[jev]

The pay equality gap is a misdirection. Gender is not a big factor in determining your pay... until you get married or have kids, when men focus more on providing while women focus more on being with their families. Look up the US Dept of Labour's numbers. In fact, unmarried, childless women have out-earned their male peers since the 70s, but don't tell the feminists that.

[opendais]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/the-pay-gap-is-beca...

Eh. The pay gap is 12%. Please provide evidence this isn't real that is verifiable and not vague "look at the statistics". Which statistics?

[jev]

As I said, gender is not the most important factor overall, their family status is. So if you slice only along gender lines, you will see a gap that is meaningless, because you are comparing apples and oranges.

Here's an article that cites several different studies. Granted, I cited the higher end, it could be lower, by all means make up your own mind. They also add the caveat here that it only applies to metropolitan areas, but this is the vast majority of the population nowadays.

>... in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group. In two cities, Atlanta and Memphis, those women are making about 20% more. This squares with earlier research from Queens College, New York, that had suggested that this was happening in major metropolises. But the new study suggests that the gap is bigger than previously thought, with young women in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego making 17%, 12% and 15% more than their male peers, respectively. And it also holds true even in reasonably small areas like the Raleigh-Durham region and Charlotte in North Carolina (both 14% more), and Jacksonville, Fla. (6%).

> As for the somewhat depressing caveat that the findings held true only for women who were childless and single: it's not their marital status that puts the squeeze on their income. Rather, highly educated women tend to marry and have children later. Thus the women who earn the most in their 20s are usually single and childless.

http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274...

Once again: women and men who want families make different choices.

[opendais]

Jev, that is a bold move but it isn't going to pay off for you.

We read that article and came to two completely different conclusions. That may be due to having different contexts about approaching this conversation. This is a tech site, the OP was about tech, and I was talking about software/tech salaries.

"The holdout cities — those where the earnings of single, college-educated young women still lag men's — tended to be built around industries that are heavily male-dominated, such as software development or military-technology contracting. In other words, Silicon Valley could also be called Gender Gap Gully."

I interpret this as basically admitting its a problem in male dominated industries [which happens to be the case in tech and engineering in general].

"He attributes the earnings reversal overwhelmingly to one factor: education. For every two guys who graduate from college or get a higher degree, three women do."

You seem to have missed the entire point of the article. The reversal that is raising women's average wage is due to an education gap b/t men & women. It is not due to equal pay for equal experience/position/etc. that is the basis of the gap in the article I cited.

The pay gap I'm talking about is when a female software engineer is paid 12% less than when a male software engineer with roughly the same experience, education, ability, and position.

You are comparing your apples [overall pay equality across all industries and disciplines] to my oranges [pay equality by experience, education, ability, and position].

Do you now understand why I disagree with you, even reading the same articles? I understand where you are coming from but there shouldn't be a pay gap for the same job title.