So it seems once they control for relevant variables the gap shrinks, leaving 10-12%? I also doubt they have controlled for all relevant variables. I mean, why are they lumping in every company together? Why not interview hiring managers where the gap is high? If they have the data, zero in on companies who discriminate.

Also in a high tech capitalistic society men are going to have a slight edge on women, lets be honest.

Our brains are bigger, its science.

We have indeed, and you've resorted to the following two arguments each time. Both flawed and laughable.

lol. Yes of course, they sacrifice money purely to discriminate against women

Must be the evil hand of the patriarchy at work!

Pure speculation and baseless assertion. No evidence to the contrary.

Irrelevant really. That still doesn't provide any evidence as to why women generally earn less due to discrimination and it certainly isn't an example of women being paid less for the same work.

I just lurk the forum really. There are some pretty smart people here and I enjoy the back-and-forth of debate.

More than anything, I want to know what the best arguments against my positions are and equally, I want to know what my opponents really believe and what the basis for those beliefs are.

I'm certainly not anti-woman though. I love women! I love my girlfriend and have plenty of female friends.

However, it simply isn't true that men earn more than women for the same work or that women earning less than men when taken as a whole isn't fully explained by their choices and biology.

Rasta, you're making the typical teenager that just learned economics mistake of assuming money is a perfect proxy for utility.

This isn't a baseless assertion or speculation. It's basic economics. That you don't understand that is because you're dumb.

2. How is the fact that many hiring managers have no incentives related to company profits irrelevant. It's like literally exactly why your point makes absolutely no sense.

Lol.

Sure thing dude.

How do you feel about the pay gap between races?

What do you mean/imply by this? Flesh it out please?

Baseless assertion. Please provide evidence of these people who aren't paid to do a good job in a professional role. HR and recruitment are judged and paid on the strength of their hires, what with that being their job 'n' all.

Besides which, the reason its irrelevant is that even if it were true, it still provides no evidence whatsoever that these HR managers are discriminating against women. None at all.

Don't change the subject just because you're struggling, we're talking about the illusory 'pay gap' between men and women here.

Lol at needing me to expand on the difference between utility and money with respect to how people make decisions.

Race is a good question because there's also a pay gap there. And there's even more of a pay gap with women who are a visible minority. So I want to know if you think there are cases where a wage gap indicates discrimination and if so how you reconcile that with your economic beliefs.

Its actually true.

One example of where I learned something about my opponents' position on 2+2 was speaking to Wamy Einhouse on the UK thread.

I was always curious about why precisely any request for evidence for discrimination against women and minorities, or anything even pertaining to scepticism about it tends to be met from fringe liberals with such outright hatred.

After all, scepticism or question isn't discrimination. I wasn't advocating that women or minorities should be discriminated against, only questioning that they are.

If someone is sceptical about whether a murder or robbery has taken place we don't accuse them of condoning either of those actions. We just accept that he hasn't been convinced that they've taken place.

Yet to me, there always seemed to be this mysterious 'hot zone' around issues of discrimination, where it was considered racist or sexist to be curious or unconvinced that they were taking place. Like the man sceptical about the murder I'm quite happy to say that murder/sexism/racism are bad things, I'm just, by analogy, asking to see the body, the weapon, the forensics etc.

Y'know, evidence.

Wamy Einhouse told me that he sincerely believes that there are only two explanations for why demographic representation in 'desirable' or 'powerful' fields might deviate from proportionally representing the population: biological difference or discrimination.

Thus, to doubt discrimination as the cause of such deviation was to necessarily entail racism/sexism.

So, whilst I disagree with him (I believe that these deviations can be explained without either discrimination or biological difference - and that often the explanations are really quite innocuous), I do understand why people who think like him are so hostile. And I now know where I should concentrate my efforts in terms of trying to convince them that they're wrong.

Anyway, I'm off to bed.

I'll let you have the last word for tonight, feel free to call me 'dumb', 'stupid' and 'racist/sexist' etc.

Yes, I didn't think you'd like to answer that one.

What you are of course, implying is that businesses do, intentionally or not, sacrifice economic utility (in this case in the form of equal labour for less money) for some unknown, obscure reason (i.e. discrimination).

What this calls upon you to do however is actually provide evidence (oh no!) that such discrimination is taking place.

I believe that the last time we had this debate, someone came up with the suggestion that the hiring was done by upper management who were high enough to make hiring decisions but not quite high enough to have equity in the company, and so it was a bunch of white men happy to sacrifice profits just so they could have cool, white men to hang out with on golfing weekends.

i.e. a scenario that was lolcompletelymadeup.

Incidentally, that scenario could well be true! and I'm more than comfortable in admitting that it would be highly unjust if indeed it were taking place... but...like I say...you'll need some evidence.

Anyway, off to bedfordshire. Night night x

Lol. You still clearly don't understand.

The point is that if you want to assert that businesses act rationally (an acceptable generalization) you are asserting that the decision makers will try to maximize their utility and NOT company profits. In some case this isn't a particularly meaningful difference - but in others it almost certainly is.

As another random point - maximizing your profits may lead you to discriminating against women. In many jurisdictions it's illegal to ask about a women's plans for having children. And so it might make financial sense to avoid hiring a women in their late 20s / early 30s due to the increased probability and corresponding expected increased cost that they will leave sooner than a man.

Also, way to keep dodging the race question. It's funny how you seem to think it's not acceptable to say what you really think about racial discrimination.

wonder why a bunch of well-known misogynist OOTers suddenly showed up here

There are two active posters ITT.

Lol, was just going to say the same thing.

Even if this was generally true there's no reason to believe it's a reasonably fast process. Women of my age (~50) were definitely given different expectations and were discriminated against when it came to careers. Even if that's since totally changed (which is highly dubious) it would still mean the senior positions tend to be male dominated which it's very hard to believe doesn't perpetuate a bias even if it's gradually diminishing.

Positive discrimination speeds up the equalisation process. It's a temporary measure to eradicate a prevailing historical bias more quickly.

Rasta I noticed you conveniently didn't answer this

What do you think of a very prominent UK businessman telling women they should voluntarily bring it up at interview if they don't plan to have a family as the companies aren't allowed to ask and will probably discriminate that way?

The illegality of asking leading to discrimination point has always seemed weird to me as would the sort of employer who discriminates against women because they might have kids place any value on them saying they had no such plans?

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm

stats by occupation and gender

- 2014
- median weekly earnings (lessons impact of outliers)
- earnings and number of workers.
- broken out by occupation: generally we expect men and women within the same narrow occupation to have similar levels of education, training, etc.

challenge: find the 3(?) where the median salary of women is higher than men

It's a tough question because there will always be motivation to hire employees who will stay on the job. The best solution I've seen is mandating men have the same amount of maternity leave as women. That still wouldn't prevent men and women both from telling potential employees they don't plan to take the leave in order to make themselves more marketable. And employers would still probably promote people who don't take the leave, all else being equal.

I don't actually think it's the illegality of the question that leads to the discrimination (although I recognize that wasn't clear). I think the question shouldn't be allowed and like you said I can't imagine it hurts.

As for the UK dude - I look at it this way. I'm happy to play most games as long as the rules are reasonable and consistently applied. So I'd tell someone that was applying to his companies to say they weren't planning on having kids regardless of what their true plans are.

It seems so painfully obvious that the reason there is a wage gap is because of maternity leave and that women are far more likely to quit or become part-time to spend time with their kids.

Can we really blame small company X for hiring a man that is slightly less qualified than a female counterpart if there is significantly more risk that you train the woman and she quits than the man doing the same thing if the cost to train someone is high?

There is a lot of truth to the evil profit seeking company theory too. It doesn't take 100% of companies to be so greedy that all they care about is making money for this theory to be true. Even if only 25% of companies ran with the profits-first playbook it would be enough to eliminate inefficiencies in the market.

Women may earn less than men because they approach the salary and raise thing differently than men.
Culturally, they may be not favoured in understanding that they're not going to get a pay bump unless they demand it, which men typically have no problem expressing to their bosses when deserved.

Anyway i'm curious if it really is the maternity leave or just the opposites of the gender roles; playing into how one gender is more awkward, at asking for more $$$ than the other gender.

Also I'm skeptical that all the fields are undercutting women compared to men and women must be favoured in some fields that men are extremely disadvantaged in regards to pay.