given the multi-decade campaign to get women into the workforce and socially punish men who resist it.

[Tyler]

This Bloomberg article sums up the various factors contributing to the gap pretty well. Employer discrimination is only a relatively minor factor.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2 ... r-wage-gap

Edit: that Scott Adams link is also very thorough and well-balanced. Thanks!

[rickb]

There is, of course, a Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male%E2%8 ... ted_States

[I Shrugged]

If it was possible for an employer to get more value per labor dollar by hiring more women, women workers would be in higher demand, and their wages would rise until the advantage went away. 

[WiseOne]

I thought the same thing for a long time, that women might earn less because many of them go on the "mommy" track, either with periods of part time work, extended leave, or even just religiously leaving every day at 5pm because they've got to get home to pick up their kids, while the guys are more likely to work late.  I haven't seen any studies that addresses this in enough detail, so I really don't know where that "77%" number comes from.  But I can look around in my workplace, small sample that it is, to see what's going on.  And I definitely see big pay inequities here, that have nothing to do with part time or mommy tracks.

I know what our graduating fellows have been offered as starting salaries, which ones have had kids recently, and how their careers have gone since graduating.  And I know what some of the new hires here have been offered, and how much some people who have been here a while are earning, at least up to NIH maximum (since salary is revealed in grant budgets).  In general, women graduates are being offered about $20K less than men, and I know of one case where a man who was no more qualified than any of these women was offered about $60K more.  And I know of a few people who had risen to the associate level - salaries weren't great for any of them which is par for my institution, but again, the men were earning about $20-30K more.  ALL these people had full time jobs and the women were every bit as productive as men (measured by work RVUs, grants etc).

There is no doubt that my department and the field in general is the epitome of the old boys' club.  There is a national organization (American Neurological Association), for example, that was invitation-only until recently and that excluded women until only about 10-15 years ago, when they invited in their first woman who happens to be someone I know.  ANA membership is one of those things that helps with academic promotions, salary negotiations etc - not having it doesn't count against you, but it's a bit of extra CV-synthetase that the guy next to you has and you don't.  There are many examples like this.

I doubt very much that anyone actually thinks to themselves, "This is a woman so I should pay her less."  I think there must be a constellation of factors, ranging from "I bet she'll take maternity leave someday" to the fact that women tend not to be as assertive when it comes to interviews & salary negotiation, to just a perception that a woman isn't going to be as ambitious as a man would be.  Some of that might be considered discrimination, but not all.

On the flip side, I absolutely don't want to be offered something just because of my gender.  When I was told about being put in for the tenure process, that's exactly what I was afraid of.  My friends all had to reassure me that I am in fact qualified and that with past inequities (i.e. my low salary right now) I should just consider it payback.

[Tortoise]

[...] women tend not to be as assertive when it comes to interviews & salary negotiation [...]

The more I think about it, the more I realize this is probably a big factor.

There can be a pretty big variation in what employees all doing the "same work" are earning based on what they negotiated when they hired into the company.

I got my first job not knowing a thing about salary negotiation or its importance in the hiring process, and as a result, I later got the impression that my starting salary was quite a bit lower than it could have been. When I got a job at a different company, they offered me a significant pay raise--evidence that I really was underpaid at my previous job. Live and learn.

I don't have the numbers in front of me, but isn't there at least anecdotal evidence that when it comes to prices that sometimes require some haggling and negotiation (e.g., car repairs), women are often overcharged relative to men? Maybe that male/female effect is also present in salary negotiation, which is essentially just negotiating the "price" of your own labor.

[Greg]

http://www.amazon.com/Business-Life-Don ... 0965227499

[MachineGhost]

Isn't it a little strange that you have to negotiate what you're worth when hired instead of being paid what you're worth and the institution being an arbitrator of fairness instead of exploitation?  What is the logic behind this?  So, of course women who are not raised to be confrontational or affirm themselves (well, I don't know about all the pussywhipped-slave-yes-men married to controlling wives) will lose out.  And why is making a little more profit to the bottom line more important than a harmonious environment.  It has to be systemic otherwise the smallish profit to be isn't in large enough volume.

[Greg]

Isn't it a little strange that you have to negotiate what you're worth when hired instead of being paid what you're worth and the institution being an arbitrator of fairness instead of exploitation?  What is the logic behind this?  So, of course women who are not raised to be confrontational or affirm themselves (well, I don't know about all the pussywhipped-slave-yes-men married to controlling wives) will lose out.  And why is making a little more profit to the bottom line more important than a harmonious environment.  It has to be systemic otherwise the smallish profit to be isn't in large enough volume.

That starts getting really subjective though MG. Let's say that you have two candidates, everything is the same about them except one has 2 more years of experience. How much quantitatively is that extra two years worth to the employer?

You might be able to figure it out qualitatively to say "yes" it is worth more, but is it $3k more because with those extra 2 years that statistically that candidate will bring $30k more into the company per year? It just gets really murky and that's where negotiations come in.

It'd be great if there were very objective measures for determining your payscale. You plug in 50 different factors of work experience, network of friends/family, etc. and out pops the expected profit the employer will get from hiring that person and then the salary they will give based on that expected profit.

[Pointedstick]

Then of course there's the fact that it's economically impossible to pay people what they're worth. If I produce $400k of value for my employer every year, they can't actually pay me $400k a year or else there's no reason to employ me anymore; the profit I generate for them vanishes. Underpaying me relative to the actual value I produce is where their profit and my employability come from. This is a big communist critique that is technically correct, but there really is no other way to do it.

[Libertarian666]

Then of course there's the fact that it's economically impossible to pay people what they're worth. If I produce $400k of value for my employer every year, they can't actually pay me $400k a year or else there's no reason to employ me anymore; the profit I generate for them vanishes. Underpaying me relative to the actual value I produce is where their profit and my employability come from. This is a big communist critique that is technically correct, but there really is no other way to do it.

Actually, you aren't worth what you produce unless you provide all your own capital goods. Of course, if you do that, then you are a filthy capitalist instead of a near-angelic worker, but we can't have everything!

[WiseOne]

Wow...I can't believe this just happened now, rather than 30 years ago!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... -published

I couldn't help but think that if I ever heard someone tell me not to publish something without a man's name on the paper, I'd punch him in the face.

[Lowe]

Before middle age, any woman could potentially switch into the mommy track.  A lot of them will, no matter what they say or how they act in the present.  So there is this risk in hiring a woman before middle age.  Not only that, but they have a higher risk of health problems, a higher risk of taking you to court, and a higher risk of distracting your other workers.  None of this is caused by malicious discrimination.  These are just the facts of life.

To compensate for the additional risks, one offers women less money compared with equally qualified men.  The market rate of female workers is probably even lower than whatever it is today, because of the risk of being sued by the DOJ for not meeting the unspoken female quota.

[Benko]

WiseOne,

That is insane.

1.  That was in UK.  Could the UK be behind on such things?

2.  Can't people publish using their first and middle initials?  How would anyone know what sex they were?

3.  "a higher risk of taking you to court, and a higher risk of distracting your other workers."

Seriously?

[WiseOne]

I also wondered if the story was made up, but here is a report about the incident in the journal Science:

http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-c ... r-response

Firing the editor was totally appropriate.  In addition to letting that review pass, editorial decisions are not ever supposed to be made on a single review.

Publishing anonymously defeats a major purpose of publishing, but there's been talk of sending papers out for peer review blinded to author.  This sounds like an excellent reason to do that.

Lowe:  The argument that women might suddenly drop out to have a baby or go on the mommy track might have some validity in assessing gender pay gaps, but I am really at a loss to understand how you can use that line to argue that a paper published by two women shouldn't be taken seriously because no men were on the author list.

Tenn:  If I ever get the chance to publish a paper with an all-female author list, I'll be sure to polish my boxing technique :-)

[MachineGhost]

Sexism has no place in the intellectual domain.  (Maybe I ought to canonize that as a quote for my signature? j/k)