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In Tech, Wage Gender Gap Worsens For Women Over Time, and It's Worst For Black Women (techcrunch.com) 356

An anonymous reader shares a TechCrunch report: According to a new study involving more than 120,000 job offers transacted on Hired, a jobs marketplace for tech workers, the average female candidate is still making less than her male peers for the same work, and sometimes far less. Hired's data shows that 63 percent of the time women receive lower salary offers than men for the same job at the same company, with white women offered 4 percent less on average, and women more broadly offered up to 50 percent less in the most extreme examples. Along the same vein, for one out of every 10 job openings that Hired analyzed, companies offered white men salaries that were at least 20 percent higher than those offered to women. According to the American Association of University Women, it might take another 136 years for the pay gap to disappear entirely. Perhaps more illuminating in this new report is what happens to women's salaries over time, and who is receiving the lowest pay of all for the same jobs at the same companies: Latina and black women. [...] It found that white women with four years or less of experience actually ask for more money than their male counterparts -- possibly because they're armed with information about what the market is paying for more entry-level jobs. A gap in the other direction begins to appear in candidates with six or more years of experience, however, with white women in tech both asking for less than their white male counterparts and receiving it. Indeed, over time and across the country, white women in tech earn an average of .90 cents for every dollar made by their male peers for the same work.
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In Tech, Wage Gender Gap Worsens For Women Over Time, and It's Worst For Black Women

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  • The takeaway (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:05PM (#54179775) Homepage

    So women ask for less...and they get it.

    Newsflash; that isn't discrimination. That's not sexism. That's individuals undervaluing they're worth, and not anyone's fault but the person that does it.

    • Re:The takeaway (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JoeMerchant ( 803320 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:27PM (#54180031)

      Did the analysis take into account time off for childbirth and care?

      If they say they did, did they do it correctly?

      • Re:The takeaway (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jhon ( 241832 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:56PM (#54180359) Homepage Journal

        Correlation != causation. Lets think this through. If a fully qualified black woman who is a perfect match for a given job will get paid 75% of a while male why the hell aren't all businesses hiring black woman and telling white men to pound sand?

        It's more likely, as the article indicates, women short changing themselves in part -- and likely that they make different career choices than men. There aren't many IT jobs where you don't find your self working god-awful numbers of hours a week at least SOME times and quite a few where ~50 a low average. Not many woman who also want (or already have) families would willingly enter that type of work environment. With regards to race playing a factor, the single parent household rate is higher with black women than white -- again -- signifying different career choices and motivations.

        You also don't see a lot of woman working on oil rigs, in the logging industry or commercial fishing. Long hours, long time away from home will usually equal fewer woman.

        • Correlation != causation. Lets think this through. If a fully qualified black woman who is a perfect match for a given job will get paid 75% of a while male why the hell aren't all businesses hiring black woman and telling white men to pound sand?

          If underskilled people get paid less than well-qualified people, why aren't all business hiring exclusively underskilled people and telling well-qualified people to pound sand?

          Answer: because the cause of them being paid less and the cause of them not being hired more is the same -- they are less desired. For good reason in the case of skill, but not in the case of race or sex.

    • ...That's individuals undervaluing they're worth,..

      I had problems with that statement...Did you mean...

      ...That's individuals undervaluing [what] they're worth,

      OR

      ...That's individuals undervaluing their worth,

      Sorry, I just had to ask...

    • You don't only get paid for what you do, you also get paid for your future potential and value to the company.

    • Women Don't Ask! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Frobnicator ( 565869 )

      So women ask for less...and they get it. Newsflash: that isn't discrimination. That's not sexism. That's individuals undervaluing they're worth, and not anyone's fault but the person that does it.

      That was my thought going in. I've read quite a few books and research on the topic because I don't want to be the one who perpetuates the gap. But over the years I've learned a critical truth: Women Don't Ask! (There's even a book by that title.)

      The data in the article is quite clear, and the article states it outright: "69% of the time women ask for less money than men". 70% of these women are making less than men because they didn't ask to make the same wages. While it happens more frequently with wom

    • Re:The takeaway (Score:5, Interesting)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @08:33PM (#54182873) Journal

      So women ask for less...and they get it.

      Newsflash; that isn't discrimination. That's not sexism. That's individuals undervaluing they're worth, and not anyone's fault but the person that does it.

      So... women do worse in a system designed decades ago when there were no women in the professional workforce. That is, a system designed around male behavioral norms. Is anyone surprised by that?

      The HR organization in my employer did an analysis a few years ago and found that while female engineers and male engineers of the same rank on the career ladder got paid the same (because the HR organization had previously worked hard to make it so), female engineers tended to be of lower rank. Looking more closely, they found that this was mostly caused by the fact that women nominated themselves for promotion at a lower rate. Promotion in my company is initiated by the employee seeking promotion, not by management. Promotion success rates for those who applied were equal or slightly higher for women, as were subsequent job performance ratings. In a followup study they interviewed randomly-selected high-performing engineers of both genders and found that the women were less assertive in all sorts of ways that seem clearly related to societal gender stereotypes -- and remember that this was a set of women working in a male-dominated field, and at the highest level of that field, so they were no shrinking violets.

      The HR team attempted to counter this problem with a campaign to both encourage female engineers directly and -- what turned out to be more important -- to educate their managers to be more sensitive to the fact that women are often less assertive, and to actively counter that by regularly encouraging high-performing women to seek promotion. Within a year of initiating this program, they found that promotion application rates had equalized across the genders, with no effect on promotion success rates or subsequent job performance. In addition, they found that promotion application rates for both genders had risen (though women rose more). Subsequent analysis attributed that to managers also putting more effort into encouraging high-performing but non-assertive men.

      The promo self-nomination process was designed with typical high-performing male behavioral patterns in mind, which turn out to be slightly different than typical high-performing female behavioral patterns. Nature or nurture, I don't know and don't care. The point is that the system was designed for men and that made it difficult for women to keep up. A slight alteration of the system fixed the problem and women are no longer at a disadvantage (not in that area, at least).

  • by GWXerog ( 3151863 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:07PM (#54179805)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Did you know it's illegal to pay one sex/race/gender/anything less than another?
    • It's not illegal to pay one person less than another.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Did you know that it's very hard to prove you are being discriminated against on wages? Most people don't know how much their co-workers earn, and don't share their own salary information.

      When such information is available (government jobs, tax data in some countries, accidental leaks) the gap tends to close.

  • by computational super ( 740265 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:07PM (#54179823)
    How much do you want to bet the solution is going to be to start paying male programmers less?
    • Pay them less *at first*, then offshore their jobs to India. It's the only way to success (and bonuses).
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      We should also ignore vandalism because stopping it reduces business opportunities for craftsmen and destroys manufacturing jobs.

      Anyway, I'd take that bet. Historically it's been the case most of the time, and in a field like IT they will either pay for talent they need or already have tried to replace you with an Indian.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:08PM (#54179833)
    Eskimo woman here. We get $0.00 for every $1.00 that our white male peers make. We can't get a job. we can't even get a job interview. I can club a baby seal just as well as a man but nobody will hire me as a front-end engineer. Totally bullshit.
    • When I read "front end engineer" my first thought was of an operator of a front end loader.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/w/ind... [wikipedia.org]

      I can't imagine too many Eskimo women operating front end loaders. Not because they are not physically or mentally capable of operating such equipment but because a "front end engineer" doesn't just drive a tractor. They would also be responsible for the maintenance on the machine, occasionally getting off the tractor and using a shovel, picking up bits and pieces that fall off the l

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:11PM (#54179851)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      It is perfectly fine if it makes things worse for male (and preferably white) people. It is only discrimination if a woman thinks she got less for her clearly superior efforts.

  • by supercell ( 1148577 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:12PM (#54179859)
    Since compensation in the private sector is more or less based on performance and since we are talking large statistical samples, might it be that males generally excel at IT functions?

    Also for career paths in general, on a large statistical basis, women are much more likely to leave the work for some period of time to raise children or in some cases they marry have a partner that allows them to not work or work part time. This is highly disruptive to their career growth and their compensation. This I suspect, is the majority or any pay discrepancy between males an females on a large statistical scale.

    Otherwise, I think the whole this is a political wedge to gain votes. I am a business owner and I suspect all business owners are going to hire the lowest cost, yet most productive employees they can. If women were willing to work for less and were such great deals, all companies would hire women exclusively. This argument falls flat.
    • People are all interchangeable because software! Everyone should be working for the government anyway! It'd be more fair!
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Correction, compensation is largely based on *perception* of performance. We all know people who bullshit their way into high paying jobs and move on when things start going wrong. Often they have job titles like "manager" and "CEO", but engineers too.

  • Why don't businesses only hire females and minorities? If females only make 20% less or whatever number it is these days, then it would make prudent business sense to hire only minorities and women since they're on the whole cheaper.

    This post brought to you by sarcasm!

  • by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:21PM (#54179967)
    The actual statistic from reputable sources is 4-7% And even those sources can't explain the reasoning because there are so many variables.
    If your interested, a good breakdown of why the gender gap [youtu.be] statistic is specious.
  • by NaCh0 ( 6124 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:24PM (#54180013) Homepage

    There is a really easy answer. I hire all men but on the EO report I write that half are identified as women. 13% identify as black and 12% hispanic.

    This keeps the Rachel Dolezal types happy and we move on to more important issues, like getting shit done.

    • There is a really easy answer. I hire all men but on the EO report I write that half are identified as women. 13% identify as black and 12% hispanic.

      This keeps the Rachel Dolezal types happy and we move on to more important issues, like getting shit done.

      And she has absolutely no right to assume their gender. Sounds like you found the loophole!

    • Of course, because gender is just a social construct. It must be true because my college professors told me so.

    • She was living proof that race is as much (if not more) of a social construct than gender, yet the same people who insist that having a functioning penis and testicles isn't a barrier to claiming to be female wanted to lynch her. I don't understand why racial identity can't be as or more plastic than gender.

      I suspect she could have kept up her self-identification as black forever if she hadn't faked the hate mail and some other sketchy behavior. It's an open question as to whether assuming black identity

  • by GWXerog ( 3151863 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:25PM (#54180017)
    I was curious where the data for this report was being sourced, and we can see it's from hired.com. Under their methodology section we see "This report is based on proprietary data gathered and analyzed by Hired’s research and strategy data scientist, Dr. Jessica Kirkpatrick. The analysis in this study was done using a combination of voluntary, self-reported demographic data and a classifier that identified the gender of the candidate based on their first name."

    Searching for Jessica Kirkpatrick in Google returns a few articles about her where the highlight is.... that she is in fact a woman. Her own public social media is nothing but a torrent of women's rights and equal pay stories and articles. So we have a clearly opinionated data scientist working with a set of "proprietary data" gathered by a private recruiting organization which focuses on diversity. Was there some other conclusion that anybody expected other then "MUH WAGE GAP IS REAL?"
    • Searching for Jessica Kirkpatrick in Google returns a few articles about her where the highlight is.... that she is in fact a woman. Her own public social media is nothing but a torrent of women's rights and equal pay stories and articles. So we have a clearly opinionated data scientist working with a set of "proprietary data" gathered by a private recruiting organization which focuses on diversity. Was there some other conclusion that anybody expected other then "MUH WAGE GAP IS REAL?"

      Since women are at least equally if not more competent than men, this should be a real incentive to only hire men if no woman is available for the job. Why when all other things are completely equal would you hire a person that is going to decrease your profit, when you have to pay more for the exact same output?

  • Black women in IT... (Score:3, Informative)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:27PM (#54180041)
    In the 20+ years of my technical career, I don't think ever worked with a black woman. White women, yes. Asian women, yes. Hispanic women, yes. But never black women.
    • by aoism ( 996912 )
      Same here. I've worked with probably 1 of the 20 total black male engineers in San Francisco, and we had to import him from Nigeria -- but never a Black woman. He was awesome at his job.

      Random side thought and completely unrelated to working with black people: I've also never worked with any known ex-cons in tech, which is another group of people in desperate need of quality jobs , but which you don't near the diversification police shouting to be included, or that they're being paid less. 8% of the adu
      • I've also never worked with any known ex-cons in tech [...]

        I recently found out that I previously worked with a confessed murderer who was arrested and charged with the crime that he committed as a teenager but was thrown out of court for lack of evidence.

        [...] and are often discriminated against by asking questions like "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" on applications.

        I've always thought that the murderer I worked with got fired for being a douche bag. A coworker found an article on the Internet and forwarded the article to management. HR investigated the matter and fired the guy because he lied on the felony checkbox question. It was worded as: "Have you ever been arrested and

    • My son has zero black women in his pre-calculus and chemistry classes.

      I guess they won't be working in technology unless we force a mix.

      • My son has zero black women in his pre-calculus and chemistry classes.

        Good thing. I would be uncomfortable with adults posing as children in high school. But seriously, your point would be more enlightening if you told us the percentage of black students at your school.

    • by waspleg ( 316038 )

      I've worked with and work with several. I'm in the public sector. I have never seen a Hispanic and only one Asian.

  • Since industry always wants to pay as little as possible to all of it's employees, wouldn't this mean that if this wage gap is real, women would get preferential hiring? Why would a company go out of it's way to hire the most expensive and presumably no more talented gender?
  • by Baloroth ( 2370816 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:32PM (#54180091)

    Hired's data shows that 63 percent of the time women receive lower salary offers than men for the same job at the same company,

    That sounds awful, till you realize that from simple statistical fluctuation you'd expect that number to be 50 percent, in which light 63 percent seems to indicate some trend, but not nearly as big a one as the writer clearly intends to signify. How large is the average fluctuation? What's the probability women could have gotten such offers by chance (which would require knowing for e.g. the sample size, which, speaking of, that doesn't seem to be given in the report)? You know, anything that might reveal the statistical significance of the findings, which seem to be entirely absent from the report and without which raw numbers are almost entirely meaningless.

    with white women offered 4 percent less on average, and women more broadly offered up to 50 percent less in the most extreme examples.

    The report (linked in the article and here [hired.com]) says the average is 4% for all women. Also, "up to 50% in the most extreme examples" means "we found 1 case where that happened", which, again, you'd expect (in fact, you could probably find some extreme examples where a man was offered that much less than a woman), or at least, you'd *probably* expect (can't say for sure without knowing the variance of the job offers, which I supposed you could extract from the chart, but doesn't seem to be given in numerical form). 4% also just happens to be the average amount less women ask for than men. They also don't (AFAICT) look into issues like time taken off career for maternal leave (which, sorry, means you're going to be worth less due to not having been able to keep up with current developments, it sucks, but life choices have consequences), hours worked (statistically, men tend to work slightly longer hours than women: IIRC it's something like 8.4 vs 7.8 per day, but no clue if that is true in tech or not), etc. etc.

    I should be clear: I'm not saying there isn't sexism in tech. There sure as shit is, for a lot of reasons, just like there's ageism, racism, religious discrimination, and a bunch of other -isms and -tions. But biased, politically motivated, and downright misleading articles like this one really aren't the way forward.

    • Perhaps the average years experience for the women's group was 4 years and the average for the men's group 5 years for the same job. That could explain a salary difference. You can get any result you want by manipulating control variables....
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      You are assuming that there would be a perfect 50/50 distribution of the was no discrimination, but you have to account for those getting exactly the same offer as well. No one sits down and calculates a candidate's precise worth to the cent, they have a budget, a rough feeling and round to the nearest whole number.

      Also, 4% is working over two weeks for free.

      • You are assuming that there would be a perfect 50/50 distribution of the was no discrimination, but you have to account for those getting exactly the same offer as well. No one sits down and calculates a candidate's precise worth to the cent,

        I dunno what accounting they did, but the plot in the report clearly splits the population into 63% offered less, 37% offered more. It looks like they used an average value for the salary offers.

  • Repeat after me:
    Can the person/animal/insect/alien do the job?

  • Discounted labour! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:48PM (#54180273)

    You hear that corporations? There's a discount on labour! Save, save, save! Apparently if you hire black women they have identical skills, experience, and work just as hard as the average person in your company. Why are you hiring anyone but them? DISCOUNT!!!

    Everyone says companies are willing to do anything to save a buck, but apparently, when it comes to labour, they won't. Weird, eh? I wonder if there could be another reason...

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      You hear that corporations? There's a discount on labour! Save, save, save! Apparently if you hire black women they have identical skills, experience, and work just as hard as the average person in your company. Why are you hiring anyone but them? DISCOUNT!!!

      Everyone says companies are willing to do anything to save a buck, but apparently, when it comes to labour, they won't. Weird, eh? I wonder if there could be another reason...

      From my experience in the industry, the difference in wages highlighted by this article would be insignificant next to the much larger wastes due to building the wrong thing, or building stuff that customers don't want, or running around in circles with changing requirements, or pursuing middle-manager pet projects.

      I think the "another reason" you mention is that no one in the industry has figured out how to systematically use software engineers to the full potential, not by a long margin.

  • by jediborg ( 4808835 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:59PM (#54180385)
    This article http://blog.interviewing.io/we... [interviewing.io] discusses an interesting experiment where males and females had their voices masked for technical interviews so they could analyze the differences in how women perform while controlling for gender discrimination. Some fascinating results that show how women react differently to tech interviews than men, possibly resulting in them getting less employment offers and/or lower salary. I wonder how much this effect can be attributed to the results mentioned in this slashdot article. Like most problems with women's performance/success compared to men, this is mostly a cultural issue. There are things we can all do to pitch in and improve the situation but its not really something the government can legislate away.

    On the other hand, i wouldn't be surprised to find the tech industry is actually more discriminating toward women than other industries, given that we already know there is rampant agism (reluctance to hire older programmers) and a culture that encourages workers to forgo family and other commitments in favor of longer hours and 'crunch time'

It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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