[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.