"Women make 77 cents for every dollar that a male makes" claim.

There are few arguments that baffle my mind as much as this one. I see it thrown around rather persistently as an excuse for sexism in the world. It is an moronic argument though and I'm going to tell you why.

1. Of the top 10 highest payed college majors in the US, every single one of them are dominated by men. In most of them the majors are only filled by about 10% women.

The 10 bottom majors are dominated by women.

2. Women are less likely to be consistent workers than men due to pregnancy and child care. Salary is something that is built up consistently over time, and when you don't have consistent work, it makes it very difficult to have a consistent rise in salary. Men are twice as likely to work 40 hour weeks as women.




When you actually look at the statistics for single women who do not have children , women earn 96% of what men do. Holy shit

i think what bothers me the most about this "women make $0.77 for a man's $1.00" thing, is that is misses the point. the point is that there is still underlying cultural sexism that drives women to be "less productive" while at the same time insisting that you must be inhumanly productive because that's what "being a real man" is.

this is about the underlying attitudes pervasive in our culture.

try reading this: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/...ce-gap/359815/

as a sort-of aside, making babies is important for the human race. raising them well is important for our future. why should that be undervalued? (and i don't care which parent stays with the baby/toddler the most - at least one of them fucking has to.)

also writing off women in the work force as baby machines when society demands women not be only that - is silly. patriarchal societies have never ensured the well-being and happiness of every helpless woman who was not allowed to work for herself. then, later, the life of the working woman was denied from society's awareness. no one cared for her or helped her with her needs. she still had to fucking work several jobs, often as a single mother. the reality of those women of the 60s and 70s was seen as some anomaly. "no, patriarchal society provides for its women... women don't work piss poor jobs making barely anything just so their kids might make it. oh, unless they're not white. then they're like animals anyway."

what people often don't understand when they take this personally is that this is a systemic problem. it's programmed into your brain and mine. so make arguments about this wage discrepancy argument. but don't argue the inequality that underlies it.

Bit of a segue, but a lot of professions which predominantly employ women, like nurse or schoolteacher, should pay a lot more. Both are extremely important, even minus the years of schooling of a doctor or a college professor. Compared to places like Japan and Finland where teaching is a well-paid and respected profession that attracts some of the brightest people, American teachers get both the shaft from administrations and have to deal with young punks leading childish rebellions against the most accessible authorities in their lives.


I mean, you get diamond drillers up in Northern Canada making $20,000 / month starting wage... for, uh, drilling stuff. I know it's market demand for minerals & danger pay that make this shit possible, but yeesh... it's a job for meatheads who like spending six weeks at a time in total isolation with forty other meatheads. When they come back to town, their hobby is blowing all their money on meth and hookers. These people shouldn't even be the same species as Homo Sapiens, let alone raking in 20K.

I had a friend who worked as a mining assistant one season, and he told me that the best drillers did cocaine on the job to help them concentrate. His regular shift was 14 hrs / day, ostensibly maintaining mining equipment; all he really did was roll joints for the miners.

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Originally Posted by inumbra

i think what bothers me the most about this "women make $0.77 for a man's $1.00" thing, is that is misses the point. the point is that there is still underlying cultural sexism that drives women to be "less productive" while at the same time insisting that you must be inhumanly productive because that's what "being a real man" is.

this is about the underlying attitudes pervasive in our culture.

try reading this: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/...ce-gap/359815/

as a sort-of aside, making babies is important for the human race. raising them well is important for our future. why should that be undervalued? (and i don't care which parent stays with the baby/toddler the most - at least one of them fucking has to.)

also writing off women in the work force as baby machines when society demands women not be only that - is silly. patriarchal societies have never ensured the well-being and happiness of every helpless woman who was not allowed to work for herself. then, later, the life of the working woman was denied from society's awareness. no one cared for her or helped her with her needs. she still had to fucking work several jobs, often as a single mother. the reality of those women of the 60s and 70s was seen as some anomaly. "no, patriarchal society provides for its women... women don't work piss poor jobs making barely anything just so their kids might make it. oh, unless they're not white. then they're like animals anyway."

what people often don't understand when they take this personally is that this is a systemic problem. it's programmed into your brain and mine. so make arguments about this wage discrepancy argument. but don't argue the inequality that underlies it.

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I think that is kind of a prevalent feature of the dominated belief system in place at the time. Christianity encourages the breeder mentality, and hence the entirety of society falls into a pattern of women trying to be breeders while the man goes out to provide for the family. Then you end up with a portion of the females trying to fight against the curve. That isn't an issue of women's rights though, that is more of an issue of women learning to stand on their own and not succumbing to the underlying currents of the establishment. Neither law or women's equality activism(feminism) is going to change that.

You also have to understand though that this is a very hard mentality to change, because reproduction and providing stable homes for upcoming kids is an important quality in society.

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Originally Posted by xerx

Bit of a segue, but a lot of professions which predominantly employ women, like nurse or schoolteacher, should pay a lot more. Both are extremely important, even minus the years of schooling of a doctor or a college professor. Compared to places like Japan and Finland where teaching is a well-paid and respected profession that attracts some of the brightest people, American teachers get both the shaft from administrations and have to deal with young punks leading childish rebellions against the most accessible authorities in their lives.


I mean, you get diamond drillers up in Northern Canada making $20,000 / month starting wage... for, uh, drilling stuff. I know it's market demand for minerals & danger pay that make this shit possible, but yeesh... it's a job for meatheads who like spending six weeks at a time in total isolation with forty other meatheads. When they come back to town, their hobby is blowing all their money on meth and hookers. These people shouldn't even be the same species as Homo Sapiens, let alone raking in 20K.

I had a friend who worked as a mining assistant one season, and he told me that the best drillers did cocaine on the job to help them concentrate. His regular shift was 14 hrs / day, ostensibly maintaining mining equipment; all he really did was roll joints for the miners.

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The business in the US is far more volatile than Japan and Finland. Most countries look at the US as having the currency of last resort. This means that resource exchanges within our currency... trades... etc... are globalized far more than Finland or Japan. In our economy you are never going to have education as valued as other things. Not going to happen anytime soon, sorry. In truth we need to reevaluate how we do education, privatize it more possibly.. more on the job training. The student loan bubble is going to splatter everywhere pretty soon as education is a very over-invested commodity.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

In our economy you are never going to have education as valued as other things.

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^ this needs to change if America wants to maintain an industrialized economy. Your supply of East Asian and Indian engineering students is running out.

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Originally Posted by xerx

^ this needs to change if America wants to maintain an industrialized economy. Your supply of East Asian and Indian students is running out.

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I agree, but it's not going to happen unless we change our reasoning on education. The whole students all over the map getting loans and going to universities to get a liberal arts degree things isn't going to work.

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Originally Posted by xerx

Bit of a segue, but a lot of professions which predominantly employ women, like nurse or schoolteacher, should pay a lot more. Both are extremely important, even minus the years of schooling of a doctor or a college professor. Compared to places like Japan and Finland where teaching is a well-paid and respected profession that attracts some of the brightest people, American teachers get both the shaft from administrations and have to deal with young punks leading childish rebellions against the most accessible authorities in their lives.


I mean, you get diamond drillers up in Northern Canada making $20,000 / month starting wage... for, uh, drilling stuff. I know it's market demand for minerals & danger pay that make this shit possible, but yeesh... it's a job for meatheads who like spending six weeks at a time in total isolation with forty other meatheads. When they come back to town, their hobby is blowing all their money on meth and hookers. These people shouldn't even be the same species as Homo Sapiens, let alone raking in 20K.

I had a friend who worked as a mining assistant one season, and he told me that the best drillers did cocaine on the job to help them concentrate. His regular shift was 14 hrs / day, ostensibly maintaining mining equipment; all he really did was roll joints for the miners.

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Not at the camp I worked at, they had that shit more buttoned up then a Nazi concentration camp. Weekly visit from patrol dogs to sniff the dorms. Dry camps are different from those I agree. My roomate brought home a pack of Ephedra, said his boss gave it to him. He gave it to me...

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Originally Posted by Hitta

You also have to understand though that this is a very hard mentality to change, because reproduction and providing stable homes for upcoming kids is an important quality in society.

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it is. which is why patriarchal society should acknowledge it, rather than shoving it in the closet with the women who are expected to take on most of the burden (and it wouldn't be such a burden if it was simply acknowledged for the labor-inducive 20+ year long job that it is).

that said, i think that now that there is more equality between the sexes than before (in the US at least) that couples are more faced with how difficult it is to spend enough time with one's child, maybe something will change? fathers too like to spend time with their children.

so now maybe it's more family vs. corporation rather than just mother vs. corporation and father = corporation. so far from what i've seen, the corporations are winning... but i don't think it's gone on for long enough yet for people to say "enough of this overbearing corporate shit."

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Originally Posted by wacey

Not at the camp I worked at, they had that shit more buttoned up then a Nazi concentration camp. Weekly visit from patrol dogs to sniff the dorms. Dry camps are different from those I agree. My roomate brought home a pack of Ephedra, said his boss gave it to him. He gave it to me...

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I'm glad places like that exist. I considered working in an Alberta oil field when I was desperate for cash a while back. I hear the oil sands are dead now because of the Saudis flooding the market with oil...

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Originally Posted by xerx

I'm glad places like that exist. I considered working in an Alberta oil field when I was desperate for cash a while back. I hear the oil sands are dead now because of the Saudis flooding the market with oil...

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I heard some like 10-20 thousand people were laid off it was pretty bad. I was long gone. Money there is amazing, getting paid 24 baseline to do the most menial kinds of work. Its all about priorities I guess. My oldest brother is up there right now in Alberta working as a city firefighter, his wife a nurse. They made sacrifices for their daughters.

@Account i will be "the woman getting angry." *pulls out voodoo doll and wishes ill upon all mankind.*

wait, please don't call me a man hater. please. then you'll discount anything i say.

but please, disregard that last statement, because if you read it, it may occur to you that i might possibly be a man hater. otherwise, why would i have even bothered saying what i did?

wait. you must understand. i just got carried away in my words. none of it means anything important. just don't read things into it regarding my attitude about men, because if you did, you reveal your secret misogyny.

no wait. i posted this in the wrong thread. you're reading it all entirely out of context. don't you dare quote!

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Originally Posted by inumbra

@Account i will be "the woman getting angry." *pulls out voodoo doll and wishes ill upon all mankind.*

wait, please don't call me a man hater. please. then you'll discount anything i say.

but please, disregard that last statement, because if you read it, it may occur to you that i might possibly be a man hater. otherwise, why would i have even bothered saying what i did?

wait. you must understand. i just got carried away in my words. none of it means anything important. just don't read things into it regarding my attitude about men, because if you did, you reveal your secret misogyny.

no wait. i posted this in the wrong thread. you're reading it all entirely out of context. don't you dare quote!

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I'm not saying you are a man hater, because I don't think that you are, but I do think there are a ton of man haters in the world that sit on their ass and do nothing and somehow think that men owe them something. At the same time I think there are a lot of guys that are just as full of shit, aka as the slut shamers of the world who has no self control: "Oh shit that girl in that skirt, god my dick is hard.... what a fucking slut". I think sexism goes both ways, which actually results in a lot of misplaced hatred.

It is the same exact issue I have with racism. I live in the south, I see real racism all the time. It exists. At the same time I think it also goes both ways. I think there is a ton of over-exaggeration, some things that were never done in the spirit of racism are enthusiastically condemned. Also if you think black people aren't capable of racism, I can guarantee you that you are wrong.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

I'm not saying you are a man hater, because I don't think that you are, but I do think there are a ton of man haters in the world that sit on their ass and do nothing and somehow think that men owe them something. At the same time I think there are a lot of guys that are just as full of shit, aka as the slut shamers of the world who has no self control: "Oh shit that girl in that skirt, god my dick is hard.... what a fucking slut". I think sexism goes both ways, which actually results in a lot of misplaced hatred.

It is the same exact issue I have with racism. I live in the south, I see real racism all the time. It exists. At the same time I think it also goes both ways. I think there is a ton of over-exaggeration, some things that were never done in the spirit of racism are enthusiastically condemned. Also if you think black people aren't capable of racism, I can guarantee you that you are wrong.

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i don't entirely disagree with everything you have said. i guess the main thing that comes to mind is that the system stacks the cards against non-whites (in the u.s.). it's not about the individual and whether individual black people or white people are racist per their experiences, learning, whatever. it's that on the whole there is systemic inequality. blacks for instance are often associated with being less educated, less intelligent, less articulate, less capable, etc. this creates inequality even when it's largely accepted that discrimination based upon race is unacceptable. even well meaning people who don't see a particular bias operating in their decision making processes can act in ways that reinforce the inequality. this really is something that is bigger than the individual. as much as racism is incredibly personal to those who have been affected by it, this topic is actually incredibly impersonal in a lot of ways. our society still teaches us that whites are "superior," but not because this is stated directly so much anymore. it's the subtle thoughts that arise in one's mind, and that are quickly brushed aside... such as "oh he's black, can he do this job?" or "oh, this is a person of color, they're here to be warm and take care of my feelings and matters of physical labor." these sorts of thoughts or biases can operate subconsciously... they are absorbed through the media, through culture, through how one was raised. the grand sum of them results in systemic discrimination. so this is very much a cultural and systemic issue rather than a question of if individual people are racist or not. it's easy to condemn an individual racist, but the mass of more subtle and nuanced racism won't be touched by that.

i guess i'd also add that individuals with racist attitudes just aren't the problem exactly. sure, anyone can be "racist" regardless of their "race," but that doesn't really matter on a larger scale. in the u.s. things are tipped towards white privilege even if you can find 1,000,000 + blacks in the u.s. who hate white people without a doubt. focusing on the backlash of racial inequality just seems a bit pointless.

the other thing i was going to qualify on is that i don't think condemning individual racists is necessarily a good solution anyway. for non-violent people, talking out ones thought distortions and issues with others can do a lot to improve things. keeping it bottled up because there's no one to talk to about it just keeps it around longer.

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Originally Posted by inumbra

i don't entirely disagree with everything you have said. i guess the main thing that comes to mind is that the system stacks the cards against non-whites (in the u.s.). it's not about the individual and whether individual black people or white people are racist per their experiences, learning, whatever. it's that on the whole there is systemic inequality. blacks for instance are often associated with being less educated, less intelligent, less articulate, less capable, etc. this creates inequality even when it's largely accepted that discrimination based upon race is unacceptable. even well meaning people who don't see a particular bias operating in their decision making processes can act in ways that reinforce the inequality. this really is something that is bigger than the individual. as much as racism is incredibly personal to those who have been affected by it, this topic is actually incredibly impersonal in a lot of ways. our society still teaches us that whites are "superior," but not because this is stated directly so much anymore. it's the subtle thoughts that arise in one's mind, and that are quickly brushed aside... such as "oh he's black, can he do this job?" or "oh, this is a person of color, they're here to be warm and take care of my feelings and matters of physical labor." these sorts of thoughts or biases can operate subconsciously... they are absorbed through the media, through culture, through how one was raised. the grand sum of them results in systemic discrimination. so this is very much a cultural and systemic issue rather than a question of if individual people are racist or not. it's easy to condemn an individual racist, but the mass of more subtle and nuanced racism won't be touched by that.

i guess i'd also add that individuals with racist attitudes just aren't the problem exactly. sure, anyone can be "racist" regardless of their "race," but that doesn't really matter on a larger scale. in the u.s. things are tipped towards white privilege even if you can find 1,000,000 + blacks in the u.s. who hate white people without a doubt. focusing on the backlash of racial inequality just seems a bit pointless.

the other thing i was going to qualify on is that i don't think condemning individual racists is necessarily a good solution anyway. for non-violent people, talking out ones thought distortions and issues with others can do a lot to improve things. keeping it bottled up because there's no one to talk to about it just keeps it around longer.

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Well the system of actually helping the minorities (wealth redistribution, tough drug laws, etc) actually hurts minorities people more than it does help. And the system actually ends up getting the minorities to support their fucked up policies which restrict them.

I've been examining evolutionary psychology claims RE: dimorphism in male and female brains extruding into emotional disposition and career preferences. That women overwhelmingly go into fields with more human contact like medicine, as opposed to men, who tend to go into more mechanical subjects like engineering, could have an evolutionary explanation.

I don't think any serious evolutionary psychologist discounts the role of culture or circumstances though. One strong example (often brought up by evolutionary psychologists) is that women in poorer countries like China, India and the Muslim world tend to have enormous participation in technology fields. A possible explanation might be that such careers offer a "get out of poverty card," the irony being that richer, more egalitarian societies would engender more segregated work places.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

There are few arguments that baffle my mind as much as this one. I see it thrown around rather persistently as an excuse for sexism in the world. It is an moronic argument though and I'm going to tell you why.

1. Of the top 10 highest payed college majors in the US, every single one of them are dominated by men. In most of them the majors are only filled by about 10% women.

The 10 bottom majors are dominated by women.

2. Women are less likely to be consistent workers than men due to pregnancy and child care. Salary is something that is built up consistently over time, and when you don't have consistent work, it makes it very difficult to have a consistent rise in salary. Men are twice as likely to work 40 hour weeks as women.




When you actually look at the statistics for single women who do not have children , women earn 96% of what men do. Holy shit

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Yup. My thoughts (Which overlap with yours):

1. Women work more part-time jobs than men do. Part time-jobs pay less.

2. Women usually have less seniority than men. Less seniority means less money. But why less seniority? By woman’s own choice: Women tend to take years off to take care of children.

3. Women tend to take on flexible jobs with flexible hours. This means the pay tends to be lower.

4. Men on average tend to work more over-time. More over time, more money.

These are the facts.

Don’t be fooled by the DECEPTION that woman are discriminated against in terms of pay, this is simply false.

I think you guys are making the argument for equality. Women make less money and have less work seniority. And they are saddled with unpaid domestic labor. All of that information and more is acknowledged in this thread. These are problems.

Speaking from my own experience, I am simply expected to do far, far, far more than half of childcare and housework, and the men in my life blind themselves to the amount of work I do. It's not even real to them; they hardly notice it. When asked to do more, they will do one or two small things. I realize not every man is like this; I also realize that a lot of men who think they are not like this . . . actually are.

Right now I'm working in a job where I am indeed paid less than several men for equivalent work (I know what they're paid because my boss did a screenshare with me and happened to have an Excel doc open with everyone's salaries listed on it). Most of the work we do is exactly the same. But they have different job titles than I do, so if you were to measure our wages, we wouldn't be compared one-for-one because we are categorized differently even though we have such similar jobs. I'm not even earning 77 cents per their dollars, it's actually way, way less than that. And this is not the first time I've experienced this in a workplace where I'm employed.

Such as the big research company where I was the second woman they hired (the first was the girlfriend of a programmer) into a corps of between 50 and 100 researchers. Where every single person with any kind of managerial role was a man because when it was in startup they hired only men. Were they better? No. They had seniority, and it was built into the system. Or the job I took in a friend's restaurant, doing accounting work, in college. The man who had been there a couple of years longer and who had no direct oversight regarding my work, and largely did the same work as I did, was called a manager, and I wasn't, and he was paid twice what I was. (Again, because I worked in accounting it was perhaps inevitable that at some point I stumbled upon information regarding his pay rate.) And again, because our job titles differed and the work did not, we would not have been compared tit-for-tat in a study of wages.

Soon after seeing the pay difference, I lost my interest in doing that job. I also am losing interest in my present job, because it's a disheartening situation to see that I'm literally valued lower than other people doing the same work.

And I never took time off from working per se, in order to raise my kids. I have worked all this time, but even *having* kids means that unlike some people I work with, I get taken for someone who has split interests. Doesn't matter that I put in more than 40 hours a week. If at 5:30 everyone without kids is still grinding away on some project, and I need to go pick up my kid, then I am the one who appears less dedicated to the cause. And I can't help having noticed that when, for example, my ex-husband (rarely) said he needed to do something regarding my son rather than work, he was treated like a hero for it.

And in case you read this as an angry rant, which is pretty much how people hegemonically disenfranchised get read when they describe the effects of hegemony to the people it benefits, I'm actually just sad and fatigued as I write this. I don't really care about the 77 cents/dollar figure, it doesn't even begin to describe the scope of the issues involved.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

When you actually look at the statistics for single women who do not have children , women earn 96% of what men do. Holy shit

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keywords: "single women who do not have children." so what are women supposed to do, forever remain unmarried and childless in order to be fairly paid? what about the women who are married with kids? why should women have to deal with taking a massive pay cut because they decide, like most people in America do, to get married and have children? men do not have to worry about this; on the contrary, fatherhood helps their careers and salary.

"The Motherhood Penalty vs. the Fatherhood Bonus"

Discrimination is embedded in the system, not only against women but especially against women with children.

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One of the worst career moves a woman can make is to have children. Mothers are less likely to be hired for jobs, to be perceived as competent at work or to be paid as much as their male colleagues with the same qualifications. For men, meanwhile, having a child is good for their careers. They are more likely to be hired than childless men, and tend to be paid more after they have children. These differences persist even after controlling for factors like the hours people work, the types of jobs they choose and the salaries of their spouses. So the disparity is not because mothers actually become less productive employees and fathers work harder when they become parents — but because employers expect them to.

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“Employers read fathers as more stable and committed to their work; they have a family to provide for, so they’re less likely to be flaky,” Ms. Budig said. “That is the opposite of how parenthood by women is interpreted by employers. The conventional story is they work less and they’re more distractible when on the job.”

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Men with children are paid the most. Childless, unmarried women come close ($0.96 for every man's $1.00), but once they get married and have kids, the pay gap widens.

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Ms. Budig found that on average, men’s earnings increased more than 6 percent when they had children (if they lived with them), while women’s decreased 4 percent for each child they had. Her study was based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth from 1979 to 2006, which tracked people’s labor market activities over time. Childless, unmarried women earn 96 cents for every dollar a man earns, while married mothers earn 76 cents, widening the gap.

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Resumes/applications from men that imply fatherhood get called back more often, and offered much more pay than women whose resumes/applications imply motherhood.

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Ms. Correll co-wrote a study at Cornell in which the researchers sent fake résumés to hundreds of employers. They were identical, except on some there was a line about being a member of the parent-teacher association, suggesting that the applicant was a parent. Mothers were half as likely to be called back, while fathers were called back slightly more often than the men whose résumés did not mention parenthood. In a similar study done in a laboratory, Ms. Correll asked participants how much they would pay job applicants if they were employers. Mothers were offered on average $11,000 less than childless women and $13,000 less than fathers.

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Hierarchy of people that employers value: Fathers > Childless women > Childless men > Mothers.

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In her research, Ms. Correll found that employers rate fathers as the most desirable employees, followed by childless women, childless men and finally mothers. They also hold mothers to harsher performance standards and are less lenient when they are late.

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Originally Posted by glam

keywords: "single women who do not have children." so what are women supposed to do, forever remain unmarried and childless in order to be fairly paid? what about the women who are married with kids? why should women have to deal with taking a massive pay cut because they decide, like most people in America do, to get married and have children? men do not have to worry about this; on the contrary, fatherhood helps their careers and salary.

"The Motherhood Penalty vs. the Fatherhood Bonus"

Discrimination is embedded in the system, not only against women but especially against women with children.



Men with children are paid the most. Childless, unmarried women come close ($0.96 for every man's $1.00), but once they get married and have kids, the pay gap widens.


Resumes/applications from men that imply fatherhood get called back more often, and offered much more pay than women whose resumes/applications imply motherhood.


Hierarchy of people that employers value: Fathers > Childless women > Childless men > Mothers.

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Let me ask you, do you think it is more likely for a married woman to seek engineering jobs, or do you think it is more likely for an unmarried childless woman to seek engineering jobs? That is where the discrepancy is coming in. They aren't making less money, they are working easier jobs... working less consistent jobs. If a married woman with children was an engineer who was a consistent employee she'd make on par with a man.

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Originally Posted by GOLDEN

I think you guys are making the argument for equality. Women make less money and have less work seniority. And they are saddled with unpaid domestic labor. All of that information and more is acknowledged in this thread. These are problems.

Speaking from my own experience, I am simply expected to do far, far, far more than half of childcare and housework, and the men in my life blind themselves to the amount of work I do. It's not even real to them; they hardly notice it. When asked to do more, they will do one or two small things. I realize not every man is like this; I also realize that a lot of men who think they are not like this . . . actually are.

Right now I'm working in a job where I am indeed paid less than several men for equivalent work (I know what they're paid because my boss did a screenshare with me and happened to have an Excel doc open with everyone's salaries listed on it). Most of the work we do is exactly the same. But they have different job titles than I do, so if you were to measure our wages, we wouldn't be compared one-for-one because we are categorized differently even though we have such similar jobs. I'm not even earning 77 cents per their dollars, it's actually way, way less than that. And this is not the first time I've experienced this in a workplace where I'm employed.

Such as the big research company where I was the second woman they hired (the first was the girlfriend of a programmer) into a corps of between 50 and 100 researchers. Where every single person with any kind of managerial role was a man because when it was in startup they hired only men. Were they better? No. They had seniority, and it was built into the system. Or the job I took in a friend's restaurant, doing accounting work, in college. The man who had been there a couple of years longer and who had no direct oversight regarding my work, and largely did the same work as I did, was called a manager, and I wasn't, and he was paid twice what I was. (Again, because I worked in accounting it was perhaps inevitable that at some point I stumbled upon information regarding his pay rate.) And again, because our job titles differed and the work did not, we would not have been compared tit-for-tat in a study of wages.

Soon after seeing the pay difference, I lost my interest in doing that job. I also am losing interest in my present job, because it's a disheartening situation to see that I'm literally valued lower than other people doing the same work.

And I never took time off from working per se, in order to raise my kids. I have worked all this time, but even *having* kids means that unlike some people I work with, I get taken for someone who has split interests. Doesn't matter that I put in more than 40 hours a week. If at 5:30 everyone without kids is still grinding away on some project, and I need to go pick up my kid, then I am the one who appears less dedicated to the cause. And I can't help having noticed that when, for example, my ex-husband (rarely) said he needed to do something regarding my son rather than work, he was treated like a hero for it.

And in case you read this as an angry rant, which is pretty much how people hegemonically disenfranchised get read when they describe the effects of hegemony to the people it benefits, I'm actually just sad and fatigued as I write this. I don't really care about the 77 cents/dollar figure, it doesn't even begin to describe the scope of the issues involved.

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I think discrimination does exist, I'm not arguing against that. I think there are places that have very backwards policies in place which prohibit certain groups to fully realize their potential. The problem I have with the whole 77 cent thing is it makes it sound like there are no opportunities in society at all for female workers and that's BS. It is possible that you just got hired by a misogynistic company.

In response to the men in your life. Why do you allow them to do that? Tell them to fuck off. Find someone that cares about you. I've seen men get into similar relationships as well where the female just kind of chills out and the guy tries really hard to take care of them all and pretty much runs himself to death. The people in these relationships convince themselves that things are going to get better, that things will change... but they never do. Eventually the person has to take control of their life or they will allow the leeches of the world to suck from them everything they have. This isn't a perfect world, fucked up things take place. There are no Disney endings.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

I think discrimination does exist, I'm not arguing against that. I think there are places that have very backwards policies in place which prohibit certain groups to fully realize their potential. The problem I have with the whole 77 cent thing is it makes it sound like there are no opportunities in society at all for female workers and that's BS. It is possible that you just got hired by a misogynistic company.

In response to the men in your life. Why do you allow them to do that? Tell them to fuck off. Find someone that cares about you. I've seen men get into similar relationships as well where the female just kind of chills out and the guy tries really hard to take care of them all and pretty much runs himself to death. The people in these relationships convince themselves that things are going to get better, that things will change... but they never do. Eventually the person has to take control of their life or they will allow the leeches of the world to suck from them everything they have. This isn't a perfect world, fucked up things take place. There are no Disney endings.

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Because, for example, my husband is a decent person who does care about me and tries to be supportive. He just doesn't get it. He doesn't see what I see and so many women see, because that's the nature of the inequality beast, it acts semi-invisibly and sets things up to seem natural, and for those who are favored the world just looks different, it's like a different lens. And looking through that lens from Day One can make even a fundamentally good person behave selfishly. What it can enable an ill-intentioned person to do is a whole 'nother tale.

I haven't found a superhero guy who isn't affected by the way most human societies are structured, and I don't think such a person exists. And if I say, well, fuck this, regarding every man in my life, I'll be in even worse material condition.

In my experience and observation, there's nothing like raising kids to expose how little things have actually changed, at least in the United States.

@GOLDEN, wow, that was a very moving and convincing account. Yes, you are right, those things @Hitta said are true, but you really made the picture clear. Also @glam had sobering points. Your story, Golden, brings to mind for me the the work world and what it was like for women depicted in the Mad Men series my husband and I watched this winter (Netflix). I imagine you've probably seen it; its popular. The 60's weren't so long ago, and in spite of superficial appearances to the contrary, things just haven't changed so much at core.

And something else came to mind. My neighbor who watches my Mom while we go to Mass is downsizing to move, and her house is like a library, and she keeps bringing me books (but my house is like a library too!:eek:). Among her offerings was an old 1980s faded paperback, Games Mother Never Taught You, by Betty Harragan. I read it because I had never read anything like it, and I found it fascinating, revealing aspects of truths of the work world that I never would have considered. It really stuck with me. It helps to know the unwritten "rules of the game" because apparently, our gut feelings, personal principles about how we think we should go about things are not always the things that work. There's something more there. Another thing I learned from this book is that our woman's intuition combined with knowing the unwritten rules can give us a leg up in the game . So I highly recommend it to you, in your situation! Many are in print, so you can get used ones for pennies plus shipping.

I agree completely with this reviewer on Amazon:

"Tells you the rules of business very clearly...... and if you weren't either a football player in high school or in the military you don't know them. It's written for women, but any men that weren't jocks or military need to read this too. I used to wonder why I got in trouble at work -- now I know and don't do it anymore. I'm getting well paid for my work, get along with my co-workers and management, and my career is on track. I recommend this book to everyone I know, the few who actually read it get the same results I got. It's a little dated, but don't let that stop you. The corporate culture (at least in the United States) hasn't changed much this century and it's not likely to change anytime soon. Some of the details she presents may be different, the general principles are still completely current. Also, she's a fun writer and it's a good read."

Golden, am I recalling correctly that you are married to your Dual? Even if he doesn't get this situation, I am sure he is peace to you, and that is something you need, and it seems to me as if God saw you needed that and blessed you with your Dual. Also I feel He urges me to pray for you, that you find satisfactory and rewarding work, so I am going to do that, by asking intercession of St. Joseph the worker and St. Dymphna. :yup:

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Originally Posted by Hitta

Let me ask you, do you think it is more likely for a married woman to seek engineering jobs, or do you think it is more likely for an unmarried childless woman to seek engineering jobs? That is where the discrepancy is coming in. They aren't making less money, they are working easier jobs... working less consistent jobs. If a married woman with children was an engineer who was a consistent employee she'd make on par with a man.

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i don't know how you can argue that point when i've already shown you that isn't the case. i think you're totally missing the larger point here: the inequality women face is less about the "77 cents" statistic and more about systemic, built-in discrimination that is hard to qualify or address directly. equally qualified women doing the same jobs as men are usually paid less, especially women with children because they are automatically, unfairly perceived to be less dedicated to their jobs. men with children do not face this kind of discrimination. i quoted specific statistics and facts to show you how this systemic discrimination manifests in terms of salary and job opportunities, but you're just completely ignoring them. you are also dismissing cases of discrimination as outliers, but the truth is that this is an endemic, widespread issue and not something that is an exception to the rule.

to further address your last point, female engineers doing the same job as men don't get paid the same. specifically, they get paid 82% of what their male counterparts do: http://www.aauw.org/2015/04/14/women...anged-in-stem/

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Originally Posted by glam

i don't know how you can argue that point when i've already shown you that isn't the case. i think you're totally missing the larger point here: the inequality women face is less about the "77 cents" statistic and more about systemic, built-in discrimination that is hard to qualify or address directly. equally qualified women doing the same jobs as men are usually paid less, especially women with children because they are automatically, unfairly perceived to be less dedicated to their jobs. men with children do not face this kind of discrimination. i quoted specific statistics and facts to show you how this systemic discrimination manifests in terms of salary and job opportunities, but you're just completely ignoring them. you are also dismissing cases of discrimination as outliers, but the truth is that this is an endemic, widespread issue and not something that is an exception to the rule.

to further address your last point, female engineers doing the same job as men don't get paid the same. specifically, they get paid 82% of what their male counterparts do: http://www.aauw.org/2015/04/14/women...anged-in-stem/

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The pay gap exists because the employer doesn't feel as though he can rely on married women with children as much as a woman that's unmarried without children. It is common sense as to why this would be the case. Married women with children are going to work less hours. Married women with children are going to be be less consistent employees on average. Salary increases occur with sustainability.

TBH we live in a society where everyone wants to breed, but only certain percentage should. We live in a world full of breeders, where someones happiness is linked to whether or not they have children. Religious institutions have pretty much implanted this idea into our heads that we must reproduce, and quite frankly it is a pretty ignorant philosophy. When the abortion rate became legal in the 70s, the crime rate went down substantially. One could actually make the argument that if you are a single pregnant girl, that not aborting the baby is murder as opposed to the other way around that religious institutions like to propose. Having children should be financially difficult to ward of people from the idea of having children. And maybe there's some semblance reasoning why when the education of women in a society goes up, the birth rate goes down.

Married women with children are never going to get paid as much as as their unimpeded counterparts. The reason is that employers are trying to make money. There is no way they can fix this without causing some other far more fucked up issue to occur in society. If they ever did some sort of alteration in the pay of women that have children, the birth rate would skyrocket.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

The pay gap exists because the employer doesn't feel as though he can rely on married women with children as much as a woman that's unmarried without children. It is common sense as to why this would be the case. Married women with children are going to work less hours. Married women with children are going to be be less consistent employees on average. Salary increases occur with sustainability.

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and that right there is discrimination. you don't know when hiring someone how long that person will stay. to make assumptions based upon gender and if that person has kids is discriminatory. really your post is kind of saying that employers find it more convenient to employ men with kids than women with kids. of course this will create a perpetuating cycle. in a couple, the parent earning more money will probably be the one who keeps the consistent f/t job. if it's possible for one of them to work less, the lower earning parent may then spend more time with the kids doing the domestic work. this lower paid parent is usually the mother.

inequality is not justifiable on the basis of what is more convenient according to the status quo. but the status quo often ends up being used in defense of discrimination as though it just isn't possible to run the system in a way that benefits everyone equally, not just those in privileged groups.

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Originally Posted by inumbra

and that right there is discrimination. you don't know when hiring someone how long that person will stay. to make assumptions based upon gender and if that person has kids is discriminatory. really your post is kind of saying that employers find it more convenient to employ men with kids than women with kids. of course this will create a perpetuating cycle. in a couple, the parent earning more money will probably be the one who keeps the consistent f/t job. if it's possible for one of them to work less, the lower earning parent may then spend more time with the kids doing the domestic work. this lower paid parent is usually the mother.

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They don't really have to make any assumptions at all for the pay gap to exist. Married women with children work far fewer hours. This lowers their salary quite a bit. If you have the fewer hours being worked, or breaks being taken for childcare or whatever, they will be less likely to get raises in salary. While I'm not saying that legitimate discrimination doesn't exist in the workforce, because it probably does.... you don't need discrimination to get a pay gap. It's just common sense and practical for business owners.

I would really love to see a statistic on female v.s. male salaries in companies that have female managers.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/585...r-men-earnings

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Originally Posted by Hitta

They don't really have to make any assumptions at all for the pay gap to exist.

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if this is in consideration in the hiring process it certainly is an assumption and it is discrimination. the individual applicant is being judged on the basis of a group that applicant belongs to.

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Married women with children work far fewer hours. This lowers their salary quite a bit. If you have the fewer hours being worked, or breaks being taken for childcare or whatever, they will be less likely to get raises in salary.

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right. because childcare is woman's work in our society. paying mothers less than fathers basically keeps it that way. there are two parents, yet only one of them is considered the child rearing one, and all the work involved in that is discounted anyway. women are just inconsistent baby machines who should stay at home with the kids. the end.

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While I'm not saying that legitimate discrimination doesn't exist in the workforce, because it probably does.... you don't need discrimination to get a pay gap. It's just common sense and practical for business owners.

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i love how you don't even see how this is discrimination! for one, if this thinking is in the hiring process like i said, there is no question it's discrimination. for two, perhaps the very practice of increasing salary over time and rewarding consistent employment is itself something to call into question. eta: or perhaps the grind of work should be looked at... why is it that we all need to work 8 hour chunks or whatever? is it possible to still run society and be more flexible? (pretty sure it is!)

seriously you can apply your style of argumentation to why women weren't allowed in certain college programs in the past. "well, all the students are men and there are only men's bathrooms so like there just isn't anywhere to house a woman in this environment." i've seriously read college rejection letters to women from the 50s saying shit like this. basically society doesn't *want* to accommodate for those who do not belong to privileged groups. change is necessary for equality and a lot of people in a lot of systems don't wanna change, often simply because it just isn't "feasible" aka convenient.

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Originally Posted by inumbra

if this is in consideration in the hiring process it certainly is an assumption and it is discrimination. the individual applicant is being judged on the basis of a group that applicant belongs to.

right. because childcare is woman's work in our society. paying mothers less than fathers basically keeps it that way. there are two parents, yet only one of them is considered the child rearing one, and all the work involved in that is discounted anyway. women are just inconsistent baby machines who should stay at home with the kids. the end.

i love how you don't even see how this is discrimination! for one, if this thinking is in the hiring process like i said, there is no question it's discrimination. for two, perhaps the very practice of increasing salary over time and rewarding consistent employment is itself something to call into question.

seriously you can apply your style of argumentation to why women weren't allowed in certain college programs in the past. "well, all the students are men and there are only men's bathrooms so like there just isn't anywhere to house a woman in this environment." i've seriously read college rejection letters to women from the 50s saying shit like this. basically society doesn't *want* to accommodate for those who do not belong to privileged groups. change is necessary for equality and a lot of people in a lot of systems don't wanna change, often simply because it just isn't "feasible" aka convenient.

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You act as though I told women to get into relationships with men and become the dominate child raising parent. What people do in their own homes is their business, if the majority of the world wants to run their household like that then who am I to judge. It is a pretty common technique to raising children in K selected species. There are quite a few exceptions though, so I mean it's not written in stone. It doesn't have to be that way. It is probable though that there is some value to the family model that we currently have in society.

Also you are right, I don't see discrimination, I see businessmen that want to make as much money as possible. The only thing they are discriminate against is low earnings. Even with female CEOs and managers, for some reason the pay didn't spike among female employees. You'd think they'd be less discriminate.

I like the idea of education being accessible enough so that mothers (even people who've been laid off / working for a chauvinist boss) can quickly get back in the game. The US is really bad at education, lol.

Also, cheap daycare.

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Originally Posted by xerx

I like the idea of education being accessible enough so that mothers (even people who've been laid off / working for a chauvinist boss) can quickly get back in the game. The US is really bad at education, lol.

Also, cheap daycare.

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See now that is actually a positive suggestion. That would help quite a bit, and is a much better suggestion than blanketing everything by calling it discrimination.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

Also you are right, I don't see discrimination, I see businessmen that want to make as much money as possible. The only thing they are discriminate against is low earnings. Even with female CEOs and managers, for some reason the pay didn't spike among female employees. You'd think they'd be less discriminate.

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women aren't necessarily less discriminatory towards women than men are. i think the main thing i'm seeing is that you don't really see a systemic problem. the system creates these issues... the individuals within it learn the system and perpetuate it. although the privileged benefit most on average, that doesn't mean everyone with more privileged status is an evil discriminator and everyone with less privileged status is free of all possible bias. really, most people are just people, and i think a good 2/3 of them at least are probably well meaning. as i was trying to point out earlier, this problem is a lot bigger than the individual.

also @Hitta, if the stuff you mentioned is considered in the hiring process and used to reject an applicant it's actually illegal because it is discrimination based on sex. so it's not just that i'm saying it's discrimination.

see http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/ and http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/i...tal_status.cfm

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Originally Posted by Hitta

See now that is actually a positive suggestion.

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All my suggestions are good suggestions.

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Originally Posted by inumbra

women aren't necessarily less discriminatory towards women than men are. i think the main thing i'm seeing is that you don't really see a systemic problem. the system creates these issues... the individuals within it learn the system and perpetuate it. although the privileged benefit most on average, that doesn't mean everyone with more privileged status is an evil discriminator and everyone with less privileged status is free of all possible bias. really, most people are just people, and i think a good 2/3 of them at least are probably well meaning. as i was trying to point out earlier, this problem is a lot bigger than the individual.

also @Hitta, if the stuff you mentioned is considered in the hiring process and used to reject an applicant it's actually illegal because it is discrimination based on gender. so it's not just that i'm saying it's discrimination.

see http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/ and http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/i...tal_status.cfm

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If you could change something, legally speaking... what would you change? What do you want the system to do differently? Do you want laws passed or something that prohibits these "discriminatory" policies? I can promise you the repercussions of doing this would be substantial.

I'm going to flat out say that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, imo, was the worst possible thing that could have happened for African Americans, and I actually think it's one of the reasons that they have been pigeon holed into poverty.

It's not just what money you give people but also the products they have to spend that money on.

http://www.businessinsider.com/women...an-mens-2015-4

Like women razors are more money then men's razors cuz ... why? It's ridiculous how we genderize things so much, the girl razors are pink and the men's razors are blue. It's a fucking razor. The important thing is you use it to shave your body with....

I'm sure of course we can all list the many reasons men suffer as well in society (this was never a race to see who can be the world's biggest victim like unhealthy social justice warriors do - but still, there is shitty unfair things that happen in the world with people unable/unwilling to seeing how they are playing a part in it), the point is it's all unfair and sucky... men don't talk about their struggles as much only cuz we say that feelings and vulnerability are weaknesses in men. But men are much more likeable people when we are strong enough to share our struggles (w/o being whiney and silly and making up untrue stuff...)

and LoL, people can support traditional family relationships without being misogynistic/homophobic douchebags.

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Originally Posted by BulletsAndDoves

It's not just what money you give people but also the products they have to spend that money on.

http://www.businessinsider.com/women...an-mens-2015-4

Like women razors are more money then men's razors cuz ... why? It's ridiculous how we genderize things so much, the girl razors are pink and the men's razors are blue. It's a fucking razor. The important thing is you use it to shave your body with....

I'm sure of course we can all list the many reasons men suffer as well in society (this was never a race to see who can be the world's biggest victim like unhealthy social justice warriors do - but still, there is shitty unfair things that happen in the world with people unable/unwilling to seeing how they are playing a part in it), the point is it's all unfair and sucky... men don't talk about their struggles as much only cuz we say that feelings and vulnerability are weaknesses in men. But men are much more likeable people when we are strong enough to share our struggles (w/o being whiney and silly and making up untrue stuff...)

and LoL, people can support traditional family relationships without being misogynistic/homophobic douchebags.

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So basically you are saying that women buy the one that is more expensive even though the male one is the same exact thing?

Gender roles are limiting, not going to dispute that one. I don't think passing laws to prevent them from developing in the marketplace is the right way to go about it. It doesn't solve the central problem and will cause more problems than it should in the long run.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

TBH we live in a society where everyone wants to breed, but only certain percentage should. We live in a world full of breeders, where someones happiness is linked to whether or not they have children. Religious institutions have pretty much implanted this idea into our heads that we must reproduce, and quite frankly it is a pretty ignorant philosophy. When the abortion rate became legal in the 70s, the crime rate went down substantially. One could actually make the argument that if you are a single pregnant girl, that not aborting the baby is murder as opposed to the other way around that religious institutions like to propose. Having children should be financially difficult to ward of people from the idea of having children. And maybe there's some semblance reasoning why when the education of women in a society goes up, the birth rate goes down. .

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:stroke:

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Originally Posted by Hitta

... It is a pretty common technique to raising children in K selected species....

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:hide:

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Originally Posted by Eliza Thomason

:stroke:


:hide:

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:gentleman:

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Originally Posted by William

Good analysis. Pretty much sums it up.

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Having said this so late in the discussion, I wonder if you then read GOLDEN's and glam's posts, and if that affected your view of how it sums up?

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Originally Posted by Account

Why women make less than men. :popcorn:

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... :deadhorse:

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Originally Posted by Hitta

If you could change something, legally speaking... what would you change? What do you want the system to do differently? Do you want laws passed or something that prohibits these "discriminatory" policies? I can promise you the repercussions of doing this would be substantial.

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i don't know. the main thing that concerns me is that families are raising kids with both parents frequently unavailable. i think that's a terrible way to do things. my objection i guess is actually mostly towards the work world and corporations which i think are basically turning the human population into slaves and it's fucking over our future generations. it should be possible for one of two parents to spend way more time with the kids so they can be raised properly. it should also be possible for parents to switch off on this, which is to say it doesn't have to be the role of the father or mother primarily... but just that one of them is able to invest enough time to it at all times. i love how we all spend our days pushing paper and on other pointless work activities, bored out of our minds, many working way over 40 hours a week even... all for what? while our personal and spiritual selves are neglected, and our kids are especially neglected. so i want "equal opportunity" but i don't care who is working what job or who prefers what role and when. i just want gender out of the equation. if we really did have an equal society we would probably end up with some patterns that might reflect trends of biological sex differences, which is fine.

anyway i don't know how to fix this shit.

i'm going to have to disagree strongly regarding the civil rights act btw. that's kind of the bedrock that really made injustice on account of race (among other things) unacceptable. of course, it did not end racism. it's going to take more than that. but to me it stands in defense of citizens, saying that yes everyone is a citizen and we are all entitled to the same rights. and frankly a society that segregates based on race is not one in which i feel particularly safe. racism is disturbing, dangerous and deadly.

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Originally Posted by William

That's a pretty crazy statement. Saving someone's life and giving them a chance to live should never be seen as murder. Props for thinking against the religious brainwashing, but this independent thought is not much better.



That's another pretty crazy statement. Making the economy tough to stop people from having children makes you an asshole, and you're being brainwashed by the stupid population control arguments. I personally hope for a better economy, better jobs, better pay, and more money for happier lifestyles for everyone.



Correlation does not equal causation. I propose that education of women increases as the economy worsens, when women have to work more to help pay for household/family expenses. Ie. 50 years ago in America, families could live off of 1 full-time worker, 1 breadwinner, whereas now it's common that both parents work at least full-time each. The education of women increasing isn't causing the birth rate to go down, it's the worse economy that's causing the birth rate to go down (among other things) as having children becomes more and more financially difficult.

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I didn't say that the economy should be tough, I said that having children should be tough. Fortunately for society, most people that would make horrible parents cannot afford to raise kids, so they don't do it. If suddenly a law was put into affect that made it so that single moms could had more income, this would actually cause more problems then it would help. This would make it far more accessible for single moms to have children. When I was a tax-preparer it was fairly obvious that the majority of those that had children shouldn't have had children. Yet there was an irony to it, the tax laws actually made it beneficial for them to have children, so they had them anyways. You should go to a tax preparer office, it is like child lottery occurring, as they all really badly want to sort out how they are going to use the children to get as much money as they possibly can....sometimes up to 7-9k$. It isn't just an argument on population control, it is an argument on internal population capacity... meaning our standard of living isn't high enough to warrant an increased birth rate. If you want to see how bad a society can get, increase the population growth of the US by another 15%. If childcare improvements can be made so that women don't spend as much down time(education, overall standard of living, etc), then the incomes of married childbearers would increase, as it should increase as this means our overall population capacity has increased. This isn't something you can artificially stimulate into working out for you.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

I didn't say that the economy should be tough, I said that having children should be tough. Fortunately for society, most people that would make horrible parents cannot afford to raise kids, so they don't do it.

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i beg to differ. from my personal observations, society is full of people who really shouldn't have had kids.

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Originally Posted by inumbra

i beg to differ. from my personal observations, society is full of people who really shouldn't have had kids.

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that was sarcasm

i don't know - some of the attitudes displayed in this thread are just so disheartening that i have little desire to keep posting in it. i've barely started my career, nor do i plan to have children for years yet, but i already worry about having to deal with these attitudes from men who think it's perfectly fair to pay me less because of my sex and ability to have children. i'm ambitious, but i also want to have a family one day. but as i long as i work in the US, i'm always going to be bugged by the thought that i'm probably getting paid less than my male coworkers - and for what? if i stay here, it's likely i will eventually come around to the point where i'll have to decide whether to make sacrifices to my career, in order to balance family life at home. because you know, the profit-motive interests of business owners and companies are obviously much more important considerations than ensuring fair compensation of their female workers - especially mothers. how silly of me, i guess i should be thanking the forces of the marketplace for discouraging me from having children, apparently :8* (!) i should probably just move to another country to work, seriously...

from my perspective, the status quo in America will be difficult to change without a real change in overall societal attitudes, including general expectations of both women and men. there are some government policies that could help push things in the right direction, however:

- affordable, publicly-funded child care for working parents
- mandatory paid maternal/paternal leave for all new parents, for a reasonable time period
- better enforcement of current labor laws, e.g. harsher penalties for companies who illegally implement "pay secrecy" rules for their employees

however, America is quite conservative, within the Western world at least. my perception is that Americans overall value the rights of businesses more than the rights of workers - "unions" and "socialism" are practically dirty words here, and people still cling to fantasy notions like "the market always knows best!" so given the current political climate, i don't currently have much faith that this will change soon.

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Originally Posted by glam

however, America is quite conservative, within the Western world at least. my perception is that Americans overall value the rights of businesses more than the rights of workers - "unions" and "socialism" are practically dirty words here, and people still cling to fantasy notions like "the market always knows best!" so given the current political climate, i don't currently have much faith that this will change soon.

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Nope, America is just like Europe... 19th century Europe.

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Originally Posted by glam

i don't know - some of the attitudes displayed in this thread are just so disheartening that i have little desire to keep posting in it. i've barely started my career, nor do i plan to have children for years yet, but i already worry about having to deal with these attitudes from men who think it's perfectly fair to pay me less because of my sex and ability to have children. i'm ambitious, but i also want to have a family one day. but as i long as i work in the US, i'm always going to be bugged by the thought that i'm probably getting paid less than my male coworkers - and for what? if i stay here, it's likely i will eventually come around to the point where i'll have to decide whether to make sacrifices to my career, in order to balance family life at home. because you know, the profit-motive interests of business owners and companies are obviously much more important considerations than ensuring fair compensation of their female workers - especially mothers. how silly of me, i guess i should be thanking the forces of the marketplace for discouraging me from having children, apparently :8* (!) i should probably just move to another country to work, seriously...

from my perspective, the status quo in America will be difficult to change without a real change in overall societal attitudes, including general expectations of both women and men. there are some government policies that could help push things in the right direction, however:

- affordable, publicly-funded child care for working parents
- mandatory paid maternal/paternal leave for all new parents, for a reasonable time period
- better enforcement of current labor laws, e.g. harsher penalties for companies who illegally implement "pay secrecy" rules for their employees

however, America is quite conservative, within the Western world at least. my perception is that Americans overall value the rights of businesses more than the rights of workers - "unions" and "socialism" are practically dirty words here, and people still cling to fantasy notions like "the market always knows best!" so given the current political climate, i don't currently have much faith that this will change soon.

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I don't believe women should be paid less for the same work. I think that when that happens it is rather unjust. You don't have a 23 cent pay gap though just because businesses are sexist, they do it because it is practical. It sucks, but that is the truth of it. The policies you recommend would not help. They don't get to the fundamental issue. The only thing that would change the amount that married child caring women are paid is if the way that child care is handled would change, and the only way that is going to happen is if we make significant strides in that via education, the male becoming more involved in childcare, standard of living increases, etc. You've misinterpreted my point as saying that the pay gap should exist, whereas I'm saying that the pay gap exists because of a more fundamental problem.. a problem with the fundamentals of the economy. There is a reason that women can't leave their homes, work less hours.... it is because the stand of living... our internal economic capacity is lacking. Businesses pay for practical solutions to accommodate their businesses. 23 cents is a giant gap, I think most people underestimate just how large that is in terms of the overall populace. If you think that 23 cent gap is solely due to sex discrimination, you really have a shitty outlook on humanity in general. I do think there is probably some legitimate discrimination in the labor force, but it's probably more like 4-7 cents per dollar. Also I think you also assume in your data that men are literally payed 23 cents more per dollar for the same amount of work, and that is not how the data is calculated. Men work more hours, if you work more hours... you get paid more. It isn't like the businesses are like "Oh I'm going to pay the woman 77 cents for every dollar the man earns." That is a misinterpretation of the statistics.

Truthfully, socialism is less of a dirty word these days in the US than Capitalism. I'd go as far to argue that there are things that China does that are more conducive to free trade and free enterprise than things that are done in American markets. The US doesn't produce anything, it is very shitty when it comes to valuing it precious resources. Whereas countries like China hoard gold, silver, or any precious resource they can get their hands on. Resources and production are wealth, not some GDP number that is easily manipulated. American hasn't really practiced capitalism for a very very long time, probably since the mid to late 1800s. The US has a propensity to inflate bubbles, which is the only reason in my opinion that the market is doing well right now. It is fairly easy for it to appear strides are being made in the market when you have as much liquidity being pumped into it via 0% interest rates as we do currently have. They can't raise the interest rates without causing a recession, and they are going to keep stalling rate hike and probably implement another round of QE. The policies that socialism support actually make it much harder on women than it does ease their issues. America doesn't believe in free markets, it believes in populism. The masses are pretty much mind controlled by business interests that support news networks like CNN or Fox News. Even the "conservatives" are highly Keynesian big business thinkers. They state that the unemployment rate is 5.5%, and they flash it on the news daily as if to prove that some progress as being made. It is such a cooked number. The only thing that number represents is how many people have left the labor market. As a matter of fact, the labor participation rate as of now is the LOWEST it has been since the 1970s sitting at 62.3%. They try to cover this up by saying that it is the baby boomers that are leaving the workforce, but it such a scam. The old people are the ones with jobs, while college graduates struggle for work. The labor force participation for college graduates is atrocious.

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Originally Posted by xerx

Nope, America is just like Europe... 19th century Europe.

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sorry, can you clarify what you mean by that in this context?

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Originally Posted by glam

sorry, can you clarify what you mean by that in this context?

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It was a sarcastic joke about how the USA is just as advanced / enlightened as other Western countries (namely, Europe) on the issue of labor rights, but only if you compared the USA with 19th century versions of those countries, a time when Europe had really shitty labor rights.

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Originally Posted by xerx

It was a sarcastic joke about how the USA is just as advanced / enlightened as other Western countries (namely, Europe) on the issue of labor rights, but only if you compared the USA with 19th century versions of those countries, a time when Europe had really shitty labor rights.

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:shifty: ok yes i see... i was overthinking, i thought you were making an obscure reference to something that i had no idea about, lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xerx

It was a sarcastic joke about how the USA is just as advanced / enlightened as other Western countries (namely, Europe) on the issue of labor rights, but only if you compared the USA with 19th century versions of those countries, a time when Europe had really shitty labor rights.

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The European pay gap is actually worse than the US. The only countries that has any sort of obvious increase in pay gap wages over the US is Norway (Ireland is lower too, but I mean it is kind of unfair to count it because of the birth rate)@ 79%(US @ 77%)of what men make with the majority of the countries falling below the US.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

The European pay gap is actually worse than the US. The only country that has any sort of obvious increase in pay gap wages over the US is Norway @ 79%(US @ 77%)of what men make with the majority of the countries falling below the US.

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Not according to these stats from the European Commission. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statist...gap_statistics

The financial sector is pretty bad, but the gap, in most cases, is less than the USA's 23%. Public sector did better than private sector. I'm not really qualified to gauge the accuracy of these statistics vis. a vis. others from different sources, though, and I suspect neither is anyone else debating this shit on the Internet.


Gender pay gap by age:

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statist...281%29_new.png

By business sector:

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statist...ap_by_NACE.PNG

Public vs. private spheres:

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statist...ic_control.PNG

...

But I was really talking about labor rights in general.

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Originally Posted by xerx

Not according to these stats from the European Commission. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statist...gap_statistics

The financial sector is pretty bad, but the gap, in most cases, is less than the USA's 23%. Public sector did better than private sector. I'm not really qualified to gauge the accuracy of these statistics vis. a vis. others from different sources, though, and I suspect neither is anyone else debating this shit on the Internet.


Gender pay gap by age:

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statist...281%29_new.png

By business sector:

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statist...ap_by_NACE.PNG

Public vs. private spheres:

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statist...ic_control.PNG

...

But I was really talking about labor rights in general.

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The way that that data is calculated is different than the 77 cent number that is calculated for the US. This is done by hourly pay, which is much different than gross wages which the 77 cent number is based on. You factor out the number of hours that someone works and that 77 cent number would go up. Also a few of them countries have substantially lower gap because of the birth rate as there is more available full time employees.

Women's hourly rate is about 84% of what Men make in the US.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

The way that that data is calculated is different than the 77 cent number that is calculated for the US. This is done by hourly pay, which is much different than gross wages which the 77 cent number is based on. You factor out the number of hours that someone works and that 77 cent number would go up. Also a few of them countries have substantially lower gap because of the birth rate as there is more available full time employees.

Women's hourly rate is about 84% of what Men make in the US.

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Here is an official OECD chart which puts the US' full time gap (~18%) as higher than a number of western / northern European countries, including Germany, France, UK, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Belgium, etc. New Zealand tops the list.

http://www.oecd.org/gender/data/genderwagegap.htm

But to be honest with you, I'm not really qualified to sift through all these statistics, so I'mma stop talking about them. I'm an engineer, I don't have the nuanced economics training to look for flaws or loopholes. That, and I can't rule out the possibility that you can find slightly contradictory statistics elsewhere, mainly because this shit doesn't have the same scientific rigor as physics. As such, don't think I'm accusing you of fabricating anything.

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Originally Posted by William

I get your perspective. You strike me more as an economic darwinist - that the people who earn more money and are more financially successful should then be able to have more children, those who can afford them more easily. It's not a bad perspective - it's a common human trait to want to protect the lives and well-being of future children, so they don't grow up in destitution, and also so that the people who actually work harder can be rewarded.

However, I see the more macro perspective of the economy - if you make pay/lifestyle easier to have, then the more successful/intelligent/etc. people will still rise to the top, as they do in any economy, but then they would be more afforded time/money to have more children. At the bottom, people would still have proportionately more children compared to the better economy, yes, but in a better economy with fewer tax handouts, like you mentioned, the incentive for the bottom few to have proportionately more children compared to tax favors would actually decrease, and limit the number of 'stupid' or 'unsuccessful' people from having more children, especially when they can't afford it. Keep in mind, in any economy, some people just want to have children and start their own families moreso than they care about money or career. So if you try to make things MORE financially difficult to have children, the opposite effect is created in the economy - the 'smart', 'successful' people who care about financial security will chase that stability longer and prolong have children longer, which may ultimately result in fewer children by smart people, while the 'stupid' 'unsuccessful' people will have children right away, resulting in more children by dumb people. This is essentially the situation currently in the US - the solution isn't to make things more difficult, but rather easier, and to cut tax handouts to the people who have multiple children beyond their own personal financial stability, a problem you see - so smart, successful people can afford to have more children and sooner, and stupid, unsuccessful people would have fewer children.

In the meantime, don't hate the players of the game. Hate the people who created the rules. It's a tough, ethical judgment to say some people strictly "shouldn't have had children". Keep in mind great people were born from poverty, came from nothing, and situations and power and money and status can change drastically over time.

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Has nothing to do with Socialism Darwinism as much as when you throw artificial stimulation in certain areas, there are always repercussions. If you are a fruit vendor and you are like "I can boost sells by picking all of my fruit", so you pick all of the fruit and for a while all the sells go up as you have a larger supply. Then all of your fruit goes bad and the vendor no longer has anything to sell and struggles to survive. So the fruit vendor learns from this, or some other fruit vendor comes about that does this better. This is the market, it adapts. The government doesn't adapt, it is like doing surgery with a hammer instead of a scalpel, it can never learn from its mistakes because it only has a limited amount of tools at its disposal. Government is highly un-adaptive. The government will keep picking the fruit over and over again. Then it'll plant more fruit to make up for the difference, and keep having the same inefficiencies that become more and more extreme as time goes on. This is a bubble, and bubbles eventually pop.

When the government continually pumps liquidity into the market, this creates a vast amount of inefficiencies. The markets respond positively to this because the liquidity gets distributed amongst shareholders. It is unsustainable though, eventually the government either quits pumping the liquidity into the markets and the interest rates rise, which causes a giant market collapse, or you keep pumping liquidity into the markets and you murder the dollar. I'm actually betting on the latter. Populations don't like to hear from their politicians that a collapse must take place to reorganize the market. So instead politicians keep printing money and pretending as if everything is getting better.

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Originally Posted by William

I think you may have missed the real brunt of what I was saying, Hitta. You're correct about artificial stimulation and government, but I'm not sure how you went on that tangent about general economic theory... I didn't mention stimulation or government in my post at all, not even once. You're correct in what you say, yes; and I'm quite familiar with stimulation, the woes of government, and bubbles, etc. But I was talking more about designing a system for the cycle of life in a society, and the blend between the economics and the ethics... maybe that part is a bit too airy for a discussion forum, or it went over your head a bit at least.

By the way, the term you're looking for is 'Social Darwinism', not 'Socialism Darwinism'. And while you're correct in the economic theory you spoke about in your tangent, it seems like you're just regurgitating what you recently learned.

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That was a typo. I know what social darwinism is, quite frankly I've probably studied more on evolutionary biology and psychology than you have, so get off your high horse.

The tangent I'm speaking of is quite important to my points. The wage gap exists for a reason, there is a reason that A) Females with children have less hours than men have and B) Females with children earn less money overall than men. Then you inspect the numbers and you learn that even women with children that work normal hours earn around the same that women without children do(about 96% of what males make). So the question is "Why do females with children work less than men?" And then you start dissecting the numbers even more and you come to realize that the amount of hours that males work after the family has a child increases.

Now I'm no employer, but I scoff at the idea that employers are sitting behind their desks and are like "Oh you are a father.... because of this we are going to give you more hours. This is our gift to you". That scenario is laughable and quite frankly ridiculous. Instead what happens is the male tries to increase his work output to hold together the family due to the female reducing her hours or leaving the labor force to take care of the child. It is not the employer's fault that women reduce their hours. You can scream at the system all you want, but you'd be completely full of shit. There probably is a discriminatory wage gape... but it is not 23%. More like 4-6 cents.

The point I'm trying to make about childbirth is that when you have a child, you are going to have cutbacks in your productive output regardless of whether it is the husband or the wife taking the hit. As a family, if this is somehow causing unbearable strain, you probably shouldn't have had the child as you can't support it properly. The giant 23% wage gap exists, not as a discriminatory component in how women are treated, but as a production roadblock to having kids. If you decreased the workhours of the male, and increased the hours of the female, you'd probably still have a very relate-able total income for the family. Truthfully it would probably be a bit less because to have the highest income per hour in a job, you have to have seniority and respect within the enterprise in which you are employed.

If there was some sort of counter to the fact that women are paid less(say you had some sort of credit that was given to women that allowed their income to soar), you'd end up having males leaving the work force gradually to take care of the children instead of the women. If the extra money was apart of liquidity injections you'd gradually have prices go up which would cause an increased diminishing of the middle class. Maybe 20-30 year we'll have a movement calling for the end of the wage gap, but instead of this time from women... we'd have men calling for it. And by that same logic, I'll state that the wage gap exists for a reason.

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Originally Posted by GOLDEN

And they are saddled with unpaid domestic labor. Speaking from my own experience, I am simply expected to do far, far, far more than half of childcare and housework, and the men in my life blind themselves to the amount of work I do. It's not even real to them; they hardly notice it. When asked to do more, they will do one or two small things. I realize not every man is like this; I also realize that a lot of men who think they are not like this . . . actually are.

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Most "unpaid domestic work" is entirely voluntary. My personal spaces are usually messy, unvacuumed. I don't really care. I don't have children, but I know people with children that live on either end of the spectrum: so called "white trash" that live in dumps and uptight WASPy types that are known to vacuum whenever their Christmas trees drop a few pine needles. Just as I'm sure there are people that always cook delicately prepared meals and those that eat junk everyday. It's a lifestyle choice. I don't really see why anyone should be compensated for what they do on their own time.


Of course, some level of childcare is legally required, and if you live in certain areas a degree of property care may be required by homeowner's associations, apartment owners, etc. But with the former, I think the current world's population is a testament to the margin of error allowed in raising children, and with the latter, again, where you choose to live is a choice.

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Originally Posted by glam

keywords: "single women who do not have children." so what are women supposed to do, forever remain unmarried and childless in order to be fairly paid? what about the women who are married with kids? why should women have to deal with taking a massive pay cut because they decide, like most people in America do, to get married and have children? men do not have to worry about this; on the contrary, fatherhood helps their careers and salary.

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unfortunately, biology has deemed that women will have huge gaps in employment if they choose motherhood. just as biology has deemed men relatively inconsequential in conception, and thus possessing of much free time & fairly expendable.


until we are all born from communal, petri dish grown wombs, I don't really see a structural fix for this. our sex is one aspect of our biology which restricts us, just as our solid bones and lack of wings prevent us from flying, or our lack of gills prevent us from breathing underwater.

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Originally Posted by BulletsAndDoves

Like women razors are more money then men's razors cuz ... why? It's ridiculous how we genderize things so much, the girl razors are pink and the men's razors are blue. It's a fucking razor. The important thing is you use it to shave your body with.....

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PROTIP: Women can buy men's razors.
If the plastic guards prove less than sufficient for shaving delicate areas on a women's body, then, volia! you now know why it costs more (i've used a woman's razor a couple of times before in a pinch, and I remember it proving a less close shave/less likely to nick you)

So, in summary, a wage gap exists.

People use this wage gap as evidence for sex discrimination.

But, this wage gap exists mainly due to factors UNRELATED to sex discrimination.

There are, of course, cases of sex-related discrimination in the work place, but, in the majority of cases this is simply not true.

Therefore, women making 77 cents for every dollar a man makes is misleading, and a terrible argument for discrimination.

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Originally Posted by peteronfireee

So, in summary, a wage gap exists.

People use this wage gap as evidence for sex discrimination.

But, this wage gap exists mainly due to factors UNRELATED to sex discrimination.

There are, of course, cases of sex-related discrimination in the work place, but, in the majority of cases this is simply not true.

Therefore, women making 77 cents for every dollar a man makes is misleading, and a terrible argument for discrimination.

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No! Didn't anyone read GOLDEN's post #19?? Did you see how in BOTH cases she made FAR LESS than 77% for the SAME work? What are the odds of that? In both cases, she HAPPENED to see salaries, but often, people work side by side and NEVER KNOW. I think its not an unusual situation - I doubt she just stumbled onto these totally unique job situations, and that every other company is scrupulous to be fair and equal with salaries, vs. paying less whenever they can get away with it. Both of her jobs would NOT show on the stats as being unequal pay, because her job got a different name! For the same work! That fact is backed up in the stats GLAM shared. And that whole Mom-penalty/Dad-bonus is a reality. It really is a problem. My guess is that if the company can pay less, they WILL. My opinion is that times really have not changed - the "changes" we see are superficial.

Perhaps one way to avoid this is to work in the public sector where pay has to be published, and positions are clearly delineated. I don't know.

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Originally Posted by Eliza Thomason

No! Didn't anyone read GOLDEN's post #19?? Did you see how in BOTH cases she made FAR LESS than 77% for the SAME work? What are the odds of that? In both cases, she HAPPENED to see salaries, but often, people work side by side and NEVER KNOW. I think its not an unusual situation - I doubt she just stumbled onto these totally unique job situations, and that every other company is scrupulous to be fair and equal with salaries, vs. paying less whenever they can get away with it. Both of her jobs would NOT show on the stats as being unequal pay, because her job got a different name! For the same work! That fact is backed up in the stats GLAM shared. And that whole Mom-penalty/Dad-bonus is a reality. It really is a problem. My guess is that if the company can pay less, they WILL. My opinion is that times really have not changed - the "changes" we see are superficial.

Perhaps one way to avoid this is to work in the public sector where pay has to be published, and positions are clearly delineated. I don't know.

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There is no dad bonus, it is a dumb concept. Employers are not like "HEY YOU ARE A DAD, I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU A RAISE BECAUSE I HAVE THIS EXTRA MONEY TO SPEND... WOOOHOOO!!!". As I have stated repeatedly through the thread, the statistics don't back up what you are saying when they are broken down. When women give birth to children, they tend to drop out of the labor force or reduce their hours. This in turn lowers women's salaries. Men as a result increase their hours of employment because they have to provide support for their families.

Fact 1: Single childless women in comparable job make around 96% of what men do.
Fact 2 : Married women with children in comparable job who work equal hours to average males earn around 94% of what men do.

When you put these two things together, there is only one conclusion to be had. While there is probably some discrimination in the work force... it is incredibly overstated. There are actually several fields, especially in engineering in which women actually make more than men. These fields include systems programmer, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. This whole "we must bridge the wage gap" movement shit that is occurring is just a method for politicians to secure votes. You've been duped. I'm all for wage equality, but this shit is just misplaced.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

There is no dad bonus, it is a dumb concept. Employers are not like "HEY YOU ARE A DAD, I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU A RAISE BECAUSE I HAVE THIS EXTRA MONEY TO SPEND... WOOOHOOO!!!".

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Well I'll give you that, but, there is a bias - that is the response. Maybe/maybe not it pans out into more/less money.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

As I have stated repeatedly through the thread, the statistics don't back up what you are saying when they are broken down.

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Well, I am not so sure. Statistics are often presented to make the opposite conclusion of truth. That's why a story like Golden's really says more to me. I am not as confident as you that I have all this figured out, but I do know her story says something about the reality that can't just be ignored.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

When women give birth to children, they tend to drop out of the labor force or reduce their hours. This in turn lowers women's salaries. Men as a result increase their hours of employment because they have to provide support for their families.

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Yes, that sounds reasonable. Except one thing that is different these days is constant turnover in employees, vs. the old way of company loyalty, staying in one place a long time. Not every job one takes is valuable experience to apply directly to the next - it can often be useless in a new position. A woman who takes time off may need a few weeks to get back on track if she has been out of it, but I do not see how in a few months time the average woman would not be at the same level (or better, if she's inherently better) than her male colleagues who did not take time off... I am just not feeling convinced that taking time off is a true damaging blow to a career (but certainly its a perceived one).

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Originally Posted by Hitta

Fact 1: Single childless women in comparable job make around 96% of what men do.

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Perhaps. I have a friend (LII) who was extremely successful/accomplished in the corporate world (she consults now); she is older so she started I'm not sure how far back... but I am going to ask her opinion when I write her next (I also want to ask her if she knows about that "Games" book I mentioned here and what she thinks of it). She had a mentor (male) to whom she credits her rise in the business world, who mentored her closely when she first started out in business (she had studied for science in college). Also, she had no children. So, no time off for that...

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Originally Posted by Hitta

Fact 2 : Married women with children in comparable job who work equal hours to average males earn around 94% of what men do.

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Well the reason why I questioned that is because of Golden's story.

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Originally Posted by Hitta

When you put these two things together, there is only one conclusion to be had. While there is probably some discrimination in the work force... it is incredibly overstated.

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So, in your opinion, what Golden described is the "exception to the rule"? She stumbled into something highly unusual, twice?

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Originally Posted by Hitta

There are actually several fields, especially in engineering in which women actually make more than men. These fields include systems programmer, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. This whole "we must bridge the wage gap" movement shit that is occurring is just a method for politicians to secure votes. You've been duped. I'm all for wage equality, but this shit is just misplaced.

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Well, it sounds that way, but, I am not convinced. Things aren't always what they seem. :shrug:

FWIW, I support more women in engineering. My workplace is a total sausagefest.

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Originally Posted by glam

... some ... attitudes ... are ... disheartening ... i ... worry about having to deal with these attitudes from men who think it's perfectly fair to pay me less ...

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I think being "disheartened" is a bit on the excessive side.

If the guy over in the next cubicle costs the company more money than you do, does that necessarily mean you have the net economic disadvantage, f.i. in terms of job security? And as a woman, are you as dependent on formal income from commercial activity as he is? AFAICT, most young women still have a source of income option that most men don't have: The traditional one, marriage. Or just the generous gentleman friends and admirers: even in this day and age, it seems to me that in personal relationships money flows easier and for both sexes more naturally from male wallets into female purses than vice versa.

Also, as a woman you'll statistically live about 7 years longer that the guy over in the next cubicle. How much monetary value does that advantage translate into? And the guy is paying for your social support during those extra 7 years, which he'll never see. You and he are both paying for your 7 extra years, which only you will enjoy.

There are lots of arguments like this that can be put forth to show that framing the issue of man's versus woman's wages as a simple "who gets paid most" kind of question is better for demagoguery than for reasoned discussion.

Edited to add: When referring above to "generous gentleman friends and admirers", I certainly do NOT refer to untoward people who attempt to obtain illicit and/or immoral "services".

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Originally Posted by ragnar

I think being "disheartened" is a bit on the excessive side.

If the guy over in the next cubicle costs the company more money than you do, does that necessarily mean you have the net economic disadvantage, f.i. in terms of job security? And as a woman, are you as dependent on formal income from commercial activity as he is? AFAICT, most young women still have a source of income option that most men don't have: The traditional one, marriage. Or just the generous gentleman friends and admirers: even in this day and age, it seems to me that in personal relationships money flows easier and for both sexes more naturally from male wallets into female purses than vice versa.

Also, as a woman you'll statistically live about 7 years longer that the guy over in the next cubicle. How much monetary value does that advantage translate into? And the guy is paying for your social support during those extra 7 years, which he'll never see. You and he are both paying for your 7 extra years, which only you will enjoy.

There are lots of arguments like this that can be put forth to show that framing the issue of man's versus woman's wages as a simple "who gets paid most" kind of question is better for demagoguery than for reasoned discussion.

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I find the idea that men should be seen as a source of income in a woman's life a very sad degeneration of what love is.

In addition, I certainly haven't experienced it in my life.
I look good, particularly when younger. I am kind. I love. I am smart. I am spiritual. I am skilled at many things. I have a lot of gifts a lot of men would be honored sharing with me. It was me who supported my husband for years, because that was natural for us. And yet, I got fired from my job when they had to cut people as "we can't fire the other guy even if you are better than him at what you are doing, as he has a wife and kids to support, and it would be too harsh for him, but you have a husband, so it's not so bad for you". His wife worked. My husband didn't. We have kids, too.... Old ideas like the one you show here are still valid in society, and those ideas threw my family into trouble for a bit, until I found new ways to create income. Old ideas don't see individuals, just groups of "women" and "men". Ideas of women and men. Not truth. Not what is. I got fired because a job wasn't seen as so important for me, being beautiful and a woman, in their opinion. My husband ended up shaming himself for not being a good man because of these ideas. I could have ended up feeling like somebody who shouldn't have a need for self-realization. It is just sad. The idea that I have to use men as income providers, instead of loving a man freely, without strings, so he can move as he wants based on his path in life, is opposing the idea of real love to me. I don't seek a partner for economic security, but for true love, freedom. And I wouldn't want it any other way. I possibly won't live longer than that man you talk of either, as I lived a stressful life due to supporting others and in addition having to face hardship due to people - generally (old(fashioned)) men - assuming my gender gives me advantages, and thus allowing themselves to use me (yes, men have used me for economic purposes) - or - as above - assume I have things already, magically, as if hard days are not really hard for women. But : I have loved. I'd take love over money again and again, no matter how hard it is or how sad it is that people still think like you do, and I am happy with my choices. But it isn't always easy. I believe your ideas are of a dying paradigm. I am grateful for that, too.

As for the rest of this thread and other discussions on this forum about genders, sure, you all talk some truth. Mostly partial. Often limited.

:love:

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Originally Posted by ragnar

I think being "disheartened" is a bit on the excessive side.

If the guy over in the next cubicle costs the company more money than you do, does that necessarily mean you have the net economic disadvantage, f.i. in terms of job security?

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Yes. Add in that it generally costs women more to hold that job. (Expectations for hair, makeup, clothes which are more expensive than men's clothes, shoes, and other beauty related requirements, etc.)

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And as a woman, are you as dependent on formal income from commercial activity as he is? AFAICT, most young women still have a source of income option that most men don't have: The traditional one, marriage. Or just the generous gentleman friends and admirers: even in this day and age, it seems to me that in personal relationships money flows easier and for both sexes more naturally from male wallets into female purses than vice versa.

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Yes, women have the economic option of selling their bodies for men's sexual pleasure.

If married without an income then she places her life under his control and becomes dependent on his interest and good will towards her. As she ages, he'll likely start losing interest in her aging body and drop her for a younger woman. By this time her age, children in tow, and 'usedness' makes it significantly harder to 'attract a man's patronage'. And without her youthful looks to help, and with kids in tow, it's also now harder for her to get and keep a stable job.

Relying on the generous gentleman friends and admirers, relying on the flow of money from male wallets to her purse (for shelter, food, utilities, transportation, etc etc) is far from economic security in the same ways as above. It's also not generosity if the money comes with expectations and demands for sexual activities.

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Also, as a woman you'll statistically live about 7 years longer that the guy over in the next cubicle. How much monetary value does that advantage translate into? And the guy is paying for your social support during those extra 7 years, which he'll never see. You and he are both paying for your 7 extra years, which only you will enjoy.

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It's more likely that no man is paying for her last 7 years as he more likely dropped her for a younger more sexually attractive girl. And most of her 77 cents is going towards seeing to the welfare of her children PLUS the beauty related requirements of her job(s). Chances are that she lacks the 33 cents to set aside into savings for her own final years.
It's difficult to live 7 years longer without access to economic resources to pay for fundamental needs.

Women are also more likely to be raped, beaten, and even killed by their husbands, boyfriends, or other 'generous' men in their lives. How much monetary and life expectancy advantage does that translate into?

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There are lots of arguments like this that can be put forth to show that framing the issue of man's versus woman's wages as a simple "who gets paid most" kind of question is better for demagoguery than for reasoned discussion.

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I agree that it's not a simple "who gets paid the most" kind of issue, but it's also not something to swept under the rug for being a messy discussion.

I don't think saying one is 'disheartened' is excessive. I think it was a fair and generous way of describing it.


Edited to add: i initially misunderstood what demagoguery meant. I've since looked up its meaning. However I still stand by what I wrote.

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Originally Posted by anndelise

If married without an income then she places her life under his control and becomes dependent on his interest and good will towards her. As she ages, he'll likely start losing interest in her aging body and drop her for a younger woman. By this time her age, children in tow, and 'usedness' makes it significantly harder to 'attract a man's patronage'. And without her youthful looks to help, and with kids in tow, it's also now harder for her to get and keep a stable job.

Relying on the generous gentleman friends and admirers, relying on the flow of money from male wallets to her purse (for shelter, food, utilities, transportation, etc etc) is far from economic security in the same ways as above. It's also not generosity if the money comes with expectations and demands for sexual activities.

It's more likely that no man is paying for her last 7 years as he more likely dropped her for a younger more sexually attractive girl. And most of her 77 cents is going towards seeing to the welfare of her children PLUS the beauty related requirements of her job(s). Chances are that she lacks the 33 cents to set aside into savings for her own final years.
It's difficult to live 7 years longer without access to economic resources to pay for fundamental needs.

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That all sounds so depressing. :cry: I don't think it matches my life experience though. In my early 20s I supported most of my live in boyfriends and some supported me, Usually it was the musicians I ended up supporting. I didn't resent it because they did everything else for me. Cleaned the house, cooked, shopped... I made way more money than they were capable of making at the time and it worked for us, for awhile. Some were younger (I was with an 18 year old when I was 21) than me and some my age and some way older. We literally partied away a small fortune, which was mine, but that is another story. I liked being in control of my money even if I wasn't spending it wisely.

Then I got into a longterm relationship with someone my age, who had a trust fund, and we pretty much split everything down the middle and maintained separate accounts, at first, but he made me quit my job. I kind of resented that when he would complain about money and money ended up being one of the reasons we split. He was kind of a stingy person from the start and kept a spreadsheet on who paid for what. It was stressful and made me feel useless and that I could never give enough in that relationship.

You could say I traded him in for a much younger model but it wasn't about my exes age or looks. We really had drifted apart. I told him I wanted to be in a relationship with someone else and all of a sudden money was no longer an issue and he said he would never mention it again and I would never have to work again. It was not the money. I chose to go live with the younger guy (much younger) who supported me for three years. I had my own money but he would not let me spend a dime of it. I ended up leaving him for a guy I ended up supporting for awhile. Then that guy started supporting me when he got a job. So my experiences have run in cycles like that.

It all sounds like a convoluted mess without the details but the main factor in all of this was never the money. I have my own. I have made some investments in my future thanks to my stepdad's advice. The deciding factor for me was and still is the love I feel for someone. I simply can't relate to most of the posts in this thread except for Anankes.

Edit: I am just going to attribute all this, in my case, to being social last with little awareness of these kinds of issues. This is an area I have not researched and probably never will. :/

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Originally Posted by Aylen

Edit: I am just going to attribute all this, in my case, to being social last with little awareness of these kinds of issues. This is an area I have not researched and probably never will. :/

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While I was raising my daughter, I inevitably met a lot of other mothers (single and married) who'd tell me their stories.
I also have personal experiences of being the one supporting my bfs, as well as being supported by bfs.
And I've plenty of experiences with the expectations of 'generous' admirers.

Enough to know that relying on marriage and/or the generosity of admirers is NOT a viable economic option for women throughout their lives. It's good only as long as she meets certain criteria. And when she no longer meets those criteria, she most definitely is as dependent on formal income from commercial activity as a man is. But since she likely didn't gain commercial activity experiences while she was economically dependent, then she's now in a much worse position than she ever was.

Edited to add: if she has children she is raising herself, then she is even more dependent on steady formal income from commercial activity than a man is.