Men and Women... Equals in Society and the Workplace?

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Actually, when young children are being raised, a lot of modern households go to one-income if they can afford it. In those cases, the vast majority of the time, it's the wife who stays home, not the husband, though sometimes it's the husband. Yes, I'm married, no I don't have any kids yet. Yes, I think this is still 'changing' if we are looking at western society as a whole. I don't have any statistics, but I'd guess that a sizable minority of households still go one-income when raising small children.

 

Without children thetr would soon be no human race. I have no answers I wish I did. The point I was trying to get across is that childcare, homemaking is a profession, it is a job whether paid in coin or not. As far as the survival of humans goes it is the most important job anyone, male or female, can do. There are times when society has to step and be responsible for the children. That is a lengthy and complicated subject all on its own.

I would like to go back to the subject of equal pay for equal work. Please note that the word equal is used twice. I stress: equal pay for equal work.

Scenario: A company as two openings for accountants, not CPAs It is not an accounting firm this is the accounting department that is responsible for finances, cost accounting, payroll, accounts receivable and payable, inventory. The positions offered are of equal status and value.

Two applicants are chose as meeting the needed qualifications. Both applicants are offered the same starting salary. Applicant A decides to negotiate and does manage to get more than the original offer. Applicant B does not negotiate and accepts the starting salary. There is no discrimination here.

Scenario 2: Same company, same jobs but for some reason the company representative decides to offer Applicant B a lower salary than normal starting salary what is the reason? If both applicants have equal qualifications why offer the one less than the normal starting salary? I do think that some form of discrimination exists. Note I have not designated them as male and female because it doesn't matter. There are many forms of discrimination. Maybe the person doing the hiring just doesn't care for the way a person looks.

Now three years have gone by with the first scenario, A has worked haid, put in extra time, perhaps taken some job enhancing courses. B has done the job adequately, there are no complaints but he/she has not made that extra effort that A made. A gets a very nice, above average raise. B gets an average raise. The salaries are no longer equal. Is this discrimination? No. Well, I could argue that this is a form of discrimination but positive discrimination for A.

Does this clarify to you my thinking or obscure it even more?

 

The first thing the feminists did here in Sweden, their first cause was to set up proper daycare. Now all parents have the option of affordable and reasonably decent childcare. It removed one of the problems from the equation. I was stunned when I found out how cumbersome and expensive childcare was in the states. The very idea of a nanny is reserved for the very very rich around here. Daycare cost between 0 and 20$ a month depending on your income (I think).

Even so the mother tend to have to stay away from the workplace for at the very minimum a few months so even the most career driven women who hand over her baby to daycare as soon as it was allowed would be away from the rat race for months if she decided to have a child.

 

Nakia, scenario B does sound like discrimination, if: they have not just the same work experience, but the same references, got the same grades in the same classes from the same school, etc., and they're hired at the same time. The last is important because starting salary is effected by the position of the company in the economy. If they're desperate for someone to fill the position, then they'll offer more. If they're not, they'll offer less. If the company has been doing well and has money, they'll offer more. If not, they'll offer less. Of course, if all things are equal, then this is discrimination of some kind, but if anything at all is unequal, things get more complicated. That is the point I see a lot of feminist arguements missing. They assume that if the woman is payed less than the man for the same job with the same degree, it's gender discrimination. But what if the man went to a better school than the woman? What if he was top of his class and she was 50/100? What if he was hired earlier, when the company needed the position filled more, or later, when the company had more money to offer?

 

:sigh: I thought I made clear that the company had two positions to fill. That the candidates had equal qualifications. I did NOT say that one was a man and one was a woman. Discrimination comes in all types, sizes, colors, bad experiences, good experiences and maybe even what I had for breakfast or didn't have the night before.

No I am not being sarcasti. I'm just a bit frustraed.

Fifty years may seem like a long time to those of you in your twenties and maybe thirties but in the history of humankind it is a drop in the bucket. Stereotypes, beliefs, attitudes and prejudices do not change overnight.

"For those of you that keep insisting that feminists are seeing prejudice where it doesn't exist take past experiences into account. If it looks like prejudice it just might be prejudice.

People have posted links here that show that discrimination has lessened over the last 50 years and I have agreed with it. If you follow up the links they go on to say that discrimination still does exist.

I was a top student in my high school class. Mathematics was my best subject and only one other person scored higher, a boy . Not that much higher either. All kinds of career opportunities were open to him. I was told to become a teacher. The principal was more than willing to get a scholarship for me at a teachers college.

Come on, men, meet me half way here. Face up to your own prejudices, we all have them. Women Can and have discriminated against women.

NOG, what if the world ends tomorrow? Then the whole debate is moot. What if I'm responsible for hiring someone, my boss has just stormed at me over something, you come in for an interview. You remind me of my boss. ???

I thought we were discussing equality in society and the workplace but we seem to be discussing what ifs. Does discrimination exists in the workplace or doesn't it. Stop trying to throw up smoke screens.

Women had to struggle for the rights they now have. It was my generation that picketed, negotiated and stormed in order to get these rights, I am still alive and here and so are lots of other people who went through that battle. Just because you weren't around for the battle doesn't mean it didn't happen and that it couldn't happen again. Isn't there a saying "History repeats itself."? Scars are left and change in society is usually slow.

 

Hey, I just read through this and I got defended - cool! Thanks guys

 

Nakia, sorry, I may have been responding to what I read instead of what you wrote. Funny how different those things can be.

As to the 'smoke screens', the fact of the matter is that, on some level, we're talking about the real world. In the real world things aren't cut and dry, they're fuzzy and confusing with lots of details that can change everything. A lot of feminists see this and call it prejudice. You've just called it smoke screens. I call it realistic.

Is there still prejudice based on race, sex, age, etc. in the world, and even in the US? Undoubtably, yes. I'm betting the examples of true prejudice in the US are few and far between, though. I'm also betting it isn't responsible for the average woman earning 75% what a comparable man earns. Ok, it may be responsible for 0.5% of it. Of course, that's just the impression I've gotten from looking at my little corner of our society. You may see something different from yours.

 

NOG, my roomate is from Virginia Beach, and we have discussed things like this, and he felt the opposite of you: to him it seemed like racism, sexism, etc still existed largely (albeit subtly), but more, and less subtly, than up here in Massachusetts.

 

I firmly believe that we all experience mere snapshots of the societies we claim to know so well. You're friend may have perfectly valid experiences to support his belief, and yet he may still be wrong (in terms of how common it is). He may have merely been in the situations to see it down here and not been in the situations to see it up there. I don't know.

 

And likewise, you may be wrong but have perfectly valid experiences to support your belief The road runs both ways (unless it is a one-way street, in which case it only runs one way. But this is not a one-way road).

 

@Nog, you may being seeing what you want to see just as you read in my posts what you wanted to read. Studies show that discrimination exists. The discrimination may be unintentional and it may be subtle but it still exists. The fact that it isn't blatant and stands up and hits you in the face does not change the fact that it exists.

Perhaps in your area discrimination is rare but this is a big country. I also don't know how broad and varied you experience is. How many different types of people you associate with.

Of course there are exceptions but exceptions do not prove the generality wrong . The only thing it proves are that there are exceptions.. Reverse discrimination does not prove that we should accept discrimination. Reverse discrimination is just as wrong as the original discrimination.

 

Nakia, could you give me some details? Link some actual studies (assuming my dial up connection will actually load the pages)? It's one thing to see a NOW article saying, 'Gender descrimination remains, though it has become a subtle and often unconcious thing' and quite another to see, 'According to statistical organization X, 48% of women are initially offered positions/pay lower than equally qualified men.'

Saber, you're absolutely right, and I tried to bring that across in my posts (not sure it worked). I'm not at all sure my experience is a valid representation of the entire US, or even the local area. All I know is that I've seen no evidence of gender-based discrimination is my life.

 

That describes my situation. My wife is home with the little guy, and I work. I should point out though, that one of the reasons this is possible is that my wife was an elementary school teacher. One of the perks of being in the union is that you are hired back (regardless of how long you take off) over new hires fresh out of college. So no matter how many years she decides to take off, she can go back whenever she wants, and she will maintain her seniority to boot. (She may not be teaching in the same grade, or even teaching in the same school, but she will get a job somewhere in the county, and the day she goes back she'll earn the salary of an 8th year teacher, because she had completed 7 years before the baby got here.)

So I guess my point to all this is that while I agree that women may not get equal pay for equal work, it may have something to do with them potentially taking time off to raise kids. Say my wife and I were BOTH elementary school teachers working for the same county, who started in the same year. And say we both worked as teachers for 7 years, then had the baby and that she stayed home and I continued teaching. If my wife takes three years off (which may be a wildly low estimae as she loves being a stay at home mom and may never go back for all I know), she would return as an 8th year teacher, while I would be an 11th year teacher, having 3 more years of teaching experience. It should go without saying that a teacher with 11 years of experience gets paid more than a teacher with 8 years of experience.

Now, I'm certainly not saying it was a bad idea for my wife to take time off to raise our son. By living in a tiny townhouse, driving cars with over 100,000 miles on them and living within a fairly tight budget, we are able to get by on my salary alone. I think we are fortunate to be able to do this, and I wouldn't trade that for the alternative of putting Jack in daycare and having my wife return to work. I'm simply pointing out that societal expectations are that the wife stays home with the kid (and I did have the higher salary of the two of us), and by doing so she puts her career on hold for some length of time. Many women do this, and almost all of them hurt themselves financially by doing so. I don't have any data to assert what the results would be one way or the other, but I'd love to see a comparison betweeen women who did and did not take time off from work to have kids, and see how their salaries compare with men. My guess is that the women without children (or at least the ones who only take the federally mandated 12-weeks off before returning to work) have salaries that are higher than the ones who took extended maternity leave.

 

Aldeth not to take away anything from your post but I think this is what several people have been saying for quite some time in this thread.

 

Well yeah - but I haven't said anything about it yet. I thought it would add meaning if I said WHY I feel that way, other than just saying - "Yeah, I agree with what a lot of other people have said."