Hacker News

Consider the discrepancies in jobs requiring similar education and responsibility, or similar skills, but divided by gender. The median earnings of information technology managers (mostly men) are 27 percent higher than human resources managers (mostly women), according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

I don’t think its article did itself a service by making this their first example of similar jobs with similar responsibilities.

A new study from researchers at Cornell University found that the difference between the occupations and industries in which men and women work has recently become the single largest cause of the gender pay gap, accounting for more than half of it. In fact, another study shows, when women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines — for the very same jobs that more men were doing before.

I think the article has a habit of muddying its point. The second study is extremely interesting, but it belabors the first one.

While the pay gap has been closing, it remains wide. Over all, in fields where men are the majority, the median pay is $962 a week — 21 percent higher than in occupations with a majority of women, according to another new study, published Friday by Third Way, a research group that aims to advance centrist policy ideas.

Editing is bizarre. It seems like we were about to make an argument but then forgot to do so. It has the feel of someone who wrote an essay trying to meet a word count. We know why we’re here and reading. A simple report on the second study would have been plenty.

Finally, the article was posted back in 2016.