Do you believe the gender gap is real?

[dead0man]

Yes, but not in the way it is being framed. The majority of the gender wage gap is due to factors such as different career choices between men and womenn although a small fraction is due to pay discrimination. Link.

This ought to be the end of the thread, though since this is Atlas I know it won't be.

I think we've done it enough times that even if there are a few "true believers" left, they know enough to keep their heads down.  Though it's been a minute, maybe there are new people?  On the other hand, this thread is on day 4 and nobody has stepped up yet.

[dead0man]

A better question is why it is that female-dominated careers tend to pay poorly, rather than why it is that women tend to go into less-remunerative careers. There's no ironclad culture-independent reason why, say, an English teacher should be paid less than a cybersecurity guy.

cybersecurity (generally) requires more brains than English teacher AND they have to keep learning.  You only need to learn how to teach English once.  Bad things will happen to lots of people if the cyber security person fails at his job for one moment.  An English teacher can just be a sh**t teacher and nobody would even notice the difference for years.  Bad cyber security professionals will get fired and not be able to work in cyber security anymore.  Bad teachers just keep teaching.

(oddly, I just had this almost exact same conversation with my sister like 3 weeks ago.  She teaches you see and found out how much the cyber security guy in her district makes...it was more than any principal and she thought that was wrong)

The other side needs to come up with better examples, the last time we did this someone wondered why parking lot attendants get paid more than day care workers.  

There are many reasons why different jobs get paid different wages, very little to none of it has to do with what gender tends to take those jobs no matter how much you all might want there to be.  Dangerous, gross, hard jobs are going to pay more than safe, clean, easy jobs.  My 23 yo Niece gets paid way more than 23 yo son, why?  Because working for the water department is gross, working in N.StLouis is dangerous...that's what my niece does.  My son draws stuff for people on the internet, it's easy and safe.  He makes just enough to keep living in my basement.  But those are exceptions, generally men are more willing to do the dangerous, gross and hard jobs.  Yes, sometimes the cultures that surround those jobs can be misogynistic and we should fight that every time we see it.  It sucks that that scares some women away from some of those jobs and we should do what we can to get rid of those attitudes.

[dead0man]

The other side needs to come up with better examples, the last time we did this someone wondered why parking lot attendants get paid more than day care workers.  

I'm confused. Is that supposed to be a bad example? I don't think of either of those as particularly outre or "skilled" professions, although I can see an argument that being a parking attendant is somewhat riskier.

indeed that's most of it.  Plus you get...something out of working with babies. Sure, sometimes it's a virus but mostly it's the awesomeness of watching a little human grow.  Little kids dream of working with babies when they grow up, nobody ever wants to be parking lot attendant.  Ok, maybe some poor kid that has low goals may dream of being a valet so he can occasionally drive cool cars around a parking lot, but way more people want to work with babies.  I'm in no way discounting the labor and pain involved in working with babies, it's a pain in the ass no doubt (mostly because of the parents and the state regulatory bodies, not because of the actual work), but so is being a parking lot clerk.

But those are exceptions, generally men are more willing to do the dangerous, gross and hard jobs.  Yes, sometimes the cultures that surround those jobs can be misogynistic and we should fight that every time we see it.  It sucks that that scares some women away from some of those jobs and we should do what we can to get rid of those attitudes.

This is the sort of thing I think most well-meaning people can agree on, so I'm glad you articulated it.

it's an important aspect of the issue that often gets ignored or downplayed.

Okay, I'm really going to need some sources cited on this one. Not that I don't believe you; I just find the premise completely ridiculous. I have not looked into careers in either field, but I've taken both English and CS classes and the two are quite incomparable in terms of difficulty.

the field of "cyber security" is crazy broad.  Everything from an intern at radio station to the guy in charge of, say, a Big 10 university's network is in "cyber security".  The pay is from minimum wage to many millions of dollars/yr.  It's certainly an easier field to get into than teaching (because you don't have to pay for college for 4+ years), but the minimum pay is lower too.

[dead0man]

Careful guys, Larry Summers got fired from Harvard for saying facts like this out loud in ....holy crap, 2006.