The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) notes that its analysis of wages by gender does “not control for many factors that can be significant in explaining earnings differences.”If the pay were equalized, wouldn't that only exaggerate the sex difference in the career choices, with even fewer women motivated to go into computers and science? I doubt if men avoid low-paying majors like "drama and theater arts" and "counseling psychology" only because of the pay. But I'm not stating an opinion about whether it's bad that there are gendered differences in career choices. Maybe that's just fine, and it's a shame that women doing what they like includes lower pay. It's just one of the many factors you have to take into account when you want to do with your life (including whether you want to spend more time with your family). But for those who think there's a problem that there aren't enough women in the STEM fields, removing the economic incentive won't help.
What factors?... Men are significantly more likely than women to work longer hours...
Career choice is another factor.... [W]omen flock to college majors that lead to lower-paying careers.... [O]f the 10 highest-paying majors... only one, “pharmacy sciences and administration,” is majority female. Eight of the remaining nine are more than 70% male.
October 1, 2015
"You have to ignore many variables to think women are paid less than men. California is happy to try."
Writes Sarah Ketterer in The Wall Street Journal in "The ‘Wage Gap’ Myth That Won’t Die" (which you can get to without subscribing if you Google some of the text).
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But for those who think there's a problem that there aren't enough women in the STEM fields, removing the economic incentive won't help.
The real problem is that there aren't enough men in any field.
Solve that problem and you'd make educated women much happier than by giving them a 10% raise...
""You have to ignore many variables to think women are paid less than men."
Nowhere do they calculate in the benefits for women being able to kill their child. I mean, that must be like the equivalent of a week of vacation or something.
I am Laslo.
I'm happy to let California run this experiment, and to watch and see what happens.
Now, if I were a California Resident/Taxpayer, I'd be significantly less happy. And if California's economy is dinged by this, it will affect the National Economy. So there is that to worry about.
Am I a klutz today or has the WSJ gotten better at protecting their paywall material from searches?
NVM
Yahoo and Bing didn't get there but Google does
One problem feminists have with lack of women in STEM is the money. The biggest problem is the constant reminder of sex differences in cognition and the obvious value that society places on that aspect of cognition, abstract thinking and numeracy, that skews male.
It is like a stick in the eye for feminists, who take as an article of faith that gender differences are socially constructed. The longer women eschew math, the more clear it becomes that something deeper is going on.
Some of these factors—quality of work, for instance—are inevitably subjective, yet trial lawyers will swoop in to turn every conceivable pay difference into a lawsuit. Employers who cannot “prove” objectively that one employee’s work was better than another’s may face costly penalties. Many will surely pay to settle these lawsuits instead of taking them to court.
The Lawyer's Full Employment Act
"it's a shame that women doing what they like includes lower pay."
As a general economic principle, work that many people like doing will pay less than similar work people dislike doing. Which is just to say that if you have unpleasant work you want done you may need to pay more in order to get enough people willing to do it.
Thus alternate explanation is that women feel they have more freedom than men to choose work they like doing, even if it doesn't pay very well.
The WSJ sometimes does not permit searches on the beginning of an article to beat the paywall, since they offer up that text themselves as a teaser.
They let you in on other portions since prospective subscribers have to be shown that they'd like the site, lest they get no subscribers at all.
I dropped my WSJ subscription in 2003 when it got too woman-pages, and it's only gotten worse.
Dear Ms. A, turn in your feminist card. Now.
The whole premise of this faux research rests on the concept that businesses discriminate against women to the economic disadvantage of the business. After all, If the business can get the same value from women at 77 cents on the dollar, why would any of them hire men? They'd just get rich on the 30% differential and hire all women...
"I doubt if men avoid low-paying majors like "drama and theater arts" and "counseling psychology" only because of the pay."
You mean manly men.
The thing about women in engineering is that it isn't the math. Women do just fine there - plenty of women get math degrees. Rather, they seem less motivated to figure out why and how physical things work. Rather, women seem more interested in the personal side. In my profession, I have dealt with a lot of engineers, and most of the male ones seem to be driven to understand the physical world. Note though that parts of engineering seem to be more congenial to women (e.g. civil, chemical), but these seem less connected to how things work than the male dominated parts of engineering (e.g. mechanical, electrical, CS). Interestingly to me, the better they understand how and why the physical world works, the worse they seem to do with interpersonal relationships (that women seem to excel at).
I doubt if men avoid low-paying majors like "drama and theater arts" and "counseling psychology" only because of the pay.
I'm an accountant. While I enjoy what I do for a living, there were lots of other majors in school I would have picked but for the need to earn a living for my family upon graduation. My son is a mechanical engineer for the same reason. I was fascinated by psychology. My son would have found plenty of other subjects more intrinsically appealing than those he took so he could become an engineer to support his family. His two sisters graduated in history and travel studies. Neither felt they'd ever need to support a family. Despite their parents' counsel, they chose majors they found interesting -- not majors they found kinda-sorta-interesting and that would lead to a job that would support a family.
So, if freed from a concern about how much a major might "pay" upon graduation, I think many men would choose other majors. I started out as an English major and left that field for accounting over concerns of earning a living. If I had been assured I could make as much as I do now, I might be writing poetry for a living rather than doing taxes.
University of Michigan study 2001 (14 years ago): "The analysis found no statistically significant gender effect when all controls were used." http://www.provost.umich.edu/reports/U-M_Gender_Salary_Study.pdf
Can you say "science deniers"?
Talk about low information legislators! If I were still a businessman and running a large operation, and if I could get women to do the same work as men for a 15 - 21% labor discount, there would not me a single male in my employ. That simple fact is the reason this whole "equal pay for equal work" nonsense will never get any traction with anyone more honest than the California state senate.
A math-related site where you can open an account to contribute has a very very tiny percentage of women. That's at a zero pay rate.
I agree with H. Why do CA Democrats hate science?
"it's a shame that women doing what they like includes lower pay."
Why?
Your job choices may vary depending on whether you choose to support a family or abort a family.
I am Laslo.
"The bill applies to public and private businesses. The act also eliminates the requirement that the comparable employees be in the same establishment, meaning a female worker could challenge the wages paid to a male employee working in the same position for the same employer, but at a different work site. "
I'm curious about this.
What if a woman working at a hotel in Lancaster, CA finds out a man in a similar job at the same hotel chain in Los Angeles is making money? There is a difference in cost of living between these two locations. Would the Lancaster woman also have to take into account women in LA are making more? Or is it enough to find a man making more?
Democrats are dangerous when they get some fake statistics to latch onto.
They really have to be able to answer one simple question: If employers can pay women less than men for the same work, then why are employers not exclusively hiring women?
We know the answer--because employers are male sexist pigs who refuse to believe women are doing equivalent work to men, even though they obviously are.
But, if that's the case, wouldn't there be some non-sexist employers there to exploit that? Would the free market not punish such sexism?
It is not low information legislators, but rather a majority who have signed onto the progressive agenda. They vote for this sort of thing because they are beholden to feminists for their offices, and therefore their livings. And feminists like this sort of thing because they like being aggrieved, primarily, I think, because it gives them power. Partly because they are, in their hearts socialists. An relatedly, this is how a lot of women think. Remembering back to PE in the 60s, the guys got graded on their physical performance. The girls got graded, to some extent, in their ability to look good, wear a clean uniform, and play well with the other girls. To this day, a lot of women seem to believe that being nice and looking good are as important, if not more so, than actually getting the work done.
The thing about women in engineering is that it isn't the math. Women do just fine there - plenty of women get math degrees. Rather, they seem less motivated to figure out why and how physical things work
There's a difference between being able to do math, and getting it. I wish I could describe it better.
But for those who think there's a problem that there aren't enough women in the STEM fields, removing the economic incentive won't help.
Does anyone think there are too few women in any field except as it relates to compensation or status? I don't see anyone complaining there are not enough female garbage collectors.
If you remove the economic incentive the complaint about not enough women in STEM disappears because economics is the issue.
DKWalser said...
if freed from a concern about how much a major might "pay" upon graduation, I think many men would choose other majors
Exactly correct. Men are first pushed to sacrifice more, and when that shows up in economic statistics the radfems want to mandate equal rewards for unequal sacrifices.
There's a difference between being able to do math, and getting it. I wish I could describe it better.
This is me, exactly. I was an engineering student for 2 years because I could do math and I knew as a woman engineering jobs would be available to me. But I don't love math, and I don't really get it. I mean, I can't dig into the reasoning behind all of it. I don't looooove figuring out math problems.
And the spacial awareness part of my brain isn't there. I'm more creative. My sister, on the other hand, is a great engineer.
'There is no limit to what we can discover when we explore, ask questions, and listen to science.'
The feminists make it seem as though gender discrimination is systemic because bosses are men who were raised in the patriarchy and therefore are prejudiced against female employees. It's ridiculous.
Employers will pay you as little as they think they can get away with while keeping you happy and productive. So the onus is mostly on the worker to get their due. Be aggressive. Be strong. Be persistent. In other words, be a man.
Just kidding.
In my profession, I have dealt with a lot of engineers, and most of the male ones seem to be driven to understand the physical world.
There are a whole set of obvious and non-obvious abilities that play into success in a career. I was tested by a company that has a huge database of how skills relate to various jobs, and some of the things they told me were very odd, some not so. One of the main skills needed to succeed (and be happy) in most engineering areas is "structural visualization". From what they told me, like math, men have a higher standard deviation in it, meaning that there are more high aptitude men than women. So, more men than women will be good at 3-d visualization, and just as importantly, find these careers fulfilling. They find that if you have a job that uses your skills appropriately (high where needed, low where needed) you are happier in that job. Yes, there are jobs that require low scores on some aptitudes. Some jobs need low "ideaphoria", a measure of how quickly your thoughts flit from one area to another, some need high.
One of the strange correlations they have found: successful photographers have above average pitch discrimination.
"Equal pay for equal work" has never been the goal of this movement. The goal has always been "Equal Pay," period. The Social Justice Warriors say that an HR administrator has just as much value as an engineer, and engineering is a majority male field while HR is a majority female field. Therefore, any pay differential is because of sexism.
If you ask why there isn't an affirmative action plan for more male HR bureaucrats or nurses, you're sexist and part of the problem.
I like my profession (consulting). I get paid by billable hours, just as my female colleagues do. We bill more hours, we make more money. If someone discovers that I'm making more money than one of my colleagues, our pay system will become illegal. Or at least a source of higher pay for lawyers. It's sad that so many productive industries have to support so many parasites; it makes the economy less productive and less rewarding. But hey, "good jobs at good wages" mostly means jobs for bureaucrats and hangers-on, not jobs for productive people.
So, the country has decided to go anti-male. And, fortunately for them, there are plenty of Progressive cuckolds to go along with it.
Even more fortunately, no woman actually respects a cuckold, so they won't ever reproduce.
Now, if I were a California Resident/Taxpayer, I'd be significantly less happy. And if California's economy is dinged by this, it will affect the National Economy. So there is that to worry about.
This is CA, where they pass ridiculous requirements for gas then whine when their gas costs more than almost anywhere else.
Princeton 2005 study: "There are essentially no differences in salary between female and male faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences after time since Ph.D., department, and rank are taken into account. In the Humanities, in recent years, there are no differences in salary even before department and rank are taken into account." https://www.princeton.edu/dof/policies/reports/taskforce_human_socsci/GTF_Report_HumSocSc_rev.pdf
And the spacial awareness part of my brain isn't there. I'm more creative.
Who knew they were different? There is a lady sculptor lives around here who obviously has off the charts spatial reasoning.
Ah, yes, "substantially similar work."
Happy days are here again -- for all those cities outside CA who would like to establish themselves as tech hubs!
Laslo S said, "Nowhere do they calculate in the benefits for women being able to kill their child. I mean, that must be like the equivalent of a week of vacation or something."
Welp, maybe they could give those women the proceeds from the sale of the baby parts they abort!
I didn't mean different, I meant either/or
Law school enrollment these days skews heavily female. Law firms are growing in size--professional employment wise, many of them are starting to look like the Big 8 accounting firms of the late 60's.
Churning away under the partnership level you'll find dozens, if not hundreds, of associates--male and female. They'll be there for six to eight years, all trying to grab the brass partnership ring. With California's "equal pay for equal work" mantra, what happens when a firm has say 15 fifth year associates? And let's posit that 8 of those associates are female, and 7 are male. I'll go even further and say that all 15 of them have produced the same number of billable hours. {Not likely--there's always a gunner or two who's trying harder---but for purposes of this note, let's say that all have the same number of hours.}
Do you, in Sacramento's simple minded view, pay each of the fifteen associates the same amount/same bonus etc? The answer is yes. In the real world the answer is no.
One or two of the fifteen will definitely be on the partnership track. Two or three will be in the process of being encouraged to leave. Some of them will happen to be working on a project that's a major success (read "big payday") for the firm, and as a matter of luck should be rewarded for the fortunate assignment.
There are just too many real world variables that affect the particular associate's value to the firm. And yet Sacramento looks at it and says, "they are all 5th year associates and should be compensated identically".
That giant sucking sound you hear along the banks of the Sacramento River is occasioned by the vacuum between the ears of our legislators.
> I doubt if men avoid low-paying majors like "drama and theater arts" and
> "counseling psychology" only because of the pay. ...
*I* avoided low-paying majors for that exact reason.
I even did a tour as a disk jockey at our campus radio station, yet stayed out of radio because 'computers' was higher paying. Yes your Top Radio DJ's make (or used to) $300k or more a year - but now you're talking like a kid trying to get to the NBA (or NFL).
I also loved theater, having acted in a play in High School.
However, I started my first job out of college at a higher pay than my career government dad.
I was the first 'college grad' from our family. I sure wasn't going to f* that up (at least from my parent's view!)
Hard stuff all the way: Computer Science & Mathematics.
In retrospect, I wish I'd done more 'little theater' - after University.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) notes that its analysis of wages by gender does “not control for many factors that can be significant in explaining earnings differences.”
Similar unaccounted for factors help to explain 'increasing' income inequality as well.
The general progressive line seems to be that no woman's life choices should result in any negative consequences. If women happen to like lower-paid careers, then it's unjust that those careers are lower-paid.
Has anyone heard of the restroom-equity issue? Even though the number of toilets is the same, the women's always has a line, so restroom equity means that women should get more toilets in their restrooms.
I don't think this issue is going to get very far before it gets blown up by transgender activism, though.
If there aren't enough women in stem its because there are too many women in nursing or fields where women tend to go. If they are happy with their choice then there is no such thing as too many or too few in a field. If they are not happy, then go back to school and learn STEM.
When I attended college back in the mid 1990's, I had a course that involved groups of students creating surveys, analyzing the data, and presenting the results to the class. In giving examples of prior projects the professor talked about an analysis of rental properties near campus, where you could predict rent by taking a starting number and then adding and subtracting for different variables: e.g. add $50 per month if parking included, subtract $20 per month for every block away from campus, etc...
Another group had done a similar project on annual professor salaries at the college. They determined a starting number and adjusted for the different factors: e.g. add $3,000 per year if the professor taught in the business school, subject $5,000 if the professor was an associate professor, etc... One of the factors was subtract $X,000 if the professor was a woman. In other words, they had already adjusted for the other factors that affect compensation, and being a woman professor meant less money. I remember at the time being really surprised that there was a wage gap in professor salaries. My (male) professor when responding to a question on this, basically laughed it off and said that it seems gender still matters. I realize that this is an anecdote about a Wisconsin University, over 20 years ago, and, hey, maybe the students' data was flawed. I hope that it would not be true today.
Maybe that's just fine, and it's a shame that women doing what they like includes lower pay.
Why is it a shame?
It's certainly not something to be ashamed of. And nobody is going to ask if it's a shame that men are prioritizing pay and that means a greater sacrifice in time and effort.
As usual, feminism is really about lamenting over the fact that women aren't men. Nobody hates the feminine more than a feminist.
What of the men who are paid less than other men? Than women?
What of the women who are paid less than other women?
The consequences of constructing male-female congruences has been disastrous for men, women, relationships, and especially babies.
To everyone a beachfront estate in Hawaii, and a beachfront estate in Hawaii to everyone.
Give everyone a key and set them loose. Equal treatment in principle, if not actual equality.
I started at UCB studying Physics and Astronomy, targeting a PhD in Astrophysics. 3 years later I learned two things. 1) My brother in law, then a PhD candidate in AstroGeoPhysics, told me a story: seems he and a few other grads were hanging around the Boulder High Altitude Observatory, and someone noted that there were roughly 50 good jobs worldwide for them, and that there were 50 of them in Colorado alone. My BIL eventually got a EE Masters and worked in industry. 2) I was not a good enough mathematician to get a PhD in Physics.
I quit, worked for a Silicon Valley startup for a couple years, and went back to get a EE/CS degree, BECAUSE I could be well-employed in that field.
Part B: In my senior year I was chatting with some women after a CS lecture. I wondered to them why they had not joined UCSEE or ACM or IEEE or even SWE (Society of Women Engineers), since these memberships looked good on a student's otherwise thin resume.
The gist of the responses I got was "We are not going to be engineers." I was nonplussed, to say the least.
OT note: My BIL's research was on the structure of the Martian atmosphere, and included constructing one of the first decent computer models of that atmosphere. Any guesses about what he thinks of the climate modeling being done these days?
Ann Althouse said...I doubt if men avoid low-paying majors like "drama and theater arts" and "counseling psychology" only because of the pay.
Not "only," but of course future expected earnings go into the factors any thoughtful person considers when making a life choice--why wouldn't it be? Maybe it's more a factor for men than for women, but I'm sure it's a factor for both.
If "equalizing the pay" means fewer men go into STEM then it could be true (mathematically) that the percentage/share of women in STEM would increase, and that might satisfy the "a problem of not enough women in the STEM fields." Most of the talking heads point to the % of men vs. women in a given field. If men are more responsive to wage/salary signals and "equalizing the pay" tends to lower the pay for men then men might avoid the field more than women, making the % more equal (but reducing the total number of people going into the field). Women win!
Now, do you care to speculate as to why men might be more sensitive to salary/pay considerations? Maybe they're expected to be the breadwinners/not counting on there being any chance of someone else providing for them? Maybe they understand a societal link btw pay and attractiveness as a mate (for men)? I dunno, maybe maybe maybe. But why doubt that men choose their majors in part around what they expect to make (using that major/degree) later?
Blogger Gabriel said...
The general progressive line seems to be that no woman's life choices should result in any negative consequences. If women happen to like lower-paid careers, then it's unjust that those careers are lower-paid.
Yes, that seems like a fair assessment: women should not bear any negative consequences for their decisions and men are obligated to subsidize women's choices. It's a baldly paternalistic (in the sense of "men have to look out for women since women can't look out for themselves" sense) worldview, but it would seem to explain a lot of the reasoning underpinning modern feminist (or maybe "feminist") thought.
Fred - my kid is in Boulder working on an engineering PhD right now. Their undergrad was in physics and math, but had better luck with engineering for grad school. Their speciality is tied closely to physics, so all wasn't lost. Great place for STEM grad school, with all the national labs there (we were talking last week about the lasers that the labs and CU share buried under that part of Boulder).
Ellen said... My (male) professor when responding to a question on this, basically laughed it off and said that it seems gender still matters.
Was your (male) professor familiar with the concepts of confounding and omitted variables, and just chose not to speculate, or was this a course that didn't normally use statistics?
"I doubt if men avoid low-paying majors like 'drama and theater arts' and 'counseling psychology' only because of the pay."
Why? High-paid psychiatry was once a male-dominated profession (and is now fairly gender balanced) as compared to lower-paid counseling and social work (which are heavily female).
Ellen - but did they control for all of the factors, or just some of them? How about hours worked over an extended period of time? Research money brought in? Papers written? Committees worked on? Etc. Somewhat interested here - know one couple who just had their first kid. Identical PhDs. Teaching at same university in same dept. Same start. He is tenure track, and she is not. Good teacher, but not that interested in research. He spends a lot of time traveling and networking for money, while she stays home with the kid.
It isn't just academia either. In law, often you need a good book of business to make top dollar, and some of your own business to make partner. As an associate, and even junior partner, that work is typically on top of billing (and often collecting) 2000+ hours a year. We may be talking > 2500 hours a year for most of a decade. Maybe more. All at a time when a woman's biological clock is running, and fertility problems are starting to arise (not surprising the number of women in my last firm who had undergone IVF). Sure, some women are wiling to give up kids for a top career, and some get away with both a top career and kids. But it is a numbers thing here, and a lot more women seem to be taking the Mommy Track option in large law firms, instead of working those long hours for most of a decade if not longer.
" Who knew they were different? There is a lady sculptor lives around here who obviously has off the charts spatial reasoning."
I certainly didn't say they were either/or. Just telling you about my brain, and why I was unsuited for engineering.
Yeah MayBee, sorry about the snark, I just wanted to fit in this lady sculptor. Probably because she sort of destroys many of my preconceptions about gender and spatial reasoning.
Understanding people is hard. People, M and F both, reach the age of 18 or so, and they pick a college major. Why? For a whole lot of reasons, only a fraction of which they could articulate. Some majors lead to higher-paying jobs, but to constant competitive pressures. Some majors lead to lower-paying jobs, but more security. Does everyone make the best possible choice? Does anyone look back on that choice and say, I really f*cked up?
I'm a lawyer. When the draft lottery kicked in (just after I graduated from LS), women went from 10% to 50% or more of law students, and after a while in Big Law firms. I've seen other job categories go the same way. I've dealt professionally with other professions, including engineering, in which there used to be "no" women and now are a lot. If you want to encourage women to try to succeed in fields that their grandmothers never considered, Thank you, you're doing God's work. Just keep the damn government out of it.
@tim in vermont:Probably because she sort of destroys many of my preconceptions about gender and spatial reasoning.
If you think that "men on the average are better at spatial reasoning" implies that no woman can better than any man at spatial reasoning, then your preconceptions are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics.
Which is disturbingly widespread. If you mention that women are on the average shorter than men, someone is bound to bring up their friend Sally who is 6' 8", and say it proves that women are not shorter than men.
When I was applying to medical school in 1961, admissions committees assumed that women would not work full-time after graduation and favored men, although some of us thought homely women were given equal weight. Their reasoning was based on the idea that there was a doctor shortage and they were trying to maximize production.
Now, 50 years later, physician recruitment firms report that female MDs work about 27% less total hours per year.
There has been a huge shift to 60% female medical students and "life-style" residencies are full. General surgery has a serious shortage. Probably working hours although back in my day it was a high status specialty. I have watched the "feminization" of medical school and the teaching is quite different. That's not all bad as it is much more about "feelings" now. Still, women tend to go into pediatrics and family medicine, both fairly low paid.
Don Corleone writes: "Does anyone look back on that choice and say, I really f*cked up?"
There was a 4th year math major on my dorm floor one year. He changed to Forestry. When I asked why, his answer was straightforward: "There are more women in Forestry."
(Unfortunately for him, he had other social problems much bigger than being a math geek.)
"Which is disturbingly widespread. If you mention that women are on the average shorter than men, someone is bound to bring up their friend Sally who is 6' 8", and say it proves that women are not shorter than men."
That's because most people are stupid. From my experience, whenever you use a Generalization, someone will pop up and in smug manner point out 1 exception that supposedly "destroys" your Generalization.
My experience is that most men define themselves through their job and how much money they make. Most women don't.
I've also found that in my field, the women - even the ones who are very good at it - try to move away from the number crunching to more people oriented positions.
@Gabriel, What I didn't expect was to run into a brilliant woman. I will give you that.
Fred.
I'm kinda chuffed.
My nephew went and got his degree in ME because of me. He is now going to get his masters in EE. The other one just started U of I in ME and my niece is getting her masters in some kind of advanced math. My oldest daughter teaches math. My youngest is getting a degree in computer animation.
Exciting time to be young.
In 1980, the "pay gap" (the ratio of all women's pay to all men's pay for all full-time workers) was 59c. In 1989, it was 71c. In 2000, it had crept up to 73c. In 2009 it was 78c. Today it's about 79c.
Who was president between 1980 and 1989, and between 2000 and 2009?
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