Question for gbajiFollow

Actually, in the age group of 25-40, in 2009 women made the same money than men.

www.vacature.com/blog/actua-mv-loonkloof-smaller-maar-niet-gedicht

The drop in higher age groups was mostly because a significant amount of women stopped working or cut back on their working hours.

Ofcourse, that's just Belgium I suppose.

Yes. And I thought about writing something about how "this is from the UK, but the general trend is the same", but figured that any smart person could figure that out for themselves and could also realize that the general trend of the data will be the same in the US as in the UK.

Do you think that accounting for those factors is going to fail to change the results in the US somehow? I'd love to hear your thinking on this.

Math isn't different in the UK Joph. Unless you're arguing that women in the UK leave the work force to raise children, but women in the US don't? The trend is the same, and any study that doesn't account for that trend is going to inflate the wage gap.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I'm trying to argue some specific numbers here. I'm not. I'm simply trying to get people to accept that the alarming statistics that are often bandied about are not really telling the whole story.

No, but economics and labor are. Nice try though. Why don't you use some of those keystrokes to find a cite from the United States instead of impotently defending one from 4,000 miles off the East coast?

Bullshit, plenty of men are whiny little bitches. You being the prime example here.

I'm just going to be lazy and let everyone one know that I realized how to spell 'cite' isn't 'site' and that once again my use of Elnese may leave most readers confused.

Yup. Because those studies only look at "time worked" in terms of number of hours per week. They aren't looking at "total time worked in the field". What the data I linked to from the UK found was that pay was equivalent between men and women in the same fields right up until the average age at which women have children. Then a "real" pay gap appears which can't be explained by working in different fields, part time versus full, job titles, etc.

The reason I linked it wasn't about the specifics of the UK, but to illustrate the point that total time in a field makes a difference which must be accounted for. The guy doing that analysis states it very clearly. He assumed a given salary increase rate over time and then found that the discrepancy in pay as women and men get older exactly equaled the difference in yearly pay raises "lost" to women due to increased absences from their field (mostly as a result of child raising).


Look at it another way: Assume there are 100 people working at an office. 50 men and 50 women. Assume that everyone starts at the same pay rate and gets the exact same pay raises each year that they work. Assume that any extended leave does not count for pay raises (you come back at the same pay that you left). Over time, if women take more leave time, they will earn less pay relative to those who don't. So after 30 years in the office, even with everything being completely fair, the women will be paid less than the men.

Add to that the assumption that every woman who takes leave will be replaced with another woman (so as to maintain that 50/50 men to women ratio in the office), those replacements will likely appear at the bottom of the pay scale, not at the top (each person fills a slightly higher role temporarily with the extra person hired at an entry position). This will add to the skew.

Add to that the statistical differential between men and women leaving the field entirely, and it gets skewed even more. A statistically relevant percentage of women simply drop out of their fields when they have children. Again, at any given time, they'll be replaced with new hires at the entry level positions. Assuming we're not engaging in sexual discrimination, a man is 50% likely to fill the actual (presumably higher than entry level) position she held. Again, over time this will skew the results towards men making more money than women.


I fully acknowledge that this is social in nature (all of the things I'm talking about are). But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's "wrong" for women to make this choice, nor is it wrong for employers to pay people based on their value and experience in the field. Feminists are free to try to convince women not to do this, or to demand that their spouses sacrifice their careers instead, but at the end of the day, that's a choice each couple makes. We cannot, nor should we, force a vision of women in the workplace upon them if they don't want to go along.

And while this is somewhat of a tangent, couples who choose to go that route aren't exactly punished for doing so. Some people seem to like to attack the "traditional family" simply because it's traditional and reflects sexual roles and assumptions that they don't agree with. But couples who form into those traditional roles still tend to do quite well, and their children tend to do well also. I kinda take a "don't fix what ain't broken" approach here. It's one thing to demand that women who choose to put work ahead of family should be able to do so and achieve equal success to men. It's quite another to argue that everyone must do that, or that everyone must change their behaviors to match some kind of sexual-equality ideal which doesn't necessarily generate better results than the way we're doing it now.

...as do new fathers much of the time.

Here's one. Assume women can do the work twice as fast. I mean, it's common knowledge right?

Some interesting info I found.

So, in CA, dads are guaranteed paid maternity leave (I never knew that). By FMLA, you are guaranteed up to 12 weeks unpaid if you:

1. Aren't in the top 10% of wage earners at the company and they can show that they'd take a significant blow to earnings without you (you are free to leave, but they aren't required to keep your job open).
2. Work for a company with more than 50 employees within 75 miles of the location. OR you work for a federal, state or local government.
3. You've worked for your employer for at least 12 months with at least 1250 hours (25 hours a week for 50 weeks).
4. If you and the mother work for the same company, the 12 weeks are split between you (all on one, halfsies, whatever).

Some states forbid companies from using paid leave time towards paternity leave, others don't (but the employer can choose to let you keep it).

You can also use those 12 weeks however you want, as long as it falls within the first year of your child's birth. So if you want to work 3 days a week (maybe because the other parent has 3 day weekends) you can.

The company is not allowed to take you off their health insurance coverage, but they can (in some states) require you to reimburse them for it.

Laws don't require employers to let your time-worked benefits to increase while you are away, so you may lose seniority privileges.

These laws apply to adopted children as well as foster children, beginning with the child's arrival in your home (or when you take off to retrieve them, in cases of long-distance adoption and such). The laws have some extra time allotted for adoption interviews, but not everyone will qualify.

In order to be guaranteed paternity leave, you are required to give your employers at least 30 days notice. (It notes that approaching your boss early in the pregnancy/whatever has been shown to increase your chances of negotiating a favorable leave scenario).

Part time employees, or employees for small companies, may not be guaranteed paternity leave. I do not know if that is also the case for maternity leave.

A. It's fun to use studies that are a decade old at best, and 30 years old at parts.

B.


LOL, not uncommon? It's EXTREMELY uncommon for a mother to be out 4-6 months. And companies aren't required to offer additional time above what FMLA mandates. And very, very few women (or men) have 2 weeks sick+vacation time, let alone more. At least in the US.\

And your job isn't guaranteed for you if you want to return part-time, btw. The employer only has to guarantee a job with the same hours, working environment and wage as whatever you were doing before (generally, you return to the same position).

And women who don't return to work at all are a minority, because people can't afford it. That was true 30 years ago, according to the study you linked, and it's only more true now.

Another note? If you don't return to work at the end of your leave, you are required by law in many states to pay back, in full, whatever the company spent on your health insurance while you were on leave.

And I'm convinced you didn't even read the study you linked. It doesn't talk about statistics regarding how maternity leave and such affects women's positions in companies (though it cites that it warrants a study). It's a historical analysis over time that concludes that, by the end of the 90s, the expectation is that women will work before childbirth, and continue working afterwards.

Furthermore, the study you linked concludes that, women are more likely to suffer wage loss from having a child, yes. But it has nothing to do with the reasons you proposed. Women are more likely to change jobs following the birth of a child, which results in lower wages in the long run (as their promotion options evaporate). Women who stay with the same company earn appropriately higher wages.

What it doesn't compare is what those women (who stay) make compare to the ones who never had kids at all. I'd guess it isn't a significant number.

And so the problem remains that a man and woman with the same number of years of experience and equal credentials will not have equal pay. And you have yet to prove that it is due to the maternity leave. The study you were so kind to link actually only hurt your argument--good job.

[edit]


And what you've failed to realize is that many of those women leave the original company for a different job (likely with reduced/part-time hours) and so are not part of the equation when you consider relative wage earnings of a woman in that field. And many are leaving jobs altogether.

So when you calculate the relative wages of women to men in a job role (say, an accountant), the women without jobs aren't included. Only women who remained and women who never had kids are included. And I SERIOUSLY doubt maternity leave for 1 or 2 kids can justify a 15% difference in wages.

Edited, Mar 8th 2011 10:24pm by idiggory

Oh, I would.



lmao. You just don't quit it with the idiocy, do you? No social scientist, economist, what have you, would ever make the mistake of treating that study as generalizable to the U.S..

I love that I can count on you posting something incredibly stupid every day, then watch you pretend like you're the smartest person in the room. Christ, did you even GO to college? An accredited one? With real diplomas and everything?

Srsly.....kids these days.