Even with similar qualifications, women spend time on tasks that lead to lower pay than men

Submitted by Mastodon on Sat, 2018-07-28 23:36

Article here. Excerpt:

'The economists observe that men and women come out of college with similar wages. But over time wages diverge—men earn 22% more, on average, nine to 10 years after graduation. The study attempts to explain what accounts for the divergence. They estimate that college major—women tended to major in education and men in business and science—accounts for around a quarter of the gender wage gap. Grades, meanwhile, have almost no impact: women tend to have higher GPAs but lower earnings.

Even among men and women with same major, a wage gap emerges over time. The researchers reckon that this is largely due to what people do on the job. Regardless of what they study, men spend more time on high-skill information tasks while women end up doing more people-oriented tasks. The study suggests that what you do on the job can have more of an impact on earnings than your college major.

It is critical to get the right experience early in your career. A history of working with information appears extremely valuable. The economists estimate that performing one extra year of high-skilled information work increases wages, a decade after graduation, by nearly 20%. If women had spent equal time on high-skill information tasks as men, it would’ve reduced the gender wage gap by 45%.

The data only measures wages the first 10 years out of college. In those years, men and women work similar hours. Later in life, the gap likely gets worse—research shows that having children penalizes women more than men and these differences grow over time.'

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I've met a few. I have noticed most don't stay in implementation roles very long. They often move on to become business liaisons/analysts or become IT managers. One thing that is driving them toward IT mgt. is their employers. It looks good for employers these days to have females in high-profile positions and promoting them (even if they aren't really ready yet) to mgt. is a sure way to just PROVE you are geek girl-friendly.

YET... going the mgt. track is not always a good idea. This is b/c being a mgr. is a political position. It has nothing to do with competence at managing ppl or projects (boy do I know this!). It has to do with the mgr.-makers deciding for whatever reason that they like so-and-so in the position for some reason. Competence has zilch to do with it. Politics is everything.

Now it can be easy to play politics and get a mgt. role. However politics keeps you in that role, too. And politics can change. It's possible to be a mgr. in one place then you leave that job and find it is hard to get a mgt. role someplace else. Or more likely, you decide that being a mgr. isn't a lot of fun. So after a stint as one you power-down. But reverting to implementation is not so easy. Further you may by now have decided that implementaiton isn't really your thing and neither is mgt. But being an analyst or similar is. Or maybe take up selling houses. Or open your own arts and crafts store. Heck, anything has to be better than debugging "for" loops and arguing over code conventions.

And that is how female geeks find themselves in different careers entirely by the time they are 30.

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Submitted by Matt on Sun, 2018-07-29 04:59