SpaceClown posted:

I'm curious as to evidence/arguments for and against it's existence?

In the past, I always remember evidence refuting and QEDing it away but as of late I always see people off handedly dismiss that without providing any real evidence as to why that's wrong. I believe that it exists, I would just like to be more educated on the issue than just going "nuh uh it exists you dumb "

Calibanibal posted:

wage slavery is categorically unethical OP, talking about wage gaps is like squabbling over the differences between field slaves and house slaves HTH

The Oldest Man posted:

"Women are in lower paying fields" is literally the refutation and that's horse poo poo, so

Calibanibal posted:

wage slavery is categorically unethical OP, talking about wage gaps is like squabbling over the differences between field slaves and house slaves HTH

SpaceClown posted:

And they are usually backed by studies and surveys from reputable sources. I have nothing to refute that with, because they are all reasonable things that would indeed cause a wage gap that's not explicitly sexist.

SpaceClown posted:

communism is crap.


I recall the refutation being based on a multitude of factors non of which were that.

They were something along the lines of:
-Women are less likely to haggle salary
-Unpaid maternity leave/Maternity leave interfering with climbing the ladder
-Women tend to not pull the old "Work at one place for two years, find another job" thing in their careers

And they are usually backed by studies and surveys from reputable sources. I have nothing to refute that with, because they are all reasonable things that would indeed cause a wage gap that's not explicitly sexist.

SpaceClown posted:

but then why has it resurged as a cornerstone of feminist discourse as an example of modern discrimination?

wouldn't it be more appropriate to approach the issue asking why women are less aggressive on average in their careers? I think it's squandering an opportunity to discuss a sociological difference when it's approached the way that it's approached.

Rexicon1 posted:

communism rules

Women are just one of the subgroups that are disenfranchised in order to maintain the unsustainable accumulation of capital

OwlFancier posted:

Because if society has the effect of pressuring women to behave that way, that is of concern to feminists.

SpaceClown posted:

I'm not arguing against that, I'm saying why isn't it approached in that way? Isn't it disingenuous to continue to paint it in the light of discrimination as opposed to sociological predisposition that results in less women making career choices that result in a higher pay?

Isn't it wasted potential to refuse to use it as a springboard for that dialogue? Especially when it's actually a non-sequitur?

SpaceClown posted:

But apparently it is because it's resulting in more women receiving lower pay than their male counterparts because of a more common trend of less aggressive career moves. But in the mainstream, nobody is taking the opportunity to ask why that is. What are the sociological pressures causing this? Is there biological factors at play or is it strictly sociological?

OwlFancier posted:

Discrimination does not need to be intentional, or individual.

OwlFancier posted:

Generally I would consider it rather a pointless discussion, given that I see no reason to ascribe to biology what can be explained quite handily by the very well documented concept of sexual inequality enforced by a masculine-dominated society. And even if it could be explained by biology, the need is no less strong to erase the inequality of outcome.

Plus the people who are very keen for there to be a biological explanation tend to be pretty universally, massive shitters.

SpaceClown posted:

It's not discriminatory when it's self-inflicted. There ARE women who exhibit the same aggression in their careers and make the same as their male counterparts, it's not even that terribly uncommon. It's a phenomenon of more women than men being unaggressive in their career choices and that translates to the wage gap. That's completely disingenuous to imply it's discrimination and not a sex-based trend.


Example:
More women than men buy X car in Y color. Is that inherently discriminatory?

But then what's gained by framing it as the result of discriminatory hiring practices?
I think it isn't a pointless discussion to talk about why there's a bigger trend of career-going women shooting themselves in the foot as opposed to men and finding out just why that is. Because otherwise there won't be a solution. The only thing that could be solved is the issues regarding maternity leave but that's not really as huge of an issue as the other two points that I brought up.

Completely agree with the bolded statement.

foolish_fool posted:

Can you provide an example of a wage gap argument that suggests it is entirely due to discrimination and/or doesn't consider possible causes and seek potential solutions?

E: I should probably clarify as a "mainstream" example as I guess anything is possible in the bizarre bits of the internet

VitalSigns posted:

Why is "aggressiveness" a good metric to use for determining promotions and compensation, as opposed to something more practical like say competency?

SpaceClown posted:

Because we have to look at what aggression means here.

Going into an interview with HR, the salary they pose is considered a starting point with intention of it going up. They expect you're going to argue that you're worth more than that. Not everybody does, plenty of people just take what it says. More women than men settle for that starting salary and bam. You've already started below the pay of your peers and that's only going to continue to be reflected even after promotions as your colleagues had a head start.

Then you have the 2-year trick, which once again, women have a trend of not doing. More experience, more pay. That's the biggest contributor to making above baseline salary and the fact that the trend of women not doing it exists is possibly the greatest contributor to the wage gap. Think of it like this, the business you worked at knows exactly what you did during your stint there and will compensate you with promotions. When you apply to another workplace, they don't know exactly everything you did, only whats on your resume and it boils down to them seeing "2 years of experience at this company" as opposed to "cleaned up spaghetti code" or whatever crap task you did to get a promotion. Needless to say, that generic experience counts for a whole lot more.

This is what I mean by aggression. The corporate world isn't a meritocracy, it never was and it never will be.

OwlFancier posted:

Working on the assumption that you believe aggression to be biologically sex linked, do you perhaps think that maybe the reason why aggression is considered a fundamental part of participation in a business and, seemingly a requisite component of fair compensation, this might have something to do with masculine over representation in those businesses, and that requiring women, which again we're positing are just naturally unfit to be aggressive for the purposes of this argument, adopt that aggressiveness or suffer, might be a bit of a clear example of sexual discrimination?

SpaceClown posted:

Then you have the 2-year trick, which once again, women have a trend of not doing. More experience, more pay. That's the biggest contributor to making above baseline salary and the fact that the trend of women not doing it exists is possibly the greatest contributor to the wage gap. Think of it like this, the business you worked at knows exactly what you did during your stint there and will compensate you with promotions. When you apply to another workplace, they don't know exactly everything you did, only whats on your resume and it boils down to them seeing "2 years of experience at this company" as opposed to "cleaned up spaghetti code" or whatever crap task you did to get a promotion. Needless to say, that generic experience counts for a whole lot more.

This is what I mean by aggression. The corporate world isn't a meritocracy, it never was and it never will be.

OwlFancier posted:

This starts from the assumption that the discrepancy is the result of women being born naturally whatever those qualities you believe explain the wage gap. Boldly, individually asserting their lower earning potential in the world. And that they are not primarily a result of socialization which functions to limit the achievement and freedom of women, intentional, or otherwise. I see no reason to begin with that assumption.

quote:

why does our society prize assertiveness? Is that discrepancy in which is viewed more praiseworthy and which rewarded more highly, indicative of an unequal society?

quote:

it is society that must change and in the same ways.

SpaceClown posted:

It's not discriminatory when it's self-inflicted. There ARE women who exhibit the same aggression in their careers and make the same as their male counterparts, it's not even that terribly uncommon. It's a phenomenon of more women than men being unaggressive in their career choices and that translates to the wage gap. That's completely disingenuous to imply it's discrimination and not a sex-based trend.

StabbinHobo posted:

what a surprise, the techie thinks there's a one-neat-trick answer based on his myopic life experience/worldview

Space Gopher posted:

First of all, there are a lot of studies which show that, when women and men with similar qualifications and experience are evaluated for a job, women are systemically undervalued. This isn't about "oh, Susan is less aggressive than John, so she's not advancing as fast in her career" as much as "we sent out a bunch of identical resumes, save for the names at the top, and 'John' resumes got a lot more callbacks than 'Susan' resumes."

quote:

Or, on the more anecdotal side of the fence, pretty much any trans woman who's transitioned mid-career will tell you that, during her transition, she started getting a lot more pushback and questions about her competence. And, the critical point for that isn't hormone therapy or whatever else - it's when she chooses to start presenting as a woman.

But, let's throw all that out the window for the sake of argument. For the sake of pure biological determinism, we'll say that there is some function of serum estrogens and testosterone which can predict pay differential in the same career with near-perfect accuracy. There are only two explanations:
- Society as a whole tends to discriminate against people with high estrogen and low testosterone; that is, generally speaking, society discriminates against women, even if it is a sex-based trend.
- People with high estrogen and low testosterone are just bad workers. Women tend to be inherently bad in the workplace.

From your posts, you've been arguing against the first possibility- you believe that the wage gap is not evidence of discrimination. So, do you believe that women just don't belong in the workplace, and are you willing to back that up with anything other than the existence of a wage gap?

SpaceClown posted:

i actually quit my job and am now a full time well-fed artist, thank you.

also I never was a programmer, but when i was working, I didn't go from no degree, no experience helpdesk dipshit to sysadmin in 4 years by twiddling my thumbs and hoping my manager noticed i was a good boy.

StabbinHobo posted:

fuckit i say we lean into this

biotruth: capitalism is a psychopathic cancerous ideology of amoral competition and accumulation. men, especially young high-T ones, are statistically more into that

edit: oh gently caress we got a boostrappin sysadmin here

SpaceClown posted:

Because assertiveness is a pretty massive signal of self-respect? Moreover, would you try this argument as to East Asian street markets discriminating against westerners because they don't haggle? If you don't think you're worth more money than what a corporation initially suggests, they are more than happy to pay you that lesser amount. But it's expected that you argue for yourself and demonstrate that you're worth more than that figure, because they want confident talent. If you're talking about why is assertiveness in this context considered more important, it's simple; Unconfident talent simply does not produce like confident talent, and are you really surprised that a corporation would want confident talent?

SpaceClown posted:

I somewhat agree, however I have often seen answers that suggest changes like removing haggling from the hiring process or cracking down on workplace hopping neither of which are beneficial to nobody. You're just crippling people who know how to and are willing to operate in a corporate environment and forcing them to work for the crap pay their dipshit coworkers work for. That's not a solution at all, in my opinion.

The real solution, like I have suggested I think twice before ITT, should be to identify and analyze the sociological factors that go into why these trends currently exist and how to eliminate those pressures.

SpaceClown posted:

Because assertiveness is a pretty massive signal of self-respect? Moreover, would you try this argument as to East Asian street markets discriminating against westerners because they don't haggle? If you don't think you're worth more money than what a corporation initially suggests, they are more than happy to pay you that lesser amount. But it's expected that you argue for yourself and demonstrate that you're worth more than that figure, because they want confident talent. If you're talking about why is assertiveness in this context considered more important, it's simple; Unconfident talent simply does not produce like confident talent, and are you really surprised that a corporation would want confident talent?

I somewhat agree, however I have often seen answers that suggest changes like removing haggling from the hiring process or cracking down on workplace hopping neither of which are beneficial to nobody. You're just crippling people who know how to and are willing to operate in a corporate environment and forcing them to work for the crap pay their dipshit coworkers work for. That's not a solution at all, in my opinion.

Rexicon1 posted:

SpaceClown posted:

if you grew up around computers and can't bootstrap yourself from a middle-class home to being a sysadmin I'm not sure what to tell you my dude

its literally I can keep a schedule and work with a package manager: the job

StabbinHobo posted: