[mdorazio]

In general, women get paid the same as men, within the error of measurement, and have for many years. The trope of women making less than men comes from an apples to oranges comparison. Women choose less lucrative careers, leave the workforce more often to care for children, and care more about work-life balance. The result is that on average across the workforce, women make less. But if you look at an individual career track and control for hours worked/overtime, years of experience, etc. it’s generally quite even.

In fact, there’s a recent trend of young women making more than their male counterparts, as per the link in this thread.

[slg]

>Women choose less lucrative careers, leave the workforce more often to care for children, and care more about work-life balance.

Although the "choose" here needs to put into societal context. Do women naturally prefer less lucrative careers or has society reinforced that some less lucrative careers are in some way feminine while some more lucrative careers are masculine? Do women naturally want to leave the workforce and prioritize work-life balance or is that a response to society putting a majority of the parenting responsibility on their shoulders?

[steveBK123]

Societal pressure and expectations cut both ways, and I think are starting to harm young men more than young women, and is somewhat explanatory of recent machismo populist political turn in youth voting.

The stats are saying - women enroll and graduate college at higher rates than men, graduate with lower unemployment, and society has spent the last ~60 years correcting a lot of the wrongs that harmed women's choices & freedoms (notwithstanding some recent SCOTUS decisions).

A young woman in 2025 has been brought up in a society that tells them they can do anything, be anything, want anything, etc.

For young men, I firmly believe society expectations haven't really changed at all actually. They are still expected to be providers, and to make educational/career choices & sacrifices to facilitate that.

Very few men are stay at home parents, or make less than their wives. Those that do are not accepted by society the same way as when the roles are reversed. As expectations haven't changed but women have gained economically in relation to men, this sets up a very potent mix of resentment and mismatched singles (high end loser women & low end loser men).

A pattern amongst my richer/older friends I've noticed is that their sons are encouraged to go get STEM degrees to support themselves, while their daughters are encouraged to follow their passions, go work at an NGO, oh and here's a condo in Manhattan we bought for you. I sat on the board of a condo in yuppie Brooklyn a few years, and despite the stereotypes, the majority of trust fund buyers were women now.

[_aavaa_]

> For young men, I firmly believe society expectations haven't really changed at all actually. They are still expected to be providers, and to make educational/career choices & sacrifices to facilitate that.

That’s because male-coded fields are still seen and treated as more prestigious. Men aren’t encouraged to go into different fields because that would mean encouraging them to go into historically female-coded fields.

Women being told they can do anything and be anything (which overall is good) is a push to get them into previously male-coded occupations, and not a change in how we look down on women-coded work.

Men who are being failed by culture are being failed because as you say they are being pushed further to the machismo extreme.

[steveBK123]

They are being failed because they are raised with the knowledge no one is coming to save them, and told implicitly & explicitly that the lower their compensation the smaller the available dating pool.

[apparent]

> Do women naturally want to leave the workforce and prioritize work-life balance or is that a response to society putting a majority of the parenting responsibility on their shoulders?

Yes, mothers naturally do have a stronger urge to spend time with their babies/small children than men do. One of my male buddies lamented that he couldn't defer his paternity leave until his son was 8, so they could interact more. He had very little interest in spending time with his infant child. This is not uncommon among men, and quite uncommon among women (who bond with the baby when it is gestating inside them, and again when they nurse it, in many cases).

[lazide]

Even women with no children and no plan for children generally do this.

[steveBK123]

I think it's not an either-or problem, but a mix. Most of the effect does appear to be job choice, which is driven by degree choice, which is driven by earlier education / coaching by teachers, parents, etc.

However, In my experience my female colleagues doing similar things are generally under-compensated BUT, and this is a big BUT.. they also are less aggressive in asking for money. I have had this discussion with my wife, and every few years she does work up the energy to have the "give me more money" discussion with her boss, which is almost always followed by a best-in-years % raise at next compensation cycle.

I coach some of my former junior colleagues too and the women are generally paid a little bit less than their peer male coworkers, but also their reaction to this injustice is a lot less "I'm marching into my bosses office Monday morning and demanding a raise" than a male in the same seat would have.

And then yeah there's also some lingering biases.

If I had to make up some % allocation for pay differentials that I've seen, it's probably - 50% job choice / 40% career management / 10% bias. But who knows.

[gruez]

>However, In my experience my female colleagues doing similar things are generally under-compensated BUT, and this is a big BUT.. they also are less aggressive in asking for money. I have had this discussion with my wife, and every few years she does work up the energy to have the "give me more money" discussion with her boss, which is almost always followed by a best-in-years % raise at next compensation cycle.

If they're actually working in the same jobs, wouldn't this discrepancy show up in the statistics? If all the male senior developers are driving a hard bargain and getting $220k, but the female senior developers aren't and are only getting $200k, it'll still show up as a 10% difference in an apples to apples comparison. The fact that such apples to apples comparison shows minimal difference either means such effect is tiny, or there's a bunch of effects working for females that's canceling out the "males bargain better" effect.

[steveBK123]

I agree the effect is tiny, I'd reckon in the 5-10% range.

However it is also worth considering that apples to apples is hard to compare and may have a latent bias you accidentally brought up by adding the adjective "senior". What if, and this is what I've seen, females tend to promoted and said titles slower/later. So a 32 year old female may be stuck at non-senior $180k while the 32 year old male cohort she started with got the senior title 1/2/3 years before and is at 220k.

Some of this is still of the same flavor of "not demanding it" as aggressively as a male might.

Otherwise, yes most of the time people point at far bigger pay differentials in stats that are driven by apple/orange compares like comparing male majority SWE jobs and female majority teaching/nursing jobs, which duh, high %% difference.

[mmsimanga]

I rarely win arguments against my wife and anecdotally neither do my male friends. As a manager the most vocal people reporting into me were always the women. Perhaps I have been lucky to be amongst strong women but I find the simingly widely accepted notion that women cannot speak up for themselves in this day is not convincing for me.

[steveBK123]

Men have been losing arguments with their wives since the beginning of recorded history lol. And I don’t disagree that women can be outspoken in the workplace. I just have seen a lot of capable women not willing to advocate for themselves.

My wife will spend many evenings arguing with me about why she can’t just ask her boss for a raise (rather than venting to me about it for months) before finally agreeing to do so.. and winning.

[tptacek]

If I said most developers upset about the balance of equities between labor and company founders had chosen the less lucrative career of not being a founder, do you think that would resolve the concern for most people?

[littlestymaar]

This is only true right after graduating and before giving birth. There is still a gender gap, but it's maternity induced.

See Kleven & Al, 2019.

[yieldcrv]

Additionally, many women are not mimicking their competition in how the career ladder is approached.

There is a fear of coming across as too assertive within the organization she is already employed in.

What’s understated is that plenty of men come across as too cocky too and get passed up within the organization and at other organizations.

But some men, with the societal incentive to get ahead, continues aiming higher at other organizations with the same playbook, and enough of them find the organization that is indexing for that attitude.

I dont have a way to quantify this behavior by gender, I frequently see women not considering it though, overindexed on getting the promotion in the org and navigating that.

The competition doesn’t care about their perception at the place they are already employed, and are aiming on getting offers all the time for leverage.

[steveBK123]

Yes I have this conversation with women sometimes where it's like "but if I am assertive and ask for money, my boss will judge me" type of societal norm compliance.

And look, maybe they will, but are they going to fire you or cut your pay? No.

You don't ask, you don't get.. that is the way of the world. If you constantly try to play it safe, you get less.

If you clip your own wings you can't point vaguely at "society" for it.

[lazide]

Fire or cut pay - now they might.

[steveBK123]

At the end of the day if you are getting fired/paycut for asking for a raise, you are either doing a bad job or at a bad company. The sooner it happens / you realize, the better.

This is the most edge of edge cases, and I've literally never heard of such a thing in 20 years working.

[lazide]

Said no one worried about being laid off ever.

[supriyo-biswas]

> But some men, with the societal incentive to get ahead, continues aiming higher at other organizations with the same playbook, and enough of them find the organization that is indexing for that attitude.

At a previous employer, I had skip levels who apparently only made disparaging statements in public settings (and only in public settings, they’d dismiss it lightly if you tried to discuss said feedback in private settings) involving their indirect reports; this was their apparent way of ruling with an iron fist so that they come across as effective managers and have more projects directed towards them by the leadership.

Even as a man, it was everything I never wanted to become; I can completely see why women, who generally pursue (or at least try to maintain the impression of) collaborative relationships often want to do nothing with it.

[yieldcrv]

What stands out to me most is that management isn’t the only way to make a lot of money in corporate environments, and that managing that way is not a necessary way to accomplish the same goals

[lstamour]

Isn’t it possible though, that if a role is gender stereotyped or if senior managers are a particular gender, that those of the other gender might need to prove themselves more to get the same job? That managers tend to hire people who appear to fit in, which usually means they are more like themselves, or those who already have the job? Also, it seems weird to suggest that only women have the failings you’ve noted, as men can also have the same shortcomings. In a way, this entire discussion is really highlighting that while some get hired, some do not, and somehow blames those who do not get hired as failures who should not get hired rather than as disadvantaged individuals due to circumstances partly or fully beyond their control.

An interesting point about choosing to leave the workforce to care for children is that re-entry into the workforce or even the ability to work and care for children is something a social net could be established to support. If we have networks that allow army recruits to enter the workforce after their service, we could do the same for parents, but instead social nets seem to devalue the act of raising children, maybe because they are driven too much by short term profit. Taxpayers accept that too, preferring tax breaks for families with children over support networks and job opportunities to re-enter the workforce full-time. One imagines it again is about hiring those like you - managers hiring individuals who worked from home are unlikely to have worked from home - they needed the time in industry to become experienced managers.

Edit: upon rereading my last comment, it is possible that work from home norms established under covid might be the best thing to happen to stay at home parents and their continued full time employment. This could then boost the number of relatively younger parents who could continue in the workforce after mat leave while also providing child care. But it’s not a replacement for better social nets and better social norms.

[rayiner]

> Also, it seems weird to suggest that only women have the failings you’ve noted, as men can also have the same shortcomings.

Why would you portray these as “shortcomings?” E.g. my wife is probably counted as part of the income disparity between men and women, because after our third child she decided she didn’t want to keep working. The choice to do that wasn’t unweighted random coin flip as between the two of us. Indeed, she wouldn’t have married me if she perceived there was a possibility I’d want to quit my demanding full time job and be the primary caregiver.

[steveBK123]

My observation in my 40s is that near-zero of the successful women in my circles "married down" but some ended up remaining single as a result of expectations mismatch. Most who ran the risk of doing so were advised strongly against it by parents. My single-at-40 female friends are by far my most successful female friends.

Quite the opposite amongst my male cohort who universally all had no problem finding a partner, but also had no concern about their patterns income potential.

The one woman we know who makes more than her husband probably only ended up that way because they've been together since they were 19, and at the time their career paths actually would have lead to the husband having higher income expectation.

There were definitely mental health / marital conflicts wrapped up in this, and the fact that she is the primary breadwinner is treated like a shameful embarrassment that she only confessed to my wife after 25 years of friendship.

[lazide]

Because ‘we’re all the same’, and somehow money is everything. Aka the particular crazy of the last 10-30 years in particular.

[afiori]

The commenter was not saying that women do not face discrimination, they were saying that salary (as in hourly cash for a given job) was not one place with sizable discrimination.

To be clear if women faced strong discrimination against being promoted it would not show up in that metric, it debunks only a very specific type of discrimination on average

[_qbxi]

> Women choose less lucrative careers

"Choose" is perhaps technically true, but misleading. Women are generally pressured out of lucrative careers.

Remember that programming started as a woman-dominated field (due to perceived proximity to typing as the fundamental skill), which is how so many pioneers and influential figures ended up being women (Grace Hopper, Margaret Hamilton). Women were ultimately pushed out as the field gained perceived prestige.

[Dracophoenix]

> Women were ultimately pushed out as the field gained perceived prestige.

They weren't pushed out so much as the nature of the market for programming changed from office work and military projects to personal computers and applications in the 1970s.

[im3w1l]

This doesn't match what I experienced growing up in the 90's. What I saw saw was girls not wanting to involve themselves with computing because it was seen as nerdy and boring and for weird people. Only when people started realizing how much FAANG's paid and how nice the benefits were did they start feeling they wanted to get in on that. Those are just my personal observations though.

[Brian_K_White]

True enough for the 90's, but the 90's came long after they were pushed out in the 60's & 70's. That's an entire generation of seperation. It's en entirely different world.