Talk:Gender pay gap in the United States/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Accedie (talk · contribs) 21:51, 23 October 2011 (UTC) I'll take a crack at this. Should have first pass notes in a day or so, after I get a chance to read, copyedit, and mull. Accedie^{talk to me} 21:51, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I see somebody got to it before I. In that case, I'll just post a general comment about insufficient density of references (I see numerous unreferenced sentences, and many instances of end-of-para-ref only). Also, too many see alsos, and insufficient wikification (for example, the important term glass ceiling is in see alsos and text, but it is not linked in text). Many references could use links to the online websites hosting the journal articles; in the modern day and era, practically all citable research (in English) has a url. Finally, I'd like to see more than a one sentence discussion of the effect of unpaid household work; there is much literature and terminology to expand into its own paragraph (double burden, etc.). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 19:42, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I signed on to review but got too busy IRL to have a proper go at it yet! Thanks for jumping in, and feel free to give more feedback here if you have the time/inclination :) And I'll try to give this some attention soon, too. Accedie^{talk to me} 00:38, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Some notes

1. Generally speaking, the article feels too top-heavy. The first half is composed of big chunks of text illustrated with ample charts, and the second half has many short, somewhat disorganized sections with no images whatsoever. I think merging a few of the second half sections and adding at least one more image would go a long way toward making it look balanced.
2. In the By industry and occupation section, I can see there's been some wrestling between two sides of a debate (highlighting the disparity in income that disfavors women and highlighting the edge cases where women actually make more than men), and for the most part it looks fairly smoothed out. But the bits about median earnings exceptions and female CEOs making more than men in 2009 should be in their own sub-subsection, something like "notable exceptions." That's where the Warren Farrell claim should go, too, with the ensuing counter-argument.
3. This paragraph in the Occupational segregation section: A study showed that if a white woman in an all-male workplace moved to an all-female workplace, she would lose 7% of her wages. If a black woman did the same thing, she would lose 19% of her wages. Another study calculated that if female-dominated jobs did not pay lower wages, women's median hourly pay nationwide would go up 13.2% (men's pay would go up 1.1%, due to raises for men working in "women's jobs") – doesn't quite make sense to me. There needs to be a better transition from the previous paragraph about traditionally feminine/masculine jobs paying less/more, or more of an explanation of what that study actually means.
4. Just four sentences in Direct discrimination? I'd at least like to know why Farrell thinks the pay gap can't be explained by it, and how his data was critiqued by Bergmann! And since all the (brief and numerous) sub-sections that follow are examples of indirect discrimination (and since the line between direct and indirect is pretty fuzzy at times), why not merge the two into a Direct and indirect discrimination level 2 header?
5. Is there a reason why Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse are referred to as "economics experts" rather than economists? That wording choice seems strange to me, given that all the other economists in this article are referred to as such. (In their individual Wikipedia articles, they're called economists.)
6. A few "citation needed"s in Maternity leave section – source?
7. Motherhood section: shouldn't that be closer to Maternity leave section (or perhaps merged with it)?
8. Danger wage premium could use a little work. Add citation to the Farrell argument, prune the long quote by Dorman and Hagstrom.
9. Shouldn't there be at least some historical section that mentions the Equal Pay Act of '63? Seems oddly present-centric, ignoring the rich history of the subject.
10. Reference-wise, the authors have definitely done their homework, and the coverage is broad and varied, but I agree with Piotrus's point above that some important terms/ideas, such as the Glass Ceiling and unpaid housework, deserve more than a passing mention.

Overall, nice work! Looking forward to seeing it get polished up a bit. Accedie^{talk to me} 01:16, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Great feedback, thank you so much. It shouldn't be too tough to expand the article a bit and fix up what's missing. OttawaAC (talk) 01:52, 31 October 2011 (UTC)