[dmichulke]

I always wonder - if there is such a huge gap, why don't folks just employ women, since they're cheaper and do the same work?

Isn't that the question to be answered in order to really understand what's going on?

Otherwise I bet I can always find, for any company, a subset of people that are underpaid relative to the rest, be it related to age, gender, race, sexual preferences, employment history, ZIP code, whatever.

[T2_t2]

No, there isn't. The gap is between different professions, not intra-professional. Where it is intra-professional, men tend to work more hours, and women tend to preference conditions over monetary remuneration (i.e. flexibility over pay, extraneous benefits over direct compensation etc etc). Just to be clear, extra time off is remuneration, as are things like on-site day care centres, but they aren't ever counted in pay gap studies (that I have seen anyway).

Add to that that Lesbians make more than straight women[1] - and gay men less than straight men [2][3] - and there is a bit more at play.

The problem is that any time there is something men do better than women - like negotiate pay - rather than bring women up to the male standard (teach women to negotiate better), people want to hamstring men (no pay negotiation). Anti-worker policies and pro-gender policies are often indistinguishable, if only to me personally, and in my more cynical moments think this is a business conspiracy to deflate wages to female levels, not increase wages to male levels.

[1] http://bigthink.com/dollars-and-sex/what-explains-the-lesbia...

[2] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-232X.2009....

[3] https://joeclark.org/gaymoney/findings/

[yomly]

It's possible to pay everyone equally - especially when you just pay everyone less.

If you disclose what everyone earns at every level, it's easy to then let all your employees pull everyone hold themselves accountable to the same level.

A bit like crabs in a bucket...

[falcolas]

There isn't a huge gap, not for the same job/title combination (there are cases where the gap does exist for the same job, but it's typically less than 10%). The gap widely most widely reported, the 70% figure, is primarily caused because of the genders holding different jobs, where the average pay for female-dominated jobs is less than the average pay for male-dominated jobs.

[wrsh07]

So... this is light on details into their analysis, but Laszlo Block [formerly of Google - where I work fwiw], claimed "In 2015 we added 8,214 employees to Google. And the women we hired, on average, received a 30 percent bigger salary increase upon joining the company, compared to men."

If you accepted his claim that Google does pay genders equitably, then this would indicate a large pay disparity outside of Google.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/04...

[dragonwriter]

> If you accepted his claim that Google does pay genders equitably, then this would indicate a large pay disparity outside of Google.

Or it would indicate a successful outreach program at Google for women by which they were successful at getting qualified women not currently working in tech to apply; this doesn't necessarily imply a like-duties gender pay gap.

[collyw]

Could it indicate discrimination against men at Google?

[falcolas]

There's a lot of variables which are not being taken into account there. If you hired a person from outside SV, and another from within SV, you immediately have a 40-50% difference in salary increases. Or, if you hire one person out of an advertising company and another out of a software company, the difference will be quite large.

It's also a bit of a weasely statement - to quote Penn & Teller, they are lying with numbers - since it doesn't mention the current difference in wages.

[Brotkrumen]

10% adjusted is pretty large. Even sub-10% usually works out to a couple of thousand each year.

[falcolas]

Yes, it's large, but it's also only practically visible when you can see all of the wages for all companies. Pay gaps between individuals in the same company - regardless of gender - can be much larger than 10%, since your wage (in the US) depends more on your wage at your last job than your actual skill level.

[karlkeefer]

Perhaps it is due to "family costs" being carried disproportionately by women.

Leaving early to pick up kids, staying home when kids are sick, etc. Even though typical gender roles are becoming less typical, they may still result in differential output from the perspective of an employer.

Thomas Sowell (a while ago) showed a dramatic difference in salary between all women, and women who had never married, suggesting that a huge component of the pay gap was due to household and family expectations.

I imagine there is more recent research on this exact theory, but I'm not aware of it.

[paperpunk]

Perhaps the same biases that might influence career progression/pay-rise discussions could also influence hiring decisions?

Though I agree with your secondary assertion.

[Brotkrumen]

The belief that a woman with the same experience, skill, etc. is a worse performer would lead to a lower salary for women. That's the whole point of contention.

And we should probably let go of the idea that markets are rational.