The Gender Pay Gap at Uber

[crinkleshoes]

Can't you get drunk and argue with everyone again please? That's much more entertaining.

LOL

Not tonight... have to work tomorrow Maybe over the weekend...



... it almost sounds like this thread is finding some weird middle ground between people of differing opinions... this MUST be a first for GD...

 

[Diddums]

LOL

Not tonight... have to work tomorrow Maybe over the weekend...



... it almost sounds like this thread is finding some weird middle ground between people of differing opinions... this MUST be a first for GD...

I'll keep an eye out


You bought a <anything from MX5 to P1 here> yet?

 

[crinkleshoes]

Question time, it's a dim **** special tonight. (though that's pretty standard)

One woman complain that nurses didn't get paid well (standard), well I'm sure they get paid more than the average warehouse workers. Band 5 Nurse lowest level of fully qualified start from £11.32-£14.70 per hour.
It seems they want a communist state where everyone get paid the same, not matter what skill.

Congrats, you found the correct thread... slow applause...

 

[FoxEye]

And until recently... I thought I was left-wing... found out I'm somewhere nearer the middle in my views.

Fair representation is what is needed, not blanket extreme left-wing rule.

I consider myself to be left-leaning. Just not "loony left"

 

[Ayahuasca]

Question time really does make you think just how some people even make it through an interview never mind manage in the actual role.

 

[crinkleshoes]

I'll keep an eye out


You bought a <anything from MX5 to P1 here> yet?

Nope... I did say I was planning for mid-late March

 

[wesimmo]

Better hope she's pretty then:

https://www.payscale.com/career-news/2012/03/beauty-and-salary

And tall:

https://www.theguardian.com/science...-height-and-womens-weight-drive-earning-power

Also it's important for her that you earn a lot of money on average:

http://www.businessinsider.com/parents-determine-child-success-income-inequality-2014-1?IR=T

But yes you just focus on the gender thing

Again, I don't disagree, there are many factors, and all of those above apply to both men and women.

However I also believe sex is another factor.

We have evolved over millennia where physical prowess, and therefore sex, has been a, if not the, determining factor for success for the vast majority of that time.

That's really not the case these days, but sex remains as a, though not the only, factor in determining pay.

 

[crinkleshoes]

I consider myself to be left-leaning. Just not "loony left"

I like the idea of true communism... I don't think China or Russia or whoever else actually got close to the definition of the term, despite often being referred to as such.

Crazy hippie commune or native american community probably comes closest to my dreamy ideal... but when you start turning that from a few hundred/thousand people into millions... seems to get a bit harder.

 

[crinkleshoes]

Again, I don't disagree, there are many factors, and all of those above apply to both men and women.

However I also believe sex is another factor.

We have evolved over millennia where physical prowess, and therefore sex, has been a, if not the, determining factor for success for the vast majority of that time.

That's really not the case these days, but sex remains as a, though not the only, factor in determining pay.

Sooooo what you're saying is... women should put out more to get higher pay?

 

[Roar87]

Again, I don't disagree, there are many factors, and all of those above apply to both men and women.

However I also believe sex is another factor.

We have evolved over millennia where physical prowess, and therefore sex, has been a, if not the, determining factor for success for the vast majority of that time.

That's really not the case these days, but sex remains as a, though not the only, factor in determining pay.

Women who work the same hours and perform at the same level get the same money, it's against the law to discriminate. On average women work less hours and choose jobs in lower paying sectors, so earn less on average. Your daughter will not earn less than someone doing the same job as her if she works as hard as them.

 

[crinkleshoes]

 

[Angilion]

That isn't what's happening/is going to happen. The very way the govt forces employers to report on their "pay gap" as a headline figure, ensures that this will continue to attract media attention and societal pressure, until the "pay gap" is closed entirely.

Take airlines. Their current "defence" is that most pilots are male and most cabin crew female, hence their headline figure for pay gap is huge (>50%).

This won't wash for long. They will now start to face pressure to attract more female pilots, which will mean they will need to favour female applicants. They will have to try to recruit male cabin crew. This will happen until the promised land is reached.

This headline figure for overall pay gap will drive many companies to actively favour women until the "gap" is closed. You can see it plain as day.

It will never be "closed" because it's far too useful a weapon. There are many ways to measure things, so it will always be possible to pretend that women get paid less than men for the same work. We're already at the stage of people scouring different jobs to find a "gap" and demanding women get paid as much as men doing a completely different job (but only ever that way around, since sexual equality of any kind is of course the last thing they want).

Tesco, for example, is currently being sued for £4 billion because warehouse staff sometimes get paid more than shop floor staff. The demanded compensation and associated media stories are, of course, based on the maximum rate for warehouse workers compared with the minimum rate for shopfloor workers.

So another possible scenario for airlines will be a demand that cabin crew get paid the same as pilots (even if they work less hours, of course, because it's enshrined in the "gender gap" propaganda that nothing matters - not the work done, not the hours worked, nothing).

 

[elmarko]

The whole pay gap debate tends to be dominated by both sides of the political extremities.

1. The side that claims that the absolute average difference between male & female wages is apr 30% & this is the result of sexism.

2. The side that claims there are no problems at all right now.

Obviously the truth is you really do need to factor in all the attributes around the worker to ensure you are comparing like for like - otherwise you end up in whats essentially a Simpsons paradox.

"Simpson's paradox, or the Yule–Simpson effect, is a phenomenon in probability and statistics, in which a trend appears in several different groups of data but disappears or reverses when these groups are combined."

I would say there is one genuine issue which should be addressed. Jobs which are traditionally occupied by women more frequently, tend to have lower pay than average for similar skilled jobs for men.

Cleaners, teaching for pre-school, cleaners, care workers, checkout staff etc. There are comparable positions for required technical skills in which men get paid a noticeably higher amount.

But these are changes to role pay - not based on gender & any changes here would benefit men & women equally in these roles, but would go towards helping a genuine cause of the pay gap.

 

[Roar87]

The whole pay gap debate tends to be dominated by both sides of the political extremities.

1. The side that claims that the absolute average difference between male & female wages is apr 30% & this is the result of sexism.

2. The side that claims there are no problems at all right now.

Obviously the truth is you really do need to factor in all the attributes around the worker to ensure you are comparing like for like - otherwise you end up in whats essentially a Simpsons paradox.

"Simpson's paradox, or the Yule–Simpson effect, is a phenomenon in probability and statistics, in which a trend appears in several different groups of data but disappears or reverses when these groups are combined."

I would say there is one genuine issue which should be addressed. Jobs which are traditionally occupied by women more frequently, tend to have lower pay than average for similar skilled jobs for men.

Cleaners, teaching for pre-school, cleaners, care workers, checkout staff etc. There are comparable positions for required technical skills in which men get paid a noticeably higher amount.

But these are changes to role pay - not based on gender & any changes here would benefit men & women equally in these roles, but would go towards helping a genuine cause of the pay gap.

Market rates decide job pay, that's how our economy works, it's not arbitrary, it's based on the availability of skills and the supply of labour for that role. If you want to start increasing pay based on what's deserved then can I suggest we pay Soldiers £30k a year before we give primary school teachers more money.

 

[Drizmod]

I would say there is one genuine issue which should be addressed. Jobs which are traditionally occupied by women more frequently, tend to have lower pay than average for similar skilled jobs for men.

Cleaners, teaching for pre-school, cleaners, care workers, checkout staff etc. There are comparable positions for required technical skills in which men get paid a noticeably higher amount.

But these are changes to role pay - not based on gender & any changes here would benefit men & women equally in these roles, but would go towards helping a genuine cause of the pay gap.

I think one factor that you may be missing which has nothing to do with skill set but to do with simple supply and demand. Example, 100 cleaners jobs available and 500 women apply. 100 factory jobs available and 50 men apply. Companies advertise jobs at the minimum amount of wage they are willing to pay to fill all vacancies. Its not just skill set, its about being able to attract staff. Factors other than skill set come into play when setting the wage for different jobs even though the skill sets may be similar


EDIT: ^ what he said

 

[Semple]

Going on the data that was mentioned in the opening post, i can't see how the gender pay gap will ever be closed.

I can completely understand why women would not want to do late fri/sat night shifts, for fear of being verbally/physically harassed by drunken men. And with the way Uber's surge algorithms work at peak times, it means drivers can make much more per hour at those times than during a Monday afternoon for example when women drivers are more than likely to be working.

But how do we make that fair? - without destroying the whole point of gig economies. Do we offer women enhanced rates during the week to close the gap in earnings? Would that be fair then for male drivers to have to take the brunt of abuse on a fri/sat night, whilst women drivers get to drive around polite elderly people for example? If you were guaranteeing equal pay, then i as a male would much rather take the easier shifts.

I guess my point is, that equal pay in gig economies will never happen without being either unfair to other genders, to other workers with more experience, to other workers who are quicker, to other workers who are more polite/friendly to customers. All of these are generally a factor in how well you get paid.

 

[Irish_Tom]

Well it is interesting as it adds yet more data to the debate, but it isn't as though all previous comments on the gender pay gap lacked data. There have been plenty of studies in the past that looked at hours worked etc.. and once you actually controlled for same company, same job title etc..etc.. you get a very small gap.

That's very true and there's certainly a growing body of evidence that "equal pay for equal work" does exist, but there's often a difference in the definition of "equal".

Something else they mentioned in the podcast, which I didn't mention in the OP, is that this Uber data raises questions for one of the most prominent economic theories relating to the pay gap.

Two years ago, Freakonomics had an episode called "The True Story of the Gender Pay Gap" in which Claudia Goldin (top labour economist and gender pay-gap expert) showed that very little (if any) of the pay gap can be attributed to discrimination. Her theory was that for traditional jobs, female "preference" (economic term) for more flexible working hours (often driven by the fact that women have more family-care obligations than men) is the main cause of the gap. In economic speak, this is called "female demand for temporal flexibility".

DUBNER: So, John. One of the explanations that is often given for the gender pay gap, coming from Claudia Goldin at Harvard, is that it has to do with temporal flexibility or inflexibility. How did that factor into your prediction of what these Uber data would show? Because I would assume — but maybe I’m wrong — that if ever there was a job that offered total temporal flexibility, it would be an Uber driver.

LIST: No, I think that’s exactly right. Claudia is the world’s expert in this area. And she’s argued I think quite persuasively that once we take off the table this idea that if you labour long hours or work specific hours during the week — once we take those off the table, then it’s much more likely that this gender pay gap might entirely vanish. So, kind of my intuition actually arose from Claudia’s work. This type of job is at the extreme of temporal flexibility. This allows you to work anytime, anywhere you want. And what we observe is that even when you give a lot of flexibility, you don’t see a really tiny or non-existent gender pay gap.

DIAMOND: But I mean it can definitely be true that there exist occupations outside of Uber in the labour market that do exhibit this hours/earnings relationship that compensates long hours of work.

 

[Roar87]

Going on the data that was mentioned in the opening post, i can't see how the gender pay gap will ever be closed.

I can completely understand why women would not want to do late fri/sat night shifts, for fear of being verbally/physically harassed by drunken men. And with the way Uber's surge algorithms work at peak times, it means drivers can make much more per hour at those times than during a Monday afternoon for example when women drivers are more than likely to be working.

But how do we make that fair? - without destroying the whole point of gig economies. Do we offer women enhanced rates during the week to close the gap in earnings? Would that be fair then for male drivers to have to take the brunt of abuse on a fri/sat night, whilst women drivers get to drive around polite elderly people for example? If you were guaranteeing equal pay, then i as a male would much rather take the easier shifts.

I guess my point is, that equal pay in gig economies will never happen without being either unfair to other genders, to other workers with more experience, to other workers who are quicker, to other workers who are more polite/friendly to customers. All of these are generally a factor in how well you get paid.

Maybe you just get paid less if you're less able to do the difficult jobs. Due to medical reasons I can't be a fighter pilot or join the SAS, I'm also not tall enough to be a professional basketball player, neither am I good looking enough to be a professional model, therefore I'm not paid as much as I might be in those jobs. If you're a 5"3 skinny weakling of a man you might feel less able to handle drunks in a taxi than if you were born a 6"4 man with the testosterone levels of a Silverback Gorilla and a beard that Zeus would be proud of. It's unfortunate.

If you want to start making things fair then make things fair for everyone, not just women, or whatever minority is the current flavour in the media. But I would suggest you don't do that since it's essentially Marxism and that doesn't work very well.

 

[esoteric]

They aren't really complaining about wage gaps in the gig economy are they? I thought it was understood that you get out what you put in.

I think the wage gap theory will never end. If we reset the system and everyone's pay was boiled down to an hourly rate and it's equal pay and pay increases are based on analytics and a man gets his 3% and the woman doesn't we have a wage gap again. Maybe the woman gets 3% and the man doesn't, wage gap? yes, but it's earned.

There is no spite against women in this debate and this is why it's not getting any where. When there really is an identifiable problem it's an easy fix.

 

[Semple]

They aren't really complaining about wage gaps in the gig economy are they? I thought it was understood that you get out what you put in.

I think the wage gap theory will never end. If we reset the system and everyone's pay was boiled down to an hourly rate and it's equal pay and pay increases are based on analytics and a man gets his 3% and the woman doesn't we have a wage gap again. Maybe the woman gets 3% and the man doesn't, wage gap? yes, but it's earned.

There is no spite against women in this debate and this is why it's not getting any where. When there really is an identifiable problem it's an easy fix.

That's pretty much my argument against gender pay gaps.

If a restaurant is recruiting waiters/waitresses and the starting pay for males is 5% higher - then that obviously equates to gender pay discrimination. You can't however expect an all female flight attendant crew to be on the same salary as the male pilot.