Ok, I know we've had the BBC/Carrie Gracie thread and the Tesco thread, but this one comes with cold hard data and I think it's really interesting.
Those clever people at Stanford University, along with three economists employed by Uber, have just published a paper titled “The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence From Over a Million Rideshare Drivers.”
The guys at Freakonomics released a special podcast episode all about it which is fascinating.
Here's the abstract of the paper *spoiler alert*:
In the podcast they explain a bit further on each of the three points:
The experience element makes up about 30% of the pay gap — after six months, the drop-out rate for women is 76%, but only 63% for men, so men tend to stick with it for longer. The more you "practice", the better you become at figuring out the most profitable areas, the kinds of rides to accept etc.
The preference of where and when to work makes up about 20% of the pay gap — it seems that men are more likely to work at times and in places that have higher rates — e.g. the Saturday night/Sunday morning graveyard shift. Men also tend to work more hours per week than women.
The biggest single factor, making up 50% of the pay gap, is speed — simply put, men driver faster than women and so they are able to make more journeys per hour. Now, it seems that men only drive 2% faster than women on average, but this equates to 3.5% of the pay gap.
Interestingly, the data collected for this study came in before Uber started allowing tips. Although it's still early days, they've started to see some trends in the post-tip data. It seems that women get tipped more than men on average and this could actually close up the pay gap. However, by enabling tips, it appears that the total average income for Uber drivers has actually gone down — they suggest this is because drivers are now less inclined to take every available ride when they can "make up" the lost earnings in tips (even though it's actually having a detrimental affect).
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Based on comments in other threads surrounding this topic, I'm sure a lot of you will say "this isn't really all that surprising, tell us something we don't know", but what I think sets this apart is that it's based on data rather than hunches or a gut feeling. Not only that, the data can actually explain the differences in detail.
I appreciate that the Uber data can't act as a proxy for the entire job market but it certainly adds to the wider discussion, especially when you consider that this is a gender-neutral platform and they found no evidence of bias when it came to customers selecting drivers. The only reasons for the gap can be attributed to the decisions being made by the men and women themselves.
Those clever people at Stanford University, along with three economists employed by Uber, have just published a paper titled “The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence From Over a Million Rideshare Drivers.”
The guys at Freakonomics released a special podcast episode all about it which is fascinating.
Here's the abstract of the paper *spoiler alert*:
Uber Pay Gap Paper said:
In the podcast they explain a bit further on each of the three points:
The experience element makes up about 30% of the pay gap — after six months, the drop-out rate for women is 76%, but only 63% for men, so men tend to stick with it for longer. The more you "practice", the better you become at figuring out the most profitable areas, the kinds of rides to accept etc.
The preference of where and when to work makes up about 20% of the pay gap — it seems that men are more likely to work at times and in places that have higher rates — e.g. the Saturday night/Sunday morning graveyard shift. Men also tend to work more hours per week than women.
The biggest single factor, making up 50% of the pay gap, is speed — simply put, men driver faster than women and so they are able to make more journeys per hour. Now, it seems that men only drive 2% faster than women on average, but this equates to 3.5% of the pay gap.
Interestingly, the data collected for this study came in before Uber started allowing tips. Although it's still early days, they've started to see some trends in the post-tip data. It seems that women get tipped more than men on average and this could actually close up the pay gap. However, by enabling tips, it appears that the total average income for Uber drivers has actually gone down — they suggest this is because drivers are now less inclined to take every available ride when they can "make up" the lost earnings in tips (even though it's actually having a detrimental affect).
==
Based on comments in other threads surrounding this topic, I'm sure a lot of you will say "this isn't really all that surprising, tell us something we don't know", but what I think sets this apart is that it's based on data rather than hunches or a gut feeling. Not only that, the data can actually explain the differences in detail.
I appreciate that the Uber data can't act as a proxy for the entire job market but it certainly adds to the wider discussion, especially when you consider that this is a gender-neutral platform and they found no evidence of bias when it came to customers selecting drivers. The only reasons for the gap can be attributed to the decisions being made by the men and women themselves.
