Chestaan wrote:Jello Biafra wrote:If it were the case that employers who discriminate against women were different from the general public, this might be the case. However, it appears that the general public also discriminates against women.
This study found that participants who viewed a video of a man and a woman helping customers viewed the men as being better at their jobs and the store in which they worked as being more clean, despite the fact that both the man and the woman were actors reading from a script, the videos were shot from the same angles, and were shot on the same set.
This study sent identical resumes to high-end restaurant for waitstaff positions. (Waitstaff positions pay more in high-end restaurants.) The female candidates were significantly less likely to get both an interview and a job offer. One of the reasons given for the discrimination was customer preference.
If the general public perceives women as being better workers, employers will too, whether or not this is actually the case.
It's an interesting point but unfortunately I have no access to the papers themselves, only the abstracts. I can't comment on them properly in that case.
However, I would point out that even if these papers are perfect, they only refer to industries such as waiting and the like. There are several other industries, where profitability does not depend on the employee's interaction with the customer where as far as I know there is also a wage gap.
Basically what I am saying is that there is something else at play. Other factors which have been brought up in this thread such as maternity leave and negotiating skills.
This article talks about the actors/script study I mentioned. The man who organized that study also organized a study where people rated their doctors, which is talked about in greater detail in
this article. Surprise surprise, people rated white male doctors as being better even when controlling for other factors. So your caveat of no employee/customer interaction would involve a lot of industries.
Further, I'm not saying that discrimination in and of itself is the only factor in play here. Negotiating skills could also have a role, but as I already pointed out,
women are penalized to a greater degree than men are when initiating negotiations. Maternity leave may also be a factor, or perhaps more accurately,
the employer's assumptions about maternity leave may also play a role.