My economics professor studies income inequality and a couple of years ago there was serious concern about gender inequality and he was asked by the university to study income inequality at the university and report his findings to a committee. First, he set out to determine the major factors that influence faculty salaries. The major factors were: 1. Time - the longer you were there the more you made; 2. Highest degree obtained - PhDs made more than masters-level faculty; 3. Specialty - some academic disciplines paid better than others; 4. Additional administrative tasks resulted in additional pay and; 5. Gender
He was asked to report preliminary findings to the committee and immediately there were faculty who wanted to run with the idea that there were inherent biases in pay between men and women. Dr. Bob is an excellent researcher, he knew exactly why he was asked to look at this issue, and he wasn't satisfied that this was in fact reality. Driving home one day he was thinking about the problem and he realized that when he started at the university in the late 1980's fewer than 10% of the faculty in the business school were female. He also realized currently >50% of the faculty in the business school were now female which is a change that has really just happened in the last 15-20 years. When he controlled for time at the university, gender was no longer statistically significant, yet every other variable remained significant. This also made intuitive sense to him since there were still a significant number of male professors who were hired before the push to hire more women and the average tenure of male faculty was significantly longer than the average tenure of female faculty. Gender bias WAS an issue but it was addressed 20 years ago and any remaining differences in income was just leftover from that period of time. Matter-of-fact, when you looked at pay between male and female faculty hired in the past 10 years, there seems to be a gender bias towards women making more than men.
I have a research background in immunology which can be very complicated and very nuanced. It is impossible for someone who does not do that day after day to really understand this nuance. Since I've been out of that field for 20 years I no longer understand the nuance. It's the reason we have "experts" and it's the reason no one can be an "expert" in everything. Every day I see lay people pretending they understand the nuance of complicated situations, having never seen the raw data, and really being ill-equipped to understand it even if they did. Despite my best effort, I do this myself at times. When we do this we are the committee members above who don't really understand the situation but want to run with the first result that fits our preconceived ideas. We as a society need to do better and stop pretending we understand things we really do not because it is pure chaos when we do this on a mass scale. Admittedly, while much of this is self-inflicted, we as a society need to make changes that result in increased public confidence in our "experts".
He was asked to report preliminary findings to the committee and immediately there were faculty who wanted to run with the idea that there were inherent biases in pay between men and women. Dr. Bob is an excellent researcher, he knew exactly why he was asked to look at this issue, and he wasn't satisfied that this was in fact reality. Driving home one day he was thinking about the problem and he realized that when he started at the university in the late 1980's fewer than 10% of the faculty in the business school were female. He also realized currently >50% of the faculty in the business school were now female which is a change that has really just happened in the last 15-20 years. When he controlled for time at the university, gender was no longer statistically significant, yet every other variable remained significant. This also made intuitive sense to him since there were still a significant number of male professors who were hired before the push to hire more women and the average tenure of male faculty was significantly longer than the average tenure of female faculty. Gender bias WAS an issue but it was addressed 20 years ago and any remaining differences in income was just leftover from that period of time. Matter-of-fact, when you looked at pay between male and female faculty hired in the past 10 years, there seems to be a gender bias towards women making more than men.
I have a research background in immunology which can be very complicated and very nuanced. It is impossible for someone who does not do that day after day to really understand this nuance. Since I've been out of that field for 20 years I no longer understand the nuance. It's the reason we have "experts" and it's the reason no one can be an "expert" in everything. Every day I see lay people pretending they understand the nuance of complicated situations, having never seen the raw data, and really being ill-equipped to understand it even if they did. Despite my best effort, I do this myself at times. When we do this we are the committee members above who don't really understand the situation but want to run with the first result that fits our preconceived ideas. We as a society need to do better and stop pretending we understand things we really do not because it is pure chaos when we do this on a mass scale. Admittedly, while much of this is self-inflicted, we as a society need to make changes that result in increased public confidence in our "experts".