Shock! The Pay Gap is Uber Bullshit!

OK, OK, so you already knew the gender pay gap was bullshit.

Perhaps you’re with Jordan Peterson and go the multivariate analysis route.

Or perhaps like Warren Farrell you prefer to dissect in detail the specific factors which show just how an apparent gender pay gap arises.

Or perhaps you just know that the gender hourly pay rate gap for people under 40 working full time in the UK is essentially zero.

Or perhaps you prefer to observe that, if women were paid less for the same job, companies simply wouldn’t employ men.

Take your pick.

But here is a very neat study that, I think I can say, bangs the very last nail into the coffin lid.

It’s a study based on Uber drivers in the USA.

The great thing about this study is that the Uber algorithm is totally and indisputably gender blind. The computer just records time of journey, length of journey, time of day, etc. What the driver gets paid cannot depend on sex.

You’re ahead of me aren’t you?

Yup, men get paid 7% more per hour.

The study was able to identify the reasons. It’s made up of three parts.

20% of the pay gap is due to what trips or routes the driver opts for. Some tend to be more lucrative than others. For example, trips to an airport are good payers. Men tend to optimise on more lucrative routes.

30% of the pay gap is experience. Uber drivers have a high turnover, but higher for women. So men gain more experience from having done the job longer. This is important because it takes experience to learn what routes, times, etc pay best. The evidence is that both sexes learn at the same rate – but men stick at it longer so end up more canny.

The remaining 50% of the pay gap is…..wait for it…..men do more work per hour. The data shows that by driving just a couple of percent faster on average men fit in more trips per hour.

Sorted.

In summary: men stick at the job longer, gain more experience, are more canny/focused on the money, and do more work per hour.

Sound familiar?

18 thoughts on “Shock! The Pay Gap is Uber Bullshit!

  1. Mike Chaffin

    Ever heard of the productivity puzzle?

    Basically it is the rate at which productivity improves… Was constant 2% a year from WW2 up to the GFC in 2007 / 8 but productivity has basically barely budged since…

    Course the assumption is that this is something directly related to the crash… My heads have been scratched over it.. Has resulted in real wages being about 20% lower than they should be due to a decade of exceptionally poor productivity growth…

    I’m wondering whether it was actually linked more to Blair and his evil feminist ways…

    As we know men are simply more efficient… Work longer hours and end up paying 70% of the tax.

    So I’m wondering whether there was a step change in personel after the crash… Whether entirely feminist HR departments first sacked as many blokes as they could and then when things recovered a bit hired as many females as they could. No doubt to much cheering from our political pigmys.

    Was there a push towards blokes taking up 3D jobs after the crash, even when highly skilled in other areas, whilst the women got all the nice safe and comfortable admin and office jobs?

    Anyone know of any data sources which might confirm this?

    Reply
  2. Groan

    This report should be read by the Companies now reporting their “gap”. Worryingly for them this confirms that even good presentation means only half of people will understand their data. More worrying is that its presentation does make people think negatively about their company, even if a large gap is the logical result of good policies or simply few workers of one or other gender. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/presenting-gender-pay-gap-figures-to-the-public-an-online-trial?utm_source=27686929-b527-4387-bc3e-5ef7039e7fe5&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications&utm_content=weekly

    Reply
  3. paul parmenter

    Coming to this article a bit late, but can I promote my favourite approach to dismantling the great myth? Again it is one with which readers of this blog should be familiar, but it has the virtue of simplicity, does not rely on endless arguments over statistics and can be deployed against all comers. It is the simple question: if you can get the same amount of work and the same productivity out of a woman by paying her less than a man, why would you ever employ a man?

    I have never found anyone who can give a coherent answer to that question. Usually all I get is a rapid retreat and a diversion into some other topic; or a simple blank stare into space. When anyone actually attempts to engage with the question, the best they have ever come up with is the embarrassingly crass claim that all employers are idiots who are so blinded by their prejudice that they cannot work out that women are cheaper to employ. And that is the best answer, so you can imagine how far on the distant side of crazy the worst ones are. I recommend readers try the question out for themselves and see what variety of confusion results.

    Reply
    1. Jay

      Also, with the hordes of FEMALE lawyers out there, none of them has the nerve (or skill?) to start a class-action suit against ANY employer? They would become feminist-icons overnight – plus millionaires, once the settlements start to roll in. Heck, not even ‘feminist’ male lawyers gave it a try, only to set an example…. and we know how low they can go.
      So, no break-through, ‘Roe-vs-Wade’-like jurisprudence, no Oprah-interviews, no Hollywood-blockbuster – simply because no lawyer is smart and devoted enough to drag a white-male-privileged patriarchial company to court – clearly there is a conspiracy against women!

      Reply
  4. AJ

    it is a nice and paticularily clean study in that it does not rely on statistical analysis to seperate the effect of gender alone from other factors. It will however make no difference whatsoever.

    The evidence was already overwhelming that earnings difference between men and women are not down to discrimination. In any case why is median earnings constantly brought up as a disadvantage to women and not life expectancy, or university places, or homelessness or average sentence length, or death at work and so on?

    This study will be ignored, criticised as being limited in scope and applicability or claimed to be biased. If by some miracle the wage gap is discredited in the public mind, and I do not think it will be, then another statistic will be brought up, however dubious, however inherently biased or unreliable which appears to show women are being mistreated.

    The fundamental issue is that nobody really cares about men and they do about women and that adds emotional power to any claim women are disadvantaged and robs power from any of those that show men and boys to be disadvantaged.

    Reply
    1. William Collins Post author

      Yes, exactly – which is why this blog is called The Illustrated Empathy Gap. There are two other contributory causes. Firstly, you cannot displace a person’s religion with reason. Secondly, this is not, in any case, about equality. That’s just camouflage. It’s about power.

      Reply
  5. Godfrey Sandford

    It is staggering how the mainstream media is able to get away – almost completely unchallenged – with its promotion of the ‘gender pay gap’ myth. Like may other commentators, one is reminded of the efficacy of the Big Lie as a propaganda technique, a phrase coined by Hitler in Mein Kampf, but later much developed by Goebbels.

    Reply
  6. Max

    Brilliantly concise. Thank you!

    I may have to add a link to this article in my list of go-to responses. It’ll be in good company, for example: June’s 14 second long takedown:

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=wjWBXbGVyQU

    I honestly don’t know how many people will be helped by this article though – because, as she notes in the above video’s description box, “this is like showing somebody proof their god does not exist”.

    Reply
    1. William Collins Post author

      Yes, I’m familiar with that shoe-on-head clip. I’d like one of those little recording devices.

      Reply
  7. Tamerlame

    People are avoiding the main issue, so therefore they are stuck in the feminsit frame, and apologizing to females for earning more money for more work.

    The issue is the gender roles that women largely enforce.

    Women select for higher status men, and deselect lower stats men.

    Men who lose their jobs are at higher risk of divorce. So if the man has kids he will be alienated from them.

    Men are willing to support a woman who doesn’t work, or only works part time. This gives women more flexibility in their life choices over men.

    Meanwhile women do 80 percent of the consumer spending. Men hand the money they earn over to women.

    This is the main reason why the pay gap exists. Women try trapping men in provider roles, and then use the fact that men earn more money than women against men.

    Men earn more money to win female approval.

    This is why I will never support a woman, and pay for one.

    I do not date, I do not pay for sex, I will never let a woman live with me rent free.

    Reply
  8. Michael McVeigh

    Many years ago I owned a large taxi company. In those days I didn’t really understand why 95% of drivers were men and 95% of telephonists were women.
    I now know that the split is stereotypical, emphasising gender differences which are basically biological. In all honesty men were better drivers than women and women were better telephonists than men.

    Reply
    1. Tamerlame

      “I now know that the split is stereotypical, emphasising gender differences which are basically biological. In all honesty men were better drivers than women and women were better telephonists than men.”

      How do you know that is biological.

      I have worked in telemarketing, and men do better than women in that.

      Perhaps women were doing the telephone jobs, because it was easier than the driving ones? Women put comfort first.

      Is that biological too? Or only because men who go for comfort over money, will not attract a woman into a relationship?

      I do believe biology explains most things, but lazy biological determinism jumps to assumptions about things.

      Reply
      1. Michael McVeigh

        It is accepted scientifically that men have better visual spatial skills than women. It is accepted scientifically that women have better interpersonal skills than men.
        Join the dots.

        Reply
  9. Shaun Biddulph

    Can you hear a low and distant rumble to the sound of feminists crying, ‘It’s patriarchy at work’.
    Nothing new here then. Lol.

    Reply

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