Apple employee spouse stages wacky weekend protest - Page 3

Anyone have kids? It's no joke.

I bring my kid to daycare before 8, I'm at work half an hour later. Starting earlier is not an option, since I'm involved in a lot of team projects. Working two hours overtime, means I don't see my kid anymore that day. Not exactly ideal for anyone.

Working steadily more than 40 hours a week would probably require your partner to stay at home. Or paying for someone else to care for them.

welcome to the 50's... What happened to technology freeing people?

That's an entirely different debate (one involving things like tax burden and other costs/forces that compel both parents to have to work) and really is beyond the topic of this thread. There is no doubt though that raising children is very difficult when both parents have to work.

They're also countries with greater social cohesion and better health care for the poor ... which you don't like, so try:

Higher standard of living.
Taller, healthier people.
More time on the beach.
Happier people.
Lower crime.

(just ask for sources if you can't be bothered to google)

Slagging these countries off because they are 'massive welfare states' is like a communist slagging off America for being 'built on the exploitation of workers.' So what if they are? It's an ideological statement that manages to avoid the fact these states are successful states that are safe, happy, healthy, relaxed places in comparison to the US.

You keep slogging away hombre, and be proud of the fact you don't have a welfare state. We'll think about you when we take ANOTHER holiday and wonder why anyone would DEMAND the right to work really really hard just so they can be sure to pay their hospital bills.

no it's not. you said yourself:

I still stand by my assertion that, unless you are retired or otherwise don't need the money, if a person is unwilling to work more than 40 hours a week at a job, he either has no ambition or is lazy.

Last edited by schmidm77 on 12-15-2004 at 04:39 PM

Your advocating a system that might benefit you, but harms families with children. Especially harms children of single parents. Leads to discrimination against people prone to get kids (read young women). Undermines workers rights and, in the end, is totally unnecessary...

Its the $8.50 thats the problem!

Well, how much do you think a person who picks up a box and puts it on a shelf should make? Unskilled labor earns low wages, if that wasn't the case then why did you bother with college?

Now this goes to the "how minimum wages contributes to unemployment" debate. Firstly, NOBODY makes minimum wage except waiters/waitresses (or other jobs where tips are received) and high school kids.

so you say that $8.50 isn't enough,ehh? Well, lets just pass a law and raise it to $10. Hold on a minute! Now each employee making $8.50 costs $1.50 more to keep employed. If we assume that the business still generates the same amount of revenue, then in order to keep the cost of labor at about the same level, for every seven employees, one will have to be fired. So one person just lost his job so that the other six could get a pay raise. Good deal.

But, let's just assume that the business can afford to keep all of the employees at the new rate. Well yippy skippy right? Wrong. The cost of labor has still had a significant increase and do you think that businesses are just going to take a loss in profit for it? No, they are going to raise the prices of the products and services they sell to make up the difference. So now these people might be earning more, but it also costs them more for the things they purchase. So the benefit of this new, higher minimum wage has just been eliminated.

Economics is really not that hard. This illustrates again that every one of these "best-of-intentions" policies usually comes with an unintended side-effect that is often overlooked, but causes real damage once enacted. Do you think maybe that the reason why most of our clothes and toys are now made in Asia somewhere might have to do with the fact that Americans like being able to go to the store and pay low prices that could never support an American workforce?

I was applying for jobs several years back and finding that they all expected long working hours. Asking the interviewer how many hours was expected was frowned upon - as what some really wanted was someone who wasn't concerned about the hours (and they did pay well).

Making up numbers here (but keeping the proportions right!) - one job was paying $70k and I spoke to people I knew about hours expected. They said it was a great job, great pay, 70 hours a week. I said that right now what I really wanted was a $40k "great job" at 40 hours a week. They said impossible.

I eventually found the job I was after. I took a job that the HR companies said was severely underpaid - but worked out to suit my time and be paid well for that time. That suited me, it suited them.


It was because I'd worked out the averages that I realised how important it was. An average 2.5 hour commute was part of that. Work out if you do stuff you enjoy through the week. And on the weekends.

Additionally, though officially I was on (say) $25/hour, they paid 1.5 times that for overtime. I was quite happy to work overtime unpaid as I had what I wanted in a job and overtime was rare. I did understand however that any overtime at 1.5x still was cheaper for my company than employing someone else. You see, no matter how much overtime you work you don't get more holidays or other leave, more public holidays, more training (or time off for training) etc. The company has to pay more since an overtime hour costs them less (and that doesn't count desk space or strategy meetings etc). For my very generous job I needed about 1.8 times my base wage - though this is rare.

Some people work hard to retire early, or to have a nicer house, nicer car - we can make that call. There are some people who LOVE their jobs. I'm now on miniscule pay in a new job I love, often working long hours. But if a job is to support my life then I want to be paid for what I do. The government attempts to protect people being used by the companies and I'm all for that.

Well, I will retract that statement then. In replying to a blanket argument I have made one of my own. It is still my opinion, but I obviously don't apply it universally to all people because circumstances do vary; my choice in wording did not express this however.

But, the issue of why certain policies contribute to an environment where both parents need to work is a very complicated one. Why, for example, does one spouse, in many cases, work a half to two-thirds of the year just to pay the family's taxes? Anyway, like I said, that debate was really beyond the scope of this thread.

If you read my post I didn't say people SLEEP an average of 9 hours per day:


So showering, shaving, dressing, brushing teeth (you DO these things, right?) PLUS sleeping...and then getting ready for bed too. Sheesh. Not that hard.


Let's see, that is about 120 minutes...or about 40 minutes per meal. This could be high (it is actually for me)...but some folks do an hour for lunch and hour for dinner but no breakfast. Maybe the average is slightly high but, once again, you missed the over all point. You were creating a ratio between 40 hours and 168 hours which is plainly misleading. The more appropriate ratio is work hours (whether 40 or 60) to "non life sustaining activity hours" (i.e. sleeping, eating, etc.) Which is more like 80-90.

The "life sustaining" stuff is stuff you cannot do without. So sleep, food, basic cleaning...commuting...and work (of course). So if there is NO time left for anything else...then all that is happening is life sustaining activity. Perhaps you want nothing more from life than work. I don't.

All I know is that a McDonald worker make more than 17 dollars as basis salary. When I folded cloths in an industry laundry I made 20 dollars per hour. When I sorted plastic bottles for Coca-Cola I made well above 20 dollars. Our unemployment rate is a bit higher than yours (around 6%) but a larger part of our population is in the work force, insured unemployment rate is more than 15 dollars/h and the guaranteed unemployment rate is 10 dollars/h (going for a 40 hour working week).

I am going to college to work with something more interesting than mobile telephony and to make a mark on the world. I can´t expect to raise my income by much more than 50% over what I get now (28 dollars as a "second line business telephony technician") when I am finished but there is no end to people who wants to study in my field (Social science, more specific sociology).

Full-time working women are paid on average 24 cents less than men on every male-earned dollar. Eliminating the gender pay gap, which involves implementing comparable worth policies, raising the minimum wage, employers providing better child care opportunities and allowing more flexible work schedules, would help lessen that problem. Pro-family, perhaps?

A friend of mine raised an interesting question on the subject of the so-called "gender pay gap"...if it is a reality...then why doesn't some company hire a bunch of women (replacing men) at 24% lower wages (or even 20%...giving some women raises!) and then establish a HUGE cost advantage over its competitors?



I have wondered about such "pro-family" policies myself. Wouldn't the ultimate "pro-family" policy be to pay an individual married person enough to enable their spouse to stay home with the kisd? (Yeah, I know...Ozzie and Harriet...Ward and June...and all that crap)...but isn't it a legitimate question?

I mean, for my kids, the best "day care" they can get is either me or my wife...and the flexible work schedules is relatively unnecessary if one of us is able to stay home and tend to the kids as they need. Note also that if I am able to work at a reasonable 40-50/hour per week rate, then I don't really need a "flexible work schedule" either...because I can be home with my kids in the evenings and weekends.

I can't help but thinking that the solution to some of these problems is much simpler than we all think. We keep wanting to come up with "pro-family programs"...when in reality the simplest one might be just paying a decent, fair, living wage to someone for a decent, fair, reasonable work schedule.

But...alas...I dream.

Well that would be very very illegal.

Hmmm...not so sure...I'm hiring an equally qualified person to do a job for less $. What is illegal about that?

There are 2 issues twisted together here, not to be confused.

One is equal pay for equal work. If you define a job, whether you pay a man or woman you pay the same.

The other is women not being represented equally in higher paid positions. Whether it's more men in managerial/director positions, more men in computers, or whatever.

Thus on average woman may be paid less than men - but it is largely an effect of not being evenly represented in higher paid positions.

If you replace all your men with women, in all positions in your company, then you gain nothing from the representation issue. The only thing you gain is any remaining difference in equal pay for equal work, which is far smaller effect than unequal representation.

So I guess my point is still made. The statistic is (very) misleading.

IF women are paid the same for the same job, then that issue is fine (I make no presumptions there).

The other issue then is why are men in higher paid positions, and in what situations should something be done or not done about it (eg unfair promotion or recruitment VS work preferences or lifestyle choices etc).

Anyway, now we're off topic from the off topic

Oh, I know I left out much much more of the issues in my last post. "Lifestyle choices" may be more realisable with help from a company, society expectations of father vs mother roles place pressures on each, and so on. So much more... OT.

Right...but the statistic should be stated differently in this case. I think it likely isn't by many (not necessarily you) to further certain social or political agendas.

There might be perfectly reasonable reasons for the lack of women in certain higher paying positions (and maybe not too)...but the blanket assertion (which is all that is often made) that women (all things being equal...and maybe they aren't) are paid less than men is wrong.

I'm curious as to how you come to this conclusion. If you separately average all male earnings and all female earnings, an earnings ratio exists that is not 1:1. It's absolutely necessary to conclude a pay gap exists, since men on average earn 24% more than women. That's across the entire U.S. labor market. If you take a look at individual occupations, pay gaps exist to the extent that men earn more than women in all occupations (although naturally the disparity varies). So whether a pay gap exists or not is easily answered by reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The question is what accounts for the gap.

On a related note, after a semester studying gender and work in my women's studies course of the same name, I couldn't remember why on earth the subject interested me. It almost turned me off to feminism, academically speaking at least. But I realize now that I merely enjoyed proving the issue was a problem or that it even existed, which a few here happily play their part. Final exam in that damn elective from hell tomorrow.

Look, the statement "Full-time working women are paid on average 24 cents less than men on every male-earned dollar." leads any reasonable person to the conclusion that two comparably skilled, experience and educated individuals holding a comparable job...if one is female she'll (on average) earn 24% less than the male would. This is exactly what the statement leads people to believe. So I (actually a friend of mine) raised the question...if this is so, why doesn't some enterprising company simply begin firing its male employees in favor of cheaper female labor?

In response, you suggested that it wasn't necessarily an equal pay for equal work gap as much as a unequal distribution into all jobs (particularly higher paying jobs). Which is a different kind of a statistic or problem.

Finally...on this subject of this statistic...statistics are misleading. We don't know what numbers went into them. Averages are particularly vexing because a) we don't know which type of average we're talking about (mean, median or mode), and b) If we're talking mean...this average can be highly skewed by only one number in the sample set.

My point about all of this is that I think the statement/statistic is misleading. If there were truly...two comparably skilled, experience and educated individuals vying for a job...and the female was willing to work for 24% less than the male...why aren't they being hired by companies in droves to achieve (significant) cost advantages over their competitors?

This seems like a reasonable question doesn't?

If this is not happening, then perhaps a couple of conclusions are possible:

1. Companies just don't like hiring women even though it might give them a significant cost advantage over competitors.

2. The pay gap (as I have described it) doesn't really exist or isn't nearly as wide as suggested.

3. There is something else that makes women unequal in this equation. In other words...yes...they'll work for less, but... (and I don't know what the "but" is).

4. There aren't enough qualified women in certain (higher paying) roles (but this really leads us back to the distribution issue...not so much the equal pay/equal work issue).

I resented schmidm77's comment about <40hrs working people being lazy and having no ambition, but he retracted it. I stand by the rest of his opinion, especially regarding minimum wage and overtime laws.

Chris, do you realize that schmidm77 only wants the freedom to write his own work contracts in a way that is suitable for him? He's not intent on forcing you or anybody else to do more than 40 hours a week. If you want 40 hours and absolutely no overtime, that should be between you and your employer.

Personally, I live in a country with extremely progressive income taxes and heavy support for studying. The logical plan for the future in this situation involves working very little, studying a lot, which lets me up the price of my few work hours while still remaining under the radar of progression. If I want to start earning seriously, I'll carry my intellectual capital to another country with tolerable taxes. This is what happens when you tax people enough. Eventually there will be no one left to pay and they have to change the system, only then the economy will not have enough life in it to adjust fast, and the repercussions won't be fun.

I don't really know what his intents are. But I am all for freedom to engage in employment at will. I never said anything about overtime laws or whatnot. In fact I really wasn't talking so much about laws as the employment/cultural/family issues connected with regularly working lots o' hours every week. While I don't know that I have a particular opinion about overtime pay laws...I do think as a society we must be careful about abuses of power in asymmetrical power situations. More plainly...when someone (whether is it business or any other entity/person) has too much power over someone else, there is opportunity for abuse (e.g., "you work for a fixed rate for however many hours I say") then, we as a society (I believe anyway) have a moral obligation to correct or stop that abuse.

I agree that most people will assume you are talking about people doing the same jobs. As you say, stats can be misleading - and so can the English language.

Your friend's question breaks the assumption above in a very nice way. He makes a totally different assumption - he finds an effective counter example and assumes that it negates the whole original statistic. Also misleading.

If we wanted to REALLY understand what's going on, we need a question which removes some of those assumptions. Something like "Where do the differences in income occur?" (etc)

That was my response, not ShawnJ's.

I suggested what the differences might account for (led both by the original general statement and your friend's question), to determine what might be going on.

If there is a specific problem but we apply a general statistic to it, will we address the specific problem?

To bring this back to Apple (and making up percentages) - saying that Apple has 3% of the market and Microsoft has 90% has certain connotations. Saying Apple has 3% and Packard Bell has 5% has different ones again. Saying Apple has far less software than MS is also 'true', as is "I can do everything I want and need to do at work on a Mac or PC".

Lots of words and assumptions, getting to the crux of any matter is difficult, and different for different people.

I think he (and I) were really trying to force a dialogue around the statement. Not so much assert another assumption as being correct (at least speaking for myself). Often the best way to do this is to go (perhaps outrageously) and the opposite direction. It wakes people. Sometimes it even makes them think.

Yeah that can be very effective. So long as at the end of the dialogue neither assumption is held, you're in a better place. Some people don't understand the limits of their own counter argument.

Recently KAPAO returned to Apple with a ten year old who hasn't been able to spend a day with her mom in 25 days. Over the family bullhorn, she was singing "If you're happy about overtime clap your hands" GUESS WHO CLAPPED? Her mother's boss! You can get the latest details at kapao.org

I like the interview with santa.

On a related note, you've been told about ten times that all but about 2-4% of this gap is attributable to factors that are not related to gender at all. You've been told that full time is defined as anything above 32 hours and that most women work a little above that 32 hours while men on average work almost 50 hours. You've been told that while men and women might have the same degree level, being a college graduate with a bachelors degree for example, that women overwhelmingly tend to get their degrees in areas like Education and English while men flow more toward hard sciences which pay more on average. You've also been told that more women tend to leave the work force for a number of years to care for children and that is considered a voluntary and rewarding choice that is equal to work even though it is not reflected in an income statement.

So for example your statement of a gap would be true with my wife and I even though we both work in a field that makes it impossible to have gender bias. Our pay for work is determined by contract for the entire group and measures the number of units of college classes in addition to the number of years experience. In otherwords, it is impossible for someone to look at my wife, see she is a woman, and pay her less because of that fact. Yet we will have a pay gap if she ever decides to go back to work because she has decided to likely take a minimum of ten years off in order to stay home and raise our children.

Additionally you've had it pointed out to you that it doesn't really matter who earns it, but who gets to SPEND it. In this matter women overwhelmingly win. When looking at the number of products, ads, etc that are introduced/placed for men versus women, women overwhelmingly win. Additionally when measuring the pure number of dollars spent, women win. My wife may earn $0 according to the federal government, but she spends practically every dollar that comes into our household.

Yet you repeat this wage gap lie as a matter of gender inequity instead of a matter of gender choice. Why do you persist in being so dishonest?

Nick

I like being dishonest. Really. It's fun. I spent a whole semester studying nearly all aspects of gender and work in a class of the same name-- just so i could impart my dishonest knowledge to everyone here. You got me pegged. Nick, I'll get to everyone's very large misunderstandings within a few days.

Sure, you tell us how a women's studies class taught at a small, private, liberal arts college in the east and the books you read in them can equal reality and thus correct our "misunderstandings" that occur in said actual reality.

Nick

Isn't it true that traditional male careers like, say teaching, tend to lose status and fall in salary as they become "female dominated"? True or false, nick?

Care to speculate on why parking attendants are payed more than day-care workers?

Or why I got more sorting coca-cola bottles (male dominated but only required the ability to distinguish between different bottles) than when I worked in a customer service frontline (dominated by women, requiring high school education).

I wouldn't describe teaching as male dominated or even as traditionally such.

Also I can speculate on why what you say might be true, but realize you've provided no proof for your assertion that parking attendants earn more than day-care workers.

I do have a very unique perspective in that I have come through and done many of jobs that are very traditionally female oriented. I, for example, have worked as a day care teacher.

So let me tell you what I saw while working such a job for example. First almost all women who were working day care had children in day care. They got to place their own children at their place of work and keep them there for free. These benefits, free day care, and having your children under your ready supervision, are worth very much in the female value system. The cash value of the benefit is probably about $160-$200 a week in addition to whatever they would earn (more if there are more than say, two children.) The fact that they get to keep their children under their own eye as opposed to being with total strangers is pretty much invaluable. Your "uniform" often consists of very comfortable clothes, especially tennis shoes. Your co-workers consist of people who are pretty much your equal, and likely have much in common with you. They often are easy to talk to, get along with, and you can share duties and responsibilities easy.

The hours most day care establishments operate are Monday through Friday from about 6am to 6pm with most major holidays off. This often means no possibility of weekend work, and having the days you want off most, free automatically. It means no possibility of graveyard shifts, odd or late hours. The environment in which you work is mostly indoors, and almost always air conditioned. There is no concern of say, robbery or managing large sums of cash or valuables that would make you a criminal target.

In contrast with even something as mundane as say, a parking lot attendant, you are often working in a booth, seldom with air conditioning. You have the possibility of weekend work, late night work, and holiday work. The job involves people who may attempt confront you and not pay. You could be a criminal target for cash or be treated in a hostile manner if someone believes something has happened to their car under your watch. You are absolutely not allowed to bring your children to work and must pay for someone else to watch them. Your work is boring and you likely have no co-workers with whom you can converse.

Now you can claim this is all bullshit that I have made up, but the reality is that you know plenty of females and males. Do a little survey of your own. Create a job of day care worker working Monday through Friday from say, 6am-3pm for $7.00 per hour or Parking Lot Attendant from say, Wednesday through Sunday from 3pm-12am at $8.00-$8.25 per hour. Find any female with children that you know and ask them which they would take. If they won't take the parking lot attendant job, ask them why and see how many of the reasons I listed are given. For fun you might even ask them at what salary per hour they would consider the parking lot attendant job. You might be very surprised by their response. I would bet that at least half would never consider the job period and the other half would probably need at least ten dollars per hour to overcome their resistance.

Try it and let me know what you find. I work in a field that is almost 95% female. I have lots of experience with what women want in a job.

Nick

Yes, Santa knows what elf labor problems are like, and what one highly motivated elf can do.

That's my job.

Sociological case studies *are* in fact heavily based on findings in the real world. To suggest otherwise shows either that you haven't read any or that you somehow missed the obvious: population surveys, interviews, original field research and observations, etc. You could debate flaws in the research methods in each study, but you can't dismiss the entire field as irrelevant because "we read books." Personally, while the readings are interesting, the material is far too dry to major in. I just can't devote all of my intellectual energies to real-world "findings," like a sociologist does. That's why I'm an English Lit major. 4.0 in my major I might add.

That's a remarkably broad misconception, but let's get into a few more specific ones. New brought up an excellent point, that female dominated jobs pay less than male dominated jobs. That's indisputable. Save your energy for other points because every set of data from the BLS disproves any notion to the contrary. You can't argue against that fact. You can justify it, but you can't argue against it. (This pdf table unfortunately shows that men make more than women in *all* occupations. And it takes a little work, but you can also see that female dominated jobs pay less than male dominated jobs)

He also brought up a more contentious point, that female dominated jobs pay less than comparable male-dominated jobs, such as daycare workers and parking attendants, respectively. This is true, but your attempt to evaluate the two different jobs is messy and imprecise. What's comparable? Well, employers sometimes implement comparable worth policies to help mitigate the gender wage gap. They do so by using a point system that ranks a set of variables (skill, education required, effort, stress, etc) on a scale from 1-100, the total amount of points adding up to 100. They then evaluate each job according to this point system, deciding how many points a particular job fulfills for each variable on the scale. The total determines which jobs receive pay raises. So it's not just one or two highly disputable points that you've conjured but many factors considered systematically.

I'll be back later.

I believe these flaws are exactly what I bring up. Your own link shows the flaw of measuring work in weekly units when it is clearly possible to show the work in hourly units. Hourly units are a well understood and commonly accepted means of measuring work done and pay for that work. The fact that they stick to weekly would be akin to measuring people exclusively in meters and using no centimeters.

The fact that full time work is defined as anything above 32 hours per week and that women often work little more than that 32 hours while men work closer to 50 hours has been brought to your attention. Yet you bring up measures that still deal with weekly salary and wonder why I don't give them any more validation than I would a measure that claimed you were two meters tall and your girlfriend, one meter tall.

it shouldn't be hard to get a concession, even from one as politically motivated as yourself, that when doing a study, you attempt to use the most precise and sensitive units of measure available. Using weeks when measuring salary is no where near the most precise measure. They have the ability to not only break down salary per hour, they have the ability to break it down to salary per hour worked , per year of experience and per degree earned and in what field. Those precise measures do not yield a significant wage gap. They are not used in presentations such as yours because some organizations find it politically desirable to divide people.


Hahahaha, speaking of underpaid majors. Make sure to continue that law degree Shawn, because English Lit plus a nickle might get you a cup of coffee in reality. Don't worry a degree in Music requires a dime to get the same cup of coffee.


Wouldn't it be intelligent to ask what other variables besides pay cause a job to be female or male dominated? I brought up those variables and you are welcome to survey any group of women who have children that you care to regarding and watch them choose the "female dominated" job for exactly the rationales I gave. It is clear women consider more than purely salary when considering a job. Any study that does not measure these factors is again, a flawed study. It is also why so many measures of comparibility fall short. You go ask a hundred women with children whether they would take the day care job or the parking attendant job and you will watch the reasoning at work.

In the tables you provided it clearly shows even in elementary education, a field that is made of not only majority women, but majority white, highly educated women, that they still earn less weekly than men on average. Yet the union contracts make it impossible to reward individual incentive. The organizational chart for most schools is basically flat with no means of men advancing disproportionately to say, Teacher I which would pay more than say a Teacher III and leaving women behind. Yet the disparity is still over 10% on a system where bias is impossible. It simply shows that the measurement being used is inprecise and politically motivated. It is not possible to use gender to advance under an elemantary school union contract. Any measure that claims so is a flawed measure. What it fails to measure, experience, hours worked, educational level, etc. is what creates that disparity, not gender bias.


My attempt was exactly what was asked for, speculation as to why day care would pay less than a parking attendant when the two are "comparible." Yet I would challenge you to see how terrible the measures of comparibility truly are by conducting a survey of your own. I know the results wouldn't even be close when dealing with women with children. Also who created the comparibility index? Was it a bunch of white males? Should we call it a patriachal comparibility index since it is clear it does not include factor most women would clear consider in their job decisions like not just job security, but physical security from crime?

The fact that you would consider a parking lot attendant comparible to a day care worker shows your own male values. Survey some female values and don't be surprised if the results mirror exactly what I mentioned.


Obviously if the system they created were truly efficient, women would gladly flow into the jobs that had been equalized. My contention is that women and their input has not been sought enough and that as a result, the factors that measure if a job comparible are imprecise and as a result, inefficient.

Before you come back, do us all a favor, address the points I mentioned and find wage studies that use precise measurements. It truly is pointless to discuss wages at the weekly level when it can lead to gaps larger than 10% even in systems in which gender bias is impossible. I wouldn't waste my time with surveys that said most men are two meters tall and most women one, and I shouldn't with wage surveys that are just as imprecise.

Nick

Um. The table shows median weekly earnings. That's not a flaw. It's a valid statistic.


Well, here you're plainly wrong. Table 17 (PDF) in Women in the Labor Force: Databook (BLS) (PDF) shows that full time working women on average work 36.2 hours compared to 42.4 for men. You overestimated the gap by nearly 2/3rds. Men put in longer hours outside the home, to be sure, but women work what's known as a "second shift" of unpaid labor, which includes domestic responsibilities and childcare. Sociologists Hochschild and Machung found that women work an extra 15 hours longer than men each week. More than that unpaid.


Let's measure in pennies and nanoseconds. Preciso, no?

As far as being "politically motivated," my only concern is egalitarianism. And it's a cheap, horribly compromised concern at that given our economic system. This course has done far more to turn me off to feminism than anything. The issues here are almost exclusively about equal access to an inherently unequal system. Blegh. And I have to argue with people here and elsewhere about that even. It's enough to make me sick-- or apathetic.


Ahem. I quote that table from the REPUBLICAN administered DOL-- the same one that eliminated the department's "Equal Pay Matters Initiative, removed all information about narrowing the wage gap from its Web site, and refused to use available tools to identify violations of equal pay laws," according to the National Committee on Pay Equity.

There are pages and pages of tables on the databook I linked to.


I know. It's ridiculously impractical-- but I'm fortunate enough to have the opportunity to study what I love. I intend to be personally responsible by not wasting the opportunity and socially responsible by broadening that opportunity to more people.


So certain factors cause women to choose certain occupations over another. Of course.


You're trying to tell me that gender has absolutely *nothing* to do with experience, hours worked, and educational level (as well as educational concentration)? Gender doesn't inform those factors one bit? They exist totally separate from gender? So while men choose higher-paying math and science related majors while women choose lower-paying humanities related majors, it must be a mere koiny-dink? *Zero* correlation? Or when women work a "second shift" at home, which detracts from their paid labor in the marketplace? Gender must be hiding under the bed with the dust bunnies for that one. Or structuring work time to care for the kids and what not. You get the point.

For some reason, the whole concept of "gender socialization" seems foreign to you, as if "gender" stops at merely the fact of being male, female, or whatnot. It doesn't. It informs much of our lives, actions, ambitions, career choices, and so on. I really can't understand any view to the contrary on this one-- one that suggests it *doesn't* inform those things on some level.


Gibberish.


Rephrased gibberish.


I don't. I haven't implemented a comparable worth policy so I have no idea how the two occupations really compare. I haven't thought about it.


Funny. Sociologists note the exact opposite phenomenon-- that comparable worth policies partially stem the flow of women into traditionally male and higher paying occupations, chiefly because the pay is now good in their own. Some consider it a limitation.


Go for it.

Valid in that it states that there is a gap. It does not state nor is it correct to state that the gap is caused by sexism. The numbers can be correct, but that doesn't mean your conclusion about how those numbers add up has any merit.


You're correct. I attempted to simply recall the numbers from memory and did so incorrectly. My general conclusion was correct though in that weekly salary would not take into account the fact that men work more hours than women and that any salary measure that does not take this into account is not going to be accurate. You've proven that my memory wasn't exact with the weekly hours worked, but that doesn't change the outcome of those numbers.

If we take the just the pure number of hours worked and assume equal pay, we already have a pay gap of 15% just because women work fewer hours. All other variables could be equal and they would still make 15% less. Simply math dictates that you have to work the same number of hours to earn the same amount of pay.

As for your second shift assertion, it has been disproven by studies from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Additionally that old study used definitions of housework that do not include tasks that men often undertake. Sure a man may not have cleaned the toilets, but if he washes both the family cars, that is considered "housework" in this modern age. Your study would not define it as such.


Hey, there is a reason your local gas station charges you 9/10's of a penny. You should consider that.

We can discuss how small a measure would be unreasonable, but the point remains that looking at hours alone accounts for 15% of the 22% gap, we should be willing to remove that from the catagory of gender bias.

BTW, your own link here, puts the gap at 22% and you asserted in the first post it was 26%. Those darn slippery numbers.


You mean they didn't address why women avoid high paying death industry jobs and don't care to be "equal" in those fields? They didn't address that men are 16 out of every 17 work related deaths and yet women don't care to come into fields like Oil Rig Worker and even things out?

Women do care about the glass ceiling, but they don't seem to care much about getting down into that high paying glass cellar where you trade money for risk of life. Perhaps when you have seen a few of your male friends mauled while working as say, a tow truck driver, you'll start to question if those men are truly as empowered as feminists claim they are and if they really are actively working to keep women out of their fields.


And if that same Republican Administered DOL suddenly changed the previously published criteria you don't think the same groups that benefit from creating that wedge would create some sort of outcry? You show the same reasoning yourself. Any change in the criteria that the previous groups used to create their wedge issue is declared an attempt to harm the people with whom they have political designs. The headline on the DOL study that showed say a 1-2% gap when hours, education, experience, etc are factored in wouldn't be "Equality Achieved" it would be "Republicans distort studies in attempt to lie about gender gap."

It always comes back to intent with folks such as yourself.


Yes, well I was equally impractical if not more so at your age. I was accepted into electrical engineering department at my university but instead ran off to toot my horn. I do hope you follow through with the teaching as it would be quite an experience widening opportunity for yourself.


Of course that also means that those factors do not have to be sexism. That is the contention with measures like the wage gap.


No, I'm trying to tell you that the results of those choices don't indicate sexism or an unempowered state among women. Very often they indicate quite the opposite and we should ask why women are allowed to make lifestyle choices that treat earning money as a secondary concern while men are not. To me, that indicates power, not weakness.

When a woman goes through life making decisions that indicate that she knows that she can choice a less demanding field of study, or choose a career where long gaps in work history do not affect your ability to be employed later, it says to me that she knows some other variable is going to pick up the slack there. That variable of course is the man who will be subservient, not empowered, subservient to the needs of that woman.

Choice is empowerment. Women show a wider range of choices because they are more empowered.

I always find it strange that this is so easily understood when we talk about employer and employee with power and not man and woman with power.

If your boss is able to spend more and work less because of his employee, that is not seen as a helpless state. When a woman can choose a certain career or part time work and not have it affect what she can spend (not earn) it is also not a helpless state.


No more gibberish than using a 20+ year old second shift study which relied on even old studies and definitions for its conclusions. You dismiss that which you know would easily be true if you cared to do the survey.


You are enlightened and intelligent enough to know which job you would choose and explain your reasoning behind it. You also know several equally enlightened and intelligent females (at least I would hope so) from whom you could seek the answers regarding their own choices and rationales. I'm sure they, like you, are probably pursuing their education and as a result won't have to weigh such options in their personal life. However you could ask them about a hypothetical and see their reasoning.


It could also be a reflection of men entering the female fields and as a result women now being less empowered to leave their own professionals and feel they can easily come back to it now with more competition. Often the case is the higher the rewards, the higher the risks. When the reward becomes higher, leaving becomes riskier. Women now become another rat trying to climb that corporate ladder. Doesn't that sound empowered?


I cannot field my own university research department. I don't even have the time to say, pursue a second degree in Socialogy. However that doesn't we can't have a nice LONG discussion here.

Nick

I think it's hilarious when military people denounce communism. Joining the military is the closest thing you can get to communism without moving to Cuba. In the military the state owns you and controls every aspect of your life. It can do whatever it wants with you, send you off to wherever it feels like , assign you to whatever job it feels you're capable of. They can order you to commit illegal acts (such as torture)- if you disobey you are severely punished. If you obey and get caught by the wrong people (the media) you are severely punished. The senior officers and their civilian bosses who originated the order go unpunished. You can't leave (except under extreme circumstances). After you finish your enlistment, they have various ways to keep you from leaving if they need you (stop-loss, IRR). Of course there are benefits- you're provided housing, full health care for you and your family, and they may even send you off to school (fully paid for) if they see potential and need your skills to be developed further.

How is all this different from communism?