females, feminists and femininity.

What I have seen in the past 15 years is a concerted effort to shape feminism as a bad thing. This is much in the same way that the word liberal has been redefined as a negative.

Words like feminazi and libtard are choice examples of this effort. But the real work has been much more insidious. To the point where the debate (in both instances really) has been completely reshaped, hijacked by those who would prefer a more "traditional" culture.

 

The 77% figure is a crock of bullshit, and has been widely debunked. All over the place. (See the 5 links?)

The statistic used was chosen for political purposes only and the data that apparently supports the conclusion, doesn't support the conclusion drawn at all.

The 77% mark is representative of all women's earnings compared to all men's earnings, for those who have the same level of education (not same field of study, only whether one has a high school diploma, bachelor's or master's). Hell, check out the White House's document on this entire subject. On page 32 they directly state that the only wage comparison made was based on levels of education. You can scrutinize the data on the graph on the same page as well for confirmation of this.

It completely fails to take into account the gender make-up of higher and lower paying industries and professions. Women generally pick lower-paying professions, with less danger, lesser hours, and higher stability.

You can't go around comparing the pay of (mainly female) nurses with the pay of (mainly male) doctors, and then complain about a substantial difference in pay. Neither can you do that with executives and their secretaries/assistants, even if all of them -for argument's sake- have a Bachelor's degree. It is sheer stupidity to do so.

In fact, an entire section of women gets paid more than men. But hey, when it is the reverse situation it is a laudable thing, right? Neither does anyone bemoan the fact that men are the minority of the student bodies in most universities.


I know as personal fact that the German government and academia, as well as Australian academia, pay no heed to the biased, skewed presentation of empirical data coming from North America.

It's political bullshit and, dare I copy @Baraka_Guru in saying, it is intellectually dishonest.

I may agree with the core principles of Feminism, but this blatant lying and deliberate obfuscation (thanks for the term MM) of the facts is what makes the Feminist movement in the West look bad.

 

He does not fail to take it into account, he explains the discrepancy right here in the quote I used in the post:

 

And I followed it up by questioning whether the discrepancy is due to IQ or the sorts of careers we value over others in our society. Which you failed to comment on.

And tell an emergency room nurse that she is choosing a profession that requires less hours and involves less danger than a physician sitting in a primary care office all day.

Things aren't as simple as you'd like them to be.

 

I see, so if you are not in line with modern feminism, you obviously want them back in the kitchen eh?

Much of the "reshaping" of modern feminism, is not due to its opposition, but its own failure and change of attitude.

Things like this....
Womyn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Didn't help 'shape' anything for the positive I recall seeing that spelling for the first time on some protest sign back on my college campus.

Also a feminazi is a particular case. Its women who are not just pro-choice, but encourage abortions and laud them. Its a bit crude but its a specific breed of feminism. I believe it was on this forum at one point a discussion of a woman who had ONE baby of twins aborted. She would come pretty close to qualifying.

 

This also explains why you have to go onto some obscure website or a blog to find a term like 'fempire' but you can turn on the major news networks every holiday season to hear about the fucking 'war on christmas.'

Don't you worry, troglodytes, we already lost!
That's how I feel most of the time.

 

You marked this phrase: "Although women do earn a majority of academic degrees, their specialties pay less, so that earnings even for women with doctorate degrees working full time are 77 percentof men’s"

I don't know whether you read my previous comment in full, but that wages of women and men are compared by level of education alone in order to show that women get paid less than men is exactly the problem with the statistic. It doesn't account at all for what professions and positions they pursue after the studies finish.

If @snowy does a PhD in education and continues to be a teacher, in whichever capacity and field, she can't possibly compare herself even to an MBA (a lower education level) working in a senior corporate position and then claim pay discrimination. Do you understand how flawed such a line of thought is?

I made no comment on the IQ argument from @Herculite because I find a claim of gender-based IQ differences extremely dubious, and more than irrelevant to the choice of professions. Speaking of failing to comment on things said, you failed to comment on the argument I presented that a section of the female demographic gets paid more than men.


Regarding job risk: Maybe your current pursuit of the nurse profession is clouding your perspective, but you are trying to make a situation seem more complex than it is. I agree that nurses are not in a low-risk job (especially those working in ER), but that is an exception to the general rule. Look at this list of apparently the 15 professions in the US with the highest amount of danger, and then you tell me which ones of these are dominantly populated by women.

 

I'm a network engineer. You don't see a lot of women in my field and I really don't know why. The hours suck, it's stupidly stressful; but it pays well and I've never seen any bias. Women that enter my field generally move on to management in a year or two. I really can't explain it.

For what it's worth, I work at IBM. Female CEO, 1st and 2nd line managers are also female. We're as female friendly/indifferent as it gets.

My wife is an RN, we have similar degrees and similar work experience. I earned 50% more than her for the first 35 years of our relationship. It would seem to have equalled out for now. I'd credit the marketplace, rather than anything else. It's hard to outsource healthcare. Her income has risen slowly, mine dropped significantly to meet the cost of labor in India and elsewhere.

 

It says specifically that the careers that women tend to get phds in pay less than the ones that men go into. What more do you possibly want from me? Jesus.

Otherwise i am about to go into a five hour lecture. Thank the gods.

 

Alright, I can tentatively accept your political bias argument when it comes to the articles. In that case, what about the argument I made based on the White House paper? The point of all this information is, after all, that the 77% is a lie.

I agree that there is a wage gap. However, one that is not nearly as bad as it has been made out to be. 93% is very different from 77%.

It would be nice to see a proper, objective academic study of this issue of the gender wage gap, without political agendas skewing the data or conclusions. I haven't been able to find much.

I don't really think this is a women-only argument. Men face just as much bias when entering traditionally female occupations. Nurses, social workers, and school teachers being prime examples.

But yes, gender discrimination when entering specific fields is certainly a problem.

 

Then I don't understand what your citing of the article is meant to do?

Do you assert that the gender wage gap is 77%, or not?

Or if you assert that it's 77% because women PhDs don't go for higher-paying jobs, what is the heart of the issue?

Still no comment on some women earning more than men, by the way.
--- merged: Dec 3, 2013 at 12:41 PM ---

I agree that we often do not get paid what our education is worth. I mean, if we were paid according to our formal education/training, as someone who hasn't even completed his Bachelor's yet I have been vastly overpaid these past years. But that is not how remuneration works. We are paid for the value of work we perform, nothing else really, and it is the employer that determines what a specific type of work is worth to them.

In the case of US school teachers, however, I completely agree. Teachers in the US are disgustingly underpaid for what they do and the contribution to society they make, and I think public policy towards education of the entire country needs serious, wide-reaching reform.

 

Amen.

 

Dude, I stated my reason for posting it when i posted the article. You misunderstood and went barreling on with your own interpretation of why i posted it. Now you want me to answer to your erroneous understanding of why i posted it. Doesn't that seem a little nuts to you?

 

The BLS has salary data by occupation and gender...

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.pdf

...from lawyers (weekly mean earnings - $2,055 male/ $1,636 female) to elementary and middle school teachers ($1,128/$921) and across the board, with relatively few exceptions.

It is certainly not all (or even largely) due to employment or pay discrimination, and one can quibble over the rate of the pay differential, but to discount or dismiss it as a factor in the less than equitable pay for women in the same jobs/professions as men and attributing the pay difference to "women’s choices" (eg to delay or interrupt work to have a family or other such reasons) or how to measure the gap and what figures to use is ignoring the facts.

 

I've read your initial statement again, trying to see another angle. You mean with "what we as a society value" that women who complete their PhDs and then choose lower-paying jobs are a societal problem?

It'd be great if you could enlighten me.

If any of your comment was addressing my statements/points, I agreed that there is a gender wage gap but not nearly as much as it has been made out to be.

Further, you know just as well as anyone on here how the use of incorrect information and irrelevant comparisons works to de-legitimize a position on the political stage. That women earn less in total compared to men is not a problem. The only problem worth addressing is actual, direct pay/employment discrimination based on gender.

In this light, why are all-women businesses not only tolerated but encouraged, with grants practically flying at them for the taking? If quotas on a minimum amount of women employees are in place, shouldn't the reverse also be true?

Feminism is also about enabling women to choose freely, no? If, as a group, they have a higher tendency to go for positions that are lower-paying but also have less danger and more stability, why is there a necessity to change that trend? Because some people want to see more female scientists?

Aren't we enforcing our own ideals on these young girls growing up and trying to figure out what to become in life?

 

You know, i'd just as soon not. It's not that important.

 

I feel this is necessary.