Which is exactly what the pay gap conversation tries to accomplish?
But I’m not sure it actually accomplishes that, does it?
I mean, it’s not about some abstract notion of “women” deserving more. It’s about you, as a specific employee, deserving more.
For this, I must admit that I’m kind of at a loss here, as it doesn’t fit into my experience. Our male and female engineers make the same, based primarily on their experience level. There’s no consideration of their gender, at all.
But the realities of negotiating a salary are subject to corporate and broader culture. Can you ask for a higher salary for you for a position your peers (other women in the same company, in this case) are going to be paid less? You can, but it probably won’t fly. And you might face firing over the petition (depends on the company, of course).
The alternative is to ask for a raise for you and all your peers (so people in the same position are paid equally). Pay gap activism tries to do this in broader sense, across a society.
And pay gap has been reduced, so there might be some effectiveness going on. Whether it’s because of market forces, activism or a little bit or both is of course hard to measure, though.
I find this statement terrifying.
If this sort of critique is what you consider redpill territory, then pray tell—and I’m being serious here—what would, in your mind, a reasonable non-redpill critique on this topic as written by a white male look like?
But therein lies the problem with your attitude here.
If other men are being paid that much… then yes, you absolutely can demand a higher salary. If you accept a lower one, then you’ll get a lower one.
The “corporate culture” in this regard is just a manifestation of what’s happening in the corporation. The workers themselves are half of this equation.
Now, if there are other women who are willing to accept less for that work, then so be it… although as an employer, it seems like I’d want to hire all those women, since they’re apparently able to do the work of men for a lower wage.
Again, it’s weird to me, as I don’t consider gender at all when hiring and deciding pay. I honestly don’t even really grasp how that would play into the thought process, although I realize it apparently must for some places.
I think that at some level some women may have internalized some notion of lower worth, and this comes out in their negotiations. But they don’t need to do this.
Here’s part of what makes this weird to me…
When you go and look for a job, you look at an area and check out the average salary for positions in that area, right? But there’s not “Here’s the range for a MAN in that area.” It’s just given for the job itself.
That’s what leads me to find it weird that you’d see a large discrepency in the wages based on sexes, since I would imagine a woman would go into negotiations with the same wage target. But apparently they don’t?
As far as I understand it, some business owners are not willing to put up with maternity leaves. That and plain old sexism (the businessman feeling more likely to bully a woman into a lower salary than a man) seem to be the two main factors in Spain.
A partial fix is allowing fathers to take paternity leaves in the same extent as the mothers (well right now it’s one month versus 4, but still). But then you face cultural issues, since there’s pressure about not taking the leave when you are the father since “it’s not necessary” (these are paid leaves protected by law). you can, as a worker, ignore the pressure, but not everybody can and people who are scared of losing their job will be less likely to stand firm.
What target you go into negotiations with and what salary the employer will offer are two different things.
It’s easier to distinguish between a cost centre and an income generator and set wages accordingly in many industries. Hence profit generator roles pay more. I can’t see how comparing different roles in different industries will ever achieve much.
Then let us try a new tack, lets look at a profession that changed its distribution greatly over the decades, and see how pay scales have changed since it became male dominated.
Lets look at programmers.
Because in the 40s through 60s there was a much larger female presence, and it was considered less prestigious and lower paying.
Today the numbers have changed, becoming much more male dominated, and conversely much more lucrative. Obviously there are other factors at play, but to ignore sexism would be historically inaccurate as well.
I think the entire point of the rebuttal is that Google should encourage gender diversity even if you grant the existence of profound differences between men and women.
Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers. If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I’m very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to. Solitary work is something that only happens at the most junior levels, and even then it’s only possible because someone senior to you — most likely your manager — has been putting in long hours to build up the social structures in your group that let you focus on code. All of these traits which the manifesto described as “female” are the core traits which make someone successful at engineering. Anyone can learn how to write code; hell, by the time someone reaches L7 or so, it’s expected that they have an essentially complete mastery of technique
Probably something like this: “A review of studies of gender differences demonstrate variance ranging from X1% to Y1% on common predictors of STEM success at age Z1 [citations], and X2% to Y2% at age Z2 [citations]. Using multiple models (ABC1, ABC2) to predict STEM success independent of institutional bias [citation], I predict that Google’s workforce would be A1% male, and A2% female. The observed values are B1% male and B2% female, suggesting that we (overcompensated, underperformed) compared to a hypothetical bias-free condition”
Or something like that. But the result would be a critique based on verifiable data and validated methods, rather than a screed that is ultimately founded on prejudice.
Now, perhaps you’re thinking, “Wow, that’s a lot of effort! And how is an overworked Google engineer supposed to find the time and training needed to carry out the careful modeling required to produce a well-informed policy recommendation?” But that question answers itself.
Thanks for the link. Another great article from SSC.
No, I’m thinking that’s its ironic that for the first half of your post, proper sourcing is apparently irrelevant, but for the second half it’s paramount.
Whoever wrote this article doesn’t understand medicine.
A privilege-based theory fails – there’s not much of a tendency for women to be restricted to less prestigious and lower-paying fields – Ob/Gyn (mostly female) is extremely lucrative, and internal medicine (mostly male) is pretty low-paying for a medical job.
This is just cherry picking, pure and simple. He lists three other specialties where women dominate: psychiatry, pediatrics, and family medicine. All are relatively low-paying specialties. And he lists four other specialties where men dominate: radiology, surgery, emergency medicine, and anesthesiology. All are relatively high-paying.
But the people/thing theory above does extremely well! Pediatrics is babies/children, Psychiatry is people/talking (and of course women are disproportionately child psychiatrists), OB/GYN is babies (though admittedly this probably owes a lot to patients being more comfortable with female gynecologists) and family medicine is people/talking/babies/children. Meanwhile, Radiology is machines and no patient contact, Anaesthesiology is also machines and no patient contact, Emergency Medicine is danger, and Surgery is machines, danger, and no patient contact.
Emergency Medicine is “danger”?? Surgeons have no patient contact??? LOLWUT?
Here is the thing, you can justify any data set with your prejudices if you try hard enough. For instance, if Emergency Medicine, Radiology, and Anesthesiology were dominated by women, then you just point out that those specialties have the most regular hours, and therefore most conducive to working part-time. If Psychiatry were dominated by men? Not enough babies! If Internal Medicine were dominated by women? Well, internists sure do love talking and talking!
There’s even a term for this type of reasoning: “Just So story”. This is the main reason why evolutionary psychology is not taken so seriously any more, at least in academia.
No, I’m thinking that’s its ironic that for the first half of your post, proper sourcing is apparently irrelevant, but for the second half it’s paramount.
Proper sourcing is necessary when establishing facts, and the original screed is based on the “fact” that women are worse at math, or too empathic, or whatever.
The rebuttal, by its admission, does not refute those facts. Neither does it accept them. Instead it points out a logical inconsistency in the original argument: even granting the “facts”, it does not follow that women would be less successful at Google. There is no need to source this, it is merely dissecting the logic.
You asked how the screed should have been rewritten. Clearly, both the facts and the logic need to be secure.
This google engineer seems like your classic smart-but-stupid person. Smart enough to work for google but too stupid to realize nobody wants to hear about the social utopia he’s been working so hard on in his head.
He just finished residency as a psychiatrist, so he does have some experience.
So is the privilege theory actually backed up by hard numbers and not cherry-picking?
Skimmed through it, still not sure at what point it was decided he should be fired for writing it.
tl;dr; was that he wondered if googles programs were working correctly and that silencing voices wouldn’t give them the optimal results for neither the workers nor the company as a whole…
I didn’t realize he finished a psych residency! Wow. Then he’s really not being honest. Any physician should know that surgeons talk to patients all the time, and need the personal skills to handle very difficult conversations.
So is the privilege theory actually backed up by hard numbers and not cherry-picking?
Well, it’s a fact that specialties dominated by men are higher-paying than those dominated by women. But that doesn’t tell you whether male doctors are fundamentally different from female doctors, or society treats the two differently, or something else is going on.
Is Google Maps required to hire flat-earthers to maintain “fair and balanced” objectivity?
They keep trying to, but they just can’t compete with the salaries the NBA is offering.
Exactly, this guy talks like he knows what he talking about but gets it so wrong. I don’t know how anyone can give too much credit to anything else he says when his examples are flat-out so wrong.
I said almost the same thing you did… it’s ridiculous to see those specialties in the light he does.