201–210 of 362 posts
It hardly seems like a fair measure of pay gap if you don't take into account disparities in promotions. At the same level, company and function the pay gap is small. Yet, women are stuck in lower-ranked positions in greater proportion for some reason.
Still not sure what to believe on this issue. Some points of discussion are (unrelated to article): 1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? 2. Women are less likely to negotiate salary and assert themselves, as women in general are more agreeable than men. Is this behavior based in biology or is…
I believe this is a very weird ponderation. The whole point is that capitalists don't do that because there is sexism among them. They are ignoring rational evidence because they have a preconceived idea that women are worse employees. If capitalists were actually these rational straw man devoided of human flaws, we wouldn't have sexism at all.
So this line of thinking is basically saying: if there wasnt sexism we wouldn't have sexism.
A more practical way of making my point. In past decades black athletes werent admitted in competitive sports teams. Would you say that you believe that wasnt racism because if it was, team owners would be tripping themselves to hire talented black athletes that were being ignored by most teams? No, they werent because they were racists. It took a lot of civil right activism to give black athletes the same access to sports jobs as white athletes. And today we know for a fact that black athletes werent worse athletes back then.
Why are today employers more enlightened that past team owners?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The whole point is that the way society systematically undervalues women-dominated professions is sexism at work. What? Can you explain how that is possible? As far as I know, people value things according to what value they obtain from them. There is no way for that to be 'sexist'. People are paid according to the value they produce. To call that sexist is just completely inconsistent with any reasonable conceptio…
> As far as I know, people value things according to what value they obtain from them. Yes. But I think you miss one point. People are not rational beings (even trained ones are not), and "value they obtained" is a result of some psychological process which is not strictly rational. And if people estimate value obtained from employee by sex of that employee, it would be not surprising at all. > To call that sexist is…
I agree in part. I agree wholeheartedly that the rational actor model is (at best) incomplete. We are not rational beings making perfect value judgments moment to moment. I further admit it is possible that, in individual interactions, the gender of the employee/agent we are interacting with may be a factor in price considerations.
However, ultimately prices are set by supply and demand. What the OP is positing, is that demand is suppressed by sexism. What would this mean? Some female-dominated professions are: Nursing, teaching, and social work [1]. Now think about what would have to be true in order for the OP's point to be correct. People would have to systematically demand less nursing, teaching, and social work in order to achieve the result they were implying. Do you think that is plausible?
When thinking about intra-profession discrimination, I would have no problem attributing that to sexism. That is, if you said to me that female teachers are systematically paid less than their male counterparts, i'd be all for labelling that sexism. But that's not what's being posited here. What's being posited is that because certain professions are dominated by women, people consume them less. People want less of them. But what is a profession's role in the world if not to generate its own demand? If people aren't demanding your services, you find a new profession.
In other words, if demand for the services women choose to provide is so elastic that it can be depressed by sexism, then maybe they ought to find better services to provide. Services that are important enough that the demand for them is non-negotiable, and can never be suppressed by sexist preferences.
1. http://www.businessinsider.com/pink-collar-jobs-dominated-by...
Still not sure what to believe on this issue. Some points of discussion are (unrelated to article): 1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? 2. Women are less likely to negotiate salary and assert themselves, as women in general are more agreeable than men. Is this behavior based in biology or is…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand, but blaming it on irrational sexism in the ether doesn't help us fix the problem. It's not an actionable piece of information.
It's more actionable than you might think. Attitudes can be changed - by social pressure, through the media, and through education. And while legislation may not directly change attitudes, it can also help create pressures that reshape them indirectly.
Still not sure what to believe on this issue. Some points of discussion are (unrelated to article): 1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? 2. Women are less likely to negotiate salary and assert themselves, as women in general are more agreeable than men. Is this behavior based in biology or is…
There are some observations (sorry, don't have the links right now) that typical salaries for careers such as teaching and primary care medicine have decreased as they've transitioned from being male-dominated to female-dominated.
I think the whole issue of "unequal pay" seems very made-up and political and does not make any sense at all, at least in any way anyone can do anything about it... bear with me while I try to explain it. Lets say there are differences in how much certain demographics of people get paid over another. Lets take short vs tall people or black vs white or with blood groups positive vs negative. Lets say that there is a d…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The whole point is that the way society systematically undervalues women-dominated professions is sexism at work. What? Can you explain how that is possible? As far as I know, people value things according to what value they obtain from them. There is no way for that to be 'sexist'. People are paid according to the value they produce. To call that sexist is just completely inconsistent with any reasonable conceptio…
Well, imagine a scenario where women are initially not in the labor force. But they want to work, same as anyone Then, one day, society changes. "You can work, but you can only be a nurse, teacher, or secretary". You don't think there'd be a supply glut driving down wages in those areas? Suppressing them over a long period as women gradually enter the labor force there? And by the same token, that society that says y…
Now, I fully admit, there is a degree to which women at a young age are socialized into those sorts of professions. And I am absolutely willing to call that sexism, and totally support every effort being made to change that.
Still not sure what to believe on this issue. Some points of discussion are (unrelated to article): 1. If women were 25% cheaper than men while being as competent, wouldn't white/male capitalists trip over themselves to only hire women to increase their profits? 2. Women are less likely to negotiate salary and assert themselves, as women in general are more agreeable than men. Is this behavior based in biology or is…
> 3. Women tend to choose lower paying jobs, such as teacher, caregiver etc. In general women tend to care about people while men care about things (STEM). Again: biology or social construct Social construct. Look at Asian countries that by all accounts have less gender quality than the west but have more women science graduates. India is double the U.K. on that metric. The fact that Sweden has skewed representation…
> that by all accounts have less gender quality
> than the west but have more women science
> graduates. India is double the U.K. on that metric.
How do you conclude "social construct" from that data? When external pressures are greater, gender differences equalize. When external constraints fall away, gender differences are allowed to express themselves. So it is no surprise that self-segregation is pretty much directly and positively correlated to measures of societal progress and gender equality. Just to repeat that: the more egalitarian and progressive the society, the more the genders self-segregate in the workplace.
Here's a quote from a BBC article asking "Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?" The answer is in the article: necessity.
"Most of the girls we talked to from other countries had a slightly playful approach to Stem, whereas in Russia, even the very youngest were extremely focused on the fact that their future employment opportunities were more likely to be rooted in Stem subjects." -- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39579321
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now that is an explanation I can get behind. I think that there is a degree to which society socializes women to prefer lower paid jobs. That I think is absolutely legitimate. But the idea that sexism causes us to value those jobs less is, I think, absurd.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over...