Gender Wage Gap 薪酬性別差距, Discussion on Descriptive Statistics

[Pearltea]

Bernie Sanders is probably celebrating how close the gap was between him and Clinton in the Iowa Caucus last night. The senator, who aims to fight inequalities in minorities (people of color, women, LGBT, disabilities) and the welfare of the youth and the elderly, has been gaining support steadily.  Anyone can visit his official campaign website to read more about where he stands on issues.  There's one issue, particularly the 'facts' and its descriptive statistics, even as female (and somewhat of a feminist) I cannot bring myself to totally agree with it.  

This issue is the endless 'gender wage gap" that politicians have been debating over for decades.  
Does it exist? I believe so  
Are the statistics correct? Most likely.
Are politicians fighting the anti-pay gap making a case based on statistics? Yes
So, they must be right? Not necessarily. 

Tl;dr (Too long; didn't read)
討論薪酬性別差距的統計數據



revised title

本篇文章已被 Pearltea 於 Feb 4 2016, 21:00 編輯過

[Pearltea]

First, take a look at where Sanders stands on Gender Wage Gap from his issue on "Fighting for Women's Right"  (Reference: https://berniesanders.com/issues/fighting-f...womens-rights/) (pearltea's translation)

AS PRESIDENT, SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS WILL:

1. FIGHT FOR PAY EQUITY FOR WOMEN.    
It is a national disgrace that women only earn 79 cents for every dollar a man earns. (女性的收入中位數只是男性中位數的百分之七十九)¹ The gender pay gap is even worse for women of color. Today, African American women earn just 64 cents for every dollar a white male earns, while the figure for Hispanic women is just 54 cents. As president, Sen. Sanders will sign the Paycheck Fairness Act into law to end wage discrimination based on gender.

5. INCREASE THE MINIMUM WAGE TO $15 AN HOUR BY 2020.
According to the most recent statistics, women make up two-thirds of all minimum wage workers. (在最低工資的員工當中，女性占三分之二) Increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour would significantly boost the wages of more than 15 million women and help close the gender wage gap.

6. RAISE THE TIPPED MINIMUM WAGE TO $15 AN HOUR BY 2023.
The federal tipped minimum wage of just $2.13 an hour hasn’t been raised since 1991. More than two-thirds of tipped workers are women. (靠收小費和最低工資的工作,有三分之二以上是女性) Increasing the tipped minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2023 would lift millions of women out of poverty and significantly reduce the gender pay gap.

Skipped #2-#4 as they were irrelevant to wage gap (they were about reproductive rights and childcare)

-------------------------------------------------

See any problem there with the descriptions? Most might say "Well it's just the median, so the extreme outliers won't skew the median".  Well, true...but here are the considerations:

- Are the female minimum wage worker and the tipped minimum wage worker groups large enough so that the median salary includes their pay rates?
- Are the male minimum wage worker and the tipped minimum wage worker groups small enough so that the median salary does NOT include their pay rates?
If both answers to the questions above are yes, then sure, increasing the minimum wage would help.  However, the fact is that it is inaccurate.  Based on government data (Bureau of Labor Statistics), 'Hourly rate' (not limited to minimum wage) workers represent 58.7% of all wage and salary workers, and only 4% of those hourly rate workers are making minimum wage or below. So we can conclude that raising minimum wage is good for certain workers, but will NOT close the gender wage gap.  

to be cont.


1 all figures are median earning based on AAUW's published result (http://www.aauw.org/files/2015/09/The-Simple-Truth-Fall-2015.pdf) _{the information published in this report is often used as the gender wage gap debate.  It’s worthwhile to take a deep look for anyone who is interested.  The report has better analysis and argument to explain the differences in the numbers than how the main-stream media with political biases choose to interpret them.}

本篇文章已被 Pearltea 於 Feb 4 2016, 15:32 編輯過

[Pearltea]

Now, one can argue this way: if the minimum wage increases, wouldn’t the wage of other non-minimum wage jobs increase as well?  Yes, the cost of doing business would increase, however in order to generate positive returns or to merely break-even, businesses would mark up the prices of goods and services, which means the cost is transferred and absorbed by the customers.  When price level goes up, it becomes inflation, and non-minimum wage workers would demand high wages in return.  In the long run, everything would be adjusted but will also return to equilibrium.  So is increasing minimum wage the answer to solve gender wage gap? Or is it more of a campaign tactic that Sanders is using in order to gain supports from the many lower wage workers? I would like to think it’s the latter.

Descriptive statistics, if used properly, can properly identify issues/problem/inefficiencies/inequality, and provide insights on what is or isn’t working. However, the misuse of descriptive statistics is misleading and deceptive, and can even cause the ill-informed to think/act based on incomplete information and biased messages.  Unfortunately, politicians and the media often unintentionally or deliberately interpret statistics, make inferences, and draw conclusions only to their advantages.   

Without turning this into a political debate, let’s focus on the main issue here.  If gender wage gap exists, how should we properly measure this based on the data that we have? The answer is not as easy as we think. 

What are the challenges?
The 79% (Refer to pg. 7 of the link provided above)
This is a very quick but rough comparison. It is inclusive of all workers, regardless of job function, location, skills (hard and soft) competency, tenure at the job, years of relevant work experience, age, education, licenses, and certification etc. The distribution of these attributes could vary based on gender but the comparison does not distinguish any of them. Also, the research report did not disclose the profile of the median earnings of female and male. 

Comparison by state (pg. 9)
This is better, but it only helps a little by taking into consideration the diverse cost of living among states.

Comparison by age group, education (pg. 14, 15)
These comparisons are bit more convincing, at least they show that we are seeing gaps in every age group/education level. The difficult part would be to validate some of the soft facts, such as whether women are taking jobs that are as aligned to their education as their male counterpart; whether women are leaving the workforce at some point to start a family and returning years later; or have their male counterpart been switching jobs more often and negotiating salary more aggressively. These factors could be an explanation for some of the differences, rather than concluding it as a discrimination that women are hitting so-called glass ceiling that limits their earning potential.

Comparison by specific job title (pg. 17)
This seems to be the better comparison, but again the challenge is still there – as the other attributes/factors could still play a significant role in driving the differences in the measured result.

It is extremely difficult and complicated to properly show the accurate earnings gap between genders, if we have to take into account all factors that can be attributed to earnings. Even if all factors are being accounted for, ceteris paribus, still shows the gaps, our analysis would provide accuracy and granularity, but lose credibility.

本篇文章已被 Pearltea 於 Feb 3 2016, 13:10 編輯過

[~欣~]

I think one of the reasons why women earn less is because of pregnancy and the social role of being a mother.
When a woman has to take care of kids, they are in general more likely to take up jobs with more flexibility over what would require heavy investment in time and effort.
One can argue that it is not "fair" to have women to stay home more and take care of the kids, but this is just how the society is like nowadays.
Maybe situation is better for the educated class where banks or other office work can allow for "work from home" or "4 days working employment".
But majority of the people in the society work for companies that do not or cannot offer such policies.

[Pearltea]

Thanks for your response.
To go off the topic on descriptive statistics, I think the factors of income disparity between genders are worth exploring further and having deeper discussions.
Firstly, I agree with your observations.  Although in the past decades we have seen more women participating in the workforce, earning comparable wage or more than men, being the breadwinner or even the sole earner in the family, the traditional gender roles still remain largely common and accepted by the society, which means when it comes to a balance between career and family, women (especially moms) are more likely to take a step back or even a break in their career in order to bear the heavier load on childcare and household responsibilities.

As much as we promote gender fairness, women nowadays are still facing many conflicting advice in regards to their career choices – on one hand they are encouraged to attain advanced degrees and are told that sky is the limit when it comes to pursuing career; but on the other hand there are many forces, whether it’s from upbringing, family influences, social circles, or even leaders from work, holding them back.  These forces are driven by the traditional social norms and they come in the forms of casual conversations, advice, or even subliminal messages that turned many women away from achieving their career aspirations.

I don't doubt the validity of the figures for the gender wage gap, but I think what can be done is to be more cognizant and supportive of equity (not necessarily equality in everything) between genders - that childcare arrangement, career choices, and family financial planning are made as joint decisions as spouses for the best interest of the family. When both spouses are willing to be aware of and respect differences, weigh the opinions from each other more equally, plan for the best arrangement for each family's needs, and support and empower each other, that could be a more constructive way to tackle the gender wage gap issue.  

本篇文章已被 Pearltea 於 Feb 5 2016, 03:15 編輯過

[willyho]

Actually, one of the questions I've always wanted to ask is what exactly is meant by 'equality'. Are we talking numerical equality say If Jack and Jill do exactly the same job, equally competent, and in the same company, then they are paid the same rate? If that is the case there is no reason to protest. However if Jill goes on maternity leave and is paid just the same, then it is unfair to Jack, since Jack is by definition working the months Jill is gone but not paid extra. Besides it's likely the company will need to hire a replacement while Jill is gone. 

However, the problem starts to roll when Jill is paid less because of the assumption that she'll marry, get pregnant, etc. Social roles aside, whether to start a family is an individual choice. Of course during the process, there'll be pressures on all fronts, social, family, spousal and so on. Yet at the end of the day, it is down for the couple (though personally, I see it as more of the woman's choice) to decide. 

A better term, I think is 'fairness' or 'compassion' or any other buzzword, since it is a lot easier to get into heated debates with words like 'equality' and not getting any useful result.

(thoughts namely from reading Lee Tin Ming a long time ago)

[Pearltea]

Thanks for your response.

The fairness in paid maternity leave is a bit more debatable - even though it seems that new moms are being paid the same way as other able bodies, the reality is that they are unable to work immediately after childbirth, but are legally eligible for the time off due to (US-FMLA) or company policy and compensated through company offered benefits.  During the leave new moms are placed on short term disability and usually the company's STD insurance pays for their regular salary (through indemnifying the company's claimed financial losses)

I think it'd be very hard to debate on the fairness of temporarily disability vs able bodies. For example, if someone is out of work for a few weeks due to a knee surgery, most people generally won't consider it "unfair" that the recovering employee is compensated at 100% for a designated time period and then partial pay thereafter.
In addition, many companies that offered traditional maternity leave have now changed to parental leave policies to broaden the coverage to new parents (regardless of gender) through childbirth or adoptions (child's age range between 0 to 17yo). While it seems 'equal' to new dads, parents with adoptive child of any age, it is not equal to childless singles or married couples as they do not get to receive the same benefits. 

Another way one can debate this as a "fair" deal is that parental leave is merely a company offered 'benefit' - which is "equally offered" to everyone, but whether one finds it beneficial depends on his/her lifestyle and personal choices. 

I think "equality" is more favored than "fairness" when it comes to debatable issues and my guess is that it could be attributed to the following reasons:
1-What seems fair to some might seem unfair to others, vice versa
2-While #1 is true, where individuals stand on a specific issue could be entirely opinionated and dogmatic
3-while #1 & #2 are true, It's more effective to debate based on objective, measurable, quantifiable facts and statistics - "equality"; than subjective, qualitative input - "fairness"
4-Perception of "inequality implies unfairness" by the general public （e.g. 不平等待遇）

Again those are just my two cents on this issue but I find the topic pretty interesting and will welcome any other insight/input on this. I do realize that I've derailed on my original topic already, so any more derailment, on descriptive statistics, gender wage gap, women's career vs family choices, equality vs fairness, or anything, feel free to go from here!

本篇文章已被 Pearltea 於 Feb 7 2016, 05:43 編輯過

[willyho]

Regarding women's career vs family issue, I really believe it's up to the individual woman to decide. Furthermore, the last time I checked, men cannot get 'knocked up'. At least in relation to the human species, it is impossible (though future medical technology may change this). On a broader issue, there is I think, a stigma of a man being near a school, as opposed to a woman. (I remember a friend told me that a friend of hers had his job application rejected by a nursery based on gender grounds. It seemed that whether he was competent was aside the point)  

[Pearltea]

From starting a family, to arranging childcare, planning family budget, and pursuing career, these are important factors to consider as a family and ideally would be best when they are made as joint decisions by couples.

IMHO, a husband telling the wife to stay home or work PT without considering her career aspiration is as unfair as a wife deciding to stay home and expecting the husband to be a sole earner, without considering the financial impact to the family and the extra stress it might incur with the roles of a sole earner (and a stay-at-home mom)

I think both genders are also facing struggles and missing out on opportunities at work due to the 'social norms' - working dads (ironically, it's a socially awkward term as most people assume dads work) are not getting enough family time because they were expected to stay late since the moms (stay at home or not) would have the flexibility and time to assume majority of the household/childcare duties; working moms are getting mommy-tracked at work as they get passed up for projects and other additional responsibilities due to the misperception that her priorities are at home instead.  These are some of the stereotypes created by the social norms and are borderline discriminatory based on gender.  I don't doubt that the social norms will stay for a very long time, but it'd be up to managers and employers to be more understanding and open-minded toward both genders and to consider opportunities more fairly.