My wife chose to be on a professional track while I spend more time with the kids at home (I do work, but you definitely wouldn't say I'm on a professional track). She makes as much money as a man would at her job. Yes, it is anecdotal evidence, but it supports the studies mentioned above.

I'm going to say "Yes, but..."

The thing is, in pretty much all societies across the board, womens' work is less valued than mens'. (I'm sure there are exceptions).

This is true even if the task is the same... say, making clothes. If clothing making is a female task in one society, it is low status. If it is a male task in another society, it is not.

In our culture, when women enter a field, the pay drops. It drops for men, too, so you could technically say men and women are earning the same amount for the same work, but the fact is fields that are predominantly female pay less than when they are predominantly male, even when it is the same field. This can partly be explained by having more job applicants, so the pay drops, so men no longer enter the field. It can also be explained by women seeing -themselves- as lower status and not worthy of a raise, so not asking for one.

So yes, a lot of the jobs women go into make a lot less, but is there an explicit reason why? In some cases there is, but not always.

In fairness to the idiots in government, they would much rather be appearing to fix perceived injustices and slights, than with fixing actual problems. So there's that.
And we don't typically recruit men to be kindergarten teachers unless they're Austrian ex-cops.

"Congress should ignore the discredited claims of activist groups."

Congress should disregard ALL claims of ALL activist groups and only vote their conscience, if they have one.

They will soon be begging for the safe harbor of federally determined occupational wage scales.

That sounds like communism to me.

In our culture, when women enter a field, the pay drops.

When the labor supply increases, overall pay should drop. This is not surprising.

There's also this, which was alluded to in the quote Amy posted.

Do we try to get more men to be kindergarten teachers, he asked?

No man with two brain cells would risk his freedom in such a manner.

In my experience, which may not be typical, most professional women, and the stuff NOW is doing really pisses them off. They worked damn hard to get where they are and made plenty of sacrifices and deeply resent having that dismissed.

(One of the funniest meetings I ever attended was a sexual harassment class at Novell in the early 90s. Each class had about a dozen people in it. There were three women in the class I was in, all software engineers. One started spewing feminist clap trap, the teachers, a couple, agreed with her. The two other women spoke up and spend the rest of the class ripping apart all three. They said things that would have gotten any man at that company fired. I don't remember all that was said except that both women convincingly argued that feminist/sexual harassment training did more harm than good, that it created an us-versus-them environment which was harmful to working as a team. Both women also said they resented being treated like children or spineless, weaklings; they didn't need someone to protect them.)

The thing is, in pretty much all societies across the board, womens' work is less valued than mens'. (I'm sure there are exceptions).

No, with a few exceptions, women choose work that is less valued.

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Some people just cannot accept that the world is unfair and that there are consequences to choices ... even choices made twenty years ago.

So, they try to legislate "fairness" without an actual idea of what this "fairness" will look like in the end - because it's always a moving target.

Again, asking for fairness of outcome rather than fairness of opportunity.

Men are the risk-takers of the species. I would not work on an oil rig

***

Amy, did you not read what I wrote? The occupation itself doesn't matter, generally, in most societies, if it is done by men it is higher status. No matter what it is. Basket weaving.

In any case, life is good.

Anybody want to bet that if this act becomes law, men's wages will go down, as opposed to women's wages going up?

If this act becomes law, businesses will go to great lengths to avoid hiring women. The government will then set quotas. In the law of unintended consequences, this will devastate businesses which require the strength and stamina most women (and wimps like me) don't possess.

About men being kindergarten teachers. I think that would be great. I didn't have a single male teacher until middle school (junior high). I had exactly 1. There were 2 or 3 PE teachers that were guys, but I no other male teachers at all.

I was thrilled to see some men in the staff at the local elementary school, but a bit disappointed that 2 of the 6/7 (one has an ambiguous name) were PE instructors (that's about a third of them). For reference, there are about 50 teachers total.

Why, why, why, does everything have to be "equal?" As a woman and an aerospace engineer, I am tired of this constant hand-wringing (always by those outside the field) that there aren't enough women in science disciplines. As engineers, we couldn't care less about your gender. We only want you to do your job.

My husband is also an engineer, and we agree that most women just don't want to go into that field. Why is this a problem?

I didn't have a single male teacher until middle school (junior high).

Me too - not counting PE teachers.

And the first non-PE male teacher I had taught ... wait for it ... science. He had a biology degree and a classroom full of snakes (which he often let us hold or feed live mice). 11- and 12-year-old boys thought he was the coolest guy in the world.

"I would not work on an oil rig, be on a crew that fixes the electricity that goes out"

Funny you should mention that. I am a man who makes almost exactly 70 cents on the dollar of my potential. I have decided to turn down two jobs on the line crew that climbs the poles and keeps the lights on in the last year. It is very lucrative work, 20k raise to start plus OT. But I am a divorced dad and outside crew working hours mean not being able to get my son ready in the morning and rush him around to school. That means no weeknight overnights or visitation when I'm on call, which means no joint custody. I don't want to be a daddy in paycheck only. Also, it's scary and it's hard work.

It's about trade offs and preferences more than genitals. But there are still some good old boy clubs and surely some ingrained hiring preferences. I would prefer not to work with attractive women for instance.

All three of my kids had a male for first grade. He was the most requested teacher in the school.

As far as "Men are the risk-takers of the species. I would not work on an oil rig" Really? Does it always have to come down to this? I don't want to go work on an oil rig either but it doesn't mean that there isn't a disparity when it comes to pay.

"Steven Pinker made the point at an ev psych conference in Austin a few years back about how ridiculous it is that we try to shove women into hard science careers. Do we try to get more men to be kindergarten teachers, he asked?"
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I would have to state that most men know better than to be kindergarten teachers.

To throw a man in jail these days all it takes is the mere accusation that a male teacher is a child molester. No evidence needed. Just "so and so said..."

really Kristen? Did you read Hoff-Sommers blog entry? In the 50 peer reviewed labor department reports, that show when you control for variables, there isn't such disparity? That often people chose to leave out the controls, because it's easier to find a trend? How 'bout the study about doctors, which failed to control for the difference between pediatricians and surgeons in pay, and the relatively different percentages of men and women in each field?

The hardest part about data like this, is the variability in data. Once you get down to comparing experience doing a thing, you realize how often 2 people doing a thing don't have quite the same experiences.

What's the difference between a sysadmin that came up the ranks from networking, and one that came from the programming world? What's the difference between a Manager that came from the programming world, and another who came from the business development groups?

With truly huge datasets, you can certainly find similar people to compare, but even then, prolly not within a company.

So, here's your anecdotal evidence. As a guy who's first career was photography for 10, then programming/systems for the last 14, I am a different paygrade than one of my friends at the corp who has been here 25 years. Even though we are the same age, and have the same level of experience doing our current jobs.

This is generally acceptable in our ranks because we know that there is a difference in "Putting in your time"

Anyone see how that might apply with gender?
Even better? Our boss is a woman who is about the same age, and has an 11yr old. But who only stopped working for the normal maternity leave. Why is she the boss several paygrades up? Because she has the drive and the will to be management, and put in all the long hours. She has so much unused vacation, they forced her to take one.

She will keep climbing that ladder, because this is what she is interested in doing. I am not interested in managing, and am better at making stuff happen on the computers... from that perspective, there is usually not much of a ladder.

Is this somehow unfair?

My aunt was an arc-welder until she fell off a scaffold and nearly ripped her arm clean off. I gave serious consideration to becoming an electrician. Good jobs, those.

Not a lot of women waiting in line for them, though.

"One of the funniest meetings I ever attended was a sexual harassment class at Novell in the early 90s."

A staple of a Babylon 5 panel or Claudia Christian appearance is the story of the arrival of company lawyers on set with paperwork to sign. They wanted the actors to pledge not to sexually harass anyone.

Not only were they laughed out of the room, and a mock document passed around for the cast to promote sexual harassment, this all happened on a show whose writers decided Claudia, as a professional officer with Earthforce, would spend her leisure time in a blue satin robe with her hair down, but still in makeup. And entertain guests while so gowned. And sleep with Talia, the PsiCorps hottie.

"The occupation itself doesn't matter, generally, in most societies, if it is done by men it is higher status. No matter what it is. Basket weaving."

I'd like to see some actual examples of that. I've looked a bit into professions that have changed from one to the other over time. Off the top of my head, here's two: telephone operators and real estate agents. Both at some point went from mostly male to mostly female. Neither suffered a loss of status; arguably, the job of telephone operator increased in status somewhat after women took over. I will also point out that both the status and pay of schoolteachers have risen as the number of males in the profession has declined.

Biology is going from being a nearly-all-male profession to being a mostly-female profession. The same is happening in certain areas of medicine. Let's see if their social status changes. I'm guessing it won't, because the job is still the same.

I'm with SwissArmyD on this. I'm a DBA with extensive sys admin experience. I've also done development/programming.

During my interview I told them I wanted to do the tech work, screw managing people. (Not that directly. ;-) My manager got what I was saying as well as the other interviewers. I am a one deep position -- most of my managers do 40+ on average as well and they get paid for it, regardless of gender. Those managers who do 40 are getting "average" pay. I get above average pay, but the only time I see under 40 is if I take a day off in conjunction with a three day weekend.

The point is that those who sacrifice will be rewarded with perks and cash. Those who do the job with no over and above won't get the perks, but will have a job. Slackers will be resented by all. It is not a gender issue. It is an effort issue.

The problem with hard science careers is that the hard part isn't optional.

In our culture, when women enter a field, the pay drops

Demand, meet supply, now nearly twice the size it once was

"I also didn't have a single male teacher until junior high."

Well, that was mighty precocious of you!

"The problem with hard science careers is that the hard part isn't optional."

Gonna quote you!

Reading the new comments here, I feel like I should mention that, as a kid, I was always told how "boring" math is and that "nobody" likes it. I don't know if boys got that as well, but I sure did. Mind, I have a B.A. in mathematics and a M.S. in biostatistics.

It took me a long time to realize that all those people were wrong. I enjoyed having a single "right" answer (as opposed to having to guess what side of an issue the prof felt was correct).

I don't care how many men/women are in a given field. I just think we shouldn't sabotage kids. Boy wants to do ballet, write poems, arrange flowers, be a nurse or teacher? fine by me. Girl wants to build robots, play with cars, make model rockets, work construction? fine too.

The only thing is, everyone should be held to the same standard. That is equality. If I get a different standard because I'm a girl (or short, or a mom, or whatever) then it's not equal.

That being said, I will only buy a car that lets me adjust the seat up so I can see properly (and so my husband can adjust it down so he can fit).