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Industry News and Information

Gender paygap nears 20% – HOGWASH!

Shawn Augustson AvatarShawn Augustson
April 30, 2007


I was listening to one of my favorite talk radio show hosts yesterday on XM radio – Larry Elder. Since anyone who is heavily bent to either side of the political dial will probably know who that is, I may have just lost 50percent of my audience, that’s OK. The 50percent who stay around to read may find that they learn something, if they keep an open mind.
You see, Larry was discussing a new study that had just come out (and he compared it with an older study) about the disparity in pay between men and women. Of course the study was backed by scientific method and statistical analysis. I’ve always believed the old saying that there are lies, damned lies, then statistics. This report reminded me of that fact.


It is easy, if you are prone to victimhood, to get exercised when some study from a prestigious sounding group announces that your “group” is getting the shaft. I imagine that is how a lot of women who first heard the news that they were only making 80percent of the pay that men make felt. They were more than likely whipped up into a frenzy of anger because they weren’t being treated fairly.
I’m all for fair treatment, and in my recruiting practice, we don’t discriminate in anyway (other than skill set and experience) in our recruiting process. Men and women are treated equally, and paid equally for the same work with the same background and experience level. Because we live in a free market economy (well mostly free market, I lament the amount of government interference that we have now, but that is a topic for another time) it is impossible for the study to be correct.
As Mr. Elder points out, one needn’t refute the methodology, which is obviously flawed. There is no need to point out that there are sufficient justification to pay people differently based upon background, education, skill set, and accomplishment, that one could not possibly pin the pay differences between men and women solely on their gender. Mr. Elder has a much easier theorem that doesn’t involve knowing sample size, statistics, or sampling methodology. We just use simple logic of economic theory.
Here is how to easily disprove the irresponsible statement that women are only paid $.80 on the dollar compared to men. If you were a business owner, and women could be paid at only 80percent the level of men, wouldn’t a business, one that was “for profit,” stop hiring men and hire only women, thereby saving 20percent of its labor costs? Of course it would, but that doesn’t happen. And it doesn’t happen because it isn’t real. Are there different salaries for workers based on what they know, what their education is, what they have accomplished in the work place, how long they have continuously worked, the skills that they bring to the job – absolutely. Are any of those things based upon gender, not really. Sometimes women choose to leave the workforce to raise a family, but sometimes men do as well. Those people will suffer a pay gap as compared with someone continuously in the workforce since leaving school.
So next time you are confronted with outrageously exaggerated “findings” of a study, use some common sense to filter what the ‘authors’ are telling you. No doubt if you utilize this methodology, you can save yourself some time trying to prove every instance where the authors have skewed the result.
-author: Carl Chapman. Carl is the founder of CEC Search – Executive Restaurant Recruiters. He has 20+ years of restaurant industry experience, spent 5 awarding winning years as an executive recruiter with a top 25 MRI franchise office. Carl graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1980. You can find Carl’s bio on his blog “Confessions of an Executive Restaurant Recruiter” you can also review his LinkedIn profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/carlchapman
This article is courtesy of Recruiting Blogswap at
http://www.recruitingblogswap.com , a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com at https://www.collegerecruiter.com/, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching entry level jobs and other career opportunities

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