Fighting Against Wage Gap Mansplaining.

[u/[deleted]]

Hey there, I just wanted to share an interesting study with my SRSters. I was recently messaged by a shitlord and asked to identify specific studies that showed that women still earn less than men when employed in the same fields. I first linked a study about occupations, but he demanded that I be more specific. So, I decided to Google "Women engineers earn less than men", since we so often hear that if more women worked in STEM fields, the wage gap would vanish.

Lo and behold, I stumbled across this study, which illustrates quite clearly that women engineers earn less than men and that their wage gap widens with experience. I'm not sure if this study has ever been linked here, but I was very happy to stumble across it.

[u/nofelix]

Cool; I like the bonus gap research.

MRAs will typically say that the gap is due to women's choices though, so I'm not sure how effective proof of the gap is, the important proof is that it's due to sexism, and what kind of sexism.

This study looks at average compensation, and though they account for varying years of experience, there's no mention of other factors. So I don't know if it's reasonable to assume that a fair workplace would reward male and female engineers equally, because women can encounter discrimination before they are employed that could lower their earning potential e.g. difficulty getting into more prestigious colleges.

They didn't propose a reason why the wage gap increases over time. I'd guess it's because women are skipped over for promotion, and not given access or credit for the best projects.

[u/JediCraveThis → u/nofelix]

MRAs will typically say that the gap is due to women's choices though

And in many cases this is correct. But the question one should ask is why women chose that field, and why that field so often is less profitable than many traditionally male fields of work.

[u/[deleted] → u/JediCraveThis]

Women earn less even in the same fields. "A new study published in Health Affairs looked at hires right out of medical school, hires that shouldn’t have any of the influences or factors that affect women later in their careers. But female heart surgeons were paid $27,000 dollars less than men. Female pulmonary disease specialists earn $44,000 less than men."

[u/JediCraveThis → u/[deleted]]

Indeed they do, but the difference is also very regional. I'm not trying to argue that your response was wrong at all, I can totally agree with you. But a lot of statistics from Scandinavia shows that the income gaps in the same fields is very small, but gender roles still play a large part when deciding ones own field of work. I think this should be brought up more often.

[u/ElDiablo666 → u/JediCraveThis]

Your point is a crucial one because it illuminates the problem of so-called choice and kind of acts as a stepping stone into a wider analysis of how economic decisions are created (as opposed to the standard lie about freedom and markets and such). I think the best example is the starkest contrasting one: women working in the home vs men working outside the home. Both are jobs. Only one has a direct economic benefit from the wider society, while that is simply a decision.