Workplace Gender Inequality
This is an outrage! Or is it? Recently published statistics state that women, on average, still only earn $0.79 to every dollar a man makes. That is not much better than the 70s, when the feminist movement really took hold. Why has there been little to no progress in 40 years? Is it that women are the weaker sex? I doubt it. My Polish girlfriend will carry more grocery bags into the apartment than I will in one trip ( as her father said -- get yourself a Polish girl and you will never have to work hard! I digress.). Certainly not weaker physically.
Could it be that they are not good negotiators when it comes to salary? A recent University of Chicago study implied that women are actually better negotiators on salary, when a job ad reads that the salary is negotiable. So women have savvy. No shock there.
I work in the scientific industry. It is predominately male, but I have seen progress over the last 20 years as more women choose engineering and science as a career choice. What was once a 10:1 ratio when I first started may now be a 5:1 ratio. That's a 100% increase over 20 years with women in these fields, and I mostly deal with Ph.Ds. So assume that strides are being made, at least in my little world, with women attaining high income jobs.
But what about the women who are not high salary achievers? My world consists of people who are either professors or researchers and I assure you -- science doesn't care if you are male or female, black or white or purple. Salary is solely based on knowledge and performance. So maybe my experience is a bit sheltered from society as a whole. What about retail employees? What about civil servants and other unionized workers? ( Don't get me started on why government employees don't need unions!) What about plumbers and ditch diggers versus caretakers and nurses? Nobody disputes there is a divide, but what factors are considered when creating these statistics? Is it simply an average of women's wages versus men's? Do male teachers make more than female? Of course not - they are unionized! So are they left out of the statistics, since it is an even playing field? The truth is, unless you are better at Googling than I, a real possibility, we are fed these numbers as Gospel truth, but nobody really knows where they came from. I know, "The Bureau of Labor Statistics" but really, what are the factors considered? How efficient is the government in collecting real data?
Anyone who knows me well, knows how I feel about injustice. I will spend my last breath fighting it. I am 100% on board for fairness of opportunity, but it seems like most want fairness of result. That is impossible to achieve. Any governmental action that tries to achieve that will fail, and will cost those who have dared to risk their efforts for advancement the burden of carrying those who haven't. That, my friends, is economic injustice, far more than any male/female inequality.
Male/female "inequality" is a farce. Women by and large take jobs that are less risky, require less education and are less specialized so they are jobs that pay less. Women also typically take jobs that allow them to be home with their children more and often take years out of the workforce when their children are younger. If women really made $.79 for every dollar made by men, you would have no unemployed women and a huge number of unemployed men because no company in their right mind would pay a dollar if they could get the same thing for $.79. Bottom line is that many women are in lower paying jobs by choice. We don't work in jobs like crab fisherman, longshoreman, or oil rigger because we don't want the dangers associated with it (and frankly the vast majority of us are just not strong enough). Women can't require special treatment (time off, kid friendly hours, extended maternity leave, lower physical risk and kid friendly workplaces) which many of the high paying jobs can't accommodate and then scream discrimination. Sorry folks you can't have it both ways.
ReplyDeleteBritish Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said, at least according to Mark Twain, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." There are 3 males and only one female in our household (it's 5 to 1 if you factor in the pets). If you go looking for discrimination or unequal representation you can always find it and have the numbers to back it up. I am especially wary of statistics from the government. There are always exceptions and clauses that distort the truth. Just look at what the official inflation numbers are. Commodities such as gas and food are excluded, but the price of appliances are included. Well I buy bread and gas weekly and a refrigerator every 10 years or so. Gas and bread prices have doubled in a short period of time! But those are not included in the "official" numbers because that would look bad. The point is that statistics such as women earning less, official unemployment and inflation numbers, and yes, even global warming should be met with a high degree of skepticism because the numbers are presented with bias to bolster a poor argument or fallacy.
DeleteShe took the words right out of my mouth. I think the statistics are skewed and are not accounting for other factors such as the job choices we make. Also when you take averages like that, you're not really taking a look at all the outliers who make the same or more than men in the same position.
ReplyDeleteWe have other women rights issues...I don't think salary is one of them.
I have hired both women and men for various positions at the company I work for. Generally, the women worked out much better than the men. And, the salary was the same, regardless of gender.
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