Young, Single, Childless Women Earn More Than Men
time.com
time.com
OF COURSE THEY DO! As someone born in the 1980s, the gender norms of the previous generations had already been blown away. Schools are filled with female teachers, administrators and policy makers. The bias inherent in the system is already in favor of females, and yet we pile on extra focus and opportunities for girls at every level from kindergarten through college. We celebrate every female accomplishment while any sign of male over-achievement is viewed as being a manifestation of discrimination.
Today, women are more likely to graduate high school, get a phD, go to law school, go to medical school. Less likely to go to jail. How is anyone surprised when women therefore end up making more money? The horribly flawed, over used statistic about women making less than men has been shown many times to be due to hours worked, aggressiveness in pursuing promotions and raises, and other similar factors.
To compensate for women born before the 1970s getting the short end of the stick, our culture has given girls born in the '80s and later every possible advantage. This news article isn't shocking, surprising, or novel - it was inevitable.
/end rant, goodbye karma
I dunno if that statistic you're citing is that horribly flawed. Remember, the top end of the income scale is still operating on prior generation norms, or at the least has only very recently changed. It certainly wasn't operating that way in the 1980s. Given the income inequality, the averages probably still work out in favor of men.
Not to get too irate about it but I can't stand when people whine about the success of women or claim men have the deck stacked against them somehow. If you're going to extol the virtues of being a man, the least you can do is act like one.
I hope you see the irony in complaining about perceived sexism towards females by being sexist towards men.
It's assuming that men should bear burdens that others shouldn't have to. That they should not complain when faced with hardship (whilst others can) that they should take harm and not object because that is just their position in the order of things. It's an extension of men being expendable - http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm (most here have seen that before I'm sure).
FWIW I, at least in part, agree with that sexist position that I've just espoused. But I recognise it as sexist.
Anyways -- on that point -- the different social levers available to men and women VASTLY dwarf any differences in aggregate earning or typical education level. Men have all of those things you mentioned and that enables us to do certain things and act a certain way, women have a very different set of tools.
And those that complain about the situation? Not going to get very far in life.
Nowhere does the comment say that women should be earning more than men. It says that if having children wasn't as much of a liability to working women as it currently is, then childlessness in women would be less associated with career-mindedness, which would cause this particular statistic to equalize somewhat.
I don't remember the percentages offhand, but a lot of the reason unmarried women do better is because marriage creates a monopsony for women. Basically employers have to pay less to hire women because their BATNAs are only local instead of national or global.
A stereotype, yes, and not always true, does anyone not believe this to be generally true?
Basically, what they are comparing is the average earning power of all women against the average earning power of poor men.
What I'm interested in is the average earning of men young men and women, irrespective of marriage or number children.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1338
(For those unfamiliar, this law would have encoded the notion of "comparable worth" into law. Comparable worth is the notion that entire fields/job categories are underpaid due to sexism.)
"Once you control for factors like education and experience, notes Francine Blau — who, along with fellow Cornell economist Lawrence Kahn, published a study on the 1998 wage gap — women's earnings rise to 81% of men's" - http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1983185,00.ht...
"You can control for all you want to control for, and the gaps remain," - http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/women-intensely-dissatisfie...
A favorite trick though from the radical feminists is to lump all the men into one group and all the women into another group and then compare the two. Always, the men will come out on top simply because of biology. Women stay at home more than men starting with pregnancy, then staying at home with the toddler, a lot of women also choose to work less than 100% in order to be at home with their children, etc.
The argument that the data supported is as follows: fewer hours worked (counting the expected or not unpaid overtime) led to smaller raises and fewer promotions. Subsequent raises and promotions are based on the resultant salaries and titles, leading to a snowball effect. Maternal leave puts the whole process on pause and puts a mother behind on the snowball process.
think about it for high paying professions such as top law firm work, or an investment bank -- getting ahead to make partner means working tons of hours which is not a viable option if you have a kid (unless there is a stay at home father).
There are statistics that give pay per hour, too.
Assuming that the article was written well, I would assume that they are referring to the average young, single, childless man.
Can you link to some of those studies?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32379727/ns/health-sexual_health...
I can't find the stories of a regular brother down on his luck at the moment. I'll try later.
It could be that not all of the gap is explained by sexism. The overall educational attainment of women is greater than that of men despite the lack of a difference in average general intelligence between the two groups. It could be that a man who goes to the same college, gets the same grades, and has the same major as a woman is slightly more intelligent than his female counterpart. It's thought that male SAT scores are higher than female SAT scores mainly because fewer males take the test (since fewer males are college-bound).
Naturally I don't argue that there's no discrimination in the workplace. For example, unconscious attitudes on the part of employers that a male worker is "providing for his family" would create a pay gap even if overt sexism is uncommon. My point is that it's misleading to say that this study determines how much of the gap "cannot be explained by anything except the person's gender" as the article writes.
kidding, maybe
When there's a labor market, being male or being female is going to be a factor in your desirability in that market, since it's, at the very least, a marker for other characteristics. Same with race or even height.
It's certainly a problem if the disparities get too large.
Now, the question is, how one can determine what is "too large"?
[1] http://www.newport.com/images/web600w-EN/images/1231942.gif
[2] http://i.cmpnet.com/embedded/gifs/2000/0010/0010feat3fig17.g...
Of course, it SUCKS that anyone is ever on the wrong end of that oscillation.
But feminists think the top half is men-only, and they want it to be women-only.
Stating this as if it were fact is disingenuous. The feminists that people think of when they think that -- the ones they label "feminazis" -- exist only in their heads as a stereotype. People actually resembling that stereotype of extremity are few and far between and can be safely ignored.
The vast majority of progressively-minded people, even those who call themselves feminists, lobby only for equality/parity, not supremacy.
But that wasn't really pertinent to my point in any case -- I was just trying to save you from categorically stating that an entire movement consisting of many millions of people was somehow arguing for a total bias reversal. Or at least they're not lobbying for it visibly. Maybe they really believe that, but you'd have a hard time getting them to admit to it. That said, I haven't seen any evidence that this is the case.
If you mean that feminists don't pursue discrimination cases when it comes to low-pay/low-prestige/high-risk jobs, that's demonstrably false: There are many examples of "women's lib" folks organizing factories or migrant workers or whatever. Many of the related Supreme Court cases (e.g. Ledbetter, Chrapliwy) were about discrimination in blue collar jobs at factories. It is likely that these groups spend more time and money pursuing discrimination issues in blue-collar and low-wage workplaces than they do in the higher-salary, higher-prestige jobs, not least of which because (a) discrimination is probably more blatant and common there and (b) more people, men and women both, have below average (arithmetic mean) incomes than have above average salaries and (c) more women have low-pay, low-prestige jobs than men.
If you mean that feminists hold up the gender imbalance in high-wage, high-prestige jobs when advocating for their cause, of course they do. Everyone would. What middle class donor is going to pull out their wallet to ensure their daughters can get janitorial jobs? The aspirational jobs are simply more inspiring. Moreover, ensuring a gender balance in the lowest-wage, lowest-prestige job categories while leaving the top end alone isn't really achieving equality, is it?
By the way, I don't think your notion that women are under-represented in low pay/low prestige jobs holds up to scrutiny anyway. Women are over-represented in the lowest end of the scale, and under-represented in the highest end of the scale. Take a look at BLS or Census Bureau data on the highest and lowest paying jobs and the distribution of women and men in each. Here's an interesting table of unemployment rate by occupation and sex: http://www.infoplease.com/business/employment-rate-occupatio.... Note that the unemployment rate pretty closely correlates to what you'd expect from a gender bias: the unemployment rate in traditionally feminine occupations is higher for men than for women, the unemployment rate in traditionally masculine occupations is higher for women than for men.
I think the only claim in your line of thinking that holds up to the least bit of scrutiny is that men are over-represented in dangerous job categories, or more to the point that men account for a disproportionate share of workplace fatalities. This is true (although your numbers are a bit off). The breakdown of hours worked by sex is around 55% men to 45% women. The breakdown of fatal injuries is around 93% men and 7% women. But with only 4,300 workplace fatalities in the United States in 2009, we're talking about one fatality for every 59 million hours worked. Workplace fatalities are not the biggest labor problem in the US, probably not even for the most dangerous occupations.
I don't mean to flog this thread that is fairly dead at this point, but seriously, the level of largely unchallenged inaccuracy, "truthiness", and borderline misogyny in this thread is not only well below HN's typical level of quality, but frankly it is disturbing. This conversation needs some balance.
The parent comment here currently has 15 upvotes. Another comment on this page claiming there hasn't been gender based discrimination "for a very long time" has 3 upvotes. Many of the claims made in these posts are simply demonstrably false. They seem to represent some kind of knee-jerk, well, not misogyny, but something approaching it. Is there a term for "dislike of women" in place of "hatred of women"?
I'm male, but gender inequality and discrimination in the workplace is obvious to me, let alone to the women in my life. Gender isn't the dominant factor in predicting income, rank or career success. It may not even be among the top few factors. But it is certainly a factor, and not a negligible one at that. To be candid I'm both astounded and troubled this isn't obvious to more of the participants in this conversation.
[You could also consider those in charge of the Texas Board of Education rewriting history and science in textbooks that will be used across the whole country, or the particular people who create the often decidedly institutionally sexist terms of e.g., rape victim anonymity or child support.]
It depends on the distribution. I would assume it's not exactly symmetrical.
Wow, really? Upvotes even? I'm honestly surprised no one has pushed back on that statement yet.
Not to be condescending, but I'll guess that you are a man, and a young one at that.
In the west, there is certainly less officially sanctioned discrimination, although that is a relatively new phenomenon. (Some examples from the US: The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was passed in 2009. The FMLA was passed in 1993. The Tailhook Scandal was 1991. Roberts v. United States Jaycees was 1984. Chrapliwy v. Uniroyal was 1982. Title IX was 1972. The EEOC and The Equal Pay act were 1963. Even 1920 isn't really that long ago.)
But if you honestly believe there is no "serious" or widespread gender based discrimination, you must either be very young, very privileged, or not paying attention. That statement just doesn't reflect the experience of people in the working world, whether white collar or blue. Google "gender discrimination study". Ask some professional women you know. Ask your significant other or women in your family. Look around your workplace and witness how people act toward and talk about women versus the way they act toward and talk about men.
It is getting better, but this isn't controversial: Gender discrimination exists.
There's no conspiracy or collusion (well, rarely, see Tailhook for example, or the wall street folks taking a business lunch at Hooters or taking a client to a strip club). It often isn't even malicious or intentional (I'm thinking of that study that showed people are more comfortable with and most likely to hire people like themselves, but my google fu fails me). But it certainly happens, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, and this certainly has a "serious" impact on women's work life and careers.
(By the way there's also gender discrimination that happens in the other direction: try to become a nanny, day care worker or pre-school teacher as a man, or sue for custody of the children during a divorce.)
You could argue that "they don't need to" and I call bullshit. Go down to the nearest college and pay attention to the comments made about the female grad students who do eschew the preening hour vs the comments about those who don't. It is absurd. A man who doesn't bother to do his hair right is "eccentric" or "a bit of a slob" but this trangression is quickly overlooked (a fact many geeks take great advantage of). A woman doing the same will forever be looked down on as 'that frumpy chick' or 'she could really be something if she took care of herself'. Do you see the difference in how the value judgement plays out?
True story, a few years ago I was working for a very traditional financial services firm, and the word came down from On High, people were to wear shirts or polo shirts, not t-shirts, in the office (as opposed to, out visiting clients, which you'd wear a suit for). The girls kept on wearing t-shirts. Someone mentioned it and was informed that they weren't t-shirts, they were "women's tops".
Incidentally, women dress up to impress other women. Men simply don't notice eyelashes or nail varnish or whatever.
I'm not sure that's true. There's a lot more diversity in women's clothing. I think that probably makes it more difficult to dress for the occasion as opposed to less. For instance, a man can wear slacks and a dress shirt to work and then throw on a tie and jacket for a formal dinner. Most any single woman's outfit would be out of place in one environment or the other.
(In fact, men can get by in almost any situation with a pair of dress pants and a button down shirt.)
> Incidentally, women dress up to impress other women. Men simply don't notice eyelashes or nail varnish or whatever.
Agreed. That has been my observation as well. I think there may have even been scientific studies on this point.
- More likely to be the victim of a rape. - Representation in the media. http://bechdeltest.com/
I'm sure there are more that a better feminist than myself could share with you.
BTW, were they comparing all men to young/single/childless/under 30 women or was it men with similar socioeconomic position?
Since college gives you a $6k bump (or so) in earnings per year afterwards ... its stands to reason that would be reflected in the numbers.
There's a much longer and involved article that breaks down the entire thing more, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-...