The bit on the John/Jenifer Yale study
http://www.yalescientific.org/2013/02/john-vs-jennifer-a-battle-of-the-sexes/

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, August 25th, 2014 12:40pm PDT - promote requested by enoch.

I have a question. How much does John Oliver make compared to Chelsea Handler?

shouldn't they make exactly the same amount?

Or we could even compare how much he makes compared to every other person who works as a talking head at his network...shouldn't they all make exactly the same amount? I doubt they do.

How about NBC, which hired Chelsea Clinton? Did she make more money because of her last name? You betcha.

Oliver should stick to showing monkey videos, at least they are legit.

Jesus Lantern the idea that you don't know how asinine a comparison and question that is is mind boggling.

You make an assertion with nothing to back it up. Perhaps your mind is just boggled all of the time.

@lantern53
you cant be serious.nobody is that dumb.
your logic is not only flawed but utterly and completely broken.

@eric3579 was making a correct observation.

your comparisons are stupid.unless you would like to defend your logic and in that case i am all ears.

/holds chin in hands and listens intently

@lantern53 -- what part of EQUAL PAY for EQUAL WORK did you not understand?

Not to be a jerk here, but pull your head out pal. We're talking averages. Based on your argument, you don't believe everyone doing a certain job should be paid EXACTLY the same amount do you? If you are smart enough to realize there is a wage discrepancy with women being paid less, what are your thoughts on the subject. I'll start. I think it is shitty.

Prove there is a wage discrepancy. He didn't and neither can you.

You're wasting your time. He's an idiot. If you told him the sky was blue, he'd say it was some kind of liberal ploy.

There's always going to be inequality on a marginal scale. Employees who are recognized as more productive, more valuable, or perform better in the workplace can and should get a larger compensation for what they put into their jobs.
The point of the income inequality conversation is the fact that taking the average of all male incomes in the US, and pairing it to the average of all female income in the US for like jobs, it comes down to women, on average, for similar jobs, making roughly 25% less than men in similar jobs.
The only argument you could possibly make against that would be that "well, then maybe women aren't worth as much as men in the workplace", which would clearly out you as a bigot and an asshole. Maybe you want that, but I thought I'd lay it out for you so you might actually glean some knowledge from those who understand more about the state of the world than you do.

I'm extremely happy that Videosift has a marginally higher-than average collective of intelligence and discourse than the rest of the internet, and because of that I would kindly, seriously, and humbly suggest that you up your level of knowledge and world-view if you want to actually contribute to the discussion here.

I miss Chingalera's trolling, because at least his stupid fucking rants had a kernel of sense to them.

That's wrong. Women doing similar jobs to men make 96 cents on the dollar
(still bad). But Oliver is arguing that men and women doing dissimilar jobs should make the same amount.

Here's the problem with that: It would force men doing similar jobs as women to make a lot less. For example, if you've ever worked in a game studio, you'll notice that 95% of all engineers are men, while for artists the split is 50-50(ish). Assuming engineers make twice the rate of artists, in order to achieve gender equality you'd have to mandate that female artists make nearly the same amount as engineers, while male artists would not. Once you include the extra cost of education for engineers, it makes the issue very cloudy.

So while I think that gender wage equality is an important goal, it is a terrible mandate.

Women make less money overall because they don't work overtime as often and they take time off to have children.

You smartasses ain't so smart after all.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/01/no-women-don-t-make-less-money-than-men.html

You believe your own liberal rags, don't you?

That is quoted once in the whole clip. The number has hovered between $0.70-$0.85 for the last few decades that the issue has been talked about openly.

Where do you get the impression that Oliver is arguing about equal pay for dissimilar jobs at any point in the entire segment? I do not see that at any point. If that were true, obviously that would be ridiculous. The goal here is equality, not up-ending the whole system of employment.

Lastly, as it's said plainly in the first few minutes of the clip: "Equal pay for equal work". There are two points I would like to make here:
1) that's clearly not an argument for inequality in favor of work compensation for women over men, and
2) If we *really* wanted to pay people equally for their work, mexican migrants who pick our vegetables every season, movers, factory-workers, carpenters and any other manual-labor jobs would be living the highlife in their gated communities with million-dollar homes, and most CEO's, wallstreet bankers, and office joe's would be scraping by in the 'burbs.

I'm going by numbers I've heard outside of the clip. The professorship example, while anecdotal, supports a number between 90% and 97%.

He dismisses women's career choices factoring into their lower pay at 3:30, 5:38, and 6:52. I get it, he's trying to make a point in an entertaining way, so he glosses over a few points. It's just I find him more inciteful than insightful.

If I wanted the close the gender gap, I'd encourage more girls to get into engineering, and pay teachers more (try to make the US education system more like Finland).

At 3:30 he doesn't dismiss the factors, he cites the study @eric3579 linked to. The other two are satire on how the "different choices" argument is bullshit.

Once again, no-one is saying that everyone should be paid the same. An engineer is paid more than a secretary (regardless of the gender of the employee).

The fact is that women doing the same job are on average paid less than men.

Having more girls go into engineering and paying teachers more are both laudable aims, but that's completely irrelevant to the issue at hand, where a female engineer and a female teacher are paid less than their male colleagues.

This is such a old argument. @lantern53 is correct. But the Leftest keep their head in the sand and Democrat placate to these dumb blind sheeple.

In government everything is equal. Hillary will make as much a Obama. . when she gets in. They pay by position, not smarts and Obama is not smart.

We need to recognize that certain users are trolls, plain and simple. I doubt they're nearly at stupid as they seem to be; they just like the attention.

So if someone disagrees with you, using references, they are a troll...got it.

But like Magicpants says, when you compare across equivalent jobs, the number is closer to 90-95%.

That can be attributed to employers factoring in potential maternity leave and the general lower likelihood of women working overtime. These are not necessarily fair as some women will work long overtime and not have kids (or have the father take leave) but there's a rational reason for employers to assume this on average.

Realistically, I would argue that the best way to approach this is purely through awareness. Mandates on pay scales or opening up companies to lawsuits for unequal pay would, if anything, make the issue worse. Which is why this being brought up in politics seems like a play for votes for an issue that can't be effectively tackled with policy and instead requires cultural changes.

Take for example, South Korea, which has much more serious discrimination. Women earn 63% of what men do, and are expected to not return to work after having children. This has created an opportunity where domestic cultural biases allow foreign firms to come in a scoop up female talent cheaper. Over time, this will give them a competitive edge, raise wages for women, and help overturn the cultural stigma.

http://www.economist.com/node/17311877

No, if someone constantly creates strawman arguments and refuses to concede when their bullshit is called (and instead recycles said bullshit) then they are trolls.

exactly,but it appears that if you point to a flawed argument it is some liberal agenda.

its so fucking stupid and annoying.

First, that's simply not ture. The pay gap is nowhere near 90% either by industry or by l
evel of education.

Second even if it was 99% that's still unacceptable. "Rational reason" or no, people shouldn't be penalised for their gender. It's not reasonable to ask a parent of either gender to work long overtime.

Number seems to vary where you look and how much is controlled for in the study.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap#United_States

Getting a bit off topic, but at least here in Australia for lower skilled jobs (say fast food) there is generally standard bonus pay for holidays and overtime standards via unions.

For professional jobs, it's largely factored into wages. People know for example, that investment bankers work weekends and long nights and this factors into their high default wage versus other finance jobs. There's a tacit understanding of the work commitment required for various professions whether it's for men or women.

references? what references?

Eric cites a study from yale, you pull up some anecdotal (there's that word again) article from someone who agrees with you...but has done no study, and you make of bunch of ad hominem attacks against eric among other fallacies

And you somehow think you have the upper ground?

It's true what they say that people like you live in a bubble.

Strawman? Do you even know what strawman is? why don't you look up the definition of strawman. Oliver's whole argument is 'strawman'. Show me some proof.

This is just another progressive ploy to make people think there is some war against women and the gov't needs to do more to make sure it doesn't happen.

Pathetic, truly pathetic.

Also, here's an anecdote for ya...STFU.

I'm sure that if I was a woman I wouldn't mind getting paid 5 cents less for doing the same amount of work as a man! I'd know my place and keep my mouth shut... wait a second... that makes absolutely no CENTS (more or less than a man because EQUALITY)

Isn't it really an accomplishment to dismiss ANY argument you don't agree with as 'liberal agenda' or 'leftist propaganda' or 'progressive ploy' while calling those same pathetic, while in no way supporting or actually presenting an argument of your own?

@lantern53 do you ever take a moment, stop and look at what you write and grasp even for a moment what an enormous hypocrite you are?

Comparing by industry and level of education is not sufficient to really see what is going on, unfortunately. Two people could work in the same industry, in completely different jobs. Two people could have bachelor's degrees, in completely different fields. As it happens these are two of the major contributors to the gap. I've seen it both in my life, and in this study, from just a few years ago. It concludes that the gap is between 5 and 7% for equivalent employees. That means people with similar credentials performing similar jobs. Here is the study http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf

Here are the reasons for the discrepancies, as they see them, in no particular order:
- More men than women tend to get educations in fields that pay more (ie. engineering vs teaching).
- More women work at part time jobs, which tend to have lower wages.
- More women tend to take parental leave.
- Women tend to place more value in the non-monetary dimension of a job than men (benefits, location, etc).

Sure, people shouldn't be punished for their gender. On the surface everyone would obviously agree with that statement I believe. If you dig a bit deeper though it's not so clear. Imagine it from the side of the employer. You have two candidates for a job, one that is statistically more likely to leave work for one or more extended periods. Each time that happens, it will cost you X$ to fill the void left. Divide that cost over the average term of employment, and you have a pretty strong case for a wage gap. Now, imagine that the decision was made for the company to ignore this cost, and simply swallow it. Assuming that they don't just increase their payroll budget to float it, we'll see wages for other people, completely unrelated to the issue cut so as to make room for it. Is that injustice more to your taste? It's worth mentioning that it would provide a clear quantifiable justification for hiring men over women.

You didn't read my argument, which I will not repeat here.

also, how the hell am I a hypocrite?

I read your post....but I didn't see any argument. What I read was 'I know you are but what am I.', 'You are just a liberal/leftist/progressive doodie head.', and (fingers in ears)'La-la-la-la-la-la-la.'...those aren't arguments.
From my viewpoint, you're being called a hypocrite for demanding more and more 'proof' from your detractors while offering none.

Then he changes his argument from "you can't prove it" to "women deserve to get paid less because they choose to get pregnant"

With a copious amount of ad homs, anecdotal evidence, conspiracy theories, and expletives.

Aka: trolling

READ THE VERY FIRST POST.

or this

or this (from Forbes, that well known bastion of leftist propaganda)

*controversy *news

Adding video to channels (Controversy, News) - requested by MrFisk.

Leftists...finding imaginary problems everywhere and solutions nowhere since Woodrow Wilson.

@lantern53

Since it is glaringly apparent you don't know what a straw man argument is, here's the definition from Wikipedia:

A straw man is a common type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on the misrepresentation of an opponent's argument. To be successful, a straw man argument requires that the audience be ignorant or uninformed of the original argument.

Your very first comment in this thread was a straw man argument. To paraphrase, you argued that the idea of everyone who has the same job title must receive the exact same amount of pay (without regard to how much work they actually do) is stupid . Which it is.

Except (as has been pointed out to you several times) that's not what this video is saying.

That's CLASSIC straw man. Wikipedia could use your comment as as a prototypical example of the straw man fallacy.

Now, let's talk about trolling...

Several times on this comment thread people have shown how your arguments are flawed (strawman, not based on evidence, etc.). Instead of conceding, you resort to ad hominem attacks--or to use the more common phrase: insults.

It would seem then that your purpose in this thread is not to have a meaningful discussion with people but simply to enrage them instead.

That is, by very definition, trolling.

I'm curious what your endgame here is. Keep insulting people until they stop replying? Convince everyone how dumb they are because they don't agree with you (despite the fact you haven't provided any evidence for why they should agree with you)? What exactly are you hoping to accomplish?

This is not as relevant as the rest of the discussion here, but an interesting addendum to the clip: the President doesn't set the salaries of White House staffers - they're set according to a schedule established by an administrative affairs body. The President has some say, though, in who gets hired to senior positions, and whether it's mostly men or women in the high-paying positions. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/14/obama-is-nudging-the-white-house-toward-gender-pay-equity.html

Folks, just ignore the trolls. The ignore button is right there. There's a clear distinction between rational counterpoint argument and these guys' bullshit. Over a course of years visiting this site, it has become painfully (literally) clear to me that they are not worth listening to, and it sounds like many of you have reached the same conclusion. They're on my ignore list, but I end up reading their comments anyway because you guys put their comments in quote blocks, which makes me sad.

Now, slightly more on topic, I'm always amazed at how well satire shows like this, The Daily Show, and Colbert produce the most interesting investigatative material. It's an interesting line to walk where they are not performing purely journalistic functions, so they're technically more free to cherry-pick parts of the topic for comedy/satire, but you can also tell they ARE trying to get to the nut of the matter most of the time. Further, the discussions we've been having on this page (the productive posts, at least) illustrate that we're actually holding them to journalistic standards anyway. Or at least argumentative standards; we see the segments of their shows as "not just jokes". What a great format. It also allows them to instead produce whole segments on calling out others (usually Fox) on their journalistic failures, which is an extremely important function but one not undertaken by most of big media.

Sorry for the essay. I like productive contributions on VS because reading the comments on CNN is just worse than YouTube...

Simply by having the same education level does not grant you equal pay (unless you're working in government). You're paid for the supply and demand of your skills. There are by far MANY more men than women in engineering and physical sciences, and those fields pay rather well. There are by far MANY more women than men in veterinary and educational fields, and those fields pay atrociously.

It is indeed unfortunate if any discrimination occurs, and even if women achieve 99% of men, it is still not nice. However, recognize that nobody is particularly certain about these numbers. I see numbers ranging from 87% to 103% in this video, so our certainty is horrible. Inequality is bad, but if you're going to get particularly opinionated about it, crunch the numbers for yourself instead of letting other boneheads skew the numbers for you.

The statistics can be pulled either way by horrible analyses, and trying to compare 'equal jobs' can be hard...particularly when you factor in cost of living differences, seniority, relative success of different companies, etc. The most compelling evidence was the Yale study where identical resumes with different names were awarded different amounts of speculative money. That was the only real telling evidence that, at least among the people in that study, there is a bias towards paying women less for exactly the same job. However, the statistics can be pulled either way in a study like that as well; what is the uncertainty of the pay level for that poll? Is it random chance and statistical noise happened to end up with the woman paid less in that study? If they surveyed an order of magnitude more people, would the average salaries converge to the same value? In most polls and studies like this, the sampling size is usually quite poor, and getting such an exact dollar figure difference with high certainty is nearly impossible. It would be great to see that study to make an assessment of how much uncertainty was present for myself.

draak13 is completely right. There's not enough objective data to establish how wide the pay gap actually is. Comparing by industry or education level is too broad to be useful. For example, in the videogame industry, the wage disparity between positions is pretty large. Based on my experience, women tend to be artists while men tend to be programmers. Good programmers are harder to find than good artists and as such, they get paid more. If you were to look at statistics regarding wage disparity between genders in the videogame industry, there would be large disparity because women are simply doing jobs that pay less (regardless of your gender).

The Yale study is interesting but it's only one study. We need more data to establish trends.

I try to keep it civil but I've been baited more than anyone else here, voodoo calling me a homo etc or others just plain saying I'm stupid etc.

My argument is the same as jerykk above, exactly my point.

But you people only spout liberal talking points.

"This isn't fair, that isn't fair!" You're like a bunch of 6 yr olds.

I know what a fucking strawman is and I know what a fucking anecdote is, I get tired of being accused. I know what a racist is, all you people have to do is accuse someone and that's the end.

Whenever you show some maturity I will respond in kind. To a progressive, the end justifies the means, so if you can use any tactic to shut me down, you do it, because the end result is that everyone will think just like you...well, I've read 1984 and I don't want any part of it.

Take a look at the Wikipedia page on the topic. There are literally HUNDREDS of studies on this from countries all over the world. And they all show the same thing--women get shafted on salary pretty much whether they live in the developed or developing world.

It's interesting you bring up the video game industry example, because I'm sure you're aware of the huge controversy in the games industry right now about the general lack of female designers, programmers, etc. as well as the misogyny that often rears its ugly head in the industry (and among gamers). I worked in games 5 years and I saw this first-hand.

On one team I worked with we had a female programmer (the only female programmer I met while working in the industry) and she was pretty good. But you know what? These rumors started going around that she used to be a man and got a sex change. Because, you know, a woman couldn't possibly be that good of a programmer.

It has been argued before that women "choose" lower paying jobs (like being game artists, or teachers, etc.) but this begs two important questions. First, why are jobs that are traditionally associated with women paid less than those traditionally associated with men and second, can we really say women "chose" those jobs if they were actively discouraged from pursuing anything else due to societal pressure, discriminatory hiring practices, or hostility (both thinly veiled and open) in the male-dominated workplaces?

Okay.

So if you know what a straw man argument is, why did you pose one in your very first post in the thread? I mean, you seem to have taken offense at being called stupid, but isn't posing a straw man argument--especially when you know what a straw man argument is--kind of stupid, particularly on a site like this where people are fairly well-versed in logical and argumentative fallacies?

Mind you, I don't agree with personal attacks on forums even if people do happen (intentionally or not) to write something stupid. But surely responding to those personal attacks with counterattacks isn't going to create a productive discussion or sway anyone to your point of view.

So I ask again, what do you hope to accomplish in this thread?

As far as I can tell, those studies on Wikipedia don't compare wages on a per job basis. They make generalized comparisons based on industry which is overly broad. We need studies that compare wages between men and women in the same positions.

I've worked in the games industry for over 7 years in teams that had several female devs and I've never encountered any of the issues you describe. I'm not saying that they can never happen but it's faulty to assume that every woman in the industry experiences discrimination and harassment. For example, one of the lead programmers at Double Fine is a woman and she seems pretty happy with her job.

As for why the fields of science and engineering are dominated by men, that's a complex issue. The fact that they are dominated by men might be enough to dissuade most women, as people generally don't like to be the minority. However, that will never change unless more women try. It's not like a ton of women try to become scientists or engineers and then quit because of harassment and discrimination. Most women don't even attempt to become scientists or engineers in the first place.

Congratulations @Jerykk you now have a firm grasp of the the term 'anecdotal'.

Assuming you were in a position to be aware of all the individuals salaries in your specific situation, and they were indeed fair and as you described in that specific situation, in no way is that representative of anything other than that specific situation.

I'm aware of no study anywhere, nor even any claim that every woman everywhere is underpaid in relation to her male counterparts.

Assuming all of the above, congrats on working somewhere that pays its employees appropriately and fairly.

Just seems really odd how you'd so rapidly dismiss literally dozens of studies and yet hold up one anecdotal experience as evidence.

I found this programme to be a fascinating investigation into gender differences, which tries to find reasons to explain the career choices made by men and women.

Please don't be put off by the subtitles. Some of the interviews are conducted in English.

I wouldn't blame history as it relates to gender dominated careers as a reason for why some jobs pay less. Veterinary medicine used to be completely dominated by males, and then starting ~40 years ago, it became completely female dominated. I would sooner blame poor pay for vets based on economic supply and demand of healthcare for animals!

As Jerykk said, the reasons for less women choosing to go into science and engineering is indeed complex, and has been a longstanding hot topic for intense academic study. Many people blame societal reasons, and the way we bring up our kids. Maybe you should let your girls play with trucks and power tools!

I like John Oliver's program, but let me see here: the white male headlining the show, who probably got this gig on HBO when he substituted for another white male on the Daily Show, is telling us about how unfair corporate America is when it comes to gender? Every Late Night talk show host is a male. So it irks me when a male-dominated business preaches to me about unfairness towards women. Classic pot calling the kettle black.