It's 'sexist' against men and women. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why.

I don't think this is true. But, fine.

It's actually not. There are some fundamental differences that are important between insurance companies charging more for old people to be covered and employers paying women less than men for doing the same job.

But, even if you take the position that the employer isn't being sexist (they are), that doesn't mean the wage gap isn't a problem and we shouldn't put policies in place to address the wage gap. Hell, these policies don't even need to be aimed at employers or wages. For example, longer and paid parental leave useable by either parent would help address the problem you're talking about here.


This would make the wage gap worse. DUCY?

No.

This does not appear to be correct, if we can use data on years of full-time experience as a proxy measurement for the effect of maternity leave.

According to the data in the NBER study I previously cited, differences in work experience account for only about 14% of the wage gap, or about a 3% difference in wages, as of 2010. If you look at table 2, the difference in work experience on average between men and women has shrunk dramatically over the last 30 years, but the unexplained portion of the gap has not gotten any smaller since 1990.

The largest factors in the wage gap, according to that study and others, are gender differences in industry and occupation. In this particular study those two factors accounted for about half of the total wage gap, and about 80% of the explained part of the gap.

We can just think about it logically too.

If we're looking purely at the gap based on having/raising children, its pretty clear that the shorter the leave, the more that women are 'punished' for having kids.

There's a relatively short period of time where women have to bear 'the career cost' of having children. This is the time related to the physical act of having children (and recovering).

Having no or extremely short leave policies mean that women bear that cost entirely - and so employers would react by 'discounting' their value.

On the other extreme, say having a 18 year, fully paid leave, the portion of that time that only women can bear is negligible. Couples could easily make decisions about who raises the kid w/o factoring in the physical act of having children. So employers would have to 'discount' both genders equally (making it not a discount).

I agree that it doesn't make a lot of sense even a priori, and with your other points as well. Logically, one could also point out that the impact of a period of leave on an employee's value is going to be highly variable by industry and the length of the leave, and that makes the entire enterprise problematic.

But, it seems useful to me to reintroduce actual data to these conversations whenever possible. Because there's little point in having a debate about the deductive logic of a scenario based in a false premise. So, bahbah and abba ask if the gap can be explained in terms of work experience and "risk" to employers, and I think it's important to point out that these aren't just hypothetical questions. Empirical evidence exists.

Are there still fundamental differences between employers paying women less and INS companies charging young men more for car INS than young women? What about men paying more for life INS than women of the same age?

Aren't employers and INS companies making bets on who is most likely to get in a wreck, die and take time off based on facts?

this is kind of the point i had been trying to illustrate before. things are incredibly complicated. most advantages also come along with disadvantages. the actual number of advantages and disadvantages women actually face (as a group) in the work force is so large and complicated that the only thing you should do is make discrimination based on gender illegal and enforce it. treat people as individuals and that is as fair as it gets

people dont seem to understand the concept of a market or collective intelligence. heres an exercise in understanding it. try to figure out the value of a 2010 honda civic with no market data. just actually try calculate all the factors people would consider and what they would be willing to pay for it. obviously different people are going to place a different value on it. you also need to factor that in. the calculation is impossibly complicated and you will likely come up with a stupid answer. using the market or collective intelligence makes it incredibly easy to price the value of any object. you look at what price transactions actually occur at, you get the answer very easily and its incredibly accurate, all things considered

singling women out as a group in the workforce and trying to determine their value is absurd. assuming that they behave the same as men is absurd. assuming they should reach an equal outcome or parity is absurd. trying to calculate the actual wage gap attributed to sexism is insanely complicated. if you can take an honest crack at it, go for it, but at this point, the data and research available doesnt even come within a light year

we could easily identify a long list of things that create a wage gap between people. easily 100 items long. focusing on gender is stupid. people should be treated as individuals and thats what discrimination laws are for. the problem we see here is that people are actually moving to affirmative action based on ******ed gender theories. affirmative action is ignorant nonsense but just one obvious example in a massive pile of garbage. studies show women and men actually have different interests. this means that women want to be kindergarten teachers far more than men for example. guess what happens when the affirmative action fairness police take over? less kindergarten jobs for women and more for men. less (insert traditionally male dominated occupation) jobs for men. the premise of equal outcomes is rotten to the very root and the consequences of that is going to be very large. there is already a move down this path in canada and its just going to create a ton of damage. this nonsense is real and it needs to be dealt with

Look, its Juan Valdez once again posting a bunch of opinions that he things are facts and logic.

When you start with your personal belief system, of course you believe this. Because every study shows there's a real gap. And you clearly believe that any gap is explained by fundamental differences between the sexes.... and so every study is garbage in your eyes.

And, amongst the many problems with your view of this issue, is that history isn't on your side. People have been making the exact same arguments based on gender and race for centuries. And, surprise surprise, we continuously see evidence that when we actually put measures in to combat discrimination these 'inherent differences' gradually disappear.

Yes.


No.

I suppose technically the answer is Yes. But there are big fundamental (and meaningful) differences between those bets which makes it a very poor analogy.

Your suggestion is that no other solutions are feasible given the complexity of the issue. I disagree. The OP of this thread discusses a rule which requires companies to measure and disclose their wage gaps. There is some evidence that this leads to meaningful changes that reduce wage gaps (cf. the NY Times article I've linked previously). I see no argument that this "shouldn't" be done.

First, the phrase "singling out" is sort of strange given that women comprise nearly half of the US work force. Secondly, no one is trying to determine their value, they are trying to measure and analyze differences in median wages. It is not plausible that the measured differences could be hand-waved away as differences in employee value.

No such assumptions need be made, and I'm not aware of any wage gap research which makes such an assumption. Many analyses explicitly focus on differences in behavior.

Again, I'm not aware of anyone claiming that exact equality of outcome is the only tolerable resolution. Rather, the size and persistence of the gap (including especially the "unexplained" portion) suggests a meaningful social problem. It does not follow from this claim that any difference would constitute a meaningful problem.

To the best of my knowledge no one has ever presented a claim that N% of the wage gap is attributable to "sexism", for which there is hardly any operational definition to begin with. It is, however, reasonable to believe that discrimination constitutes a meaningful part of the unexplained portion of the gap. It's also reasonable to consider how even the "explained" parts of the gap reflect particular attitudes about gender which might be called "sexist".

As with the objection about equal outcomes, the problem is the scope of the data. If the data were more mixed, with women earning substantially more than men in certain occupations, but less in others, and the overall gap much smaller, then the argument against over-interpreting statistical data would make more sense.

This goes back to your first comment about singling out women, but the obvious flaw in your rhetoric here is your studious avoidance of history. It's not accidental that we consider gender a salient social category, or worry about discrimination against women. It's because of the long history in which women were explicitly treated as property or at best second-class citizens.

I am not aware of any policy proposals to address the wage gap via affirmative-action-like systems, but I would also agree that it's probably not a generally effective solution.

It's also not clear to me how the general conclusion that the wage gap is a problem depends on any particularly controversial theory of gender. You already claim to agree that discrimination is wrong. There is evidence that part of the wage gap is caused by discrimination. This does not require any particular theory of gender.

Can you explain what the fundamental differences are please?

most people would have been humiliated when faced with their pathetic and blatantly obvious strawman tactics like i just did to you on the previous page. you never stop though. the bolded sentence is what you snipped out in order to formulate yet another feeble straw man. it wasn't tucked away somewhere in another post or within the same post, its literally the prior sentence. at this point i cant tell if you're trolling or have a learning disability

i would gladly respond to all of this but i think it would be a nice short cut if you were to explain to me what happens if the report shows a wage gap. now what? are they guilty of something? are they under investigation?

ok so lets say they are now under investigation. how exactly are you going to conduct this investigation? what information are you going to gather and how?

The law discussed in the OP has no requirement beyond reporting. There are no penalties for having a gap, there are no investigations. All that is required is public disclosure. The article is here. The key points are:

The article I mentioned previously about the possible outcome of disclosure is here. See the paragraph beginning with "But real-world results suggest otherwise..."

My argument is that the potential cost of such a rule is quite low, merely some minimal amount of overhead for HR at these companies. The potential benefit is unknown, and certainly the example of PWC does not sustain any general argument. But I think it's an instructive example nonetheless.

obviously im missing something and jumping to conclusions based on whats happening in canada

why are you collecting the data? you have shown a gender pay gap, so what? what are you going to do with that info? nothing? then why collect it

in canada they are looking at population demographics and going after organizations to replicate population demographics at each organizational level because otherwise, it shows discrimination. thats where i see this headed. maybe im missing something. thats why i asked the questions i did

what would you do with info that demonstrated a wage gap

I already have information that demonstrates a wage gap, so that is not the purpose of this law imo.

The purpose of public reporting per company is both to create awareness and social pressure within actual companies to examine their own wage gaps and perhaps to make changes to address them where appropriate. This has the benefit of not trying to force a one-size-fits-all solution on a complicated problem. As with PWC, It may be useful despite the lack of investigations or penalties simply because there is already widespread agreement with the idea that women should be paid equally to men for equal work. The problem is not convincing people (at least not in these corporations) that wage discrimination is wrong. The problem is becoming aware of the subtle issues which lead unintentionally to inequality.

so you would collect the information and publicize the results regardless of what they are. then you would do nothing except let people learn from it and adjust any biases they may have?

what do you believe the people advocating for the collection of this data will do with it or try to do with it?

this is starting to feel like im pulling teeth here

Correct.

I imagine that for the most part the people advocating for this law favor it for the reasons I do, which is why they crafted it in this particular form. One could imagine this sort of law would lead to some marginal increase in discrimination suits since potential plaintiffs would have more information to work with. Beyond that, it's not clear to me what else anyone could "try to do with it."

Sounds like a personal problem. Instead of asking me the same question three times you could have simply read the OP.

im asking for your opinion, and it seems like it needs to be extracted

i don't believe for a second that advocates collecting the data will just sit back and hope people adjust their biases through awareness

this circles back to the unanswered questions which is was the point of dialogue

i realize this is hypothetical but its in response to your previous post. attempting to actually articulate what is involved in a gender discrimination case is what i was hoping to get from you. that was the purpose. im sure you will be able to come up with something, but if you can't, well then i guess that would say a lot, right?

You are entitled to believe or disbelieve whatever you like about the motives behind the law, but your speculation appears to be baseless. I am only concerned with the consequences of the actual law as implemented.

Likewise, you are welcome to find whatever point you like in this conversation, but the point of it for me is not and has not been to consider the process or outcome of a counter-factual investigation of company-specific wage gap data when such an investigation is neither part of the law I cited nor contemplated by any argument I've made. In fact, I've stated more than once (across the two threads dealing with this topic) that I think the most interesting aspects of the wage gap do not really involve the kind of discrimination which could be the subject of a discrimination case.

Basically, your error is in thinking that your misunderstanding of the law constitutes a meaningful response to my post.

you responded to my post with a bunch of things i confidently disagree with. instead of typing it all out i clearly stated a short cut would be for you to articulate what would be involved in an actual discrimination investigation. i also clearly stated its hypothetical. as if i had a crystal ball, you refused to participate while pretending you weren't refusing to participate. its the same old dance. ok you can't articulate how you would conduct a discrimination case, fine but then maybe consider you also responded to my post in a way that highlights the importance

the point of articulating what is involved in a discrimination case isn't to advocate for or against any law, its to actually understand how complex and incomplete the current information is. then potential problem of actually discovering what portion of the gender wage gap is actually due to discrimination. i have said over and over that a gap isnt strictly due to discrimination. so, how are you going to extract the discrimination part? if a wage gap isnt evidence of discrimination (and it isnt) then how do you determine how much is due to discrimination? why are you collecting data to determine a gap if you are unable to articulate how discrimination can be extracted? is collecting this data implying that discrimination exists? of course, because obviously discrimination does exist

i get that you dont answer questions that dont comply with your line of thought. we've been down this road. if you cant even articulate how you are going to determine discrimination with any data collected never mind which data to collect, then maybe you need to pay closer attention to my comments and re think your responses

Lol, Juan. I answered a bunch of your questions again last time you asked me a bunch.

I suspect you just don't get that your walls of text have no substance in them.

Can you link to particular examples of this replicating population demographics at each organizational level?

I mean, of all the weird cul-de-sacs he's tried to steer conversations into, I think this one might be my favorite.

juan: how will the investigations under this law work
me: there will be no investigations
juan: yes, but hypothetically how would they work
me: ...

You really can't figure them out?

I mean, you're either dumb or being purposefully obtuse. I'll give you one hint though. At no point when hiring someone have we had a discussion about that persons health, smoking habits, chances of having children, etc.

I don't see how this could be your favourite.

The basic premise of his argument is that men and women are different and that explains all differences. And given that, any study that says there are unexplained reasons for the wage gap are bull****. And then we can claim that there are no reliable studies!