The gender wage gap is NOT due to discrimination.

org for providing a website where we can have civilized, intelligent debates. I wish you good luck, and will begin my arguments. Throughout history, women have been payed less than men in the same position, which has been labeled as the "wage gap. " I am arguing that the wage gap is caused by sexism and discrimination. I will respond to your arguments in your order, add my own, and then provide closing arguments. 1) First, some defense: Your first argument relies almost solely on this Consad study. However, this study is extremely flawed, and fails to account for the parts of the wage gap that are caused by sexist tendencies. The researchers themselves cautioned that they did not have enough data to make a definitive, reliable claim. Elizabeth MacDonald writes, "But the researchers also warned that either they did not have enough long-term data or the studies they looked at had too few workers to definitively ascertain why exactly the wage gap exists, as well as the size of it. The government researchers also warned they did not have enough data to ascertain the impact of various factors like work experience, tenure, occupation and industry to deliver "adequate analysis" of what the true wage gap really is. " [1] The researchers themselves say they couldn"t deliver "adequate analysis. " We have no reason to trust this study - It failed to account for the factors that drive workplace discrimination. Also, the evidence they looked at was short term, and did not cover the span of a worker"s life. As you pointed out, much of the discrimination comes later in life. They continue to express uncertainty when they say, "As a result it has not been possible to develop reliable estimates of the total percentage of the raw gender wage gap. " The research doesn"t even analyze "whether women are rejected from jobs they apply for right from the get go because they have children, even if they had resumes identical to men"an all too prevalent reality that undercuts the theory that the "pay gap doesn"t exist. "" This is a factor that you never accounted for. It"s harder for women to get jobs in the first place, a statistic that isn"t examined when evaluating the wage gap. The Consad study gets worse. The worst flaw in the study is that it analyzed part time and full time workers. A post on the blog Alas! explains. "The standard wage gap figure only includes full-time, year-round workers,2 but CONSAD included part-time (and, I suspect, short-term) workers, which means it"s looking at a significantly different population" The single largest factor that CONSAD found "explained" the wage gap is the difference in hours worked. Since women are more likely to work part-time, and since CONSAD (unlike standard wage gap studies) included part-time workers in their sample, in effect CONSAD is comparing mostly female part-time workers to mostly male full-time workers. Then " what a surprise! " they determined that the difference in hours worked accounts for a huge portion of the wage gap they measured. " [2] This practice is extremely negligent. The study is comparing two completely different types of jobs, and then attributing this to the wage gap. If women are more likely to work part time, its self-evident that they"re going to have less hours. This doesn"t mean they"re payed equally. This is a huge flaw in the study, and should be enough to discredit it, thus hindering your argument. The study also ignores things like occupational discrimination and the fact that men are more likely to be promoted. Onto offense: Your claim that other factors cause the wage gap is discredited by your own evidence. The payscale article you cite concedes a lot. "The first thing to know is that, no matter how you slice it, there is a gender pay gap. Do men really make more than women? Yes. The gender pay gap is very real" When we compare men and women who hold the same jobs" there is a gap: the controlled gender pay gap. Nationally, when we control for job title, job level and other important influencers of wages (like years of work experience), women still only make 98 cents for every dollar earned by men. " [3] Here, it concedes not only that the pay gap exists, but that even after accounting for ALL OTHER INFLUENCES the wage gap exists, undoubtedly because of discrimination. And what"s important to remember is that many of the influences it accounts for are caused by discrimination. For example, "Men are 85% more likely than women to be VPs or C-Suite Execs by mid-career, and 171% more likely to hold those positions late in their career. " While many wage gap skeptics have long tried to chalk that up to a lack of courage in women, it is undeniably caused by discrimination. An article in the Harvard Business Review says, "In repeated studies, the social cost of negotiating for higher pay has been found to be greater for women than it is for men. .. However, in most published studies, the social cost of negotiating for pay is not significant for men, while it is significant for women. " [4] Women who try to negotiate raises or promotions face intense social consequences, which is not true for men. Sexism has scared women out of trying to negotiate, creating a fear-based environment of discrimination in the workplace. 2)Offense and Defense: Turn: This statistic proves my case. Women enter the workforce at close to equal, but are denied promotions and other opportunities because of their gender. (Cross apply my payscale evidence. ) Keep in mind though, that this argument doesn"t account for the fact women are less likely to be hired at that age, meaning less of them are working or making money. Also, this article is about the UK, and not the US " which makes it carry less weight. 3)Defense: Your evidence is from Hay Group, a consultant firm with little history in studies or polling. This is reflected in the flaw with the study you provided: It has a TINY sample size. Roughly 260,000 people per country. That"s less than 1% of their populations. Even so, there is correlation between wage gap and nation. The two countries with the largest pay gaps were Mexico and Brazil, both of which have problems with sexism. Mexico has a consistently growing problem of sexism in women that is reflected by the Homicide rate against women. Not only is this rate incredibly high, [7] but women are scared out of reporting such crimes. Brazil is a historically patriarchal society that is heavily impacted by Iberian culture " which is inherently sexist and has women in subordinate positions in the household. Neither of these are progressive countries with good track records on gender treatment. Conclusion: Because of the flaws in the Consad study, which is the bulk of your argument, and the evidence that jobs lose their value when women become common employees, as well as the evidence from Cornell and Harvard economists that at least 38% of the wage-gap is direct discrimination, which doesn"t even account for aspects such as backlash against women that ask for raises, the prejudice against women applying for jobs, and many other factors I laid out above, clearly proves that a substantial portion of the pay-gap is because of discrimination. One final statistic from payscale, "a staggering 36 percent of female MBAs believe they have been denied a raise or promotion because of their gender. " Quick Note: My original argument was 5,000 characters too many, so I had to get rid of a lot of my offense, I'll try to bring it up in the second speech, though. Also, I wrote this is word and then copy/pasted it, so there was more formatting originally. Sorry for that. Finally, thanks for reading, and can't wait to respond to your argument. 1-Elizabeth MacDonald writing for Fox Business. . http://www.foxbusiness.com... 2-Alas! Blog. . http://amptoons.com... 3-Payscale. . https://www.payscale.com... 4-Hannah Riley Bowles writing for the Harvard Business Review. . https://hbr.org... 5-Claire Cain Miller writing for the New York Times. . https://www.nytimes.com... 6-Nolan Feely writing for Time Magazine. . http://time.com... 7-Report presented before the Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW. . http://www2.ohchr.org... 8-Asaf Levanon"s abstract to her study titled, "Occupational Feminization and Pay: Assessing Causal Dynamics Using 1950"2000 U. S. Census Data" From Oxford Academic Journal. . https://academic.oup.com... 9-Madeline Farber writing for Fortune. . http://fortune.com...