This kind of thing is impossible to control for, though. How can you tell whether someone's success or lackthereof (including via degree of responsibility) comes from earnest evaluation of merit or social bias? I have a difficulty imagining trusting any kind of confident assessment of the bias at hand.
Sure, but people are always going to make their own judgements, so why bother complaining about it? It comes off like you're trying to defend the industry as being equitable when it clearly caters to people with certain skills.
Yeah it's really difficult, but that doesn't mean you should just give up and take the average.
There was a case recently in the UK where Next (high street clothing chain) were paying their warehouse staff more than their shop staff for (apparently) similar work. The shop workers had a higher proportion of female workers than the warehouse workers (something like 70% vs 50%).
Next claimed this was because the market rate was higher for warehouse workers. They got sued by the female shop workers for discrimination.
They lost and have to pay back pay. Now... you might think 70% vs 50% is barely a difference - did the Next bosses really discriminate? Surely not. Well, that's what the court thought too. Apparently even though they accepted that there was no conscious or unconscious discrimination, the effect of the pay difference was in itself discriminatory.
I dunno how that makes any sense. The shop workers should have sued the IT department and then they'd be in for a serious pay day!
I think the problem is that often the solutions are worse than the problem... price controls, wage ceilings, protectionism, etc. As opposed to offering negotiation training to women to push for the highest wages you can achieve.
I've worked pretty hard to teach my daughter than it doesn't hurt to ask for more than offered, or even to price yourself out of a job if there are multiple opportunities on the table. Women tend to naturally optimize for stability over maximum income and other factors and to accept a given deal vs negotiate. Much like men are far more likely to move to another location for career advancement and higher pay. There are natural tendencies that training can overcome which is likely better than trying to price control.
> Yeah it's really difficult, but that doesn't mean you should just give up and take the average.
Presumably the rational approach would be mild skepticism about confidence, not specifically accepting or rejecting any claim. Which leaves this well within the grounds of "plausible".
