Equal pay for Women’s Soccer? (Cont’d)

drummerboy

 Jul 14, 2019 at 2:10pm

DaveSchmidt said:

drummerboy said: Why aren't what jobs the same? How do you make more jobs the same? What? 

 What’s keeping women from doing the same jobs as men?

Like what jobs are you thinking of? What jobs do you think women are being kept from doing?

Tech jobs, the unionized trades and Fortune 500 CEOs spring to mind. You and proeasdf may believe the underrepresentation of women in remunerative fields is a result of personal choices, but I think PVW was asking whether larger forces are at play. At least, that’s how I took it, and that’s how I’m chewing on it. 

I’ll add the sciences.

Nearly half of US female scientists leave full-time science after first child (Nature)

I'm really not sure of your point here.

Your example of the sciences is exactly one of personal choice, isn't it?

While the lack of female CEO's is mostly (not completely) one of sexism. But since the number of ceo's is such a trivial part of the work force it's probably not worth talking about in the larger scheme of things, as it doesn't really tell us too much.

Most of the other disparities regarding job choices are due to systemic sexism. Jobs that were traditionally for woman were (and I guess still are) devalued compared to jobs that men usually took.

But I never meant to imply that these disparities are all about personal choices.

drummerboy said:
I'm really not sure of your point here.

 My only point was an attempt to explain what I thought PVW was getting at. As I said, I'm chewing it over for myself. You're welcome to think about it however you'd like, or to ask PVW or someone else to explain it better than I did.

I think saying that women are in lower paying jobs out of personal choice is very simplistic. There are many reasons women are in lower paying jobs/fields- issues with child care, certain careers/skills not being fostered in girls’ development (historically math and science), discrimination, opportunity, perception that women are weak or too emotional for certain work and so on. A whole host of factors. The goal would be to reduce or eliminate the factors that aren’t based on true choice or on physical differences (let’s face it, there are real physical/biological reasons why jobs like firefighter are predominantly male). I don’t think we are there yet.

yeah, but who's saying it's because of "personal choice"? Seems to be a strawman.

DaveSchmidt said:

drummerboy said:
I'm really not sure of your point here.

 My only point was an attempt to explain what I thought PVW was getting at. As I said, I'm chewing it over for myself. You're welcome to think about it however you'd like, or to ask PVW or someone else to explain it better than I did.

 Yes, exactly.

I could push further and suggest that if you think that "the number of ceo's is such a trivial part of the work force it's probably not worth talking about in the larger scheme of things, as it doesn't really tell us too much," then you're perhaps still missing how structural inequity works. 

Sexism isn't some guy in a MAGA hat chortling as he rejects raises for female employees - or at least not just that. It's the whole way economic activity is structured so that, even in the absence of overt misogyny, women will still on average be unable to earn as much as men.

drummerboy said:

Your example of the sciences is exactly one of personal choice, isn't it?

Strawman? 

How did you conclude that choice is what’s doubling the rate for new mothers to leave full-time science jobs, compared with new fathers? Did you consider and reject the idea that social expectations, social supports or other factors that can be changed might have an impact?

Put another way, I'm not arguing with the numbers, but with the meaning you assign to them. There's always, always some plausible sounding reason for the pay gap -- pay is based on hours worked, or seniority, or years of experience, or total revenue.  Should one of those measures falter, easy enough to switch to another. 

One way to interpret such numbers is as justification for pay inequity. An alternative is to see them as quantifying inequity.

Men get paid more because they work more hours? Why do they work more hours? Start probing and pretty soon that looks less than a good explanation for the pay gap and more just another example of how gender roles reinforce economic inequality. And you can do the same exercise for just about any of these kinds of measures.

drummerboy said:
yeah, but who's saying it's because of "personal choice"? Seems to be a strawman.

 Well, you pretty clearly were taking that position. 

DaveSchmidt said:

drummerboy said:

Your example of the sciences is exactly one of personal choice, isn't it?

Strawman? 
How did you conclude that choice is what’s doubling the rate for new mothers to leave full-time science jobs, compared with new fathers? Did you consider and reject the idea that social expectations, social supports or other factors that can be changed might have an impact?

What's to consider? Obviously those things are already changing (and have been changing for decades now) in the direction of allowing women to choose to continue careers when they have children.

Because of that, women choosing to leave careers these days, as they are in the sciences, is far more due to a "real" personal choice rather than succumbing to societal pressures - at least as compared to 30 years ago (to pull a date out of my hat). It has to be, otherwise you have to admit that the cause for sexual equality has gotten nowhere in the last 100 years.

I'm not really sure what the source of contention is here. I am not arguing that "choice" is the primary driver of wage differences. But let's not pretend that it has nothing to do with it. People choose to have children, and they know (or should know) full well the additional stresses that it will place on them in terms of trying to maintain a career.

The bigger point is how to actually fix this. Simple saying "equal pay for equal work" hardly comes close to what's needed to get rid of the vestiges of sexism which push people into making a decision that perhaps they'd rather not make. You need to make radical changes in providing society-funded day care and family-leave policies. You need to, somehow, force wages up in those jobs to which women tend to gravitate.

It's a complicated question, playing against an evolving background of social conventions.

drummerboy said:

I'm not really sure what the source of contention is here. 

I guess the source of contention is that PVW is encouraging looking at the problem in a different way, and you’re intent on making the case for your point of view. PVW: We can always come up with reasons, which become excuses: DB: But reasons!

Simple saying "equal pay for equal work" hardly comes close to what's needed to get rid of the vestiges of sexism which push people into making a decision that perhaps they'd rather not make. 

 Good luck getting a crowd to join you in a chant of “It’s a complicated question, playing against an evolving background of social conventions!”

If “Equal pay for equal work” inspires deeper thought — and there’s some evidence in this discussion that it has — huzzah.

DaveSchmidt said:

drummerboy said:

I'm not really sure what the source of contention is here. 

I guess the source of contention is that PVW is encouraging looking at the problem in a different way, and you’re intent on making the case for your point of view. PVW: We can always come up with reasons, which become excuses: DB: But reasons!

Simple saying "equal pay for equal work" hardly comes close to what's needed to get rid of the vestiges of sexism which push people into making a decision that perhaps they'd rather not make. 

 Good luck getting a crowd to join you in a chant of “It’s a complicated question, playing against an evolving background of social conventions!”
If “Equal pay for equal work” inspires deeper thought — and there’s some evidence in this discussion that it has — huzzah.

Alternatively, a person can have a narrative (such as women are being negatively affected by systemic sexism) and not allow the narrative to be critiqued despite reasons existing that such negative effects may be caused by multiple issues/reasons/preferences.

When I hear the word "reason" being scorned, I wonder if all have considered that the word "reason" is also part of the following words and phrases: reasonable, fair and reasonable, rational and reasonable, reasoning, etc.

Additionally, "reason" is also a synonym for the following words:  rationality, logic, logical thought, scientific thinking, reasoning, thought, cognition, etc.

I would strongly encourage all to be rational and reasonable by not scorning the word "reason."

proeasdf said:

When I hear the word "reason" being scorned, I wonder if all have considered that the word "reason" is also part of the following words and phrases: reasonable, fair and reasonable, rational and reasonable, reasoning, etc.

I can’t speak for “all,” but, yes, I’ve given those words and phrases consideration. Also these: treason, no-ears and Hey, Stephen Rea’s on.

drummerboy said:

What's to consider? Obviously those things are already changing (and have been changing for decades now) in the direction of allowing women to choose to continue careers when they have children.

People choose to have children, and they know (or should know) full well the additional stresses that it will place on them in terms of trying to maintain a career.

The actual work of childrearing continues to fall on women disproportionately, a fact that I think undermines your assumptions about how far society has come in this area "for decades now." When my mother had children, she stepped off the tenure track as an educator and raised three kids as a full-time job; my father was the breadwinner. When I had children, I "tried to maintain" my full-time career while juggling family time, school transportation, childcare arrangements, household employee management, medical appointments, vacation planning and extracurriculars. At my two-equivalent-paychecks household and among women I know in similar circumstances, the burden isn't shared equally. 

TL;DR: Nobody wonders whether a man will choose to continue his career when he has children.

j_r said:

At my two-equivalent-paychecks household and among women I know in similar circumstances, the burden isn't shared equally.
 
TL,DR: Nobody wonders whether a man will choose to continue his career when he has children.

And to take it a step further, if an approximately egalitarian home situation can be achieved, it's yet another hurdle to have it work out as a female breadwinner.