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From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.politics,net.social
Subject: Re: Discrimination against women and statistics
Message-ID: <212@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Jun-85 17:28:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubvax.212
Posted: Mon Jun 17 17:28:04 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Jun-85 01:27:11 EDT
References: <482@ttidcc.UUCP> <8203@ucbvax.ARPA> <8204@ucbvax.ARPA>
Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, CA
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Xref: watmath net.women:5964 net.politics:9484 net.social:700

In article <8204@ucbvax.ARPA>, fagin@ucbvax.ARPA (Barry Steven Fagin) writes:
> From Jennifer Roback, an economist at Yale, commenting on the "59c"
> button popular among feminists during the 1984 election: (This
> button was intended to symbolize the fact that women make 59 cents
> for every dollar that men make).
> 

Jennifer Roback may be an economist at Yale (still), but her views are
well-known to be far from the mainstream.  She is the house libertarian
there (just as there is usually a house Marxist, and a house Straussian in
the polisci department, etc.).  Read the rest of what she says and you
will realize this for yourself.

> "Actually, many of the factors that contribute to the earnings gap are the
> result of personal choices made by women themselves, not decisions thrust
> on them by bosses.  The most important example is marriage."
> 

Men make the same choice of marriage, and it doesn't contribute to their
earnings gap.  Isn't that a difference we can call discriminatory, if
our goal is to make married partners share equally in the burdens of life?

> "These differences between married women and single women (and between
> married women and men, for that matter) contribute dramatically to
> reducing the earnings of married women.  Thus we find, in a comparison of
> the earnings of never-married women and those of never-married men, that
> the women's earnings in 1980 were 89 percent of men's.  This figure has
> been essentially unchanged since the 1960 census.  So if one is looking
> for a "culprit" for the earnings gap, it is far more plausible to pin the
> blame on *marital status* than on *gender*."
> 

The differences are between married women and single women, but is the
cause of those differences the choices women make or the job market that
chooses predicated on those choices?  Well, depends on your politics.  If
you believe that married and single people should be treated equally by
the job market, then you would blame the job market.  If you don't, then
maybe you will blame the choices and those women who made the wrong choice,
marriage.  The question of plausibility has to do with social and moral
goals, not with statistics.

> "...so there are a number of differences between men and women for their
> earnings differences.  Taken altogether, these very reasonable and
> understandable factors cannot, it is true, account for the entire earnings
> gap.  But when the gap *is* corrected for these factors, it is not 59%
> but more like 66-87%, depending on the study."
> 

Again, the decision to "correct" is not a statistical one, it is a moral
and political decision to ignore these differences as factors in
discrimination.  Genetic determinists "correct" for differences in
environmental "endowments" all of the time.

> "...common sense tells us that personality makes a huge difference to a
> person's career success.  Ambition, aggressiveness, willingness to take
> risks, ability to get along with and motivate others, commitment to the
> job, willingness to assume responsibility--all of these factors contribute
> to higher wages...But none of these factors can be measured, and the
> residual earnings differences could just as easily be due to differences
> in these factors as well as to discrimination.  The point is that we
> cannot distinguish discrimination from these other, unmeasurable factors."
> 

Which is why rougher indications like the differential impact of marriage
on men vs. women's incomes take on so much more importance.  Those
indications are much more solid than the "just as easily" speculations
with absolutely no empirical support that Ms. Roback refers to.

> "...Clearly, neither feminist fund raisers nor the average well-informed
> citizen knows this stunning fact: ONLY 40% OF THE EARNINGS OF WHITE MEN
> CAN BE ACCOUNTED FOR BY MEASURABLE FACTORS.  That is, A FULL 60% OF THE
> DIFFERENCES IN EARNINGS AMONG THEM CANNOT BE EXPLAINED BY ANYTHING WE CAN
> MEASURE (emphasis mine)...This is why we cannot rule out the possibility
> that the entire earnings gap between women and men is due to real personal
> productivity differences that cannot be measured.  The upshot is that THE
> PRESENCE OF DISCRIMINATION CAN NEITHER BE PROVEN OR DISPROVEN WITH
> STATISTICAL TESTS."
> 

Evidence required for social policy can be less than proof and still be
of great value.  Indicative rather than inferential statistics is often
all anyone has to determine any policy.  In fact, if the inferential
statistics denied the evidence of the indicative statistics, in many
cases one should still go with the indicative statistics and question
whether the assumptions behind the inferential statistics were as valid
as one thought they were.

> 
> "...so the 59c button ... is a symbol of the faith that much of the women's
> movement places in government intervention as a solution to women's
> problems.  Unfortunately for that faith, many women are liberating
> themselves without the help of the law.  THeyy are finding their own path
> through the maze of the world of work and devising their own way to
> balance all of their financial, personal, and emotional needs.  And the
> movement's loss is the individual's gain; for many of the problems that
> some women face today will best be solved by the individuals themselves
> and not by government action."

Note that the last two sentences are given no empirical support at all
by Ms. Roback.  Doubtless she has some microeconomic model to back her up
-- another inferential method whose assumptions should be questioned as
they apply to this world we live in.

> 
> Thought I'd throw this in to the AA debate.
> 
> --Barry
> -- 
> Barry Fagin @ University of California, Berkeley

Thanks.

Tony Wuersch
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