Buzzfeed's Yellow Journalism: What Does The Gender Wage Gap Actually Look Like?

Disclaimer: The contents of this blog are entirely the opinion of the author and are in no way be interpreted as a statements of fact nor as professional or personal advice of any kind. If in doubt, research it yourself.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term "Yellow Journalism", as I myself was until a few weeks ago, it means sensationalised or exaggerated articles with eye-catching/click-baiting titles with little or no research. With that explained, onto the video:

 

 Coming straight out with an assertion. No examining data to discover if men really do make more money than women, or why, just going ahead and presuming that's the case. 

Lie. Not at the same job. This figure appears to have been taken from the Institute for Women's Policy Research link they have cited as a source in their description. The source doesn't give details of how they arrived at their 77% figure, although from their pdf files it looks like it's the same flawed method as always. Add up all the yearly earnings of all the women in the US, divide by the number of women, do they same for men, express one as a percentage of the other. More on this below. 

Taken from the `Fact Sheet` " The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation" by the Institute for Women's Policy Research. I've briefly gone into the flawed methodology used above. Also, don't salespeople tend to be paid a percentage of their sales and get bonuses for meeting targets? Without seeing any further data it's impossible to make an accurate assessment, but just going on the propaganda video and what I've just written I would have to assume that one gender is underperforming.

From the New York Times article. I've gone into the articles below. 

Again the flawed IWPR data .

It's actually "Janitors and building cleaners", also taken from the IWPR data. 

Once again, IWPR.

IWPR

IWPR

IWPR

From the New York Times article.

So they've made some assertions and have backed them up with data gathered via a flawed methodology. They've just presented the data as is with no explanation in the video or description as to why. At least they linked their sources which do a somewhat better job.

With that in mind, let's look at what their sources actually say. 

Institute for Women's Policy Research http://www.iwpr.org/initiatives/pay-equity-and-discrimination

Hardly an unbiased source as it's in their interest to continue to perpetuate the narrative of female victimhood in order to convince people that such an institute is needed.

Their method for determining the pay gap is fundamentally flawed as it doesn't take into account:

• People working in different fields (except where it specifies a particular job, obviously)
• People having different specialisations in the same field
• People being employed on a full time or part time basis
• People working overtime
• People receiving promotions
• Differences in qualifications
•  Differences in experience
• Differences in time employed at their current job
• People taking time off work
• People negotiating wages

Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2013/08/13/bad-news-from-the-top-the-gender-pay-gap-in-the-c-suite-is-still-womens-fault/

Interestingly this article cites that "even in entrepreneurship where women are writing their own checks!" women are paid less than men. In her article regarding entrepreneurs pay her source for the differing pay rates doesn't appear to show the figures she quotes at all, and when compared to figures from the National Women's Business Council her numbers don't make sense. Anyway, allegedly when women decide how much they are going to pay themselves they pay themselves less than men. Whose fault is that then!? When the author quotes people (including women) who say that women not negotiating their wages are lowering the bar for everyone who comes after them, she brushes it off with "I don’t believe pointing fingers at ourselves is getting women anywhere". Much better to point the finger at men and avoid any responsibility at all isn't it? 

New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/the-pay-gap-is-because-of-gender-not-jobs.html?_r=0

Although this article doesn't actually provide specific data or sources for its assertions that the pay gap exists between men and women within the same occupations(other than to say Claudia Goldin, Harvard University, but no details of what paper or study), it does actually provide a reason for it. The jobs with the pay gaps tend to be ones that disproportionately favour working much longer hours, ie, someone working 80 hours gets paid more than double what someone working 40 hours is paid. Essentially the pay gap is down to men working much longer hours than women and not any nefarious conspiracy. The author of the article then says that men are the problem by not placing enough value on spending time with their families instead of working such long hours. So her solution is not that women should work longer hours to match up to the men, but instead that men should work shorter hours so that they get paid less. Again, nothing like scapegoating someone else to avoid personal responsibility is there?

Bureau of Labour Statistics http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2011/ted_20110216.htm http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2011/ted_20110216_data.htm

Just a selection of statistics regarding median weekly earnings of men and women, not controlled for anything.

Pew Research http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/08/on-equal-pay-day-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-gender-pay-gap/

This source actually goes some way to explaining the pay gap, saying "women were more likely to say they had taken career interruptions to care for their family" and providing the following statistics:

39% of mothers say they had taken a significant amount of time off work, compared to 24% of fathers

42% had reduced their hours (28% of fathers)

27% had quit work altogether (10% of fathers)

13% had turned down a promotion (10% of fathers)

Again, this shits all over the narrative that Buzzfeed was trying to assert in their video. It's almost as if Buzzfeed didn't even bother to read their sources.