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ORIGINAL: respectmen

None so blind as those who will not see.

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Just because feminists cried wolf, it has to be true. Just don't let facts get in the way.

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ORIGINAL: InfoMan

The gender wage gap is a real thing... but that's because the work place fatality gap is equally real.
Males make up 90% of all work place fatalities.

So long as women don't risk their lives in the name of the almighty dollar a wage gap will always exist, as more men will do more dangerous things that pay better then the relative safe things most woman are employed to do... that is just the nature of business I am afraid.

I never understood why people treat this wage gap thing seriously even....
It is such a narrow understanding of reality that is skewered by both sides of the argument to present things that don't actually exist.

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ORIGINAL: respectmen

I don't think so little stef. I'm the one pointing and laughing at the others who are CRYING over an imaginary wage gap that doesn't exist.

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These people are fucking pathetic. They can't handle facts and logic.

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ORIGINAL: InfoMan

The gender wage gap is a real thing... but that's because the work place fatality gap is equally real.
Males make up 90% of all work place fatalities.

So long as women don't risk their lives in the name of the almighty dollar a wage gap will always exist, as more men will do more dangerous things that pay better then the relative safe things most woman are employed to do... that is just the nature of business I am afraid.

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I never understood why people treat this wage gap thing seriously even....

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ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1

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ORIGINAL: InfoMan

The gender wage gap is a real thing... but that's because the work place fatality gap is equally real.
Males make up 90% of all work place fatalities.

So long as women don't risk their lives in the name of the almighty dollar a wage gap will always exist, as more men will do more dangerous things that pay better then the relative safe things most woman are employed to do... that is just the nature of business I am afraid.

I never understood why people treat this wage gap thing seriously even....
It is such a narrow understanding of reality that is skewered by both sides of the argument to present things that don't actually exist.

This is a common argument put forward by many apologists to discredit it.

There are many examples where females get paid less for doing the same job as their male counterparts; same work, same location, same hours, but paid less.
There is also the disparity that many females get passed over for promotion.

That is the gender wage gap.

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ORIGINAL: stef

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ORIGINAL: InfoMan

The gender wage gap is a real thing... but that's because the work place fatality gap is equally real.
Males make up 90% of all work place fatalities.

So long as women don't risk their lives in the name of the almighty dollar a wage gap will always exist, as more men will do more dangerous things that pay better then the relative safe things most woman are employed to do... that is just the nature of business I am afraid.

Yes, all those dangerous tech jobs where men still make significantly more than women. Bigly danger. Huge, even. We should have a ribbon campaign for all the manly men who give their lives on a daily basis in the bit mines.

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I never understood why people treat this wage gap thing seriously even....

Sounds like a personal problem.

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ORIGINAL: longwayhome

There is a fatality gap, which is sometimes reflected in pay (e.g. deep sea divers on oil installations) and sometimes not (e.g. construction workers on building sites). And it is true most of these jobs are done by men.

All the so called "legitimate" reasons for a gender pay gap still do not explain the extent of lower average pay and the absence of women in areas such as senior positions in so many companies.

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ORIGINAL: bounty44

that the left continues to promulgate the simplistic notion of a "wage gap" without taking into consideration all the reasons for differences in pay between men and women---to me---is a stellar example of either their intellectual dishonesty, or their inability to think.

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ORIGINAL: longwayhome

There is a fatality gap, which is sometimes reflected in pay (e.g. deep sea divers on oil installations) and sometimes not (e.g. construction workers on building sites). And it is true most of these jobs are done by men.

All the so called "legitimate" reasons for a gender pay gap still do not explain the extent of lower average pay and the absence of women in areas such as senior positions in so many companies.

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Feminists keep demanding new laws to protect women from the so-called wage gap. Many studies have found that women make about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns. Activists say the pay difference is all about sexism.

"No matter how hard women work, or whatever they achieve in terms of advancement in their own professions and degrees, they will not be compensated equitably!" shouted Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., at a "wage equity" rally in Washington, D.C.

But how could this be possible? Suppose you're an employer doing the hiring. If a woman does equal work for 25 percent less money, businesses would get rich just by hiring women. Why would any employer ever hire a man?

Martha Burk, chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, gave me this simple answer: "Because they like to hire men, John. They like to hire people like themselves and they darn sure like to promote people like themselves." In other words, men so love their fellow men that they are willing to pay a premium of, say, $10,000 on what would otherwise be a $30,000-a-year job, just for the sheer pleasure of employing a man. Nonsense. It's market competition that sets wages.

Men do care about money -- and that, not wage discrimination, is why men tend to make more of it.

"Women themselves say they're far more likely to care about flexibility," says author Warren Farrell. "Men say, I'm far more likely to care about money."

Farrell spent about 15 years going over U.S. Census statistics and research studies. His research found that the wage gap exists not because of sexism, but because more men are willing to do certain kinds of jobs. "The average full-time working male works more than a full-time working female," Farrell said.

Farrell illustrates his findings at lectures by asking men and women to stand in answer to a series of questions about job choices, such as whether they work more than 40 hours a week, outdoors or in a dangerous job. Again and again, more men stand.

Job choices explain the pay difference, Farrell argues in his recent book, "Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap."

They also explain, Farrell said, why more top corporate executives are men.

"We have been suckered into believing that because there are more men at the top than women at the top, that this is a result of discrimination against women. That's been the misconception. It's all about trade-offs. You earn more money, you usually sacrifice something at home," Farrell said.

Suppose two people have equal potential, but one takes on more demanding, consuming, lucrative jobs while the other places a higher priority on family. The one who makes work the focus will be more productive for an employer than the one who puts his or her home life first. The latter will get more of the pleasures of family. So he (and it tends to be "he") will make more money, even though she would be equally productive and equally rewarded if she made the same choices.

"Women and men look at their life," said Farrell, "and women say, 'What do I need? Do I need more money, or do I need more time?' And women are intelligent enough to say, I need more time. And so women lead balanced lives. Men should be learning from women."

One irony is that some people, especially young women, may make the choices that lead to the pay gap precisely because they have been taught the job market shortchanges women. Women who see the market as hostile may put their hearts into their homes instead of their careers -- thus making less money.

But the market isn't hostile. The market is just. It rewards you for the work you do, not for the work you choose not to do. If men want the family time many women have, we must accept lower financial rewards -- and if women want the money, they have to work like money-grubbing men.

It's our choice.

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Do men earn more money than women in comparable jobs with comparable responsibility? Most people seem to think so. During one of the presidential debates, John Kerry complained that full-time working men made a dollar for every 76 cents paid to women for the same work. President Bush didn't challenge the statement, and reporters let it go by as well. "The average woman is cheated out of about $250,000 in wages over a lifetime," said an article in Ms. Magazine. The AFL-CIO estimates that working families lose $200 billion of income annually to the male-female wage gap.

Oh, really? The Census Bureau did find that women earned 76 cents for every dollar paid to a male (now up to 80 cents on the dollar), but that was a raw number, not adjusted for comparable jobs and responsibility. A new book, Why Men Earn More by Warren Farrell, goes further, examining a broad array of wage statistics. His conclusion: When reasonable adjustments are made, women earn just as much as men, and sometimes more.

Some of Farrell's findings: Women are 15 times as likely as men to become top executives in major corporations before the age of 40. Never-married, college-educated males who work full time make only 85 percent of what comparable women earn. Female pay exceeds male pay in more than 80 different fields, 39 of them large fields that offer good jobs, like financial analyst, engineering manager, sales engineer, statistician, surveying and mapping technicians, agricultural and food scientists, and aerospace engineers. A female investment banker's starting salary is 116 percent of a male's. Part-time female workers make $1.10 for every $1 earned by part-time males.

Surprisingly, Farrell argues that comparable males and females have been earning similar salaries for decades, though the press has yet to notice. As long ago as the early 1980s, he writes, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that companies paid men and women equal money when their titles and responsibilities were the same. In 1969, data from the American Council on Education showed that female professors who had never been married and had never published earned 145 percent of their male counterparts. Even during the 1950s, Farrell says, the gender pay gap for all never-married workers was less than 2 percent while never-married white women between 45 and 54 earned 106 percent of what their white male counterparts made.

Citing Internal Revenue statistics, Farrell notes that women who own their own businesses net only 49 percent of what male counterparts make. Since it can't be that male bosses are holding them back here, women seem to be seeking certain lifestyle trade-offs-forgoing the highest possible income for more free time and flexible hours. They also seem to be avoiding some high-paying jobs. Female engineering managers make on average $83,000, but only 10 percent of the managers are female, indicating that many women are bypassing careers that could pay them more.

Farrell argues that many men outearn women by a willingness to take risky and dangerous jobs as well as work that exposes them to stress and bad weather or that requires a transfer to an undesirable location in another city or country. Women are more likely than men to pick glamorous jobs that tend to pay less. A London School of Economics study tracking 10,000 post-1993 United Kingdom graduates from 30 universities found that males were earning 12 percent more than women. The men tended to stress salary and were more likely to take up engineering, math, and computing. The women were more apt to seek socially oriented jobs and as undergraduates had favored majors in education and the arts.

Much of Farrell's book is written in the style of a self-help book. It lists 25 ways women can improve their earnings, 10 of them advising the careful selection of high-paying fields and subfields. In nursing, an anesthesiology nurse can make more than the average doctor. An Army therapist is better paid than many other therapists. In the field of languages, Farrell advises, skip French and learn Arabic or Farsi. You will earn more.

Farrell was a board member of the National Organization for Women in the early 1970s but broke with the movement over its antimale excesses. He believes that the academic world and the news media have been incurious custodians of the myth that male oppression prevents women from achieving equal pay. It's a sturdy myth, and data that contradict it are typically buried or never updated. Given the current campus climate, no broad and honest academic study of women's pay is possible today. Farrell bluntly advises women to put the victimization rhetoric on hold and just do what it takes to get the high-paying jobs. Good idea.