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(May 24, 2016 at 1:28 am)pool the great Wrote: Wow, okay, that's a pretty shitty experience you had to go through. I feel for you, but I was more hoping to hear about your experience regarding pay discrimination you had faced.
That must have been too long of a ramble. Did you miss this part? I had to accept a salary that was $1200 per year lower than my male predecessor, and I had to have a Master's degree to be interviewed, (newly required for the position) when my predecessor only had a Bachelor's degree?
OK, but how did you rule out other factors? What if the city cut some library funding and simultaneously upped the requirements for that position? How did you establish a causal relationship between your gender and the new requirements/pay?
Verbatim from the mouth of Jesus (retranslated from a retranslation of a copy of a copy):
"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you too will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. How can you see your brother's head up his ass when your own vision is darkened by your head being even further up your ass? How can you say to your brother, 'Get your head out of your ass,' when all the time your head is up your own ass? You hypocrite! First take your head out of your own ass, and then you will see clearly who has his head up his ass and who doesn't." Matthew 7:1-5 (also Luke 6: 41-42)
Something that never fails to amuse me is the guys who feel threatened by a woman because she earns more than he does. I've encountered a few, especially when I made it a policy not to date anyone else in the medical field.
(May 24, 2016 at 12:10 pm)drfuzzy Wrote: That must have been too long of a ramble. Did you miss this part? I had to accept a salary that was $1200 per year lower than my male predecessor, and I had to have a Master's degree to be interviewed, (newly required for the position) when my predecessor only had a Bachelor's degree?
OK, but how did you rule out other factors? What if the city cut some library funding and simultaneously upped the requirements for that position? How did you establish a causal relationship between your gender and the new requirements/pay?
I didn't, Red. There could have been a lot of other factors - and I did tell Pool in a previous post that there had been funding problems. Gender was only a factor when I heard that they had not chosen any male applicants to interview, and I know that wouldn't stand up in a court of law. I don't think that they got many applicants because the pay was easily $10,000 below what the degree requirements would usually command, but . . . I needed a job.
"The family that prays together...is brainwashing their children."- Albert Einstein
Gotcha. Unfortunately, the kind of people who seek money and positions of power are often also men, and the kind of men who think they're better than women. That is definitely a thing, and because of how imperfect our court system can be, I am sure that many instances of discrimination (along with many instances of a lot of bad things) can and do slip through the cracks.
That being said, it is my observation that those people usually have to find ways to circumvent the legal system and Western culture at large, because sexual discrimination and harassment are illegal in the workplace, and mistreatment of women just because they're women is actually obscenely unpopular with a growing majority of both men and women, especially among young people (at least according to what I see in pop culture and in the people I observe).
While those things do exist, and people do sometimes get away with them, people also get fired and/or prosecuted for those things on a regular basis. I can think of at least 3 or 4 people off the top of my head that have been fired from my day job for sexual harassment and/or discriminatory language (calling someone of any gender a bitch or a fag is a no-warning offense, and one guy recently got canned for calling a girl a cum-guzzling cunt). Also, since I'm in the food service industry, I am extremely used to women making more money than me, both on isolated cases and in general. 3 out of my 4 managers are women, including the general manager, who presumably makes more than any of us (not that I would care even if it were any of my business).
I guess my bottom line is that I recognize that discrimination is an ongoing and attention-worthy problem, but I don't think it's systemically enabled or culturally acceptable in the current zeitgeist; it's very much a feature of a dying generation. I'm sure there are certain areas and maybe even whole states where it's a bigger problem, but I'm in rural Virginia squarely below the Mason Dixon line and it's still generally considered a no-no to discriminate in either pay or hiring because somebody is a woman, black, gay, or anything else. I have run into assholes who do not behave appropriately toward women in one regard or another, but they are generally frowned upon and find it difficult to hold jobs if they can't keep that shit to themselves at work.
I also don't think the earnings gap is a good thing to point to, either as evidence of wage discrimination or as an example of a cultural bias against women. It seems to me that the factors that primarily play into that are things that have nothing to do with discrimination and mostly to do with biological and behavioral differences between men and women. Why those differences exist (and to what extent they influence income) is a whole other debate, but I think those factors influence the statistical variation in lifetime earnings between men and women far more than instances of unpunished discrimination (infuriating as those may be).
Verbatim from the mouth of Jesus (retranslated from a retranslation of a copy of a copy):
"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you too will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. How can you see your brother's head up his ass when your own vision is darkened by your head being even further up your ass? How can you say to your brother, 'Get your head out of your ass,' when all the time your head is up your own ass? You hypocrite! First take your head out of your own ass, and then you will see clearly who has his head up his ass and who doesn't." Matthew 7:1-5 (also Luke 6: 41-42)
Gotcha. Unfortunately, the kind of people who seek money and positions of power are often also men, and the kind of men who think they're better than women. That is definitely a thing, and because of how imperfect our court system can be, I am sure that many instances of discrimination (along with many instances of a lot of bad things) can and do slip through the cracks.
That being said, it is my observation that those people usually have to find ways to circumvent the legal system and Western culture at large, because sexual discrimination and harassment are illegal in the workplace, and mistreatment of women just because they're women is actually obscenely unpopular with a growing majority of both men and women, especially among young people (at least according to what I see in pop culture and in the people I observe).
While those things do exist, and people do sometimes get away with them, people also get fired and/or prosecuted for those things on a regular basis. I can think of at least 3 or 4 people off the top of my head that have been fired from my day job for sexual harassment and/or discriminatory language (calling someone of any gender a bitch or a fag is a no-warning offense, and one guy recently got canned for calling a girl a cum-guzzling cunt). Also, since I'm in the food service industry, I am extremely used to women making more money than me, both on isolated cases and in general. 3 out of my 4 managers are women, including the general manager, who presumably makes more than any of us (not that I would care even if it were any of my business).
I guess my bottom line is that I recognize that discrimination is an ongoing and attention-worthy problem, but I don't think it's systemically enabled or culturally acceptable in the current zeitgeist; it's very much a feature of a dying generation. I'm sure there are certain areas and maybe even whole states where it's a bigger problem, but I'm in rural Virginia squarely below the Mason Dixon line and it's still generally considered a no-no to discriminate in either pay or hiring because somebody is a woman, black, gay, or anything else.
I have run into assholes who do not behave appropriately toward women in one regard or another, but they are generally frowned upon and find it difficult to hold jobs if they can't keep that shit to themselves at work.
I also don't think the earnings gap is a good thing to point to, either as evidence of wage discrimination or as an example of a cultural bias against women. It seems to me that the factors that primarily play into that are things that have nothing to do with discrimination and mostly to do with biological and behavioral differences between men and women.
Why those differences exist (and to what extent they influence income) is a whole other debate, but I think those factors influence the statistical variation in lifetime earnings between men and women far more than instances of unpunished discrimination (infuriating as those may be).
Great points, Red! I agree - I think the wage gap is primarily a generational/patriarchal perception problem. I grew up in the 60's - in an area when a married woman having a job was a terrible shame for her husband. These ideas have not yet completely died out.
And I don't think that the earnings gap is the best example of cultural bias either. I have read many interesting books about speech and behavior patterns, and the difference between male business culture and female - they make great points - I should look them up. I still think the article I posted was interesting though.
"The family that prays together...is brainwashing their children."- Albert Einstein
(May 24, 2016 at 12:44 am)pool the great Wrote: Unconscious discrimination?
I would call it subconscious rather than unconscious.
Nevertheless, the point is that employers don't just necessarily think consciously to themselves "oh, she's just a woman, so I know how much she deserves" or "hey, she's a woman, so that means I don't have to pay her as much" or something like that. Rather, what may happen is they'll come up with different reasons in their minds why this particular person got this much pay compared to someone else. e.g., "she didn't negotiate with me", "he's doing well with his colleagues or coworkers", or "she's too timid"
In their minds, gender is irrelevant to the "actual" reasons for less pay. But it doesn't mean associations aren't subconsciously made between, say, being female and "not getting things done as well as men".
Of course, not saying this is how it is in every case. This is partly speculation, albeit based on studies in social psychology and related areas.
(May 24, 2016 at 12:49 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote: Not to sound like pool, but an earnings gap and a wage gap are not the same thing. Yes, discrimination occurs, and yes some people get away with it, but I have yet to see any convincing evidence that sexual wage discrimination is still a systemic problem in Western society, or that it is a major contributor to the earnings gap.
It's a matter of coming up with the most plausible explanation for the unaccounted difference in wage/earnings between both genders. The evidence is that there is, controlling for most other factors that have been considered to contribute to gender differences in this context, still a difference.
Easy way to debunk this: Are jobs advertised with one pay rate for women and one for men? If not why not? If I could get away with paying women less for the same work why would I ever employ men?
(May 25, 2016 at 4:01 am)MrNoMorePropaganda Wrote: Easy way to debunk this: Are jobs advertised with one pay rate for women and one for men? If not why not? If I could get away with paying women less for the same work why would I ever employ men?
Well, would that work if, for example, an employer subconsciously or consciously associated women with poorer work performance/quality than men?
I feel for you, but I was more hoping to hear about your experience regarding pay discrimination you had faced.
