Another Day, Another Asinine Post On Jezebel
A blogger there named Doug Barry suggests that you "Express Your Outrage About the Gender Pay Gap with These Pithy E-Cards."
And there is a gender pay gap.
Dr. Carol Tavris, whom I recently had on my radio show, writes in the WSJ:
In 2010, young American women had a median income higher than that of their male peers in 1,997 out of 2,000 metropolitan regions.
Oopsy...was that the wrong pay gap?
When women do make less money, there are usually reasons:
--Women tend not to negotiate for higher pay the way men do.
--Women take time off to raise children and make children their priority.
For example, from this Kay Hymowitz piece on City Journal:
Let's begin by unpacking that 75-cent statistic, which actually varies from 75 to about 81, depending on the year and the study. The figure is based on the average earnings of full-time, year-round (FTYR) workers, usually defined as those who work 35 hours a week or more.But consider the mischief contained in that "or more." It makes the full-time category embrace everyone from a clerk who arrives at her desk at 9 AM and leaves promptly at 4 PM to a trial lawyer who eats dinner four nights a week--and lunch on weekends--at his desk. I assume, in this case, that the clerk is a woman and the lawyer a man for the simple reason that--and here is an average that proofers rarely mention--full-time men work more hours than full-time women do. In 2007, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 27 percent of male full-time workers had workweeks of 41 or more hours, compared with 15 percent of female full-time workers; meanwhile, just 4 percent of full-time men worked 35 to 39 hours a week, while 12 percent of women did. Since FTYR men work more than FTYR women do, it shouldn't be surprising that the men, on average, earn more.
...But proofers often make the claim that women earn less than men doing the exact same job. They can't possibly know that. The Labor Department's occupational categories can be so large that a woman could drive a truck through them. Among "physicians and surgeons," for example, women make only 64.2 percent of what men make. Outrageous, right? Not if you consider that there are dozens of specialties in medicine: some, like cardiac surgery, require years of extra training, grueling hours, and life-and-death procedures; others, like pediatrics, are less demanding and consequently less highly rewarded. Only 16 percent of surgeons, but a full 50 percent of pediatricians, are women. So the statement that female doctors make only 64.2 percent of what men make is really on the order of a tautology, much like saying that a surgeon working 50 hours a week makes significantly more than a pediatrician working 37.
And, really, as I've heard said before, if you can get a woman for 77 percent of the salary you'd have to pay a man, wow...who'd ever hire anyone male (save for all those dirty and risky jobs that women tend not to want)?
Oh, yeah -- and the e-cards are here.
Predictably, like Jezebel, they're tired, working too hard, and unfunny.
Most of women majority jobs have a turn over of only other women. Note that. Men are not taking over women majority jobs.
I always hold on to the belief if you prove yourself at building a career like a man does, i.e. doing something as tough as outside sales based on commission then there is never a reason why someone wont pay you the same amount or more.
Your worth is not based on how much you work or for how long, it's based on what you can do that others cant.
Most jobs that women hold can and do tend to get replaced by other women. And then I get to hear the bitching about how you are unappreciated. Again it's not how hard, long, tedious you work, it's what skill set do you offer an employer. Otherwise migrant workers would make more than CEOs.
Nobody cares how hard you work because there are lots of people that work hard. What else do you have to sell to me about YOU?
Purplepen at September 12, 2012 11:24 PM
I've seen this stat for years. If someone spouts it off at me:
I ask how many weekends do they work a year?
How many times do they stay late?
How many times do they come in early?
How many times do they fill in for missing employees?
Will they work over night?
Unless they can give affirmative answers to the above questions why do they deserve equal pay?
Jim P. at September 13, 2012 5:47 AM
Ever since they started with this gender pay gap decades ago I have learned to ignore it. Here's why:
The original study from sometime in the 1970s (done by NOW if I remember correctly) used statistics to lie. They claimed that the CEO and his executive assistant were a "part of the same team" and therefore lumped them into the same occupational group. Seriously, the female secretary's and the male CEO's salaries were consider "comparable" by NOW?! What a load of crap!
By golly, I would hope that the CEO is paid more, a lot more, than the secretary. Afterall, the CEO (whether male or female) should be a lot more accountable than the assistant.
I'll also use myself and my occupation as another example - corporate training. Yes, men make more money than women, a lot more.
However, that is grouping all trainers together. If you break us out by the difficulty and expertise-level required of the training involved then the pay by gender is the same.
The real difference is not in the gender, but it is that the more difficult, requiring more technical expertise, training (think teaching javascript or some sort of programming language) pays more; teaching end-user training (think about training someone how to use MS Word, Excel, or PowerPoint for example) pays a lot less as it does not require more expertise. (more expertise than the end-user, yes; but, not more expertise than teaching programming)
The more difficult training tends to be male dominated while the softer training is dominated by women. Why this gender difference is anyone's guess and really is a different topic than the pay gap.
P.S. for what ever it's worth, I'm on the softer side of training and there are women who are paid more than me because they do the more difficult training. Should I moan about a gender pay gap? (BTW, that question is just me being snarky - not a real question)
Charles at September 13, 2012 6:32 AM
The 77% stat most often quoted compares all full-time jobs in the economy, yet 98% of workplace deaths are guys, so - unless guys are so reckless that we are dying on the same job at a 49-1 rate versus women, women and guys are not doing the same jobs.
I also suspect that the statistics often quoted do not include benefits, such as pensions (presumably higher for women relative to salary, all other things being equal, due to greater longevity)), health benefits (again, greater for women), and employer provided day-care (obviously skewed toward women if for no other reason than due to the prevalence of single-motherhood).
DirkJohanson at September 13, 2012 7:19 AM
I remember reading somewhere that women are also more likely to want non-monetary compensation like the ability to work from home or flex hours.
Elle at September 13, 2012 7:51 AM
I thought it was pretty well established that the gender pay gap wasn't between men and women, but between women with kids and women without 'em.
Kevin at September 13, 2012 9:20 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/09/13/another_day_ano_1.html#comment-3329626">comment from KevinThey "forgot" to mention that at Jezzy.
I work crazy hours -- rocketed out of bed at 4:50 this morning in fear, dreaming it was my book deadline day and all the words were fallen off the pages.
You just can't work "crazy" hours if you have children and still be a good or adequate parent, unless you aren't the parent taking care of them.
Amy Alkon at September 13, 2012 9:42 AM
Don't forget that in the eyes of the federal government, women are more valuable employees then men (especially white men). No business ever got sued by the EEOC for hiring or promoting too many women.
Cousin Dave at September 13, 2012 10:00 AM
I'm a divorced man and I make 77 cents on the dollar of what I could be worth. Rather than take the lineman position- 6AM-4:30 PM, outside climbing utility poles in the winter- I chose to keep my 9-5 desk job. I did it to be a 50% dad (I know crid doesn't believe such a thing exists) rather than have him every other weekend. Can't be on-call and be a single parent, unless you have a babysitter who is willing to come over at 4 am with 15 minutes notice.
There oughta be a law against such injustice.
smurfy at September 13, 2012 12:31 PM
The studies alleging a gender pay gap are perfect examples of using "social" "science" as an axe grinder.
SFAIK, where adjusting for experience, hours worked, within a specific occupation there is no measurable pay gap. So, to create one, these "studies" arbitrarily compare female dominated occupations against those typically male based on some cooked up similarity in required qualifications for each.
In other words, they cook the numbers. And that is even before getting to Amy's point that if women could really be found for 77 cents on the male dollar, any gender pay gap would have long since been arbitraged right out of existence.
In my relatively well remunerated profession (still about 94% male, despite the fact that minimally qualified women will get hired, where a similarly situated male won't even get an interview), women earn substantially less than men. Why? As a group, they value schedule over advancement, so choose higher seniority in lower paying positions. Additionally, they work fewer hours on average than men, because they drop assignments more often.
Jeff Guinn at September 13, 2012 4:14 PM
I was thinking about this one at my job yesterday. My new job, started this week, is male-dominated. It requires that we work weekends, every weekend, have few holidays, climb ladders, carry heavy things, do minor repair work, and basically get dirty and sweaty every day.
I am a woman, and I like my job, but most women don't like jobs like mine. They don't want to be dirty and stinky and sweaty. They don't want to have to stash baby wipes, deodorant, and clean shirts at work. That means that women don't do my job very often. The ones who do pass the dirtiest jobs off to their male coworkers.
There are commissions and bonuses involved in this job, but the few women I'm working with just don't get the bonuses, because they don't do the hard work that pays the most. They'd rather be comfortable. Now, there's nothing WRONG with that, but I don't like them acting like they got cheated because they CHOSE not to do the hardest jobs that get the most money.
The Original Kit at September 14, 2012 5:04 AM
Here is the US Dept of Labor insisting the gender pay gap exists.
WARNING: Reading this may cause a sudden spike in blood pressure.
Jeff Guinn at September 14, 2012 7:27 AM
Now, there's nothing WRONG with that, but I don't like them acting like they got cheated because they CHOSE not to do the hardest jobs that get the most money.
Posted by: The Original Kit at September 14, 2012 5:04 AM
__________________________
And I tend to get annoyed when men complain about how women have all the safe jobs. Even men who don't have kids to feed don't tend to go for minimum-wage jobs, I'm guessing.
lenona at September 14, 2012 8:20 AM
And I tend to get annoyed when men complain about how women have all the safe jobs.
Who cares if you get annoyed?
dee nile at September 14, 2012 8:32 AM
And I tend to get annoyed when men complain about how women have all the safe jobs.
Who cares if you get annoyed?
Posted by: dee nile at September 14, 2012 8:32 AM
_________________________
The point is, why should anyone care when whiners of either sex can't be bothered to notice that an awful lot of jobs will only pay well if they're dangerous and vice versa?
BTW, a well-educated man I know who's having trouble finding work complains that women are "stealing" men's jobs - that is, prestigious jobs. (Women aren't the only group he's blamed.) I told him that if he's going to talk like that, he might as well blame his unemployment on over-population, since, as Quentin Crisp once wrote: "Nothing except diamonds is above the law of scarcity value."
lenona at September 14, 2012 12:12 PM
"BTW, a well-educated man I know who's having trouble finding work complains that women are "stealing" men's jobs - that is, prestigious jobs. "
Well, do keep in mind that the government has stacked the deck. Promoting a woman helps a business meet its EEOC quotas; promoting a man does not, and promoting a white man is almost prima facie evidence of discrimination. If you're charged, you are guilty; the law allows no defense. So hiring and promoting men is a business risk.
Cousin Dave at September 14, 2012 12:51 PM
Leave a comment