The Fun, Easy Jobs Pay Less
Maybe "the glass ceiling" has something to do with feeling compelled to sit behind a chic, glass desk. Claudia H. Deutsch comments, in the IHT, on Warren Farrell's new book on what women are paid:
Farrell accepts that women, as a group, are paid less than men. But women, he says, methodically engineer their own paltry pay.They choose psychically fulfilling jobs that attract enough applicants to depress pay. They avoid well-paid but presumably risky work and tend to put in fewer hours than men - no small point, he says, because people who work 44 hours a week make almost twice as much as those who work 34 hours and are more likely to be promoted.
In fact, Farrell points to subgroups - male and female college professors who have never married, or men and women in part-time jobs - in which women average higher pay than their male counterparts.
"Control for all these things, and the women make as much, or more," said Farrell, 61, whose new book on the shaky myths of pay disparity, Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap - and What Women Can Do About It, arrived in bookstores in January.
"Let's face it: Men do a lot of things in the workplace that women just don't do."
...Men have long realized that jobs in manufacturing and sales - line jobs in business parlance - are better for their careers than staff support jobs in human resources and public relations. "CEOs are selected from among those assuming bottom-line responsibilities for a company," he said, "so these fields pave the way for women who want to break alleged glass ceilings."
Hi -
>>"Let's face it: Men do a lot of
>>things in the workplace that women
>>just don't do."
Geez, I wonder what Rosie the Riveter would have had to say about that.
L'Amerloque
L'Amerloque at March 4, 2005 4:17 AM
She'd say "We can do it!" of course.
Todd Fletcher at March 4, 2005 8:12 AM
"Men have long realized that jobs in manufacturing and sales [...] are better for their careers"
Men haven't "realized" anything more than women have. Jobs in manufacturing allow us to break things and put them back together. Jobs in sales allow us to screw over guys who are taller and better looking. I think that people's career choices are largely a function of their temperaments and skills -- and I think that temperaments and skills do vary, on average, across the gender line.
I make a good living, but I could make more in another, more cut-throat industry. I'm a girly man, and I like having time to think and to have flirtatious and fun conversations with my colleagues. (I am also very lame at putting things together and negotiating prices.) Those perks are a form of income to me. It really seems to miss the point to say that women more often select, say, grade school teaching positions than men because they're economically irrational.
Maybe the salary ranges that are tagged onto different classes of jobs happened AFTER they were chosen predominantly by one gender or the other? It reminds me of that old line, "If men became pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."
Lena at March 4, 2005 8:25 AM
Are various HR jobs lower paying because they're not as necessary, or because a lot more women take them?
In other words, which came first- the low pay, or the women in the jobs?
Angélique at March 4, 2005 5:03 PM
We could answer that question empirically, Angelique, if we could get historical data on:
1. Salaries for HR jobs, and
2. The distribution of gender within the HR field.
If HR has always been a female-dominated field, we wouldn't be able to do much analytically. But let's assume that we might start with a field that's predominantly male, and then shifts more and more toward women over the decades.
For each year, we could calculate the percentage of all HR jobs that are held by women. We'd then calculate the mean or median HR salary.
With this analysis, we could answer the following question:
As more women moved into HR, did the average HR salary come down?
If you get the data, I'll run the numbers. I'll even throw in a scatterplot!
Lena at March 4, 2005 5:25 PM
Lookie here. SOMEONE has to have the babies. Women nurse babies as well, and time taken off the have a child and successfully nurse a baby can put a serious nail in the palm of your job.
This bit of biology is something men CANNOT take on. So... this puts the wrench in the works for women who want children. Where there are children present, there is a homemaker present, one hopes. Eventually, it can be the husband.
Women who are in relationships where there are no children must learn to expect a greater amount of homemaking skills on the part of their mate or have the couple spend the money it takes to keep the house the way they like it. Women have got to stop "just doing it" in the house if their partner isn't taking on an equal, REALLY equal amount of husbanding to her wifing.
Couples have the opportunity to arrange things between themselves. A single woman has every reason to expect that the damned workplace isn't an automatic cross on her back. The ongoing problems exitst with expectations of others and demands we make on ourselves.
Deirdre B. at March 4, 2005 5:32 PM
I have been offered the same corporate job THAT I WAS ALREADY DOING that a man quit at that 70 cents to the dollar ratio. In 2001.
And men work hard? Kiss my ass. I see lazy long lunching middle management suck ups being promoted when the womem support staff are the ones actually doing the work.
What women don't do as well is the office politics. Mostly cause you have to sell your soul. Or write a book explaining that really, there's no problem, Women WANT to be paid less cause they make bad choices.
I've out Alpha Dogged men before. They REALLY don't like it. My role is supposed to be supportive listener and worker bee.
Just because I can talk to a friend, soothe my kid and work on the project at the same time doesn't mean I'm not doing the job. The male managers, who rate work and judge worth, just ain't smart enough to see it.
marsha at March 4, 2005 6:27 PM
Well, I hate to say anything, for I know that I will get at least a few people a’ bitching. Anyway…
From my prospective, I have never seen a job listed that shows: ‘RN, level III, 5-10 years experience, ICU duties; male $15-17 per hour; female $12-15 per hour’. For Medicare, medicate, medical, etc. there are no ICD-9 medical codes ‘253.5.90471: treatment of diabetes; male fee $325, female fee $250’. For the years I worked in industry there where no pay scales: “Chemist level I, 1-3 years experience; male, $40-45,000/year; female $30-35,000/year’. Moreover, from the litigious nature of any work environment, it would be immediate news (and pending lawsuit) if any person, of either gender, would be at a financial disadvantage from taking a job that the other gender benefited from. I guess this will be followed by all sorts of comments of ‘well, this happened to me…” or anecdotal stories of who got paid less from doing which job that someone else got paid for. As a side note, I personally saw two times (again, in my limited experience) a woman person taking a job, subsequently ‘unexpectedly’ getting pregnant, taking leave for the maximum time, and then quitting thereafter (pure abuse of the laws put in place to protect women from having their jobs taken away from having child)--maybe a side-effect from a white-collar job. Anyway, just a comment about the things I have observed.
doc jensen at March 4, 2005 7:42 PM
> Lookie here. SOMEONE has to have the
> babies.
I've never understood why. People who insist on making babies are the ones who have to deal with this, but we shouldn't pretend it's entirely compulsory. Parenthood is actually pretty easy to avoid. But people WANT to have kids, don't they? So it's like any aspiration: A commitment for which one will be compelled to make sacrifices.
> Women have got to stop "just doing it" in
> the house if their partner isn't taking on
> an equal, REALLY equal amount of husbanding
> to her wifing.
Are you going to hold your breath? Or just hector husbands like a screeching hen?
> The ongoing problems exitst with
> expectations of others
Right, markets are competitive...
> and demands we make on ourselves.
So, like, pick a project. Is it at least possible that men are by nature less concerned with household things, as opposed to being badly socialized? Why pretend that masculinity is endlessly flexible?
> Just because I can talk to a friend,
> soothe my kid and work on the project at
> the same time doesn't mean I'm not doing
> the job.
It's a safe bet that an undistracted contender of similar talent will kick your ass. Markets are efficient that way.
For the first time in a couple years, I agree with an entire Lena comment (the 825am). (Except for the flirtatious part.) It would be neat if everyone was as cognizant of their implicit choices. Not every problem in your life is a product of darkness in the hearts of others.
Cridland at March 4, 2005 10:55 PM
Hmmm. We all have to get past the idea that we're gonna breed at some point in our lives and embrace the possibility of never reproducing. And everyone needs to agree that sex is great and good and let birth control become as ubiquitous as toilet paper. And those who do breed, whether by choice or coercion, need to accept the career hits. But although the parental units should share those hits, it's true that it's the females of the race that do the producing and feeding of a new life. Which can translate into delayed or postponed careers. I went back for my BS after raising 3 kids and even though I make as much (or more) now as guys with as much experience as me (AND I’ve gotten a 45% raise in the last two years), it blew me away that after working for months on an out of state project developing some hardware, when it came time to sign for delivery, the tech assisting me was handed the paperwork instead of me. What the hell? I think it was just because he was male, and it was more comfortable for the guy. I work in a male dominated field and I have been routinely ignored. I have learned to speak up. I’ve grown balls, so to speak. I think we just need to keep on truckin’. I just saw a screening of the movie “Osama” (http://www.mgm.com/ua/osama/). And holy shit, talk about repression. We’ve come a long way, but as a whole, the world has a long way to go.
Diana Rants at March 5, 2005 12:07 AM
Diana, do you still do black ops stuff out there in the desert? Yeager and Skunkworks development and all that?
Cridland at March 5, 2005 8:56 AM
Yeah, um, point is that doing three things at once isn't distracting. It's simply how I work. Nice to know that you ignore the implied point that it isn't, based an answer around how distracting it would be for you and fashioned it in smug male style.
Single minded focus is a guy thing in general. Mulit-focus is something most women can do.
My butt gets kicked when I don't suck up to the middle management asshole who doesn't do anything. I can't do the politics baby, not to climb up the soul-numbing corporate ladder.
And the pay differential isn't because of starting jobs advertising different rates for different genders. It's because of who is HIRED for what jobs and how they are PROMOTED. The idea that everyone is looked at equally and only a human's abilities matter has become a fairy tale white guys like to pull out cause it supports what they want to believe. And it's easy. You get to pretend the problems aren't you and that they've been fixed.
I also understand anecdotal evidence is not in any way something you can accurately base generalities on, of course, but it does illustrate things currently happening in the particular. My experience merely says it's still going on. Do not believe that I was not worth the same money as the person who quit. I was/am actually worth much more. I had been doing both our jobs for a year. The people above him never communicate with those below. (Hell, I was shafted but it was the best for me.)
What it does prove that a problem is still going on is the research that says it is. So the real question is what's the latest research, how was it done and what does it say? This I can't honestly say I know right now. I have no idea what was used in researching the above book.
We are lucky that discrimination on race or gender is no longer a clear cut company policy. But it does still exist in our minds, subtle beliefs that are usually only seen by those on the outside of you and I see them all over these comments. The idea that women will be the care givers. That taking a maternity leave and realizing you can not leave your baby to go to work everyday when it's time to go back is "abuse." (It's changing your mind when you realize you can't let strangers take care of your heart everyday.) The silly example of how jobs are advertised.
My personal point is there are a million other ways to do business that would support parents AND childless folks. That just changing the mind frame of what a work day should be. Hell if you choose to not have a baby then shouldn't you have free time to do junk for yourself? Yet that is never addressed.
We keep pretending the current model, based on greed, puritanical work ethics, and male style "communication" can be fixed and if things are wrong it's the cogs fault for not speaking up or going home early to pick up a sick kid.
I have to also say it's great to hear of a woman doing very well in her field etc. I'm not saying that nothing is getting better. But that doesn't mean it doesn't still suck. And just because it doesn't suck as MUCH as it did (I mean hey, we do have the vote and can even own property now) doesn't mean you sit back and say ok, that's good enough.
I mean, unless it is good enough for you. In that case be a dear, DON'T breed. We don't need you in the gene pool anymore.
Oh and I am optimistic that things well be much better in about 30 years. That's when the 20 somethings are going to be in charge. My gut says they are gonna be a LOT closer to equality thinking.
marsha at March 5, 2005 9:58 PM
Marsha, I really appreciate what you have to say. I certainly didn't mean to imply that everything was perfectly peachy for me. Sure, I'm making as much as guys 20 years younger than me, but nowhere near what guys my own age are making. I took a major career hit by being a mom first. And things certainly haven't been easy. 6 months after I was hired my boss actually pulled his little pink willie out and beat off in front of me while we were driving on government property. I laughed it off, but it shook me to the core. In the end, he was fired, disbarred from the base and his career in aerospace is ruined. The investigation was hell; I lost hair in chunks and felt ostracized immensely. (His buddies (all male co-workers) didn't want him to get in "trouble".) In the end, the Air Force asked me what could be done to make things better in the lab. I said, "hire more female engineers" and they have. What a difference that has made.
Women work with others in a lateral fashion. Men think hierarchically. Sure, we need leadership, but the best way to get a task done is to work cooperatively, as a team. We NEED a little more “tend and befriend” and a little less “fight or flight” Again, Marsha, I agree with you. Things will be better in 30 years….
Diana at March 6, 2005 12:13 AM
> I can't do the politics baby, not to climb
> up the soul-numbing corporate ladder.
!
Cridland at March 6, 2005 12:24 AM
Hi –
>>Oh and I am optimistic that things well be much
>>better in about 30 years. That's when the
>>20 somethings are going to be in charge.
>>My gut says they are gonna be a LOT
>>closer to equality thinking.
(wide but sad smile) Hey, this is exactly what I was hearing 40 years ago, at a very famous university on the other side of the Bay from San Francisco.
I wouldn't be holding my breath, if I were in your position. I say this with neither animosity nor glee nor humour, just with realism … and sadness.
L'Amerloque
L'Amerloque at March 6, 2005 10:15 AM
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