1) equal pay for equal work
2) equal represenatation among (higher paying) jobs
I routinely see these two issues conflated, and occasionally the purported resolution of #1 for gender being trotted as evidence of no more "gap".
Although I can see how that could be characterized as "cherry-picking" a statistic, it doesn't make the statistic any less valid, and it detracts from the real problem of conflation. If it's true, then additional effort at #1 would, indeed, be wasted. It would be better to criticize the notion of just one "gap" rather than any cherry-picking.
How does this relate to the topic at hand? The original commentor suggested a problem of conflation, between "unemployed" and "jobless".
Elsewhere in the thread, it's been discussed whether workforce participation is a more meaningful metric.
Even that risks conflating "employed" with "fully employed" (as opposed to "underemployed", such as part time or working for a lower wage). Real wage growth comes up repeatedly, presumably because of that confounding factor.
As for equal pay for equal work - I'd be very surprised if women aren't getting that, because that's illegal and you'd expect that to show up in the form of many many lawsuits.
Yes there does seem to be an issue of some workplaces that have a boys club type environment and fail to promote women - but I don't know if that's big enough to explain the dramatic wage gaps that are touted by some people.
Negotiating a higher salary requires a bit more drive/aggressiveness than the average person has. Making up numbers here, if you say that only 20% of the population has that personality trait, men seem more likely to have that trait (perhaps 15% of men have it and 5% of women), which would contribute to the equal pay for equal work gap.
To rephrase my above statement, the current job market rewards certain personality types with higher positions & salaries, and men seem to have a higher chance of having that personality.
A completely separate question is: Is the above an acceptable situation? I would say no.
For example, more men are three times more likely to be psychopaths than women [1], and CEOs have a much higher chance of being psychopaths than the general population [2]. There's a strong chance that certain psychopathic tendencies are rewarded in the current corporate structure.
Similarly, there are other stories you hear of there being a lot of backstabbing in certain companies at the higher levels. Personality types that are disinclined to engage in that will be unlikely to climb the corporate ladder there.
It's probably in the best interest of all companies and society in general that these kind of personality traits are not rewarded unless they are actually beneficial.
By fixing the problem at this level we'll not only be solving the gender/pay gap between men and women but also the gender pay/gap between differing personalities within a given gender as well.
[1](https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/mental-disord...) [2](http://www.businessinsider.com/ceos-often-have-psychopathic-...)
I have another theory. Some people are so incompetent that they end up as C-level execs. Incompetent people tend to promote equally or more incompetent people.
Second, when you do that you're sort of controlling the problem away. Women don't seek more work/life balance because they're not as crazy as men. They do it because they're expected to carry more of the burden of raising a child. The literature is clear that the wage gap is relatively small until children enter the picture. After that the gap skyrockets.
This is why the main practical goal of every wage gap activist is equalizing the burden of having a child. It's why the number one policy issue is universal mandatory parental leave for both genders.
There certainly is sexism in the workplace, although the court ruled different I think Ellen Pao was a victim of this. That said, I don't know if it as prevalent and widespread so as to lead to meaningful and statistically significant wage gaps when all the factors are considered. Certainly the evidence for this sort of widespread institutionalized sexism is lacking in my mind.
Still I think the conversation here is more that the wage gap numbers are not as significant as they are often presented in discourse about gender equality
Saying you need to control for things that have already been controlled for doesn't leave a particularly good impression.
To me it seems like an uninteresting tautology. Like these others:
“False statements about immigration numbers are often presented in discourse about naturalization policies”
“Misleading financial figures are often presented in discourse about what stocks to buy.”
It’s like... yah. So?
All discourse is full of garbage. If you are interested in the truth, you weed through that and evaluate the numbers and, according to best practices, find a good estimate.
When you do that, you find there is a substantial gender-attributable pay gap in many countries in many industries.
Why that is and how we change it seems like a worthy discussion.
I am curious to why you think the existence of people with a poor understanding of the facts is a worthy topic of conversation.
There will always be people in “the discourse” saying wrong things. If that’s all it takes to halt the important conversation about how women get pay equity, then you have yourself a surefire tool to ensure that conversation never happens. Or at least that you never have to participate.
(And as a side note, the existence of a raw 77% gap is factually true. Media would have to argue that it’s entirely due to sexism for them to step into territory you object to)
"Female Uber drivers make 7% less per hour than their male counterparts—even though the algorithms that determine pay for the ride-hailing service are gender blind, according to a multi-year study."
If their conclusion is accurate, I am puzzled as to what solution can be proposed. Should we lower speed limits or cut mens’ hours?
Apologies if I don’t understand the uber cost structure. Is there not a time component in the service charge similar to cabs?
Taxis often take this even farther and make the time component only include time where the taxi is going less than fixed, fairly low speed (in NYC it is 12 mph), so slowing down from 25 mph to 20 mph wouldn't gain them any extra money on the fare but would cost them extra time.
The studies do not "control for everything". For example I have never seen
1. Control for the much higher levels of sick days taken by women.
2. Control for the product of hours worked and years worked. Women work fewer hours and spend more years out of the work-force. This has a multiplicative effect on "hours of work experience"
Additionally the power of "controlling for X" is vastly overstated. In reality it is only reliable when the different factors are close to orthogonal, have linear relationships and are not causally related. Typically none of the above are true.
Almost impossible to make any progress in it without appeal to emotion and in-group/out-group dynamics.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/06/30/new-repo...
Women tend to choose more fulfilling lower paying careers (last point on fortune and second last on time)
http://fortune.com/2018/04/10/gender-pay-gap-myths/
http://time.com/5230911/equal-pay-day-2018-wage-gap-myths/
I don't have the original studies but I think the news sources here are fairly reliable
Perhaps you can find the citation yourself and use it to counter the point you are replying to.
The burden of proof is on the person making the claims. What is freely asserted is freely dismissed. How would the user you replied to even go about searching for the citation, given so little information to go off of?
The link you provided seems to allude to someone announcing their personal preference, which should not have to be defended. Assertions of what scientific literature have established as accepted wisdom are free game for questioning. That's what gives theories their fundamental efficacy, being able to withstand reasonable criticism.
Then kindly leave it at that. It is, after all, the nature of friendly and disagreeable conversation. Crying to me about it certainly isn't productive.
If simple enumeration of the fallacies contained your arguments is seen as a personal attack, You don't have a lot of ground to stand on when you accuse other people of being trolls.
If you want a citation then go find it. Don't expect other people to do YOUR work for YOU. For more information on trolling: https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/troll/Avoiding_Tro...
Anybody who anticipates a conversation is a thing that can be won, as in a contest or battle, is probably a troll.