Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulRobinson | Hacker News Reader

No, but people will just assume the actual pay is £20k and decide whether to apply for it on that basis.

As an employer that ruins one of the classic ruses that has been going on for a while: take someone through multiple interviews and then lowball the candidate who seems the most desperate.

If you believe in free market economics I think we can expect this to be a mess for a little while and then within a year or two it gets relatively efficient at dealing with the inefficiencies it’s targeting: younger people just not wanting to play the bullshit game where employers dangle generous starting offers, and then rug pull them to 2/3rds of that number; and to fix the gender pay gap (and the smaller reaching ethnicity pay gap).

View on HN

What do you think the fix to the gender pay gap is relevant to this conversation?

There is no gender pay gap in 20s, 30s with several areas now favouring women. The mean pay gap is entirely due to the percentage of women in their 40s+ taking time off work for motherhood.

Anecdotally, women in their 30s are disfavored for the “risk” of starting a family

The paygap is just a measure of the number of women having children. What percentage should have children? If you want a zero mean paygap, the answer has to be zero.

A woman who has two children, at minimum, works two years less. In a (25 - 65) yr career that's a 10% pay gap she'll experience wrt a male who works the same period.

The paygap is just a dial which controls the rate of motherhood.

There is no "per job" paygap. Nor could there plausibly be. For if any group could be paid less to do the same work, someone en mass would be, thus lowering the pay for that work. (Its unclear how such a rich source of free output from 50% of the population could go untapped, systematically).

Though even if that logic isnt persuasive, there is no measured per-job pay difference at an individual level. The "pay gap" describes a mean difference in pay at population level -- when you control for total hours worked, it disappears.

Even if this is true, the obvious solution in my mind is to allow sharing of parental leave.

That wouldnt "solve" the paygap, women still need to be out of the workforce for O(1yr) per child. That would be an "individual" pay gap of around 10% for a women who has two children.

> women still need to be out of the workforce

Do they? I've seen women take 6 months or even 3 months maternity leave, with their partner stepping in to support.

So you think the average human female, bearing a child for 9months, should be off work only 1.5months either side of giving birth?

For what purpose are we saying such crazy things? Why is it so important to place all members of the human species on the same rack, stretch them to the same length, and maim them till they fit?

How have we, as a civilisation, become so terrified of difference?

Nothing of the sort; just providing a counterpoint to what was an overly strong/confident assertion that "woman need to be out of the workforce for O(1yr)". Those women didn't feel forced either way - they made a plan with their partner based on what leave they each had available to them and how much they each valued their work vs parenthood.

Also, 1.5 months off prior to the due date is more than normal. Most women work until 2-4 weeks before.

allow is not enough, it would have to be required. otherwise couples are still under pressure to let men work and let women take the leave.

Why is noramlizing a population statistic, like average pay, more important to you than motherhood?

I've never met a mother who wanted to be in work full time. What exactly do zoom meetings, email threads, and spreadsheets get you in life?

I'm not one to say "captialism has gone too far", but perhaps in this case at least, isnt it mad to force average labour hours to be the same across sexes "just because" ?

women who do not want to work are not forced to. this is about women who do want to work but are forced to take the full parental leave instead of sharing it equally with the father because men are pressured to not take any parental leave lest it affects their career.

the goal is to require men to take equal parental leave in order to remove that pressure and put women and men on a more equal position when it comes to children.

today women are considered a hiring risk because they might have children and take parental leave. if fathers were required to take parental leave as well, then the risk would be more similar for both.

> if fathers were required to take parental leave as well, then the risk would be more similar for both

I wonder what the economic implications are when both parents take leave instead of just one (e.g. twice the overhead for finding temporary cover, short-term liquidity impact for employer and public benefit funds)

those are the economic implications for a society that wants to have children. the right for men to take parental leave already exists (in some countries at least). so the economic implications are already a reality. that being a problem is why men are under pressure. forcing leave makes sure that employers get to face the reality. and it puts businesses on equal footing, because now they all need to do that. as a business owner i am no longer at a disadvantage compared to other businesses if i allow men to take leave.

I got your point and I am still interested in the full picture of what I posted before

> What exactly do zoom meetings, email threads, and spreadsheets get you in life?

OK, now ask the same question of fathers.

> I've never met a mother who wanted to be in work full time.

This is as daft an argument as me saying "my wife is one so all women must be"

We do already have this in the UK post partum, although there's also the ongoing matter of childcare, which judging by headcount at school pick-up time still leans heavily female today anecdotally.

Is it not possible to manage childcare around full-time jobs? Let's say dad takes the kids in at 8:45 then heads to work, while mum starts work at 7, finishes at 2:30 then goes to pick up the kids. School holidays complicate matters, but you have clubs and annual leave. And you can also both reduce working hours slightly.

A lot of people do not work in jobs where that flexibility is practical, regardless of the legal right to request flexible working in Britain.

In the UK it essentially is, one of the two parents can take the full parental leave. It does not have to be the mother. Guess who still chooses to raise their kid instead of creating shareholder value in bullshit jobs most of the time.

You've actually disproven your claim.

> The paygap is just a measure of the number of women having children.

> A woman who has two children, at minimum, works two years less. In a (25 - 65) yr career that's a 10% pay gap she'll experience wrt a male who works the same period.

Your claims are disproven by your own math.

A paygap over that period would be a 3% to 8% drop due to child rearing, not 10%, if we accept your claims.

In reality, in the US women do not usually take 1 year off per child. Paid maternity leave is 12 weeks by federal law. That creates a "motherhood-caused" paygap of only 0.75% to 2%.

Demonstrably not true. One of the drivers of the legislation is to reduce the number of employment tribunals brought about for cases of pay discrimination where the overwhelming evidence is that women are paid less than men at every level of expertise and age.

We have the data on the average hours women work, it's ~1mo/yr less. We also know the pay gap, its 1mo/yr. The effect due to differential pay is a rounding error.

We can also do the simulation trivially using empirical data, women on average in the UK have 2 children, and take four years out of work to have them, and when in work, work for 9 years part-time. That creates a theoretical paygap of 20% on a 40 year career across male/female populations

The claim that the economy sustains a free markdown on 50% of the population's labour is mad. What force of nature is keeping a mass of businesses forming just hiring this cheap labour? Why arent there businesses booming hiring, en mass, women?

Either way, aside from that madness. The effect is, to a significant figure, entirely explained by working duration not differential pay.

And I've personally known no mothers who think the population of women is better served by reducing their part-time work, and having them work more.

> women on average in the UK have 2 children, and take four years out of work to have them, and when in work, work for 9 years part-time. That creates a theoretical paygap of 20% on a 40 year career.

And people wonder why professional women don't want to have children any more.

The lifetime pay for a median UK worker @40yr @35k/yr ~= 1.4mil

The "cost" of two children, with above numbers, for "mean woman" is 20% of pay -- so she earns ~1.1m

Presented on a deathbed: would you have preferred to earn 1.4mil over your working life and have neither of your two children, or 1.1m and have both?

The question would seem an absurdity. Bearing in mind that 300k comes with a lifetime of zoom calls and emails, and not much else.

Now if you want to pay women to have children, that's a proposal I'd be open to -- it would reduce the pay gap by significant tax rises, and so on. Nevertheless, I've not met any mothers who wanted to work more nor would take the trade for 1.4 over 1.1 (this, of course, doesnt control for tax credits or welfare -- which both perform this redistribution anyway).

We've created a society which economically punishes people for having kids. I don't think anyone should be surprised that the fertility rate is declining.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com