Pay Equity, The other "women's Issue"

[Vagrant0]

 

The issue IHOE comes when two candidates of equal training apply for the SAME job. In all they are equal except one is a woman. They have two jobs so they hire them both. The woman gets a considerable less starting salary.

 

That sounds severe, where do you get evidence for something like that though? If you could just show it then the debate would be pretty much over.

 

The only sort of inequality I've seen in my jobs are gender role related. At the cannery women work almost exclusively on the sorting lines, though some do get the cushy machine jobs it's mostly men that get them and no male works on the sorting lines (because it sucks donkeys working on the sorting lines).

 

I can't comment on salary jobs since I've never managed to get one of those, or been privy to what other people would be paid in those positions. But I suspect it uses a statistical formula based on area, cost of living, projected throughput, projected costs, average number of lost hours (sick days, tardiness, ect), and just by virtue of fewer women being in those positions, those women in those positions who are "bad" employees end up ruining the statistics for everyone... Even if we had some higher-level human resources person to offer light to this, chances are that they would just say that it is just what they are told to start people at. Or that most of it is actually arbitrary, and that they generally try to pay what people expect they should be paid for that level of work and their individual circumstances.

 

 

I have however been in situations where I was automatically assigned to a given position just because I happened to be male, and was continually pushed towards more physical jobs despite having a much wider range of experience and after having demonstrated that I am capable of more than just brute labor. The fact that my managers and the majority of the upper level staff of that location were women, and very rarely was anything I did even acknowledged unless it involved lifting something heavy, and this isn't the only time I've been in that situation.

[Lisnpuppy]

I am not going to comment on your post Vagrant, not because it isn't valid but because I think it is leaning outside of the realm of this topic. You have gone from talking about salary to talking about your own personal treatment (not income) on your jobs. I believe it and I have seen it but it isn't what this thread is about.

 

Now as to this: Well here are some links

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-25/why-women-earn-less-than-men-a-year-out-of-school

It says a large portion is explained by choice of major but when in identical situaltions...

 

"But as the scenario above shows, even when women and men are in practically identical situations, their earnings start to diverge just one year out of school. That’s true across most sectors of the economy. One year out of college, female teachers earn 89 percent of what male teachers earn. In sales jobs, women earn 77 percent of what male peers earn. Women who major in business earn, on average, just over $38,000 the first year after graduation, while men earn just over $45,000. “About one-third of the gap cannot be explained by any of the factors commonly understood to impact earnings,” write the AAUW researchers, Catherine Hill and Christianne Corbett."

 

I wonder also why women do not seek careers in science and math related fields but that is another topic.

 

And..

 

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/16/why-do-new-female-college-grads-earn-17-less-than-men/

 

and

 

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1983185,00.html

 

and

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/03/us-doctors-pay-gap-idUSTRE71215F20110203

 

which is about starting salaries for physicians and it mentions:

 

"What is surprising is that even when we account for specialty and hours and other factors, we see this growing unexplained gap in starting salary. The same gap exists for women in primary care as it does in specialty fields," said Lo Sasso, whose findings were published in the journal Health Affairs."

 

I personally think this article is a very significant one as it acknowledges and compares the differences in the jobs they choose or the hours...but also compares after these factors are removed.

 

These are all articles from the last several years. They all discuss factors which women could change if they were taught to do so (again why this persist is another topic I think) but all go to say even when they take all the factors out for these there is still a startling and often widening gap between the starting salaries of men and women that are for all intent and purpose equal.

 

If you simply type in Google "Starting salaries for men vs women" page after page after page comes up with many, many of them saying this same thing.

 

So I think my personal experience reflects this. Though there are certainly other things involved in some it shows that there is a significant difference in the starting salaries of men verses women, of similar fields and education and that there is the kicker.

 

Men and women are different. There is always going to be fields which one gender to the other is preferred because, yes I agree with Vagrant that there are gender differences (and that is ok.) However many fields are not gender specific and the pay scale still seems to lean to the male.

 

So there is a gender bias...it doesn't seem to be getting smaller it seems to be getting bigger.

 

To me to solve this issue women need to be taught they can be just as proficient in being educated to fill many high paying jobs (like in the sciences and math heavy fields), they need to be taught like men that it is ok to be ambitious and learn to ask for and negotiate their salaries and then the gender bias that remains can start to be addressed in our societies which though less, still remains.

[DONKENFAP]

I'm really surprised by some of those, especially that a solution could have been introduced. I wonder if we have something like this here:

 

"A federal effort, known as the Paycheck Fairness Act, that would have required employers to disclose salary data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was shot down in Congress this year. If it had passed, the government could have used the compensation survey to crunch numbers, look for patterns of discrimination, and bring lawsuits of its own."

 

The sciences area is the one that I really would not have expected. I guess education isn't the solution to everything. It looks like these studies looked at specific groups too:

 

"While historically women have tended to choose primary care fields such as family medicine or pediatrics, the percentage of women entering those fields dropped from about 50 percent in 1999 to just over 30 percent in 2008, roughly on par with male doctors. But even though women doctors are choosing higher-paying medical specialties, they still made considerably less than men in 2008. The team found the gap widened even after adjusting for choice of specialty, practice type or number of hours worked."

 

Only problem is that they don't actually show the figures they are talking about, some of the comments on those articles are frustrated by it.

[Lisnpuppy]

I don't think government is the answer to this though I don't think they help.

 

I think the issue needs to be changed on a cultural level. Teachers and students need to be given equal chance and equal encouragement and they do not at times. Women need to be SEEN in these occupations that are well paying and traditionally not seen as jobs women are in. The environment of the place of employment needs to change. Traditional business still operate in the past in many ways. Ideas of work schedules and men taking time off and the "old boy's club" that is still a part of our business culture. There is nothing wrong with either parent staying home with children. It is the attention and love they get that counts.

 

I don't think even if the government would pass some of these things it would truly change things. A change in attitude like this needs to start in the home, in the schools at the most base levels.

 

I will give an example. I see commercials and ads for the toy LEGOS all the time. It is always boys playing with them...always, always, always....but when I was growing up we had this and this is how it needs to change:

http://resources.news.com.au/files/2011/12/23/1226229/323829-lego-ad-1.jpg

[colourwheel]

I can agree there is a cultural issue here. But to help address this issue legislation is needed to help prevent this type of discrimination. Whether you believe it's because of the factors one could argue why women are paid less then men, every factor listed from women working less to over all amount of time a women would spend in the field of their career could be countered by just as many factors why men shouldn't be paid anymore than women... You might as well go as far as saying men are more likely to get into car accidents, men are more cost liable when it comes to their life expectancy, men are more likely than women to...etc.. etc ...etc... the point is you can come up with many statistical excuses why one gender should be paid more than the other when it basically comes down to it shouldn't be this way in the 1st place....

 

You could even go as far as suggesting maybe one of the reasons why women do not work as much as men is because the fact they have always been paid unequally granting a total disincentive when looking at the history of women in the work place reaching a glass ceiling...

 

There are far too many cases where as women in the work place will be put in the position to train male workers who inevitably will exceed their female trainers rank in the work field. This is not because the women are not qualified to excel beyond their current rank but more so a culture that has repressed how far a women should succeed...

 

In order to start a cultural change, we need to ensure this type of discrimination is protected by law....

Edited January 31, 2014 by colourwheel

[TRoaches]

Anti-discrimination laws have little to no effect on discriminatory practices. They are only really effective against discriminatory employers who are stupid enough to say what they think out loud.

 

It works like this: A person applies and interviews for a job. The employer chooses not to hire them because this employer hates people with blue eyes, and the applicant has the bluest eyes they have ever seen. The applicant senses the employer's disdain for blue-eyed people and decides to pursue a discrimination complaint against the employer. The employer is asked by the labor department or a court if they have discriminated against blue eyed people, and he says "Nope, never" It is now one party's word against the other's. The applicant is asked to provide proof of the discrimination. Assuming that the employer did not state their disdain for blue eyes within earshot of anyone notable and did not issue an office memo about why blue eyes should not be hired the only proof that could be given of discrimination is "He has no blue eyed employees, therefore he discriminates against blue eyed people". He counters that he has not had any blue eyed applicants who were the right fit for the company. Case dismissed!

[colourwheel]

 

Anti-discrimination laws have little to no effect on discriminatory practices. They are only really effective against discriminatory employers who are stupid enough to say what they think out loud.

 

Unlike "anti-discrimination" laws in the past, It is far more difficult to make a case whether one person is being discriminated on based on trivial factors... It's a little bit more easier to make the case on how much a person is being paid over someone else doing the exact same job. The amount of yearly income doesn't lie.

[TRoaches]

How can you establish that they are "doing the exact same job" in an objective way? Any evaluation of job performance will include subjective assessments as well as objective measurements. For example, two retail employees could work the same weekly hours in the same position and be equally efficient but one employee could have a much more inviting personality and therefore be more desired by the employer. If two people perform equally but one is a jerk or is unable or unwilling to represent the company in a positive way then they should not be guaranteed equal pay. There is nothing wrong with an employer favoring an employee based on the subjective opinion that they like that employee more. I have worked for companies that employed relatives of the company owners, and those family members were most likely paid better than the average employee because they had a favored status due to the family connection. Objectively they were no better than the rest of the company's employees, but subjectively the boss likes his niece much more than he will ever like me and there is nothing wrong with that. You are proposing a system that would interfere with an employer's ability to show that kind of favoritism towards a more valued employee, whatever their reasoning for favoring that employee may be.

[colourwheel]

@TRaoches

 

I think your missing the point. If two people are hired at the same time to do the same exact thing, over all both people should be paid the same amount regardless if they are male or female... The issue has never been about performance in the work place...

Edited January 31, 2014 by colourwheel

[TRoaches]

@TRaoches

 

I think your missing the point. If two people are hired at the same time to do the same exact thing, over all both people should be paid the same amount regardless if they are male or female... The issue has never been about performance in the work place...

 

If you are talking about compensation for service then the discussion will always be about performance first, everything else second. Saying that a discussion about pay should not also be about performance makes no sense. Imagine walking into your employer's office and requesting a raise, then refusing to discuss your performance in support of your raise. You reply to any performance-related questions, statements, or suggestions that the employer asks with "This is not about performance. It is about gender. I just need you to give me a pay raise, because gender gender gender discrimination gender!".