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

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... Ah, yes, I see it now. Sorry. Anyway, as I said earlier, the Military seems to be a standing exeption of equality in all manner of areas (even serious accusations of racism today).

Next time, you may want to try actually reading it (or even my summary of it's summary). Both older women and undereducated women were MORE assertive than their male counterparts (those being the groups you'd expect to be most victim of oppression). It was only the young, educated women that were less assertive than their male counterparts. In addition, this is data that heavily mirrors the US, the UK, France, Germany, and a number of other 1st world nations.

 

Your link doesn't work, and I thought about calling you on it, but decided it really didn't matter -- since the link is studying women from Nigeria, a country that imposes sharia law, practices female genital mutilation, and has a well established record of turning a blind eye to the physical and emotional abuse and discrimination against women, children, and ethnic minorities. That the results agreed with your pre-arrived at conclusion is of no relevance whatsoever, and data about the behaviour of oppressed Nigerian women is of no value whatsoever when talking about western women unless you are trying to assert that an extra X Chromosome has more to do with female behaviour than the society in which she lives. For that matter, a study of German or French women would also be of little value in a debate about the US pay disparity, since we live in the USA. Our cultures may be similar, but they are not identical, and if you expect me to believe that an extra X chromosome has more to do with an individual's personality than the society pressuring the individual to act a certain way and penalizing her for deviating from the norm, you'll have your work cut out for you.

There are multiple interpretations for much of the research done on gender inequality. For example, in one of the studies I found, men and women leaving grad school were asked questions about their plans to negotiate pay. It turned out that more women leaving graduate school expressed trepidation about negotiating their salaries than men. There are many possible reasons for this. It could be because the women were inherently less assertive or less comfortable handling confrontations than the men, as you assert. That is a possible answer, and for a few of those women, it is probably true. It could also, however, be that the women are more honest, and that a lot of the men were unwilling to admit their fears. It could also be that they had a very real fear of being labeled a bully broad for "acting like a man"* in trying to negotiate their salary. It could be due to the fact that many of these women are keenly aware of the fact that their market value is lower than that of a man. It could even be a statistical anomaly. The truth, though, is that it is more likely to be a combination of these things and several other factors that I likely failed to list. Some of them we can address. Others...not so much.

The ultimate point here is that the pay disparity is real, has many contributing factors of varying degrees of relevance, that any sociological cause you may choose to blame is going to cut both ways, and that it will still serve as but a small part of a larger picture. There is no one answer to the problem, and there is no one solution.

*...which would mean that sexism is forcing them to moderate their behaviour -- proving one of my earlier points that sexism in the workplace, if more subtle, is nevertheless still alive and well.

 

Drew, sociological gender differences are well established, and can generally be traced back to a very few origin cultures. Pretty much all western cultures share this (including those sections of African societies heavily influenced by the West). As for studies, another quick Google search turned up frequent references to:
Gay, Hollandsworth, & Galassi, 1975; Hollandsworth & Wall, 1977; Kern, 1996; Kern, Cavell, & Beck, 1985; Kimble, Marsh, & Kiska, 1984
And that's just addressing assertiveness.

I make no claim as to why women repeatedly and consistently show the same patterns in studies, merely that they do, and that this is likely an accurate representation of reality.

Yes, the pay disparity is real. Yes, it has many contributing factors (though I suspect almost all of them are sociological in nature, and not something that can be legislated). Yes, I would say almost all sociological differences, by definition, have a root in sexism at some point or another.

That doesn't change the fact, however, that attempts by feminists to 'rectify' the situation have often led to giving women more pay, more perks, and/or more benefits than a male counterpart who performed the same way (same willingness to work, same assertiveness, same etc). If the problem is women's behavior, it is women's behavior that has to change. If the problem is men's reaction to women's behavior (ala accusations of "bully broad"), giving in to those reactions will only cause the problem to be worse. Women are best served by challenging the system, not giving in to it. If the problem is simply that men and women work and function differently on a basic level (heavily debatable, but some research indicates this), then the best solution is for women to build their own parallel system (i.e. start their own companies, institute their own business practices, etc), not to try to alter the men's system.

Much of the feminist movement doesn't want to do this, though. They want to legislate 'equivalent' treatment. This is my criticism of them.

 

NOG -- did you really pay attention to the dates of those references? How can you assert they are still accurate?

 

Seconded.

Hang on a second, NOG, Other than the fact that women working full time are guaranteed 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave by the government (which, may I add, hardly counts as a "perk"), nothing you've stated thus far supports this conclusion, either, and you haven't offered even a shred of evidence that would support the conclusion that women actually get more pay than equally qualified men. In fact, all the evidence points in the opposite direction on the pay front...a point I thought you already conceded. You're going to need to back this one up, too. While you're gathering up your apocryphal horror stories about the women of the Ivory Coast getting more pay, perks, and benefits than equally qualified men in order to support your pre-decided conclusion, you ought to have your wife read this thread so she can tell you what she thinks about all this.

Spoiler

...but don't blame me if she makes you sleep on the couch after reading your responses...

 

I'm back after taking the dog out for a walk....

NOG (again): You are (of course) aware that some of the articles you reference are from a time when Title IX had recently been passed. A few of those articles were specifically written to combat the Equal Rights Amendment -- you're really digging back to ancient history with regards to such matters. Billie Jean had only recently beat Bobby Riggs and men were still able to beat their wives in public (even in front of police). Sex was considered a spousal right and men were allowed to force themselves on their wives if they felt the wives weren't "doing their duty" as often as reasonable.

In the eighties women were required to return to work two weeks after giving birth -- they could be fired if they took longer. Mr Mom was a comedy poking fun at men who stayed home with kids. And women had to choose between having kids and having a career -- employers were allowed to pass a woman for promotion because they had children (obviously a woman would be committed to their family in such a case). Employers were allowed to use the requirement of travel to discriminate at will.

Even your most recent article was written at a time when the "mommy track" was legal. A woman would be automatically pushed into a slower promotion category because she had children.

Context of when an article was written is quite important -- I would recommend you go to a library and look up articles in more recent journals -- at least the past five years or so. The articles I read are published by the American Chemical Society annually.

 

First of all, about that last question: We live in a world based on making profit. To achieve this, we are led to believe that we are living in an overpopulated world, where scarcity of resources is dire. Artificially induced scarcity is well documented, as resources are destroyed regardless of legality, to keep the scarcity (and profit) high. Although the profit-driven world we live in is causing harm to humanity and the environment, I have no doubt that there's room and resources for many billions more humans to live on planet Earth.
You changed the subject however, since you are talking about the quantity of humanity, while I'm talking about the quality. To answer the real question: YES. Physically, mentally and genetically healthy humans are GOOD for humanity.

I personally experienced some things during youth which might be categorized as 'traumatic' (although the definition requires that the subject be traumatized as a result, so maybe not...). But I was always able to look at the bigger picture, and not let it get to me. Some people are just more prone than others to being traumatized, and I believe maternal age is a significant factor in this (I also read that paternal age is not entirely irrelevant, due to copy errors occurring in sperm cells). As a biologist, I don't see the psychological perspective as be-all and end-all of everything. I try to see if there is a biological factor which may increase the likelihood of this disorder occurring.

And there seems to be one, namely maternal age. Here's two articles on the subject I found through casual googling:
Mental Retardation, Maternal Age, and Sexual Orientation

A Profile of Pedophilia: Definition, Characteristics of Offenders, Recidivism, Treatment Outcomes, and Forensic Issues

 

Coin

I think I agree with you strongly on this broad point and feel it is a good one.


NOG

I would argue leave is a good thing. If nothing else you want to be sure that a baby is taken care of properly. Either the mother or father can try to do this but, due to biological reasons, there are a few things women do that men don't (such as breast feed). Note I am not talking social positioning here.

 

Ok, for the timing of the articles, those are just the ones that came up as references for more recent work (usually building on their results). I didn't cite the more recent works because they were generally not 100% applicable. They looked at differences in assertiveness between women of different cultures, or different ages, or different educations. All the cross-gender work referenced (on the first page of my Google search) was older, yet still cited as legitimate sources in papers written in 2003 and later, indicating that it's still accepted work.

Drew, I wasn't talking about what was the law, but the kinds of laws trying to be passed. I'm saying that some femenists have tried to force employers to pay women in Position X with Degree Y the same as men in Position X with Degree Y, even if the man has more experience, is more assertive, performs better, relates to clients better, works weekends, travels for business frequently, and the woman does none of these. The femenist movement has, in the past, tried to make position and degree the only two factors for pay and promotion rate for women, which is idiotic, and would lead to women being payed more than men who acted the same way (that is to say, the underachieving men don't get raises and promotions, but the underachieving women would).

Actually, she's the one who first alerted me to this stuff (as a result of her Counceling of Women classes). I haven't asked her for her text book sources yet, since she's been busy every time I've been on to write, but if you really want, I can ask her for them. They're probably more up-to-date than what I've found on Google.

The sheer amount of polution being produced and food resources being consumed tells me that we either need to significantly alter our process of meeting our needs or we need to take a second look at our population.

Ah, sorry, I mistook your point. Yes, I'll agree that children of younger couples are generally better off than children of older couples in terms of genetic factors. However, children of younger couples are also generally subjected to more psychological and developmental strains thanks to the younger couple's inability to properly take care of the children and build a life at the same time. It's the required level of education in modern society that appears to be the problem. When your new citizens can't really start building a life until they're 25-30, it naturally pushes the child-bearing years to older ages.

As a student of psychology, I see psychological factors, so I guess we each have different perspectives. Overall, though, the Nature vs Nurture debate seems to be mostly settled with a conclusion of "both". It takes both the natural proclivity toward something and the environmental and developmental triggers to activate and set most facets of behavior. There are a few odd exceptions, such as Schizophrenia (100% genetic and organic), Disassociative Identity Disorder (appears to be 100% developmental), and the like. On top of that, there are still plenty of individual cases where we really don't know. For example, Alzheimer's appears to be caused by aluminum deposits in the brain, but studies have shown non-Alzheimer's patients often (~50%) have more aluminum in their bodies than Alzheimer's patients. The question, then, is what causes the aluminum to be deposited in the brain as opposed to somewhere else. No one has any idea to date (at least, last I heard).

There's one problem with these studies that I can see right off the top. They all compare pedophiles to other pedophiles. They talk about what seems to influence who a pedophile will target, but not what makes them pedophiles (the vast majority of pedophiles report sexual abuse as a child themselves, and most target the gender of their abusers). On top of that, all of those studies give nothing more than a correlation, which in psychology is notoriously iffy.

Oh, yes, I entirely agree. And I'm not saying maternity leave is a bad thing, not by any means. What I'm saying is that the feminist movement has gone too far in many recent cases. They've got maternity leave, so now they're going for other things. On top of that, they've protested paternity leave, they've demonized women who choose to stay home to raise a child, and they've belittled many attempts to blend the child-rearing lifestyle with the career path.

 

Spoiler

There is definitely no scarcity in food. Most of the pollution nowadays is indeed due to inefficient processes, which definitely need revision. We have the technology and expertise to do this, but it's being made deliberately unprofitable. Take the electric car as an example; patents are bought and not utilized by oil companies, while government and industry actively prosecute anyone who attempts to make their own progress. There is definitely no scarcity in energy, geothermal energy isn't even talked about. But electricity that isn't scarce, isn't profitable. That's why industry focuses on polluting energy sources like coal, oil and nuclear power.
There's also a phenomenon where (un)necessary pollution is deliberately dumped in places where it's harmful, to make the people dependant on external food/water sources.
As for job scarcity; we're living in the monetary system. People are dependant on offering their labour on the job market in order to generate income. But industry is in the process of mechanization, automization and digitalization, so there's no longer need for so much labour. This means that people are being continually put out of work. The services sector has been used to create new and marginally useful jobs, but it's only a matter of time before we run out of ideas. Newspapers are quick to find scapegoats in immigration and the failing economy, but these aren't the real causes. The monetary system simply doesn't work anymore, so you must ask yourself a simple question: How important are the people in this? Some people* are quick to jump to the conclusion that we need to eradicate the surplus redundant workforce, foreigners first of course...

* Are you absolutely sure you want to 'take a second look' at our population? How's the job hunt going?

It doesn't take a PhD to raise children. It's quite easy, even animals know how to do it. It goes wrong when people react negatively to stress factors, and a lack of financial support is involved in 99% of the cases, directly or indirectly. 'Are antisocial people poor, or are poor people antisocial?'
Families wait, NOT to gain experience in childcare, or life in general, before having children. They wait until they feel they have the financial backing to succeed. The economy is the greatest risk to any family's wellbeing.

 

Coin, I think you need to back away from the kool-aid on those conspiracy theories of yours. We're already having noticable impacts on fisheries worldwide. Electricity is not plentiful (geothermal is already being used just about everywhere it can be used in the developed world). The pollution I'm talking about is not created by massive corporate entities, but by cities, towns, villages, and farms (organic nutrient pollution). Yes, it's poisoning our waterways, but not because corporations want it that way.

As for childrearing, I never said you needed a PhD to raise a child. What I was talking about was the apparent modern need for at least a college degree, and preferably a graduate degree, to be able to afford raising a family in the US today.

 

But doesn't this actually support NOG's point. Wouldn't older parents tend to be more financially secure than a couple who is just starting out?

Also, I think we have a bit of an age-ism problem going on here, as a lot of you are still in your early 20s. Studies show that people who have children in the 30s are not significantly more likely to have a child with significant birth defects than parents in the thier 20s. If you look at the hard numbers, even people who are 45 and over still have a 97% chance to have a perfectly normal baby, and while that IS a statistically significant difference from people in their 20s, the odds are still definitely in your favor.

EDIT:

Agreed. We already know about your 9/11 thoughts, but do you think that Obama was born in the US, or that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, or that we really landed on the moon?

 

Aldeth, NOG claims that other factors are considered when families choose to start having children later. I tried to illustrate that financial backing is the only factor holding families back.
NOG I'm spoilering this because it's largely off-topic.

Spoiler

I'm not contesting that. Some scarcities are real, but not limiting: Humanity doesn't depend on fish to thrive. People don't want or need to deplete their own natural resources. But the economy is making this activity profitable, so people do it because they are compelled to.

Estimates of the electricity generating potential of geothermal energy vary from 35 to 2000 GW depending on the scale of investments. This does not include non-electric heat recovered by co-generation, geothermal heat pumps and other direct use. A 2006 report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), that included the potential of enhanced geothermal systems, estimated that investing 1 billion US dollars in research and development over 15 years would permit the development of 100 GW of generating capacity by 2050 in the United States alone. The MIT report estimated that over 200 zetajoules (ZJ) would be extractable, with the potential to increase this to over 2,000 ZJ with technology improvements - sufficient to provide all the world's present energy needs for several millennia.link

According to new figures which reveal heavy industry's contribution to climate change and have prompted new calls for tighter restrictions on corporate pollution, all the efforts by individuals and households to cut their carbon footprints will make little difference unless accompanied by greater action by industry. A 1% increase in the efficiency of one of the giant power station in Britain would save the typical carbon emissions of 21,000 households. Five biggest polluters in UK produce more CO2 than all motorists combined. link

Which only supports my point of finances being the single limiting factor. Thank you.

 

NOG, you aren't making sense. Regarding promotion, if the feminist movement were trying to make education and position the only metrics used for promotion, and you'll have to prove that*, that would apply to men as well. If performance isn't being factored in for women, it isn't being factored in for men, either, which means under-achieving men and underachieving women would still get the same raises and promotions. Your argument contradicts itself. You're going to have to prove it* if you want me to believe that the feminist movement has been lobbying to remove performance review from the promotion process.

Regarding pay, if the feminist movement is trying to make factors like education and position the only factors for determining pay*, the situation isn't as you describe, either. In the military and in the government, pay is based on two things -- time in service and rank. The system works because under-performing employees don't get promoted. In addition to that, employees that consistently under-perform can also be penalized with lost time or (in the military) lost pay, demotion, and termination.


* ...with facts gleaned from the USA during the current millennium.

 

I meant to respond to the quote below, but forgot. I'll spoiler it again, because it is slightly off-topic.

Spoiler

I'm sorry if you think I'm displaying bigotry towards your age category, that isn't my goal at all. These numbers are most likely to be the risk of a child being afflicted with a single type of birth defect, let's say down syndrome, for the sake of argument. But the chances of contracting all kinds of other allergies, birth defects, mental disorders, you name it, they all increase by the same degree. This effect compounds into a very high risk chance, although many of these birth defects will not be crippling or life-altering. The chances of a child turning out 'perfectly normal', as you call it, become very small indeed. The result is, that doctors consult older parents to prepare them for the likelihood that their child will be born with multiple defects. Also, you shouldn't just look at it from your individual perspective, but as an effect on society as a whole. Your child may have run the gauntlet and come out lucky, but 3% of other couples like you won't have. And that's only considering down syndrome.

 

Well many feminists are arguing for gender quotas in the management of major corporations and political positions. Which might end up with someone less qualified getting a position.

Still I think this thing about assertiveness is complete BS since it can depend upon the enviorment. Women are expected to act in a certain way and if they go against it they might seem even worse, men usually get somewhat alarmed by assertive women. What NOG is basically saying is that women get less pay because they don't deserve as much as men and that's something I'll have to strongly disagree with.

 

Criticism of such quotas carry with them a degree of validity and would be a good springboard for reasoned debate about how we should and shouldn't be addressing the wage disparity. That said, such quotas are a far cry from removing the performance review from the hiring, compensation, and promotion process. There are legitimate problems with these affirmative action-style measures, and such criticism is a welcome springboard to finding a better solution to the problem, but to argue that such measures throw the performance review out the window entirely is to go into hysterics.

 

I think you misunderstood me. My point was that the financial factors force a family to wait until later years (25-30) to have children. And even that isn't very risky.

You missed it, Drew. The point was that the overachievers would be payed the same as the underachievers. The problem the femenists have is that, statistically, considering the standards and measurements used in business, men are more likely to overachieve than women*.

*Mind you, I'm not talking in general, but just in this business sense. My wife is 5X the overachiever I am, but she wouldn't last long in the corporate world.

That is another example.

This is very true, though it isn't simply a fear of how they'll be percieved. This is a function of the society they've been raised in.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that it's a sociological problem which will have to be addressed through society, not through the law. I'm also saying that, as long as the real, practical differences are there, there is legitimate reason for there to be a difference. It's not sexism on the part of the employer unless they also refuse to promote assertive women. If they do that, then they're mysoginistic pigs, but many companies never get many chances to do that (and from the increasing numbers of women in higher levels of almost all fields, it seems most companies take the opportunities they're given). Basically, I'm saying the problem is something women will have to fix (as it is largely shaped by their upbringing, and thus the way they'll raise their little girls).

 

Coin, I wasn't accusing you of displaying bigotry towards my age category - I'm not even in my 40s, but that wasn't the point.

My point was that birth control is a relatively new development. It's only been in the last 40 or so years that it's been in use. If you go back further than that, women getting pregnant and having babies well into their 40s was the norm (it's not like people stop having sex when they hit 40), and the vast majority of these babies were normal. Heck, there are still people alive today who were born in that era, it's not like I'm talking about the distant past, I do not beleive the odds are "very small" of a woman having a normal baby in her 40s. They may be lower than for a woman in her 20s, but that doesn't mean it's "likely that their child will be born with multiple birth defects".

*As an example of this, my father-in-law actually has an aunt and an uncle who are YOUNGER than him. His mother was the oldest of 10 children. She got married and had him, and the last of her two siblings were born after that. Those two people are still alive today and they are perfectly normal. That also means that my father-in-law's grandparents had a grandchlid that was older than two of their children.

 

You missed it, NOG. The point is that I categorically reject this idea because 1) no one is actually lobbying to remove performance review from the pay and promotion process and 2) even if a company pre-set the pay for each position, your overachievers would be paid more because they would get promoted to higher paying positions more often.

It is true that men are more likely to be willing to travel, but I've seen no statistical evidence that men are more likely to overachieve. I'll need you to back this one up, too, if you want me to accept it.