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ORIGINAL: InfoMan

Do you work in any 'Tech job'

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it is by far one of the worst career options to take.

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people being asked to work off the clock - devoting 60+ hours but only getting paid for 38 of them...
being told you HAD to come in on weekends and holidays because if you don't, you're fired...
Knowing that at the end of the Tech Project which you're working, you'll get laid off...
then completely belittled because seriously... 'how hard can that be?'...

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People treat the Tech Employees like absolute dogshit, and women are far less inclined to put up with that then men.

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ORIGINAL: stef

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People treat the Tech Employees like absolute dogshit, and women are far less inclined to put up with that then men.

Is that your reasoning why men in tech jobs get paid more?

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ORIGINAL: InfoMan

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ORIGINAL: stef

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People treat the Tech Employees like absolute dogshit, and women are far less inclined to put up with that then men.

Is that your reasoning why men in tech jobs get paid more?

Actually yes.

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Women are less inclined to allow mistreatment and will more readily hop jobs or even careers if they feel that they are potentially losing out on progress or advancement. Men on the other hand are more inclined to dog it out - weathering the storm so to speak, and will hang on for that raise or promotion - which some eventually do get.

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ORIGINAL: stef

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ORIGINAL: InfoMan

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ORIGINAL: stef

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People treat the Tech Employees like absolute dogshit, and women are far less inclined to put up with that then men.

Is that your reasoning why men in tech jobs get paid more?

Actually yes.

That's funny, especially when you consider that the majority of absolute dogshit behavior women in tech are forced to put up with is from their douchebro co-workers. Are you're saying, in effect, that douchebros are being rewarded for being douchebros?

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Women are less inclined to allow mistreatment and will more readily hop jobs or even careers if they feel that they are potentially losing out on progress or advancement. Men on the other hand are more inclined to dog it out - weathering the storm so to speak, and will hang on for that raise or promotion - which some eventually do get.

What exactly are you basing this on?

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ORIGINAL: bounty44

whoever reported wickeds post---thank you.

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As a young professional woman myself, lately I’ve grown fatigued by the media’s on-going portrayal of women as victims of circumstance. Media messaging on one topic in particular – the gender pay gap – is especially discouraging because it’s assembled on the basis of flimsy facts. Although it necessitates a voyage outside my traditional topical expertise, setting the record straight seems a sufficiently worthwhile activity as to require it.

Let’s begin with the numbers. Hillary Clinton and others allege that women get paid 76 cents for every dollar a man gets paid – an alarming workplace injustice, if it’s true.

The 76 cent figure is based on a comparison of median domestic wages for men and women. Unfortunately, comparing men’s and women’s wages this way is duplicitous, because men and women make different career choices that impact their wages: 1) men and women work in different industries with varying levels of profitability and 2) men and women on average make different family, career, and lifestyle trade-offs.

For example, BLS statistics show that only 35% of professionals involved in securities, commodities, funds, trusts, and other financial investments and 25% of professionals involved in architecture, engineering, and computer systems design are women. On the other hand, women dominate the field of social assistance, at 85%, and education, with females holding 75% of jobs in elementary and secondary schools.

An August 2016 National Bureau of Economic Research study, Does Rosie Like Riveting? Male and Female Occupational Choices, suggests that industry segregation may not be structural or even coincidental. According to the authors of the study, women may select different jobs than men because they “may care more about job content, and this is a possible factor preventing them from entering some male dominated professions.”

Another uncomfortable truth for the 76-cent crowd: women are considerably more likely to absorb more care-taker responsibilities within their families, and these roles demand associated career trade-offs. Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In describes 43% of highly-qualified women with children as leaving their careers or off-ramping for a period of time. And a recent Harvard Business Review report describes women as being more likely than men to make decisions “to accommodate family responsibilities, such as limiting (work-related) travel, choosing a more flexible job, slowing down the pace of one’s career, making a lateral move, leaving a job, or declining to work toward a promotion.”

It’s fair to assume that such interruptions impact long-term wages substantially. In fact, when researchers try to control for these differences, the wage gap virtually disappears. A recent Glassdoor study that made an honest attempt to get beyond the superficial numbers showed that after controlling for age, education, years of experience, job title, employer, and location, the gender pay gap fell from nearly twenty-five cents on the dollar to around five cents on the dollar. In other words, women are making 95 cents for every dollar men are making, once you compare men and women with similar educational, experiential, and professional characteristics.

It’s worth noting that the Glassdoor study could only control for obvious differences between professional men and women. It’s likely that other, more nuanced but documented differences, like spending fewer hours on paid work per week would explain some of the remaining five percent pay differential.

Now, don’t misunderstand. Certainly somewhere a degenerate, sexist, hiring manager exists. Someone who thinks to himself: you’re a woman, so you deserve a pay cut. But rather than that being the rule, this seems to be an exception. In fact, the data seems to indicate that the decisions that impact wages are more likely due to cultural and societal expectations. A recent study shows that a full two-thirds of Harvard-educated Millennial generation men expect their partners to handle the majority of child-care. It’s possible that women would make different, more lucrative career decisions given different social or cultural expectations.

Or maybe they wouldn’t. But in the meantime, Hillary’s “equal pay for equal work” rallying cry is irresponsible, in that it perpetuates a workplace myth: by painting women as victims of workplace discrimination, when they’re not, it holds my sex psychologically hostage by stripping us of the very confidence we need to succeed. It also unhelpfully directs our focus away from dealing with the real barrier to long-term earning power – social and cultural pressures – in favor of an office witch hunt.

And that’s why, on the gender pay gap, I’m not with her.

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The White House and many in Congress argue that employers pay women less than men for the same work. They point to figures showing that women earn 77 cents for each dollar men earn.[1] Such statistics ignore other factors that influence pay.

Education, choice of industry and occupation, hours worked, experience, and career interruptions all affect the productivity—and compensation—of workers, whether male or female. Accounting for such factors reduces the difference between average male and female wages to just 5 cents on the dollar. Other factors, such as the cost of fringe benefits, may account for much or all of the remaining gap.

The Gender Gap

Differences in average pay do not necessarily indicate discrimination. Many factors affect workers’ productivity and thus their pay, including:

•Work hours. Employees who work longer shifts—including overtime—usually produce and earn more than those who do not.

•Education and human capital. More educated workers often have more skills and greater productivity than less educated workers. Consequently, they usually command higher pay.

•Occupation and industry. Jobs in some occupations and industries (e.g., construction, manufacturing) are more physically unpleasant or dangerous than others: 92 percent of workplace fatalities in the U.S. are male.[2] In order to attract potential employees, these jobs must pay a compensating wage differential that accounts for the dangerousness or unpleasantness of the work. Other jobs require specialized skills or expertise.

•Experience. Employees become more productive as they gain experience. Economists also find that their pay tends to rise as well.

•Career interruptions. The skills and productivity of workers who drop out of the labor force can erode. When they return, they usually earn less than they would have had they remained employed continually throughout.

•Benefits. Cash wages make up only two-thirds of workers’ total compensation. Non-cash benefits, such as health coverage and paid leave, make up the rest. Employers care about the total compensation they pay but do not particularly care about how it divides between cash wages and benefits. Workers who want more benefits may accept jobs with lower wages, and vice versa.

Market forces compel employers to set pay on the basis of factors such as these that affect productivity. Businesses that pay their workers below their productivity see them accept better job offers from competitors. A company that paid experienced workers and new hires the same amount would have great difficulty retaining experienced workers. A hospital that paid its doctors and nurses fast-food wages would find itself chronically understaffed—if it had any staff at all.

Consequently, economists would not expect men and women with different levels of education and experience working in different occupations in different industries and with different benefit packages to make the same amount. To the contrary, pay differences would naturally arise in the absence of any discrimination.

Government Pay Gap

The pay gap in the federal government demonstrates this fact. Congress sets the pay of most federal white-collar employees through the General Schedule (GS). GS grade and seniority almost entirely determine the pay of federal employees. Other factors—including gender, market pay rates, and individual productivity—play little role.[3] Federal managers have no ability to discriminate in favor of or against female employees.

Nonetheless, the federal government has a substantial pay gap. The average woman on the GS makes 89 cents for each dollar earned by the average man.[4] How so? The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) investigated and determined:

When we examined pay gaps by grade level for the GS population, we found that there was no significant gap between female and male salaries. However, more females were found in lower grades, which may be a reflection of differences in occupational distribution.[5]

For example, OPM data show that among the federal workforce, females make up 75 percent of all social workers but only 17 percent of all general engineers.[6] On average, federal social workers earn $79,569, while federal general engineers earn $117,894.

A comparison of wages within each occupation reveals very little wage gap. Without accounting for any potential differences in education, experience, hours, or other factors that could affect wages, female engineers earn more than 95 percent as much as male engineers, and female social workers earn more than 97 percent as much as male social workers.[7]

Accounting for Factors Influencing Pay

Many economists have examined how the pay gap changes after controlling for factors that influence pay. Most studies find that observable characteristics explain a large portion of the apparent gap in pay between male and female workers—with differences in occupation and experience having the largest effect.

The Department of Labor commissioned an examination of this research, which it published in 2009.[8] It found that the average woman makes 18 percentage points less than the average man. Controlling for demographic factors and education actually slightly increases the gap (to 20 percentage points) primarily because women’s educational attainment now outpaces men’s. However, detailed proxies for occupation and industry reduce the overall gender gap by almost a quarter—to 14 percentage points. Adding controls for hours worked further shrinks the overall gap. And adding additional controls for the number of children a worker has and time out of the workforce reduces the gender gap by three-quarters—to just five percentage points.

Accounting for several observable characteristics shows women with the same skills and doing the same jobs as men are paid almost the same amount. Including other factors would probably further shrink the remaining difference.

Surveys of individual workers cannot reliably measure total compensation, which includes benefits. For example, few workers know how much their companies spend on their health insurance premiums. Consequently, studies examining the gender gap rarely examine total compensation. If women—particularly working mothers—tend to place a higher value on some benefits than men do (such as more paid time off or better health coverage), this would artificially inflate the pay gap. They would accept lower pay in exchange for better benefits, but surveys asking about wages would report only the lower pay.

Shrinking Gender Gap

An apples-to-apples comparison shows women earn almost as much—and quite possibly just as much—as men for doing the same work. Aggregate differences in pay reflect different choices made by individual men and women.

This explains why the gender gap has shrunk so rapidly over the past generation. In 1979, the median woman working full time made 62.5 percent as much as the median man. By 2013, that figure closed to 82 percent—half the gap disappeared. Since the 1970s, women have become more highly educated and moved into higher paying industries and occupations. For example, a generation ago, very few women worked as doctors or lawyers. Today many women work in these and other high-paying occupations and earn more as a result. Consequently, the aggregate gender gap closed significantly.[9]

Misleading Figures Harm Women

The claim that women earn 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men is more than misleading. Perpetuating it discourages women from striving to achieve in the workplace. Few competitors will strive their hardest in a rigged game. Inaccurately telling women that employers have stacked the deck against them dissuades them from making the career investments necessary to get ahead.

Misleading claims about the gender gap can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, discouraging aspiring female workers from making the choices that would enable them to succeed. Advocates would do much more to help female workers if they explained why the gender gap exists—and encouraged them to use their skills to excel in the workplace.

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ORIGINAL: InfoMan

And while you want to sit there and say that the common denominator is that women are being treated poorly in these industries - there is an unspoken incorrect assumption that is being made here... that men have preferred treatment in those same roles.

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As if they are harsh to women and polite to men.

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you've made the assumption with your first line about 'douchebros';

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As if mistreatment is unique to only female
Well, I've seen first hand that this is not the case.

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It is an equal opportunity shit storm in the tech industry.

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Men get treated just as poorly in the tech sector as women.

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Founded in 1982 by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., with the blessing and aid of Margit von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, Henry Hazlitt, and Ron Paul, the Institute seeks a free-market capitalist economy and a private-property order that rejects taxation, monetary debasement, and a coercive state monopoly of protective services.

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Some myths die hard. The myth of the gender wage gap is one that’s had particularly long legs. Right after winning an Academy Award, Patricia Arquette proclaimed that “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America” to thunderous applause. In her “11 Commandments of Progressivism,” Elizabeth Warren is so beside herself she writes “… I can’t believe I have to say this in 2014 — we believe in equal pay for equal work.” President Obama established an Equal Pay Task Force and one of his first acts was to pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

It’s all but taken for granted. Women make 77 cents on the dollar compared to what a man makes for the same work. I’ve been taught this since grade school. Indeed, it would seem to be that the only people who disagree with this are actual economists who study the issue.

As many have noted, a question quickly comes up when discussing wage discrepancies between two groups; if employers care so much about money (which progressives seem to be convinced of), why would they ever hire a man when they can hire a women to do the same thing for three quarters the cost?

Jobs Are Not Homogeneous

But a second problem comes up after just briefly scratching the data; why isn’t this wage gap even remotely close to being consistent across industries? It’s not just models (who make 10 times as much as their male colleagues), but also a variety — albeit minority — of different fields. Forbes recently ran an article based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics titled “15 Jobs Where Women Earn More Than Men.” These jobs include bakers (104 percent), teacher assistants (105 percent), nutritionists (101 percent), and occupational therapists (102 percent). Do those hiring bakers just happen to be some of the few people in this country who aren’t sexist?

What about location? The Huffington Post ran a similar article based on census data titled “The 11 Cities Where Women Out-Earn Men By the Biggest Margin.” They include Atlanta (121 percent), New York (117 percent), and San Diego (115 percent).

And as Warren Farrell notes, the 2003 Census Bureau Current Population Survey showed that “When women and men work less than 40 hours a week, the women earn more than the men.”1 134 percent for between 25 to 34 hours and 107 percent for between 35 and 39 hours.

Add to this another interesting fact. A study by the American Association of University Women — a group that strongly believes in the wage gap — found that,

overall, the regression analysis of earnings one year after graduation suggests that a 5 percent pay gap between women and men remains after accounting for all variables known to affect earnings.

Leave aside the fact that regression analyses cannot be taken as gospel. There’s simply no way to control for every variable (see here for a great discussion on this topic). Even so, 5 percent is a lot less than the supposed 23 percent wage gap. Why would employers discriminate more as women got older? So, the wage gap is not only inconsistent with employer’s best interests, it’s also inconsistent across industries, locations, hours worked, and ages. Yes, this doesn’t sound suspicious at all.

As I’ve discussed before, differences do not automatically equal discrimination. After all, Asian-Americans are paid more than Whites. And Japanese-Americans are paid more than Korean Americans. For crying out loud, lesbian women make more than straight women! One must dig a deeper before settling on discrimination as the end-all explanation.

Men and Women Often Have Different Career Goals

And once you dig a little deeper, it becomes abundantly clear that men and women do not treat work or life in the same way. By either culture, biology or a mix of the two, men place a higher value on income. For example, a survey of men’s and women’s reasons for obtaining an MBA found that,

Men acquiring an MBA aspire to become President or CEO of both public and private companies. … Women MBAs, however, ranked management consulting, executive level vice-President positions and non-profit executive management high among their career goals. … Men expect to hold the top leadership positions and for women, it is still the exception.

This would also explain why men are more likely to seek after dangerous jobs with hazard pay. Thus, men make up 93 percent of workplace fatalities. Professor James Bennett found 20 differences between what men and women do in the workplace that influence income that aren’t found in the raw numbers — which is all the “77 cents on the dollar” takes into account. These reasons include,

•Men go into technology and hard sciences more than women.

•Men tend to take more stressful jobs that are not "nine-to-five."

•Men are more likely to work longer hours, and the pay gap widens for every hour past 40 per week.

•Women are more likely to have "gaps" in their careers, primarily because of child rearing and child care. Less experience means lower pay.

The reason women are more likely to have a gap in their career is what economist Walter Block coined as Marriage Asymmetry Hypothesis in a study criticizing the wage gap back in 1981. Namely, when a man and woman get married, what typically happens is the man will take on the lion’s share of making money and the woman will take on the lion’s share of raising the children (a fact that has been demonstrated time and time again).

Whether this is right or wrong is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The only thing that matters here is if the wage gap is due to discrimination. And the major differences between men and women in workplace behavior — primarily as a result of marriage — cast a lot of doubt on the discrimination hypothesis.

As Denise Venable points out in her analysis of the wage gap, “in general, married women would prefer part-time work at a rate of 5 to 1 over married men.” (This is probably why part-time women earn more than part-time men.) Furthermore, women over twenty-five years of age have held their current job for an average of 4.4 years vs. five years for men and pay raises come with seniority.

In addition, expectations and future plans play a big role in these decisions. As economist Thomas Sowell observes,

Women tend not to go into occupations in which there’s a very high rate of obsolescence. If you’re a computer engineer and you take five years out to have a child and [raise him] until the age you can put him in daycare, well my gosh, the world has changed. You’d have to start way, way back. On the other hand, if you become a librarian, a teacher or other occupations like that, you can take your five years off and then come back pretty much where you left off.

Computer engineers generally make more money than librarians.

Never-Married Women Make More than Men

Indeed, when comparing never-married women with never married-men, the wage gap doesn’t just disappear, it flips. As far back as 1971, never-married women in their thirties have earned slightly more than similar men.2 In 1982, never-married women on the whole earned 91 percent of what men do.3 Today, among men and women living along from the age twenty-one to thirty-five, there is no wage gap.4 And among unmarried college-educated men and women between forty and sixty-four, men earn an average of $40,000 a year and women earn an average of $47,000 a year!5

And when all of this is taken into account, the wage gap all but disappears, as many studies have found:

•A study by the CONSAD Research Corp. for the US Department of Labor found that once they controlled for the variables, there was “an adjusted gender wage gap that is between 4.8 percent and 7.1 percent.”6

•A study by June and Dave O’Neill for the National Bureau of Economic Research found that “… the gender gap largely stems from choices made by women and men concerning the amount of time and energy devoted to a career.”

•Warren Farrell conducted a thorough study reported in his book Why Men Earn More and found no evidence of a wage gap.

•A 1983 study by Walter E. Williams and the aforementioned 1981 study by Walter Block discredit the idea that the wage gap is caused by discrimination.

•Carrie Lukas notes that “In a 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30, the research firm Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8% more than their male counterparts.”

Even PolitFact rated the claim that “women are paid 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men” as “Mostly False.”

It’s certainly possible that the small remaining gap in the CONSAD report is because of discrimination, although it’s just as likely to be other variables that weren’t accounted for since no study can have perfect controls. For example, how does one control for motivation and personal work/life goals? Regardless, most of the gap has to do with choices. There’s nothing wrong with women’s choices; indeed, there may be something wrong with men’s as seeking a work-life balance is probably a wiser decision. Still, it is these decisions that are the primary reason for the wage gap, not discrimination. This stubborn fact might explain why, despite all of their protests, the White House paid women only 88 cents on the dollar compared to men and even Hillary Clinton herself only paid women on her staff 72 cents compared to men. Reality just doesn’t seem to care much about rhetoric.

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ORIGINAL: bounty44

how many felchgobbles to make all that go away??

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ORIGINAL: stef

They often are.
Again, not an assumption.
it's not unique to women, but we get the significant majority of it in many organizations unless a concerted effort is made to put an end to it.
Yeah, no. Not even remotely.
Bullshit. The LA Times article you linked to shows this isn't the case. In addition to the points raised in the article; ideas raised by women are often ignored or discounted, while the same idea raised by men are not, and that's far from a rare occurrence. Throw all of that on top of the pay gap and it's hardly a mystery why women are leaving tech. It's not because men are more willing to "dog it out".

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ORIGINAL: InfoMan

You see, this is where the argument gets problematic.

By simply asserting that there is no discrepancy in pay for Men over women, and that women are the only ones being oppressed, you limit the argument and produce a bias which only endears dislike and distrust of those making the claim.