Harvard Study: "Gender Wage Gap" Explained Entirely by Work Choices of Men and Women The “gender wage gap” is as real as unicorns and has been killed more times than Michael Myers. Monday, December 10, 2018 please log in to view this image Image Credit: Ingfbruno, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons please log in to view this image John Phelan Economics Gender Sexism Pay Gap Personal Choice Employment Wages Leer en Español “Gender pay gap is worse than thought: Study shows women actually earn half the income of men,” NBC announced recently in reference to a report titled “Still a Man’s Labor Market” by the Washington-based Institute for Women’s Policy Research, which found that women's income was 51 percent less than men’s earnings. The "Gender Pay Gap" Isn't What You Think It Is What do you think of when you hear the phrase “gender pay gap”? Perhaps you think of a man and woman who work exactly the same job at exactly the same place, but he gets paid more than she does. This sort of discrimination has been illegal in the United States since the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963. This methodology takes no account whatsoever of a whole host of factors that might explain this discrepancy. But that is not what is generally meant by the phrase “gender wage gap.” Instead, the commonly reported figure—that a woman earns 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man—is derived by taking the total annual earnings of men in the American economy in a given year and dividing that by the number of male workers. This gives you the average annual earnings of an American man. Then you do the same thing but for women. The average annual women’s earnings come in at about 80 percent of the average annual man’s earnings. Presto, you have a gender wage gap. That’s it, honestly. It isn’t much above back-of-a-cigarette-box stuff. This methodology takes no account whatsoever of a whole host of factors that might explain this discrepancy. It ignores the fact that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in 2017, men worked an average of 8.05 hours in an average day compared to 7.24 hours for women. True, women are more likely to be raising children, taking care of elderly family members, or doing housework, leaving them with fewer hours in the day for paid employment. But this does not alter the essential fact: that people working fewer hours, on average, can be expected to earn lower incomes, on average. Not Exactly Apples-to-Apples And there are differences in the type of work men and women do, which bears on their earnings. BLS data shows that, in 2017, 94 percent of child day care services workers were female, the highest percentage of any category, and that the mean annual wage of childcare workers was $23,760. By contrast, just 2.9 percent of workers in logging were women, the lowest share of any category, and the mean annual wage here was $42,310. They have simply assumed a cause and carried out a slightly grander version of the back-of-a-cigarette-box calculation to support it. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research study fails to account for these differences. Indeed, its authors are airily dismissive of analysis that takes into account “occupational differences or so-called ‘women’s choices.’” Its headline claim is that the 80 cents figure is wrong; in fact, women earn more like 49 cents for each dollar a man earns. The authors, Stephen J. Rose and Heidi I. Hartmann—listed in that order because that is how it is presented on the cover of their report, not because of sexism—arrive at this conclusion by taking a longitudinal dataset from 2001-2015 and measuring average annual earnings across the period for people who worked any amount during any of these years, and then comparing the overall averages for male and female workers, as well as for different subsets of men and women. Workers who were employed full-time for the entire 15-year period are lumped in with those who worked only part-time or occasionally. Rather than starting with an observation (that 80-cent statistic) and examining possible causes, Hartmann and Rose have simply assumed a cause (rampant sexism) and carried out a slightly grander version of the back-of-a-cigarette-box calculation to support it. This isn’t how social science research should be done. It is exactly the wrong way round. A New Study Out of Harvard Remember, if we truly want to measure the impact of sexism on male and female relative earnings, we want to look at men and women doing exactly the same job at exactly the same place. Fortunately, a new study by Valentin Bolotnyy and Natalia Emanuel of Harvard University—again, listed in that order because that is how they are presented in their paper—does just this. And yet, even here, Emanuel and Bolotnyy find that female train and bus operators earn less than their male counterparts. They look at data from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA). This is a union shop with uniform hourly wages where men and women adhere to the same rules and receive the same benefits. Workers are promoted on the basis of seniority rather than performance, and male and female workers of the same seniority have the same choices for scheduling, routes, vacation, and overtime. There is almost no scope here for a sexist boss to favor men over women. And yet, even here, Emanuel and Bolotnyy find that female train and bus operators earn less than their male counterparts. From this observation, they go looking for possible causes, examining time cards and scheduling from 2011 to 2017 and factoring in sex, age, date of hire, tenure, and whether an employee was married or had dependents. They find that male train and bus drivers worked about 83 percent more overtime than their female colleagues and were twice as likely to accept an overtime shift—which pays time-and-a-half—on short notice and that around twice as many women as men never took overtime. The male workers took 48 percent fewer unpaid hours off under the Family Medical Leave Act each year. Female workers were more likely to take less desirable routes if it meant working fewer nights, weekends, and holidays. Parenthood turns out to be an important factor. Fathers were more likely than childless men to want the extra cash from overtime, and mothers were more likely to want time off than childless women. “The gap can be explained entirely by the fact that, while having the same choice sets in the workplace, women and men make different choices.” In other words, the difference in male and female earnings at the MBTA was explained by those “so-called ‘women’s choices,’” which Hartmann and Rose so easily dismissed. “The gap of $0.89 in our setting,” the authors concluded, “can be explained entirely by the fact that, while having the same choice sets in the workplace, women and men make different choices.” The “gender wage gap” is as real as unicorns and has been killed more times than Michael Myers. Yet politicians feel the need to genuflect before this phantom figure. President Obama’s White House was obsessed with that ridiculous 80-cent number. Let us substitute the quest for phantoms with serious research into the causes of relative incomes.
Partygate: I misled MPs but not intentionally, says Boris Johnson Published 13 minutes ago Share Related Topics Coronavirus pandemic please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,JESSICA TAYLOR/UK PARLIAMENT Boris Johnson has accepted he misled Parliament over Covid rule-breaking parties in Downing Street, but denied he did it on purpose. The former prime minister has published a 52-page defence of his actions ahead of a grilling by MPs on Wednesday. In it, he says his assurances to MPs that lockdown rules had been followed were made in "good faith". Mr Johnson faces being suspended or even expelled from Parliament, if MPs decide he deliberately misled them. A group representing families of Covid victims said his claim to have acted in good faith was "sickening", and it was "obvious" he deliberately misled MPs. The privileges committee is expected to quiz him for several hours on Wednesday in a televised hearing. As it happened: Follow reaction as former PM's dossier published MPs' Partygate inquiry into Boris Johnson explained Five key findings from Partygate probe update The committee, chaired by veteran Labour MP Harriet Harman, but with a Tory majority, has previously said Mr Johnson may have misled Parliament on multiple occasions. It also says it has evidence which "strongly suggests" Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street would have been "obvious" to the then prime minister. In his defence document, prepared by his taxpayer-funded legal team, headed by top barrister Lord Pannick KC, Mr Johnson says he had not "intentionally or recklessly" misled MPs, and would "never have dreamed of doing so". He said he accepted assurances he gave the Commons on several occasions after the Partygate scandal emerged in late 2021 that rules had been followed had turned out to be wrong. An inquiry by senior official Sue Gray later found widespread rule-breaking had taken place, and Mr Johnson was among 83 people fined by police for attending law-breaking events. 'Half-baked account' But he said he believed at the time that events he attended in No 10, including to bid farewell to departing staff, abided by restrictions because they were "essential for work purposes". He added that it "remains unclear to me" why he was fined for attending a gathering in No 10 for his birthday in June 2020. He said he relied on officials to advise him about other events in the building he did not attend, and there was nothing "unreasonable" about that. He said that he had "corrected the record" in May 2022, on the day Ms Gray's report was published. On that day, he told MPs it was "not the case" that rules had always been followed. "I believed - and I still believe - that this was the earliest opportunity at which I could make the necessary correction," he added. "It was not fair or appropriate to give a half-baked account, before the facts had been fully and properly established." please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,CABINET OFFICE Image caption, Boris Johnson was fined for attending a birthday gathering in the Cabinet Room in 2020 The committee is expected to publish its verdict on Mr Johnson by the summer. It has assembled evidence including written statements from 23 witnesses, official diaries, emails between officials, and WhatsApp messages handed over by the former prime minister's legal team. Dominic Cummings row It will publish a "core bundle" of documents on Wednesday morning, ahead of Mr Johnson's hearing later in the day. In his defence document, Mr Johnson claimed the committee had not found evidence he intentionally misled MPs. He said the "only exception" were assertions made by his former top aide Dominic Cummings, whom he said was "discredited" and was motivated by personal animosity. Mr Cummings hit back on Twitter, saying a drinks party in the No 10 garden attended by Mr Johnson had been deemed to have broken the rules by police, with officials fined for attending. please log in to view this image IMAGE SOURCE,CABINET OFFICE Image caption, The committee has published photos of Boris Johnson attending events - including this one in January 2021 In an interim report published earlier this month, the committee said Mr Johnson's statements to MPs, as well as his performance at Covid press conferences, show that he understood what the rules were. In a statement on Tuesday, the committee said Mr Johnson's written submission contained "no new documentary evidence". Possible punishments In his document, Mr Johnson attacked the conduct of the inquiry, accusing the committee of being "highly partisan" and going against precedents set by previous similar inquiries. The committee has decided that whether he intended to mislead MPs is not relevant to what it has been charged with investigating: whether it was stopped from doing its job by his statements to MPs. But if they find that it was, then his intentions will be considered when deciding any punishment they recommend. A finding that he deliberately misled MPs is likely to attract the strongest sanction. Another option is they conclude he misled Parliament "recklessly". In his submission, the former prime minister hit out at this reasoning, saying the idea of misleading MPs recklessly was an "entirely novel concept". The full House of Commons will have to approve the committee's final recommendations, as well as any sanctions. Conservative MPs will be given a free vote, meaning they will not be told how to vote by party managers. The possible punishments range from ordering him to apologise to suspending him from the Commons. If he is suspended for more than 10 days, this could trigger a by-election in his constituency - although suspensions of this length have been rare in the past.
They wanted to Get Brexit Done, choosing to ignore the fact that everything they'd been told about that was a lie too. Tomorrow should be fun, though.
no wonder they are all so desperate to leave france Care4Calais @Care4Calais · Mar 9 Today Calais woke up with snow covering the ground, and gales hammering the sites where refugees are living. The conditions are horrific, and likely to get worse. Please donate to help refugees in Calais get through this winter. No amount is too small: http://Care4Calais.org/donate please log in to view this image
please log in to view this image please log in to view this image telegraph.co.uk Residents in Ulez expansion zone face two-mile treks to nearest train station Postcodes set to fall under Sadiq Khan’s drive to cut emissions will be further away from public transport, analysis reveals
I’m sick of it, this me me me show that never ends. Absolutely everyone knows that he is narcissistic liar and cheat, somewhere on a pathological spectrum which does not allow him to understand that he can be wrong, and that rules apply to him too. Ignore the ****, that’s the worst punishment for people like him. Meanwhile in a ‘surprise’ inflation goes back up. Surprising to people who never do a food shop I suppose. Not as important as Johnson of course. Let’s see who tries to scupper the NI EU protocol deal. Easy to work out, who benefits from Brexit never being done?……oh yeah, those people who need an enemy to blame for everything, who would have no career without whipping up hate and fear, whose reason for existing depends on the EU. Hard core Brexiters.
This is quite good... Brexit: The hardliners of the ERG have no choice but to live in their own fantasyland | The Independent
Sunak has such a lack of balls he is likely to cave in somehow to this bunch of self centred ******s.
I don’t think he’s a bad bloke deep down but he knows he has to pander to the rabid xenophobes and general idiots in his party and the electorate as that’s all they have left after 13 years of decimating the economy and demonstrably leading the country worse in every conceivable way than other ‘wealthy’ countries. I sincerely doubt he personally believes in his own government’s rhetoric. Johnson didn’t either. Maybe that’s worse than if he did.
Not sure he can now, can he? Today's vote will pass with Labour support. Two former Tory PMs and one former Tory leader amongst those voting against. This would have lost them the whip under Johnson.
My feelings haven't changed since posting this. It's amusing watching the Brexiteers vote against yet another form of Brexit though. What do we want? Brexit! When do we want it? Now! What sort of Brexit? Not that one. Or that one! Or that one. Or that one. Or that one! Definitely not that one. Or that one. All these Brexit's are terrible. But we definitely want Brexit! Huzzah for Brexit! Oh, but not that one either.
