It seriously irritates me when these articles like these conveniently ignore a certain portion of the population. Where's non-Latina white women in the bar chart?

I did some rough-and-dirty calculations based on US census data (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/RHI725219) and the 83-cent statistic in the article. Turns out non-Latina white women actually earn _more_: about $1.03 for every $1.00 earned by non-Latino white men.

A lack of transparency will do more to hurt gender and racial equality in the long run. It's better to leave the statistic in and explain why the numbers are as they are instead of turning a blind eye.

Does your calculation try to recreate the 0.83 $ statistic by assuming the proportion of the workforce of a given (gender, race) is the same as the population as a whole?

Because that's not necessarily a valid assumption.

I flagged the article.

Maybe the author could re-post a version that has a better breakdown of race and genders?

Current one excludes black males, Asian males as well as Hispanic whites. Also doesn’t aggregate per occupation, seniority nor immigration status. And despite mainly focusing on gender equity omits white woman?

There has been a trend in social studies lately to just group whites and Asians together when convenient in order to avoid discussing certain issue [0]. Hope the author isn’t trying the same tactics here [1].

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/ex-recruiter-accu...

[1] https://nextshark.com/students-of-color-washington-asians-wi...

It's like when they say that whites dominate managerial positions but they conveniently conflate Jews with whites.

Are we not white? Whenever there's a drop-down that's what I select.

Latino is considered white now?

there are white Latinos. they would've been descendants of Spanish or Portuguese colonizers who didn't intermarry much or at all. Latino is an ethnicity, white is a race, at least according to the Census.

Louis CK, Snooki, Vanna White, Charlie Sheen, Nicole Richie, and Ryan Lochte are all considered white, but have Latino ancestry.

Many latinos have white skin.

Ironic they leave out Asian men in the graph at the top. I guess those numbers wouldn't fit their "America is racist" trope.

Other than that though, standardizing pay will balance the playing field towards smaller companies. Bigger companies will face pressure to standardize pay packages per level (see: Coinbase, Uber) which limits their ability to reward top performers. Smaller companies won't have that same pressure. The pay gap is largely a function of how much each gender negotiates on average and if you take away negotiating then people will just leave to places where they're paid what they're worth.

The largest part of the pay gap is not negotiation, it's occupational segregation. And for the most part, sharing salaries publicly won't fix this at all. It's too late by the time everyone has chosen a career. To fix this gap, we really need to change how we all think about gender roles from birth.

Whats to fix? The evidence shows that women and men choose different things. There is less STEM participation by women in countries that are more gender-egalitarian.

Smart women who are capable of STEM careers largely choose different careers, if they can. Whats wrong with that? Doesn't assuming that there is something to "fix" here imply that women are broken? It's already clear that removing the barriers to enter these fields doesn't make them substantially more attractive to women, so whats left to "fix"?

There is more to the equation than STEM vs non-STEM jobs.

> removing the barriers to enter these fields doesn't make them substantially more attractive to women

Any why is that the case? There are a lot of assumptions about the types of jobs that men/women should be doing, and there are also a lot of cultural assumptions about those job positions themselves and what they expect of their workers. There are also still many jobs which are not receptive to one gender or the other, either by their cultures or the cultures of their customers. This is something that should be fixed, even if it doesn't impact the choices that people make, although we do know that cultural expectations have a huge impact on choice.

We also don't only have cultural expectations about jobs women should have. We also have expectations about jobs men have. For example, many cultures expect men to make personal sacrifices in order to earn more money. Gender expectations usually affect both genders at the same time, rarely one in isolation.

Ill believe it when there is a massive push for women to go into dangerous jobs.

Shouldn't we be equally concerned about men or women being hurt at work? The fact that most places, culturally, are not, is exactly the kind of stuff I'm referring to.

The US and Europe have great safety regulations for workers. It turns out given the choice women would rather not live in the middle of nowhere in -40C weather getting soaked by crude oil and mud every day, even if it pays six figures. Why do men do it? Because there's a societal expectation that they provide for the family as a breadwinner.

Exactly. Just because we have made great progress with blatant sexism over the past 50 years doesn’t mean that we’re treating sexes equally. This is one of the reasons why a wage gap due to “choice” isn’t as much of a “choice” as many write it off as.

We raise children with an expectation that women need to be “protected” from certain jobs (and other expectations), then after two decades of that conditioning, we ask them to make a “choice”. Of course those “choices” end up being biased. But they didn’t fully choose, they were raised to believe certain things about themselves and their surroundings.

How are peoples choices ever gonna be unbiased? Beyond absurd to claim choices are only unbiased if men and women choose careers in equal proportion.

I did not claim that men and women have to choose careers in equal proportions. They might, or they might not.

But we do have plenty of examples where the expectations of society have influenced their choices in a way that conflicts with the free will of men and women.

I am sure we can both come up with many examples of things that society expects men to do, and things that society expects women to do. And, examples of scenarios where people would be treated very differently if they were a man or a woman. Obviously, these are a factor in people's life experiences, and therefore a factor in the way people make decisions. We may not expect them to choose differently given their own free will, but we also know that they are not making these decisions due to free will alone.

No such thing as making decisions due to free will alone

One day, we may be able to make them in the absence of gender stereotypes, if people choose so. Or, at least, some or most of them. The fact that we have changed some of them suggests that we may be able to change more.

"we may be able to change more" "free will"

Yes, in reference to different things. A free will to choose one’s career path, and changing ideas which are contrary to that.

So instead of pushing girls and boys to choose jobs based on their gender we should...push girls and boys to choose different jobs based on their gender? It seems like you're fighting fire with fire here.

> push girls and boys to choose different jobs based on their gender?

Nowhere did I suggest as much. I am simply suggesting that the gender roles we ascribe to children early on leave permanent impressions upon what they choose, and maybe more importantly, what others expect of them.

by insisting on that suggestion, you are implying that this is harmful, that women choose incorrectly, and that it be corrected

No, women (and men) are not “incorrect” for having been misguided by their upbringing. Children aren’t to blame for the way they were raised, they have no choice in the matter. Those who influenced them in that way are the ones who are incorrect.

by what evidence or intuition are you inferring misguidance?

We have plenty of relevant examples of scenarios where, given the exact same set of circumstances, men and women would be treated differently for exercising free will in defiance of gender norms. There are still jobs, even in the most progressive parts of the world, where people are given different levels of respect just because of their gender.

How does that work?

I'm not sure what part of my comment you're referring to.

“To fix this gap, we really need to change how we all think about gender roles from birth.“

How are you going to correct humanities concepts of gender that have existed for a long time?

The same way we've made any other social progress. By discussing it.

Problem solving requires more than discussion.

Sometimes. But if it does, it starts there.

There is no gender pay gap.

It's tiring (and amazing) to see people still hang on to that thoroughly debunked position in 2022. It's still comparing the salary of a CEO to a kindergarten teacher.

This has nothing to do with gender and the gender pay gap doesn't have any scientific basis whatsoever. There are simply way too many variables.

We can extrapolate what's going to happen.

People who are bad at negotiating will get more money, people who are good at negotiating will get less and will be pushed more to contracting / entrepreneurship.

Does the pay gap even exist for same-level positions? I always thought it was basically comparing (sum male earnings)/(total males) to (sum female earnings)/(total females).

If the pay gap actually existed for same level positions, and was the 83c per dollar as is commonly quoted, why wouldn't there be all-female firms, paying their employees say 90 cents on the dollar, such that their overall payroll costs are much lower for the same quality work as a workplace with mostly males. Shouldn't that company be able to outcompete other companies?

If group A is more willing than group B to sacrifice their health and relationships to improve their value at an office, how can groups A and B ever be equally represented beyond entry level positions?

The pay gap is much smaller if you compare identical jobs like you're suggesting.

I post jobs, but we always adapt the offer depending on the person’s skills. The very idea that a job has a specific salary is disjoint from ground reality.

The ideal that everyone’s skills can be ranked using material criteria is an oversimplification of society.

Nope. Because promotions, retention raises and direct recruiting to unposted jobs via networking will still happen.

It happens because we want them to happen. A barrel of legal problems bound to happen will always meet lesser market value than a barrel of people who tend to work until they die at their desk. As long as presumption of innocence doesn’t make its way, some people are just pending lawsuits on legs.

If a manager knows who they want to hire before the job posting goes up how will you know?

Yes! But until its a requirement, I'm hoping more folks will share their salary privately, but also publicly like me https://www.jvt.me/salary/

Just make everyone’s pay public domain. Then let market forces take effect. “privacy” just helps companies have all the leverage in negotiations so that those who are less assertive (esp women and minorities) get the worst deal.

Job postings is weak. We should man up and make all salaries (including bonuses, commissions, benefits and similar) public.

And it's not about gender or race (or other) politics. It's about making a market efficient and fair. That's why no one would shop at a place where nothing had a price label.

Norway does this. And you can basically do it for all sorts of state employees (teachers with X degree and Y years experience get Y0,000 ±5%)

> teachers with X degree and Y years experience get Y0,000 ±5%

That would never work in tech. And the higher paying firm you go to, the less it works. High performers in FAANG can have refresher and bonus multipliers of 2.5x the base performance rating. In HFT high performers total comp can be double or triple low performers' TC.

I would think it shouldn't work for teachers either. In the US there is a marked difference in teacher compensation between good districts and bad districts and you see the quality difference in the students that come out of those schools.