BS: Gender Gap Crumbling

Subject: BS: Gender Gap Crumbling
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 26 Jan 07 - 12:44 AM

Report: Among Tech Execs, Women Make More than Men, ARTICLE DATE: 01.25.07,
By Deborah Perelman, eWEEK

"… … according to the report, female professionals actually surpass their male counterparts in salary among specific job titles. Help desk professionals, earned $40,937 on average, 4.8 percent more than men; technical writers at $73,816, made 2.5 percent more than men. IT executives (CEOs, CIOs, chief technology officers, vice presidents and directors) earned an average of $109,912, or 1.4 percent more than men. "



Okay, we'll accept that it's a freak occurance isolated to a small category of jobs, but it should inspire women everywhere to

                   GET THOSE tBITS UP!

(I'll go hide now while the discussion proceeds.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Gender Gap Crumbling
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 26 Jan 07 - 03:33 AM

Well if it's anything like the office I work in, it's because it's the women who are actually doing the work, producing the goods and being paid accordingly. 25% of our workforce is male, their output is less than 15% of our product (OK, that's mainly filing but we produce shit loads of the stuff). If we were paid as piecework, some people in my office would go home very hungry each week.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Gender Gap Crumbling
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 26 Jan 07 - 10:00 AM

While the people responsible for this survey probably tried really hard to produce something meaningful, any such results are always a bit suspect. Note the equivocating "among specific job titles." A common ploy in multidivisional companies is to give people doing the same jobs a different set of titles in different divisions, or sometimes even in different departments. This effectively prevents comparing job-vs-job pay scales, since they can say it's a different job because they call it by a different name.

With "appropriate manipulation" this can be used to give the appearance of a wage/salary structure that's completely unrelated to skills, effort, performance, quality, or any other standard one might otherwise apply.

"We can't give you a raise and the lot's full so we can't give you a parking space, but we'll call you the department supervisor until a space opens up." (An actual offer I once received - and I was the only person in the department.)

John