Spinoff of a Spinoff - Gender equality in pay and other stuff unrelated to religion

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What is this supposed to mean? Oh! I see, you're speaking of Saudi Arabia...silly me, I get it now.

 

Chandos, what it's supposed to mean is that the modern feminism movement has moved past equality (in almost all areas) and is now looking to gain advantages over men.

 

You know, I hear this argument all the time, but I've never heard anyone actually try to back it up with evidence. Economists controlling for factors like lost time due to child birth, etc, have reaffirmed again and again that women still don't get equal pay for equal work, and while there may be some unreasonable feminists out there (and every cause has more than its fair share of unreasonable advocates), I see no evidence to show that the modern feminist movement has "moved past equality and is now looking to gain advantages over men." This isn't the kind of assertion you can expect to be taken at face value. You'll need to back that up.

 

How did we manage to end up here? Anyway, as Drew said anyone who have spent even the briefest time or energy actually paying attention to gender issues will see that we still have a long long way to go. Most of the legal obstacles are gone but the societal and structural are still very much in evidence and I personally do not think there is much to do now except wait for the new generations with different values to take over. One point you do have NOG is that equality is a two way street and from my point of view women themselves are some of the biggest roadblocks out there. They are often not very keen on sharing the power they do have which is mostly domestic and reproductive. The poor buggers are starting to figure out that the world men built for men isn't really all that grand either and in many ways suck just as much as the old "female" world.

Wow, that was some pretty impressive incoherent rambling from my side but I hope someone will be able to untangle it.

 

Without wanting to start yet another spin-off threat, let me just say:

1.) There are many performance issues economists can't readily account for that numerous studies show are factors in a woman's pay versus a man's (i.e. likelyhood to negotiate for higher starting wages, likelyhood to ask for a raise, likelyhood to work late hours or travel, likelyhood to emphasise one's own role in group projects, etc). However, in the institutions where pay and promotions are more standardized and procedural, where those things don't play a serious role, women in the US usually earn just as much as men for the same degree and position.

2.) I was talking specifically about legal issues, as socio-political issues are way too hard to standardize and measure.

 

NOG, all I'll say is that in the field of chemistry you are wrong. Women's pay is getting closer, but is still substandard even in large corporations. And that's comparing women and men in equivalent positions with equivalent experience (not looking at all women and all men).

 

T2, again, how avidly did the women negotiate for starting salaries? How likely are they to ask for a raise? Studies repeatedly show that women are less assertive of their professional status in the job-world, more likely to refer to their slight superiors as "Sir" or "Maam", more polite with establishment, etc. That's even true in the psychology and sociology world, where the women even know of the principle. I blame it on socialization 100%, but it has a real impact on pay and promotion in most jobs.

 

NOG, that's hardly a strong defense of your initial statement. At the bottom tier of a company, where pay is preset and non-negotiable, or in non-military* government work where pay is likewise preset, women have been found to earn the same pay as men. Your argument that women's reduced income is due solely to her social behaviour is rather ham-handed, as well.

If you want to play with social generalities, I can do that, too. The men (who do the hiring and promoting) have a tendency to label women who are as assertive and ambitious as men "aggressive" -- and when they use that label, they aren't using it nicely. If a woman were to simply "act like a man," this would quite likely backfire. Hillary Clinton is no more ambitious than any other politician, for example, and she isn't exactly well liked, is she? Personally, I think generalities like this are a total waste of time and of little use to reasoned debate, but this generality carries no less value than yours.

* In the military, hazardous duty assignments tend to accelerate promotion. Since a lot of hazardous duty opportunities are denied to women, women lose out a little in the promotion department. This difference tends to be even more pronounced with Officers than it is with enlisted members.

 

And should not make a shred of a difference anyway I would add. It does not matter why women are recieving less pay, unless its related to competence and results. If the corporate reasoning for promotion is made in any way to benefit men regardless of their individual productivity then obviously some corporate practices need to be reformed.

@NOG

I don't agree with anything you say about the majority of women's right movement and sort of get the picture that in your opinion perfect equality has been reached and there is no reason to promote any kind of change anymore. In which I think you are dead wrong. Of course some of the more radical elements are a different matter and should be duly ignored.

 

NOG you have no clue on this issue with regard to chemists. The ACS does an annual survey with thousands of women and has also conducted surveys with employers. They also interview and have done extensive reports to enlighten chemists of the continuing problem. The discrimination exists. Period.

Off hand I'd say you really need to find a few more reputable sources on the subject -- yours has some merit, but is certainly not even close to presenting an unbiased view of the issues involving discrimination in the work place.

 

I'm, uh, assuming you were aiming this part at NOG, right?

 

I wonder how people view the act of reproduction: Is it a completely self-indulgent act? I see it as a fact of life, where women bear the burden. It's a period with high expenses, and of diminished income. To see it as unfair towards men is downright short-sighted. Husbands of pregnant women also enjoy a short pregnancy leave in Holland, but nonetheless... What if a woman chooses to have a child without the father involved? I'll preempt your remark of disapproval: What if the woman was made pregnant, and the father did a runner after the legal abortion period?
If you say you support equal rights, then back your claim up: Women will never have a fair chance to compete in companies, if they aren't allowed to have pregnancy leave. The current employment system is still largely designed by men for men. Pregnancy leave is a bare minimum to fill the gaps in the system.
We still have a long way to go: From a biological viewpoint, the current economic system is harming humanity. Couples are encouraged to wait with starting a family until they feel they have the financial support to succeed. Given our cautious nature, we tend to wait a long time before we feel safe enough. This results in the fact that couples don't start having kids until they're well in their 30s. Biology is cruel and unforgiving, and the closer the mother gets to 40, the higher the risk for the child. Pregnancy itself becomes more risky, especially labour. Chances of miscarriages increase. But the main effect, is on the children: They are born with all kinds of birth defects, ranging from mild allergies, physical and mental disabilities, all the way to psychoses (murderers and paedophiles are consistantly born from older mothers). We need to make it more feasible for couples to have children at a younger age.

Ever played Black and White, NOG?
"DISCIPLE: BREEDER."

 

I don't know about equality in the workplace -- I don't read many studies about that sort of thing, but based on my personal experiences, I would say that some radical feminists have gone too far. I'm talking about the culture in general here, and in the educational field. I attended far too many lectures that might have well have been labelled "why every single man on the planet is an a-hole and why women are 10000% superieor to the pond scum with the Y chromasome". It gets old. In family law, some really bad apple guys are used to paint every single man with the same brush and now we have a system that automatically villifies men and is totally slanted in favor of females.

Again, my positions are based on personal experience, and to be honest when it comes to matters such as this I deeply distrust the so-called science of the studies, as I believe that those studies are often biased not by common sense feminist thought but by radical, fringe, man hating lunacy. It gets tiresome being told again and again that by virtue of having white skin and a ding-ding, I am automatically responsible for every dumb cracker over the past 2000 years who has ever oppressed anyone.

 

... That would seem to back my claim, Drew, as well as my data.

This is true in some cases. Studies have found that describing a woman as 'aggresive', without any tone to the descriptor, is more likely to produce a negative perception than describing a man the same way. Additionally, women who play the man's game are likely to be described in less positive terms than the men acting the same way. Still, that's a sociological factor, not a legal one.

This makes no sense to me. Unless you want to either forgo all real evidence and just make idealized claims or consider thousands or millions of case-studies, generalities and statistics are what you need to use when discussing an overall principle (such as equal pay for women). You can't just dismiss generalities backed by evidence.

Morgoroth, consider that companies want assertive qualities in their higher employees. They want people that act on their own, take initiative, and work longer hours. The idea of rewarding people for presenting desired characteristics isn't exactly revolutionary. The fact that these characteristics are more likely to be found in men than in women is just the nature of the business, though. Some businesses do well identifying other characteristics to reward, ones that are common in women (such as Counseling), but most can't readily do so.

I think perfect legal equality has been pretty much reached* (at least, in terms of women getting all the benefits men do, men still don't get everything women do).

Those femenists that responsably attack the sociological problems now (such as promoting women for characteristics they can add to the job that men don't), I have no problem with. Those that want the father to be 100% responsable for his child but have no rights or priviledges need to be kicked out of the movement.

*There may be individual laws I am not aware of where this is not true, and the Military seems to be a standing exception to equality everywhere, but in general.

You still haven't answered the question. I'm trying to say there are some practical (though not insurmountable) reasons for some unequal pay. I don't know that that's the case in Chemistry, but I'd like some evidence that it isn't.

Actually, the bulk of the papers I've seen on this topic were written by women. Women's Studies does tend to be populated by women, after all.

... Umm, I'm not sure where you're going with this, but I think maternity leave is pretty standard in the US. It's Paternity leave that's new and unusual (though it's getting more acceptance). I think at least maternity leave may even be a legal guarantee in some states, I'm not sure. At the least, I haven't heard of any sizable companies denying a mother maternity leave in at least a decade.

I think you need to do more research. The odds of birth defects do increase with age, yes, but I don't think they range nearly as wide as you think they do. Several of the problems you listed (pedophilia, for example), are entirely psychological, and are almost always linked to trauma durring childhood. It may be that older parents are less able to take care of their children, but I think that's a weak arguement.

Also, what exactly do you consider the "good" of the species. At the moment, I don't think further increases in population can be counted as "good".

No, actually. Is it good?

 

There are times I read things on these boards and just sit stunned. I believe many misunderstanding are either due to a lack of reading comprehension or lack or desire to read.

 

I like mushroom soup, too.

Unless, of course, you were implying something else.

 

WHAT!?!? HOW CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING AS INSENSITIVE AND INFLAMATORY AS THAT!?!?



T2, care to elaborate on that any?

 

NOG, most jobs do not entail attacking entrenched positions with an M-4 carbine, making HALO jumps, or performing a covert insertion by water to kidnap or assassinate a single target and fade away without notice. While this is somewhat understandable when this is the Job description, it is not understandable for a job that involves researching the chemical composition of dog **** or keeping the books for Enron.

Regardless of why it happens, discrimination is discrimination -- and discrimination is illegal. What's more, you still haven't proven this. Your "facts" are nothing more than a tidy little collection generalities that you seem to expect me to take at face value.

You can when the generalities have not been backed up by evidence and the person making them is expecting you to take them at face value. You are claiming authority. You argued earlier that it is too complicated for an economist to realistically control for legitimate reasons that a woman would see a reduced rate of promotion, despite the fact that this is exactly what economists do for a living, and you dismissed it out of hand while simultaneously making a broad generality about how all women behave in the workplace -- essentially asserting that women's lower pay is entirely their fault. NOG, this isn't just a too-neat-and-tidy over-simplification. It's a positively ridiculous assertion. Whatever the causes of the male-female pay disparity may be, you can rest assured that the answer won't be neat, tidy, or simple.

Is sociological behaviour a contributor? Sure. It is not, however, as one-sided as you indicate. A great many other factors such as concern about career interruptions, maternity leave, a customer preference for white men*, and just plain sexism also play an important role. You can not so neatly and tidily argue that women don't promote as quickly solely because of female behaviour, and you really have no basis at all to argue that none of it can be addressed with legislation. To solve the maternity leave barrier, for example, the government could simply require employers to guarantee paternity as well as maternity leave.

* A rather famous study conducted by David R Heckman showed that even women and minorities found white male doctors more approachable than women or minority doctors and that they found white male salesman more trustworthy -- suggesting that addressing customer biases will be a large part of solving the wage disparity.

 

Drew, any management position requires initiative and assertiveness to some degree. I don't care who you're managing. If you have people under you, you need those characteristics. Add to that the fact that companies are constantly looking for people to move up to higher positions (i.e. ones that won't dead-end in middle-management) and promotion based on those factors is realistic. Add to that things like willingness to work late, on weekends, or to travel for business, and you can see why men may earn more promotions and raises than women in many businesses.

Take any Counseling of Women course and they'll cover this. It's been demonstrated through numerous studies across the US.
Here is one I quickly picked off of Google. It's from Nigeria, not the US, but the results were similar. Highly educated young men are more assertive than highly educated young women. That's the target group for much of upper-level business. Interestingly, older women showed more assertiveness than older men, but at this point one's career path is pretty much established. Likewise, less educated women are more assertive than less educated men, but those aren't really upper-level management material.

How exactly do you quantify assertiveness? Especially, how do you do so without interviewing individuals? Willingness to work late, weekends, or travel on business I could see being accounted for (as they leave a paper trail), but I doubt an economist will be able to control for personality factors like assertiveness or politeness. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'll accept it, but that's my educated guess.

Oh, I'm not making any absolute claims. I never said all women behave that way, or that all pay inequality can be attributed to this, but rather that most women behave that way and that most pay differences can probably be explained this way.

Why? Because you say so? I see a logical and plausible explanation. I see an explanation backed by plenty of research even conducted by women that should legitimately contribute. Now, I'm sure there are still misogynistic pricks out there that run their businesses like their own private boy's club but, like racists, I'll bet they're few and far between these days.

Umm, Drew, those are more sociological behaviors, and legitimate targets for business practices in some fields. I'd group those in with my other factors, though maternity leave and career interruptions are becoming slightly more gender equalized (men taking paternity leave and becoming stay-at-home dads).

THIS is what I'm saying doesn't seem to be playing a major role any more.

For most of those issues, a legislative address would be extremely inappropriate. Are you going to say that IBM has to pay a lazy, uncaring woman who just wants to get a pay check and go home the same amount (and promote her just as frequently) as their most prosperous and diligent male employee? Now, I'm not trying to make any generalizations here, but a legislative solution would do just that.

Actually, this has been suggested in some states. The Feminist movement seems split on it, with some being strong advocates while others are strongly against it.

 

What does any of this have to do with why the fact women denied hazardous duty assignments where men are not is a military-specific problem that can not be extrapolated over to a desk job? This, by the way, is what T2 was talking about when he said "many misunderstandings are either due to a lack of reading comprehension or lack or desire to read".

What?! Are you seriously trying to compare the women of a nation that still practices female genital mutilation to American women and expecting me to consider that comparison even remotely relevant? Of course the women there are less assertive. It's ****ing Nigeria! You know...Nigeria...the country that according to our own Department of State has serious human rights problems including but not limited to* human trafficking for the purpose of prostitution and forced labor, child labor, child abuse, child sexual exploitation, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, and severe discrimination based on sex, ethnicity, region and religion. Yeah, I'm sure the women there are just like the women here.


* For the sake of brevity, I skipped the security force abuses, the regions enforcing sharia with particular brutality, and the far-reaching government abuses including the abridgment of what the rest of us would consider basic constitutional rights.