Talk:Paycheck Fairness Act

A fact from Paycheck Fairness Act appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 2 October 2010 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that President Obama called the Paycheck Fairness Act "a common-sense bill" that would help end persistent male–female income disparity in which American women earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2010/October.

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Analysis of arguments

The statistic that women earn 25% less money than men is generally assumed to be due chiefly to wage discrimination, i.e., a blatant refusal to obey the "equal pay for equal work" law. Another factor is that women "are segregated" into lower paying careers, although it is not made clear whether this is because of personal choice (I like hairdressing), social pressure (Be a nurse, sweetie) or outright sex discrimination on the part of employers.

While groups like NOW note that women take years off from work to raised kids, the tacit assumption is that employers shouldn't be paying them lower wages than men who didn't (and therefore have more years of continuous experience).

It seems the object is to ensure equal outcomes, regardless of any differences of aptitude, personal choice, or levels of skill and experience.

If this analysis is correct (or close to it), I suggest we make the assumptions and reasoning of both sides in the argument explicit. --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:52, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary, almost nothing in the description of the Act seems to suggest an attempt to ignore experience or skill - the only possible exception being the "characteristics of the position not related to gender", since, as only women can get pregnant, it could be argued that a pregnancy leave and the resulting lag in experience is gender-related, and thus an invalid grounds for wage discrepancy; careful wording of the act would be able to avoid this issue.

The rest of the act - forbidding reprisals against employees who raise wage issues, investigating the causes for the income discrepancy, funding programs that develop female negotiation skills (one of the problem areas usually recognized as contributing to the wage gap is women's lack of assertiveness and negotiation skills), allowing employees to disclose and discuss salary information, and the need for employers to disclose the reasons for wage discrepancies (if we for a moment assume that "less experience because of motherhood leave" is considered equivalent to "less experience because of a year spend exploring one's soul in India", for example), have the object of both arming women with the skills and freedoms needed to negotiate increases to their wages (skills that society generally fails to provide them) and breaking down opaque office politics that get in the way of proper, transparent pay negotiations.

It is, in short, about counteracting social and informal traditions and politics that get in the way of truly free and competitive employment practices. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.18.198.30 (talk) 17:12, 9 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The last paragraph of the "Criticisms" section of the article, concerning Selective Service, is inapropriate, off topic, poorly written and completely uncited. It is not a criticism of the bill itself but instead a criticism of proponents of the bill. It is also apparently a personal opinion, because although I work in government affairs and have been tracking this bill, I have yet to hear anyone cite this as a reason they opposed this legislation while several of the other cited rationals about the legislation being too broad are common. I hesitate to edit the article myself, though, because I am new to this process.

This article has several grave flaws, including an unscholarly tone and unbalanced, opinion-driven content. Ames016 (talk) 19:12, 5 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The criticism section is based on research that was not peer-reviewed, which means the quality and validity of the research has not been verified by experts. This section also inaccurately mentioned at one point that the Consad study was carried out "by" the Department of Labor, when in fact it was carried out "for" the Department of Labor. (This is fixed now.) --kfrear 11:57, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that, as it is now worded, the NPOV issue has been resolved. Of course, I am but one person, so I won't edit it to remove the banner until others have had a chance to react to this. I would, however, like to swap the criticism and justification sections; the affirmative cases should always go before the negative ones as a matter of NPOV, with the exceptions of instances where no case can be made (e.g. pseudoscience).128.192.161.226 (talk) 03:35, 23 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The article is argumentative and replete with judgments on the merits of the proposed legislation that seem to reflect the viewpoint of the author(s).

Without attribution, major portions of this article are copied straight from the article "Closing the 'Factor Other Than Sex' Loophole in the Equal Pay Act," published on the website of the National Women's Law Center and dated April 12, 2011 (http://www.nwlc.org/print/resource/closing-factor-other-sex-loophole-equal-pay-act, visited on 2/13/2013). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Auxilstitute (talk • contribs) 20:34, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So that's it. The tone and argument is completely inappropriate for Wikipedia. It looks like it was written by somebody who didn't know about the pillars of Wikipedia (particularly WP:RS and WP:NPOV). Plagiarism is unacceptable. The two choices are to paraphrase and cite the sections, or delete the sections entirely.

Anybody who wants to edit this and isn't familiar with Wikipedia guidelines should start by reading WP:RS and WP:NPOV. --Nbauman (talk) 15:36, 1 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

New York Times debate

Here's a good collection of WP:RS arguments, mostly for the Act, but including Christine Hoff Sommers against it.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/03/31/why-has-salary-parity-still-not-happened
Room for Debate: Bringing Home Less Bacon
New York Times
March 31, 2013
--Nbauman (talk) 15:26, 1 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Article is completely uninformative

This article is useless because despite the extensive discussion, nowhere does it actually say WHAT THE BILL DOES. A person coming to this page to find out the details of the bill would go away with no more knowledge of that than before. All the discussion is about legal terms and precedents, not the content of the bill. The article needs a substantial rewrite. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Finsternis (talk • contribs) 03:35, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Restructuring

I just took a first crack at revamping this article. I inserted basic information about the bill, removed most of the verbatim legal argument taken from another organization, and restructured the headings. I still think most of the Justification section needs to be removed/replaced with something people can actually understand. I have not had time to review the Criticism section yet. MatthewBurton (talk) 13:06, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It tells by whom

The criticisms section cites two sources that dispute the causes of the pay gap. The lead section contains a link to the article Male–female income disparity in the United States, which covers various views on the causes. The fact that the causes are disputed is relevant enough to the subject of the article that it's worth mentioning in the lead, but not so central that it's worth covering in detail there.

This kind of thing is why I don't edit much any more. There's nothing you can contribute that won't get slapped with at least one tag. If you summarize what the sources say, that's "original research"; if you quote them verbatim, that's plagiarism. --Dan Wylie-Sears 2 (talk) 13:41, 16 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The opening paragraph doesn't cite particular causes. If the linked article covers many proposed causes, doesn't the link speak to both sides? MatthewBurton (talk) 20:48, 22 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

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