(2016)
You can ask why till the cows come home, but there will never be a satisfactory answer. Just asking the question to imply wrongness does not really do anything though.
Way to blow up their credibility in one sentence... Those are completely different jobs. An IT manager needs both management skills and sufficient technical knowledge to make decisions about technical matters and effectively supervise technical employees. Those skills are in higher demand, resulting in higher pay for IC staff and managers.
Also, numerous studies have found that the pay differences within job categories are largely accounted for by factors like overtime, lack of flexibility, stressful work environments, long commutes, etc. Society encourages men to pursue higher compensation, so it's hardly surprising that they are willing to put up with more for an extra 5-10%, even if it's to the detriment of their health and work-life balance.
Two things are rarely mentioned
When you compare apples to apples, male vs female engineering manager with similar backgrounds, the pay is the same. In the Bay Area it favors the woman.
Desire has a large part. It’s no coincidence that the countries with the most women in programming are places like India and China, where they are given little choice. If you can do the job, you do it because otherwise poverty.
When women don’t have to, they don’t.
ENGNR•4h ago
The gender pay gap is really the parenting pay gap, since it didn’t exist before the age where people start having kids. Encourage more men to be stay at home dads and you’ll see the gender differences disappear.
toomuchtodo•3h ago
The phrase I’ve heard more than once about this is “Men want kids like kids want pets.” Easy to want something, but work is hard.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/20/paid-paternity...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
ENGNR•2h ago