It is more socially acceptable these days for men to be stay-at-home dads as more skilled and educated women join the workforce. Not only that, but most (US)states have safety nets in terms of Medical Leave/Work Compensation that protects women/men and their jobs when they have to leave work to deliver/take care of a child. What functions of gender are you referring to that impedes career and wage growth? Not being a dick, just trying to understand where you are coming from.

In my opinion, career and wage disparity has nothing to do with gender function, but percieved societal norms and practices; i.e. Men are expected to provide, women are supposed to be the caregivers, ect.

Came here to say this.

Taking some time off to give birth is a function of my gender, sure, but taking full maternity leave is not. Change maternity leave to parental leave, give equal benefits/consequences for men and women who take this leave. Society expects women to stay home, so more do. Furthermore, with the wage gap existing across most industries... Couples often decide on who will stay home based on who makes more money. Surprise, men make more on average, so they are more likely to stay at work.

By the way, "Breaking gender barriers is one thing, ignoring that functions of gender can impede career and wage growth is purposely ignorant" makes me want to puke.

Several years ago at a m id sized company I had two weeks of paternity leave. Females were given four weeks from the moment of hire and up to two months if they had been with the company "x" years. So, yes... society places us in those roles and discriminates in the workplace appropriately.

AS for making you want to puke...

A woman who decides to have 2 or 3 children in the course of her career is taking time off and out of her industry. It may be for a noble cause, but to artificially support her equal pay for equal work after having children is bizarre to me. Fresh out of college with equal education and drive? Yes, absolutely she should be paid equally based on her drive and quality of work just like any employee. My point is, if she takes time off for having children, that is a separate life pursuit and impacts her on the job experience and ability to produce consistently. I would expect my earnings as a man to suffer if I took time off to heal from a medical condition or care for a loved one from time to time...It should be no different for women.

I get that you have a uterus and biologically you didn't choose that for yourself at birth, but you are female. Forcing equal pay artificially with being realistic about why there are wage gaps is ignorant... which was my point. If you have done nothing to sabotage your earnings, and are under paid compared to your male peers at your current employer than that is indeed gender based bull shit holding your earnings back and you should fight it.

Note on that mid sized company I worked for. All the project managers were female... It was the "good Ol'Girls" club and no man was ever promoted to project management as you could never get in that inner circle.

Wage inequality may be driven in part by your choice to reproduce, but also by each specific workplace.

I'm rambling.

1) Procreation is required for the survival of the species

2) While virtually everyone can procreate, only a specific subset of the species (women) is burdened with a long gestation period and a societal expectation of devoting their lives for their children

3) Women have no choice about belonging to this subset

4) Women who procreate face economic hardships

5) Economic hardships promote structural inequality

6) Gender-based structural inequality is crap

7) Some people still feel like inequality is good thing, apparently

8) Anecdotes are not data, although they do make great justifications for sexism

It is a choice to procreate today is it not?

Sure, not everyone has to procreate. But procreating is a requirement for the species to survive, and so we must have some people doing so. To punish those who do is unfair.

Is it unfair to not reward them as we do those who chose not to?

I'm not sure I understand how it is a woman's choice to disrupt her career, when companies are not offering fathers the leave to stay at home and raise small children. If it could be either partner, then it would be a choice, but if companies are deciding that only women can take time out to raise children then the company (maybe society as a whole) has made that decision, not the woman (or the man). So why should she suffer a penalty for being forced to break her career.

Pay is the reward for experience and output. Can't put in anymore simply than that. Artificially propping up women's salaries under the guise that it must be equal due to having reproductive rights just doesn't make sense to me.

Yeah, I get that. And I think if you choose to take time off, for whatever reason, you will be behind. But if companies only offer maternity leave (and not paternity leave), then women are being forced to disrupt their careers, rather than making a choice, and I don't see why they should be penalised for a decision that is made by the company.

While this is wonderful news for the 27% of the tech industry that is female (from those pinko leftists at Forbes), if you read the report, outside of those fields, women still are paid less, period, then men are. To quote the actual report: Consider a hypothetical pair of graduates—one man and one woman—from the same university who majored in the same field. One year later, both were working full time, the same number of hours each week, in the same occupation and sector. Our analysis shows that despite these similarities, the woman would earn about 7 percent less than the man would earn. Why do women still earn less than men do after we control for education and employment differences?

This is of course, right after graduating from college, in the exact same field. When you look at the fact that women tend not to be in the STEM fields (According to Forbes, two years ago, 20% of all CS majors were female. MIT may have more and more women, but not all universities do.), and the fact that women are in more part time jobs then men (this is anecdotal, but I couldn't find any research on it, but everyone I have talked to who works part time would rather be working full time), the ear of the pay gap, whether 77% or 84% appears. The reasons why women fall into these positions, rather than men is something to look at, as it is just as much a societal idea as a simple wage gap for identical positions.

joju - all medical leave in the US, unless a person's contract specifies otherwise, is unpaid. How much we are fucking people over with this, is a good question, but all that family and medical leave does for someone is prevent them from getting fired when they take time off because they are sick/to care for someone.

To step away from the statistics, the two female friends I have in STEM fields have both received healthy helpings of shit for being female in their respective fields. While attitudes are changing, things are nowhere close to fixed.

On the FMLA-unpaid leave thing -- most STEM field jobs I'm aware of allow for stockpiling of paid-time-off prior to such an event, and usually there's an arrangement for 'partial disability' insurance that covers pregnancy/delivery time off at something like 50-80% of normal pay.

Why do women still earn less than men do after we control for education and employment differences?

I wonder if/how a study could be designed to factor in the ability and willingness to negotiate aggressively. Further to that, I wonder if there would be a difference in response to men and women following the same negotiation script; would people give women the same leeway as men when negotiating?

I think that has a lot to do with it. Girls are not encouraged to be assertive.

I'm more curious about how women who negotiate in the same way are perceived. I suspect they get chucked in the "bitch" bin, where as men just get thought of as go-getters. (And of course men who don't like that sort of behaviour that get chucked into another sort of bitch bin.)

Plenty of women are assertive and plenty of men aren't. I think that's probably down to personality, but then, I'm an unassertive man. Even my boss has tacitly indicated that I would probably benefit financially if I didn't just accept and feel grateful for whatever I'm given. But, ultimately, nature versus nurture etc.

Personally, I think it's stupid that haggling over one's salary is even an option. Everyone should get paid what their position is worth.

I suppose if convincing people to give your company more money is part of your job you could argue that the ability to talk your way into a higher salary suggests you'd be better at that job than someone else, but in most cases negotiable salaries just reward pushy assholes.

" Everyone should get paid what their position is worth. "

Nope. Everyone should get paid what they are worth.

There is no reason why the asshole who just shows up everyday should make the same as me if I'm producing more, producing better results, quality, etc. If the asshole gets paid the same, I promise you I'll take my work ethic someplace else. If you think it is easy to weed out the under performers think again. I've worked in small and large companies and the only time we've ever been able to get rid of dead weight efficiently is when lay offs came about.

The company should pay you what is within the competitive range in their industry matched to your position/skill set/etc. I think that is closer to what you meant...

You're right, that was sloppy language on my part. Yes, people should be paid what they're worth, and that worth should be determined by their work performance rather than by their ability to dicker over a salary.

Negotiating doesn't take a lot of balls on anyone's part.

At a mid sized company I worked at for seven years, I developed a very simple way of demonstrating my worth above that of my peers. We were billed out to clients at a daily rate + travel & expenses. My rate was anywhere from the floor of $800 to $3000 per day. I effectively was the only one billable at that top rate.

Every year during my performance review I would compile a spreadsheet detailing how many days at what rates with the total revenue for the year that I generated. For me it was a simple exercise as I was also always curious, and it seemed to be an effective way to near silently justify my existence and worth to the company. The two managers I had during that period both commented that I was the only one that ever took the time to do that. I received my max bonus and max allowable raise every year I did that. There was no need to negotiate, no playing hardball.

So there are plenty of creative ways to dicker over salary though I will add one big exception... IF you are in professional sales, you should probably never expect much in the way of a raise as your employer views your meeting your number and then exceeding it to hit a potential multiplier as incentive enough... If you are good at professional sales, you can make your own paycheck.

That is a form of negotiation, though, and not every personality type enjoys that sort of combative behaviour.

Which is why buying a car is a torturous experience for so many people.

That is their problem then isn't it?

If they don't have the personality type for it, or just don't care to make that effort, they probably aren't a top producer/worker anyway.

There are plenty of skilled people who do great work despite not being pushy assholes.

So, everyone who's not an obnoxious extrovert is a lousy worker? Nice.

No. Being an extrovert is not required for discussing salary.

Yes of course there is individual variance, I'm talking about on average.

Reddit had a post this morning saying something similar in Smithsonian. Good news to me, as my daughter is a computer science major.