Then, one day, society changes. "You can work, but you can only be a nurse, teacher, or secretary".

You don't think there'd be a supply glut driving down wages in those areas? Suppressing them over a long period as women gradually enter the labor force there?

And by the same token, that society that says you can't be an engineer or a CEO because you are a woman - that severely punishes those women who do seek those jobs - you don't think women would respond to that? That even if they could produce more economic value, the societal pressure can override the capitalist tendencies of organizations and individuals to maximize wealth?

This causes the persistent inequity in career pay that was caused in part by the original influx of women into the field when explicit sexism was rampant.

And in all cases, somebody has to be the first one; somebody has to show a path, often against institutionalized sexism. Once the door is open (especially when there are few doors) I can see careers tipping fast.

Of course computer science used to have a lot of women; especially when they were being used as human calculators(!), so I don't know what exactly changed that made it a boys' club.

Regardless of the cause, it has the perception, which makes it self perpetuating in some sense - women see articles about how tough it is to be a woman in tech, and are turned off by it, even if the higher pay is there and it's all just rumors.

I suppose though there is something of a reverse impact in some fields (in terms of labor force participation) - like nursing, which is so female dominated, there's actually negative pressure for men who try to enter it . But it also just isn't held up as high as medicine at the MD level.

But do they face strong institutional barriers and negative climates in some of the best paying professions (like engineering)? Yes.

The scale of it isn't like it was 50+ years ago, but let's not pretend like it's "All Better Now"

Now, I fully admit, there is a degree to which women at a young age are socialized into those sorts of professions. And I am absolutely willing to call that sexism, and totally support every effort being made to change that.

Supply and demand and value are central to the equation, but large variability in compensation among near identical profiles in the US and Canadian software sectors is an indicator that the individual isn't good at knowing their value.

I challenge you to question if either of these assumptions hold in all cases or just in an idealized world where everyone is a "rational consumer."

Women are not pressured to be breadwinners, so they're more likely to pick careers that sound fulfilling and satisfying, but are less lucrative.

Media likes to focus on the pay gap, but has anyone investigated the fulfillment and satisfaction gap? I wouldn't be surprised if overall men are less fulfilled and satisfied by their jobs.

We teach men that their value is in their accomplishments, which is a) more empowering; b) more under their control; and c) more conducive to independence and pursuit of self-realization (in career or in other aspects of life), positions of power, and yes, powerful and high-paid careers.

For example, let say we take two groups of men in the age of 30. Those in group A have traveled and accomplished a bunch of personal goals, but are at this point jobbing at minimum wage jobs. Those in group B stayed put and studied and work hard to position themselves at high earning jobs. Which group is rewarded highest by society? My bet if they did such study would be group B with a very clear margin.

Men are being taught that their primary value as human is to chase wealth. This causes men take more risk, die at a earlier age, and have a smaller social network to take care of them at old age. Regardless of gender, neither men or women live a life of roses, and being valued for physical attractiveness rather than wealth has benefits and drawbacks.

If I have a high income, I have many options to swap that for fulfillment and satisfaction. I can buy stuff, I can go on interesting vacations, I can have expensive hobbies, I can donate to charities, and I can partake in a large number of experiences that are only available to those who can afford it. And finally, I can give it all up and pursue a life of simpler pleasures. Those are all options I have.

If I have a low income, I might still feel satisfied and fulfilled, but that could change. What options do I then have?

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/hitchens200701

If you want to resolve this problem you need to either ask women to lower the bar and not seek men with resources or ask men to raise the bar and demand that women not only be youthful/fertile, but also have resources. Good luck.

Kinda works both ways as an argument. If they were so concerned about pay, they can try and negotiate for more. Men are taught/encouraged to do this more from a young age. If you want to be paid more, you gotta haggle, you can't just accept the price on the sticker.

A lot of the problem with gender roles is many feminists have internalized male actions as the norm and female actions as inferior...so they see women as underpaid over as having the flexibility to raise a family

p.s.: my niche loves my old lego's more than the girlish ones.

feel free to source that in a way that can be proven. The assertion is just pseudo intellectual excuse making. Society is NOT telling women to NOT be sanitation workers. Society is not telling women not to work on offshore oil rigs. Society is not telling women not to be surgeons but to in fact be veterinarians. Society and "gender role" excuses don't hold up to reality. Time to accept that the women you know, or imagine you know make their choices, largely based on their own interests.

You're welcome to try to convince women to become sanitation workers rather than paralegal interns in climate controlled offices. Good luck on that.

If a man says they are going to work on an offshore oil rig they are much less likely to get societal push back than a woman because it is seen as a normal thing for a man to do but not a woman.

If a woman is an elementary school teacher it is considered completely normal, whereas men are often looked down upon for doing so. The same happens with male nurses.

How can you read all the stories about sexual harassment in our industry and not think women are being discouraged from pursuing careers in tech?

I mean if you want to talk about cultural influence there's way more news articles celebrating women doing various things, celebrating women entrepreneurs, women soldiers, women and minority events and special recognition or conferences.

Read all the stories about sexual harassment? Anecdotally I've seen just as much sexual language coming from women in IT as men in terms of workers. Project mgrs, network admins, probably a few more. And those instances were miniscule and didn't make up anywhere near a day to day problem for people.

I have seen instances where a guy who was being a dick treated women poorly. He got a talking to and cut that out. I've seen women take their day out on men and women and never got any kind of talking to. It's really funny you're pointing to some sort of dysfunction and not demonstrating or sourcing anything but "all those stories"

The idea that there aren't multiple forces, often brutal ones, nudging men and women into particular fields is just preposterous.

Yes. But I think you miss one point. People are not rational beings (even trained ones are not), and "value they obtained" is a result of some psychological process which is not strictly rational. And if people estimate value obtained from employee by sex of that employee, it would be not surprising at all.

> To call that sexist is just completely inconsistent with any reasonable conception of economics to my understanding.

Conception of economics is a theory. Reality is something different, theory is just simplified description of reality. Theory is much more formal, more simple and more understandable. Theory exists only in human mind as some entity of informational nature, while reality... well, reality is just a reality. Theory offers us laws that works in most cases. Or more precise, that laws works while axioms postulated by theory are fulfilled. But reality just works, it does not follow our laws and rules, it just works somehow.

No absolute truth exists. Every one axiom sometimes is not true. In a case when axioms are not true, theory becomes unreliable. If you think to rely on laws of some theory, then first you should check whether all relevant axioms are fullfilled in your case.

People use word "economics" and mean either theory or reality depending on context. This leads to confusion and inability to see the difference. Train youself to separate theory and reality on every occasion, try every time to use different words for theory and reality and you'll become immune to such mistakes.

As I undestand such a theory as economics, "people value things according to what value they obtain from them" itself is axiom. Here you see some case where axiom is false: its just a matter of fact. So reality and theory are different here substantially. You should choose some other theory to deal with such situation.

I agree in part. I agree wholeheartedly that the rational actor model is (at best) incomplete. We are not rational beings making perfect value judgments moment to moment. I further admit it is possible that, in individual interactions, the gender of the employee/agent we are interacting with may be a factor in price considerations.

However, ultimately prices are set by supply and demand. What the OP is positing, is that demand is suppressed by sexism. What would this mean? Some female-dominated professions are: Nursing, teaching, and social work [1]. Now think about what would have to be true in order for the OP's point to be correct. People would have to systematically demand less nursing, teaching, and social work in order to achieve the result they were implying. Do you think that is plausible?

When thinking about intra-profession discrimination, I would have no problem attributing that to sexism. That is, if you said to me that female teachers are systematically paid less than their male counterparts, i'd be all for labelling that sexism. But that's not what's being posited here. What's being posited is that because certain professions are dominated by women, people consume them less. People want less of them. But what is a profession's role in the world if not to generate its own demand? If people aren't demanding your services, you find a new profession.

In other words, if demand for the services women choose to provide is so elastic that it can be depressed by sexism, then maybe they ought to find better services to provide. Services that are important enough that the demand for them is non-negotiable, and can never be suppressed by sexist preferences.

1. http://www.businessinsider.com/pink-collar-jobs-dominated-by...

Not all jobs have direct "money in, money out" relations that you can use to judge value. This opens the door for all sorts of cultural bias that affects how people decide how much a particular job is "worth".

I know job prospects aren't as hot for lawyers as they once were[1], but it's still one of very few professions that I'd expect to reliably make someone's parents' eyebrows go up and an "oh!" issue from their mouth on hearing their kid's dating one, ya know? So the prestige is still there, unless I've missed something. And doctors are doctors, so certainly in that category, too. I really doubt "software developer" automatically gains one anywhere near as much social capital, in general company and without further favorable details/context.

[1] as you correctly wrote, "Not all jobs have direct 'money in, money out' relations that you can use to judge value."

> I'd grant you that teachers are underpaid, but that isn't sexism

Sure; however a statement like "teaching is work befitting a woman" would be sexism.

You need only listen to the experiences of women founders in Silicon Valley to realize your comment really doesn't match up with what really happens. Women, especially in the tech sector, are treated like personal sex objects of some VCs.

There is not a single situation you listed above that cannot be attributed to similarity bias or cultural bias against, both completely unintentional.

That's a theory. The relevant question is, what evidence exists to support or refute that theory?

That's not true. Very easy counterexample: negotiation. Women are generally less inclined to negotiate then men, causing them to earn lower salaries. Does that mean that people value jobs performed by men who negotiate more than jobs performed by women who don't? Of course not - it has nothing to do with the value-add at all.

That would mean basically a woman accepted 99K where a man accepted 100K. At that scale negotiating and gap is almost non-existent.

And you don't generally negotiate position and or rank. You apply for or get recommended for a job and get it or not, negotiating is usually about the dollars and cents after being in strong consideration for a position or after being given an initial offer for a position.

If women /are/ discriminated against you might even argue, based on this data, they are better at negotiating than men and that could make up for them being so close in pay for same rank / same role jobs. The point is the data doesn't support it.

That means there's likely some kind of societal pressure keeping them from negotiating as much. There have been plenty of studies that show assertive women are seen as just being bitchy while assertive men are seen as strong leaders.

That societal difference is sexism. Individuals don't have to be consciously sexist for implicit bias to affect women.

If you want to argue that it's sexist that we socialize women to negotiate less, i'm all for that, though.

If that's the road you feel comfortable walking down, I think it's fine to compromise at that point. Regardless of how it happened, the result - women not negotiating - is still the same.

Women generally don't handle negotiating the same as men. But negotiation skills aren't relevant to most jobs. So if that's a factor in how people get paid, it's _systematically_ sexist.

Because sexism or no, I think it's a tremendous problem when people get ahead for completely tangential reasons to their job performance and skills.

Unless your point is that the sexism is at a larger cultural level that fosters the average woman to be less effective at salary negotiations. In that case I completely agree.

This blanket statement seems sexist. Some are inclined and some are not.

Besides, as soon as one leaves the world of small business, the corporations stick to salary bands attached to specific titles. The variations within the bands are usually driven by longevity with the company as well as performance reviews. It makes things easier in HR department, and creates a paper trail on compensation decisions in case someone decides to get litigious later.

> Some are inclined and some are not.

That is what "generally" implies, yes.

There is an argument that women are generally less inclined to negotiate due to the effects of sexism.

"Miller and Douglas discovered that women who had experience with successful negotiation were superior negotiators to men, even when they rated themselves as only average negotiators."

In the same vein, people who have never studied French are generally less inclined to join a conversation in French.

Which is a very specific use case of a specific environment with mainly unknown opponents (as opposed to work relationships, where you typically know the boss), tight deadlines (need a car immediately) and little wiggle room (shopping around car dealerships is time-consuming, sending resumes to competitors to test the waters is less so).