The real ironic thing in all of this is the Human Resource involvement in maintaining salaries and the gender gap. HR is a very female driven industry, yet they help establish the pay grades and application of those pay grades which facilitate the gap, and then protect the interests of the organization over the interests of the employee.
Clearly we've missed a couple of steps here: How exactly is HR facilitating the gender pay gap?
I should also say that I'm in support of strengthening paternity leave to encourage more men to be primary caregivers, and subsidizing child-care to get mothers back into the workforce faster if that's what they want.
In Norway (and I think a couple of other countries), paternity leave is prescribed - a portion of the total parental leave is designated to the father. The aim was (at least in part) to get around what Corsi mentioned earlier, that expectations of new parents of different genders are very different. I know that most conservatives have no love of "social engineering" but I'd be interested in hearing from people in these countries on how this policy is working out.
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A) High-status career
B) Spouse with a high-status career
C) Family life
Pick two. Ambitious men have an easier time disregarding B than ambitious women do, because ambitious women often consider a high-status spouse to be part of the package of success. For the gap at the very top to close, we'll have to see more highly ambitious women adopt the mating tactics of their male counterparts - which is to put a higher value on nurturing and parenting qualities in a mate than status and earning power.
Ufff...
You do realize that sexism is at the root of this argument? You're normalizing a man's penchant to disregard their spouse's career ambitions, and assigning a craven double-standard regarding men and women's view of spouses.
And never mind the fact that you're placing the family responsibilities in the lap of the women to resolve.
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In Norway (and I think a couple of other countries), paternity leave is prescribed - a portion of the total parental leave is designated to the father. The aim was (at least in part) to get around what Corsi mentioned earlier, that expectations of new parents of different genders are very different. I know that most conservatives have no love of "social engineering" but I'd be interested in hearing from people in these countries on how this policy is working out.
Freakonomics has addressed this. I'm not sure if it was in the one linked, or in a different one, but in those Scandinavian countries with their strong social programs, the number of women in management positions is far lower than in countries without similar social programs. Despite the rhetoric around it, there are more women in senior management in the United States than in any other country.
You do realize that sexism is at the root of this argument? You're normalizing a man's penchant to disregard their spouse's career ambitions, and assigning a craven double-standard regarding men and women's view of spouses.
And never mind the fact that you're placing the family responsibilities in the lap of the women to resolve.
No. I'm saying that in the various qualities we look for in a mate, women tend to rank earning power and status higher than men do. There's no double-standard at all. Neither men nor women can expect to have all of a high-status career, a mate with a high-status career, and a healthy family life. Pick two. The notion that you can have everything is delusional. For men and women.
Ambitious men and women could also decide to stop sacrificing family and private time in order to reach the heights of the professions. But when we're talking about the glass ceiling, we're talking about positions vied over by extraordinarily ambitious people. Their willingness to set aside other considerations in pursuit of status and success is their defining characteristic. It would be nice if social norms around high-status jobs changed - and I think they are changing - but it's one of those things that's extremely difficult to implement in a top-down fashion.
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No. I'm saying that in the various qualities we look for in a mate, women tend to rank earning power and status higher than men do.
Have you considered that the view you have towards what men and women look for in a mate are distilled from old societal norms that marginalized women into these stereotypes in the first place?
That you list women as looking for "high-powered" or "high earning" spouses is simply a remnant from a sexist time when women were practically excluded from working, let alone working anything other than typical "secretarial" jobs. Their financial security was defined by their spouse, and society basically cast them into that mold.
So what I'm saying is that your basic framework is derived from a sexist time, and is therefore sexist in its baseline expectations.
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Saw a really interesting interview with the Dean of Harvard Business on gender on Charlie Rose. here is the relevant excerpt.
Quote:
Charlie Rose: So, on the question of women --
21:55 Nitin Nohria: Yes.
21:59 Charlie Rose: Did you think Harvard was doing a good job both in terms of women as professors, women as graduates and women participating in the academic life of the business school?
22:13 Nitin Nohria: We had been -- we started admitting women at Harvard Business School in 1963 and we took great comfort in the fact that each year from the eight women who we admitted to the first class, we were admitting more women each year and many of these went on to have great careers, and so we were satisfied we had an increasing number of women. But when we looked harder at the numbers we realize that even though we had been increasing the participation of women, not all of them were thriving at Harvard Business School. So for example every year we award graduating students Baker Scholars, these are people who were honors in the both the first year and second year. This is the highest academic honor of our business. We also give people first year honors and second year honors and we found that women were about half as represented in these honors as they should be by the percentage that we admitted. So for example, when we had 30 percent of the women who were a part of the class, only 15 percent were getting honors. So that made us, at least, pause and ask the question why. Why would it be the case that we believe we're admitting equally qualified women. We're not putting the thumb on the scale to admit women who are not as qualified as men, so why would they not do as well as Harvard Business School? It's hard to believe that women don't aspire to get honors at the same rate as men do. And what we learned is that there was nothing deliberate that was going on in our classrooms, so we found for example that some people suspected that maybe male professors were more hostile to women and since we have class participation as 50 percent of the grade, they were just undervaluing the comments of women. But we learned that, no, women were as likely to underperform in classes taught by women professors as by --
24:03 Charlie Rose: So why were they underperforming in classroom participation?
24:07 Nitin Nohria: So what we learned is that they were very subtle things. Women were a little bit more tentative sometimes to get into the classroom discussion. As a result, they might not get called upon at the same rate as men. We learned that women's comments were not as likely to be remembered as men who spoke out. So I was far more likely to, if Charlie spoke, to say Charlie had a great comment. On the other hand, if a woman spoke, I might just ignore that comment and not give it as much attention.
24:37 Charlie Rose: But why?
24:40 Nitin Nohria: I think this is just that we've learned through lots and lots of research that's been done in gender that we're all socialized, all of us, both men and women and it turns out women are as likely to under- represent, undervalue, overlook, not pay as much attention to the comments of a woman who speaks as a man, but once you become conscious of that and this is all we have to do, we actually made people mindful of that, once you become conscious of that, you can correct yourself quite quickly, but you have actually know that that's a bias that we all have and these forms of bias we think is one of the things that is actually getting in the way of women succeeding not just at Harvard Business School but in all organizations.
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Freakonomics has addressed this. I'm not sure if it was in the one linked, or in a different one, but in those Scandinavian countries with their strong social programs, the number of women in management positions is far lower than in countries without similar social programs. Despite the rhetoric around it, there are more women in senior management in the United States than in any other country.
What kind of social programs are they referring to? Higher availability of affordable, quality child care typically leads to higher workforce participation rates for women. I will try to track down the podcast you're referring to.
The G7 as a whole is around 22% women in senior management, which is low on a global scale. I don't think we're in any position to shrug our shoulders and dismiss potential improvements.
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make posting this clip in relation to the subject at hand.
A couple comedians (only one of whom is actually funny, the other is a steroid-fuelled ultra-bro) snicker about how being a mother isn't hard since you can do it in your pyjamas, which is just idiotic.
Then they whine about how tough the jobs men have are, and how they personally couldn't actually do those jobs.
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Have you considered that the view you have towards what men and women look for in a mate are distilled from old societal norms that marginalized women into these stereotypes in the first place?
That you list women as looking for "high-powered" or "high earning" spouses is simply a remnant from a sexist time when women were practically excluded from working, let alone working anything other than typical "secretarial" jobs. Their financial security was defined by their spouse, and society basically cast them into that mold.
So what I'm saying is that your basic framework is derived from a sexist time, and is therefore sexist in its baseline expectations.
It's true that women have needed to look to mates for resources. But that doesn't mean that the tendency of women to look to men in a provider role is strictly a consequence of sexism and social structures, and can be shunted aside if it offends our contemporary sensibilities. There are strong evolutionary reasons for these predispositions, just as there are strong evolutionary reasons why men in every culture on the planet favour young and healthy mates. They're both reproductive strategies, exhibited universally among humans in every culture and level of development.
In the interest of disclosure I should point out that I subscribe to anthropology and evolutionary psychology as sources of human behaviour. So I believe our behaviours are not shaped only by societal systems and norms, but by strong innate biological impulses. Impulses we share with humans around the globe today, with our ancestors of 50,000 years ago, and with other close primates.
We don't have to be slaves to these innate impulses, any more than we're slaves to our violent nature. But any explanation of human behaviour that doesn't take them into account is starting from the fundamentally flawed premise of the blank slate.
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There are strong evolutionary reasons for these predispositions, just as there are strong evolutionary reasons why men in every culture on the planet favour young and healthy mates. They're both reproductive strategies, exhibited universally among humans in every culture and level of development.
There's no doubt in my mind that this is true, and denying the inherent biological differences between the sexes is one of the more obnoxious aspects of the blank slate attitude taken by many people in the past... what, two decades? Evolutionary psychology is an important field that's had needless roadblocks thrown in its way at every opportunity by the worst of academia. So while your caveat about your subscription to what can only be called "reality" is probably appreciated by some people, it isn't even really a matter of what you believe. You might as well have said, "I subscribe to the theory of evolution".
But at the same time, there are plenty of biological predispositions that are ingrained in us through selection over a hundred thousand years that societal progress have outpaced, and it'll take thousands of years more to select out naturally. There's no need, in the modern context, for this tendency, and it's counterproductive just as our poorly developed prefrontal cortexes are a hinderance to our ability to deal with one another. As you say, you've described the underlying rationale for peoples' behaviour, but would you concede that that description isn't normative at this point?
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The source of a continued wage gap is the decrease in unions. The wage gap among unionized workers is shrinking at a steady rate, I believe it is at a roughly 9% difference male and female union workers while it sits at roughly 18% difference among nonunion workers.
Interesting fact, female union workers on average earn a higher wage than non union male workers.
But at the same time, there are plenty of biological predispositions that are ingrained in us through selection over a hundred thousand years that societal progress have outpaced, and it'll take thousands of years more to select out naturally. There's no need, in the modern context, for this tendency, and it's counterproductive just as our poorly developed prefrontal cortexes are a hinderance to our ability to deal with one another. As you say, you've described the underlying rationale for peoples' behaviour, but would you concede that that description isn't normative at this point?
I agree that there is no longer a need for this reproductive strategy. But progress requires more than just revising our social structures and norms. It involves millions of individuals recognizing the need to overcome their natural impulses. Which I think is exactly what I said up-thread: for the glass ceiling to be overcome, women will need to recognize and overcome their natural impulse to seek out a higher-status mate. If they want families, they'll need to put aside the attractive fantasy of 'power couples.'* We'll see more women in the upper reaches of corporations and governments when ambitious women pair up with partners who are not also ambitious. And the rest of us - including other women - will need to stop judging ambitious women by a different standard than we judge ambitious men.
* The fascination with Sophie Trudeau is an example of this fantasy, held almost exclusively by women, of being famous or influential for being the partner of a powerful individual. How many magazine covers feature Angela Merkel's husband? How many assistants does he need to handle his speaking requests? Some traditional or sexist values cannot be changed by men - they need to be recognized and changed by women.
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This isn't earnings related but it does seem like evidence of the old boys club. From a recent Globe and Mail article...
Quote:
Women accounted for less than 3 per cent of incoming CEOs in 2015, the lowest percentage since 2011, according to a new PwC study of the largest 2,500 public companies in the world.
“The news was even worse in the U.S. and Canada where the share of incoming [female] CEOs fell for the third year to the lowest in the study’s history,” a press release accompanying the study said.
“Surprisingly, there was just one woman among the total 87 incoming CEOs in the U.S. and Canada last year (1 per cent, compared to 4 per cent in 2014 and over 7 per cent in 2012).”
What kind of social programs are they referring to? Higher availability of affordable, quality child care typically leads to higher workforce participation rates for women. I will try to track down the podcast you're referring to.
The G7 as a whole is around 22% women in senior management, which is low on a global scale. I don't think we're in any position to shrug our shoulders and dismiss potential improvements.
They have both affordable, high quality child care and strong support for parents that choose to stay at home to raise their children. They also have long paid parental leave, and other benefits.
The US has none of these, and this results in fewer women having the option of staying at home or taken long maternity leaves, so fewer women end up taking breaks. It's harder to get off the career track in the US vs Scandinavia, and as such, more women are in senior management.
In the US, the earnings gap basically doesn't appear until children are in school, when the short school day finally forces one parent to give things up. Up to that point, most two parent families can find a way to co-ordinate thing so that both parents can work with out major compromises. Once school is done or the kids are old enough to take care of themselves after school, you start to see the earnings cap narrow again. I suspect if you look at Canada, the earnings gap starts sooner due to the longer government paid maternity and paternity leaves, especially for people with multiple children.
The source of a continued wage gap is the decrease in unions. The wage gap among unionized workers is shrinking at a steady rate, I believe it is at a roughly 9% difference male and female union workers while it sits at roughly 18% difference among nonunion workers.
Interesting fact, female union workers on average earn a higher wage than non union male workers.
One finding from efforts to increase female graduation and enrollment in STEM programs is that structure and predictability dramatically improve female enrollment and success rates. Most comp sci and non academic science programs are unstructured, and where you go with your career is very open ended. The schools that have moved to make career planning easier and more predictable have had much higher enrollment and graduation rates than those that have not. This is again from memory from a Freakonomics podcast discussing the topic.
Unions are similar. They provide a semi-rigid structure that you follow to get where you want to go. If you prefer such an environment, then your going to stay in it longer, and if other like you also stay in it longer, other like you are going to end up earning more on average than those who don't. Since, on average, women seem to prefer such an environment (regardless of why), it should be no surprise that they are earning more in this environment. Further, I would suspect that relative to the workforce participation rates, there are also substantially more women in unions that men.
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They have both affordable, high quality child care and strong support for parents that choose to stay at home to raise their children. They also have long paid parental leave, and other benefits.
The US has none of these, and this results in fewer women having the option of staying at home or taken long maternity leaves, so fewer women end up taking breaks. It's harder to get off the career track in the US vs Scandinavia, and as such, more women are in senior management.
In the US, the earnings gap basically doesn't appear until children are in school, when the short school day finally forces one parent to give things up. Up to that point, most two parent families can find a way to co-ordinate thing so that both parents can work with out major compromises. Once school is done or the kids are old enough to take care of themselves after school, you start to see the earnings cap narrow again. I suspect if you look at Canada, the earnings gap starts sooner due to the longer government paid maternity and paternity leaves, especially for people with multiple children.
I understand Freakonomics' rationale, and I'm not arguing against it, but I'm not sure it completely stands up.
Percentage of corporate board seats held by women:
Norway - 36.7%
Sweden - 24.4%
Canada - 13.1%
United States - 12.2%
And my point was larger really, in that we're not leaders in this by any stretch, and need to look at what might be effective for us. That's all.
I understand Freakonomics' rationale, and I'm not arguing against it, but I'm not sure it completely stands up.
Percentage of corporate board seats held by women:
Norway - 36.7%
Sweden - 24.4%
Canada - 13.1%
United States - 12.2%
And my point was larger really, in that we're not leaders in this by any stretch, and need to look at what might be effective for us. That's all.
I would encourage you to not judge freakonomics by my memory of the episode.
However, I'm much more interested in people in senior management that are not on the board, namely, the vast majority of people in senior management.
My understanding is that Scandinavia has more women on boards for legal reasons, but fewer when you move beyond that, but again, my memory may be failing me. I'll have to see if I can find the episode.
Yes, for sure this is true. This is the point, though - focusing on the pay gap obscures this causal issue, which is one of the underlying causes we should be talking about. This is a problem we can hopefully solve (or at least ameliorate), which would have good outcomes for women more broadly not just in terms of how much money they make over their lifetimes but in other ways, too.
That being said, it probably won't be surprising that no matter what we do, some women (probably quite a few) are going to simply prefer to act as primary caregivers in their family, and they shouldn't be stigmatized for that preference, or be accused of not having agency. So what do you think is the best way to approach this issue?
Increase paid parental leave to 12 months, reserve 3 months for Dad (or non-child-bearing spouse in same-sex relationships).
In contrast, women’s median and average wages grew substantially faster between 1981 and
2011, increasing by 23% and 26%, respectively. As a result, the male−female hourly wage gap
narrowed. In 1981, women aged 17 to 64 employed full-time had average hourly wages that
were 77% of those of men; in 2011, the corresponding figure was 87% (Chart 4). However,
these results are based on raw data. When gender differences in industry, occupation,
education, age, job tenure, province of residence, marital status, and union status are taken into
account, women’ wages amounted to 92% of men’s in 2011 (See subsection 9.2).11 Among fulltime
workers aged 25 to 54, the corresponding number was 91%.
It goes on to analyze what the contributing factors are in Canada specifically.
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