Economist Watch

Expanding the number of sources we check for editing and typo type blunders, welcome to Economist Watch.

On the subject of gender differences in pay in academia:

Explicable differences amounted to 77% of the overall pay gap between
the sexes. That still left a substantial 23% gap in pay, which Dr
Connolly attributes to discrimination.

Err, no. What is meant is that 77% of the observed pay gap can be explained (time off for children, all that sort of stuff) and that 23% of that observed gap was not, and should therefore be put down to discrimination.

Most certainly not that there was a 23% gap in pay.

Don’t these people have editors?

5 responses

  1. Presumably too the 23% is down to all sorts of inexplicable (so far) reasons, one of which may be discimination.

  2. Yep, or even due to the different proportions of the sexes in, say, computing and biology. The 23% covers every possible explanation that hasn’t been explicitly tested for.

  3. Two female academic scientist chums of mine have a specific complaint: because of the shortage of people in their category, they have to spend an inordinate proportion of their time being The Science Woman on various committees. It’s not clear that allowance will be made for that in promotion procedures. They are therefore paying part of the price of femininism. I have no idea what proportion of the 23% that is, but I do feel that Germaine Greer and co ought to drop them the odd cheque in compensation.

  4. MikeinAppalachia Avatar
    MikeinAppalachia

    If the average difference is about 1500 and if male professors have an advantage of 4000, are there female “other than” professors making, on average, a lot more than their male counterparts so as to reduce the “gap” by 2500?

  5. At least they knew not to use gender when they meant sex. 😉

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