Anonymous asked:
Uh, I’m not really an expert on the empirical literature on the gender wage gap but based on my googling it seems like a lot of it is explained by hours worked, experience, and occupational segregation. Then there’s a residual that’s probably partly due to women not negotiating, and what’s due to straight-up discrimination probably comes out to a couple cents on the dollar at most.
I think the fact that you have to negotiate for your salary is kind of stupid. This is mostly motivated reasoning due to the fact that my response to every job offer I’ve ever gotten is “… you really want me to work for you? And you’re paying me that much? Don’t you realize how incompetent I am?” I guess negotiating probably exists for a reason, like a lot of norms, and won’t go away. My preferred solution to the “men negotiate more than women” thing is socializing men to be less confident. So far my strategy has mostly consisted of telling middle school boys they are stupid and making fun of them when they make mistakes. But keep an eye out for the release of my new book, Lean Out, in 2016.
Occupational segregation … I think women and men are pretty different and it is both unsurprising and totally fine that they self-select into different jobs.
Of course some of the occupational segregation might be coming not directly from different abilities/interests but from women going into less demanding/more flexible professions to leave more time for childrearing. And housework/children are presumably driving the differences due to women working fewer hours and taking time out of the labor force.
I think that if women are generally more interested in prioritizing children that is okay?
(A conversation with my friend I had a couple of days ago:
her: “I know this sounds bad, but I think once I have kids I want them to be my top priority and my job will be kind of secondary.”
me: “… that doesn’t sound bad, why would it sound bad?”
her: “you know, women … careers … feminism …”
me: “isn’t the point of feminism supposed to be that women have the freedom to do whatever they want, not that they should be forced to work demanding jobs?”
her: “well, I guess but …”)
But like, I do think a lot of women are unsatisfied because they would like to have successful careers and be involved mothers and it’s just hard to do both. I think men could stand to do more to help out, given that they have more leisure time than women right now. I don’t think “men do more” is all of the solution, especially given that women interested in demanding jobs tend to be interested in men with demanding jobs.
I guess ideally jobs would be more flexible about what hours their employees work, and women would not face as large a penalty for dropping out of the workforce for a few years? If I were czar looking into those further might be somewhere on my agenda.
Wait, was the Lean Out an intentional reference or just happenstance? Because you talk about women not negotiating in a way that makes me think that you’re not aware of research that indicates that women who negotiate are viewed more negatively then men who negotiate, but you seem to be referencing a book that talks about exactly that?
That was not an intentional reference to that, just a reference to Lean In! I had not seen that research–it’s interesting that failure to negotiate might be rational on the part of women.