Maddox: How every company in America can save 23% on wages (video)

[Tservitive]

This video is a short and somewhat condescending way to express the true 5-7% wage gap and why it exists. 

 

[Daniel Unplugged]

All good points.

 

I just had a thought. Has there ever been a study of the 'wage gap' that considers whether any of it is due to women (on average) doing a lower quality of work / being less productive at work than men (on average)? It would seem to be the obvious first thing to check when trying to explain a difference in wages between men and women, yet I cannot recall ever hearing of such a study.

 

I suppose the idea that men and women are different is still herecy, and thus shall not be considered possible, at least by TPTB.

[labmath2]

Ironically, the transgender community rely on the idea that there are differences between men and women to prove it is not a psychuatric condition. While simultaneosly supporting feminism.

[LovePrevails]

[Pepin]

I just had a thought. Has there ever been a study of the 'wage gap' that considers whether any of it is due to women (on average) doing a lower quality of work / being less productive at work than men (on average)? It would seem to be the obvious first thing to check when trying to explain a difference in wages between men and women, yet I cannot recall ever hearing of such a study.

 

Kind of. There are studies that show that women work less than men for any particular job. Men will work more overtime, cover more shifts, and so on. As a result, they get larger raises since employers really like it when employees work extra. Some of those stats can be found in the FDR presentation on the wage gap.

 

I had a discussion on a forum about minimum wage back in the day and pointed out that if women were as productive as men and made less, that companies would hire more women and gradually get rid of the men. Someone actually linked me a couple of studies about that actually happening at call centers. The women tended to be better at the job and they were also on average paid less, so over the course of time these call centers became mostly female staffed. I wish I could find the link to this, but I am having trouble searching past all the recent pay gap articles.

 

What I really don't think people understand is that if men are really making more than women for the same productivity, it does not necessarily mean that they are being underpaid, rather it is more likely that men are being overpaid. The idea people have in their head is that the women in these instances ought to get raises up to the wage the men are making, but in most cases the misallocation is in paying men more than they are worth, and the solution is to pay men what women are making or less.

 

Now of course there may be instances where women are being underpaid, and firing men is not the best way to go about it since that won't reduce the high risk of these skilled women finding higher paying jobs elsewhere. In these situations, it would make more sense to pay women more. But at least in most cases where there is a legitimate gap, I would guess that men are being overpaid.

[Frosty]

You don't even need to research this really, you know that businesses are handing out equal wages under equal circumstances because it's a free market. It's simply not possible for businesses on aggregate to sustain a bias in a free market like this, eventually that bias will be ironed out, all that is required is a bit of economics 101.

[labmath2]

You don't even need to research this really, you know that businesses are handing out equal wages under equal circumstances because it's a free market. It's simply not possible for businesses on aggregate to sustain a bias in a free market like this, eventually that bias will be ironed out, all that is required is a bit of economics 101.

Not true. If you go to parts of the workd where people have strong cultural beliefs about certain groups of people,you see how culture influences economics.

[DaviesMa]

That 7% could also represent a risk premium for the employer as they may not be keen on having reduced productivity from women who become pregnant and the subsequent hassle of finding a maternity replacement and holding the job open for the applicant. I don't think the US has mandatory maternity pay but I presume it is offered by some employers?

 

Also women are statistically take more sick days than men, even when accounting for differences in occupation, which reduces productivity.

 

Finally, I would be surpised if women in general are as ambitious as men on an evolutionary basis because a man could have an almost unlimitied amount of children, which would depend upon his status, where as a woman could a have a maximum of 10 or 15 children and this would not rely on status but on marrying status. Anecdotally, many successful women who don't play on their beauty tend to be quite masculine in character (Hilary Clinton for example.)

 

I realise that these studies control for seniority but men may be more productive in the same role as women because they are more keen to impress and get promotion. As men inhabit more senior positions and male entrepreneurs are usually more wealthy, there appears to be some support for this.

[Funkmaster_A]

Many business owners are probably afraid that they'll hire a woman, and then Sandra Fluke 2.0 will go before congress and demand that anyone who already hired a woman has to give her free stuff.