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That is obviously not my point, which you keep missing or ignoring.
I keep stating it as clearly as I can in every reply, but you don't even acknowledge that I say it:
Granting all of those ifs, the "other factor" you mention is prejudice. You cannot simply handwave that possibility away because it doesn't make business sense. Companies, even successful companies, do things that make no business sense all the time. Because they're run by people who are not purely rational economic calculating machines.
So yes, companies are paying higher process for the same exact result they would have gotten if they paid cheaper. And yes, that makes no sense in a business/economic perspective. But they do it anyway, because the people making the decisions have their own prejudices, their own corporate culture, their own assumptions about what makes a good manager/executive, etc.You can't simply look at whatever is being done in the corporate world and decide that must be the most efficient way to do things, because the market has spoken. Haven't we seen enough to know better?
And that's obviously not my point either, but it seems a lot more what you are arguing for. Yes, we pretty much can handwave what your suggest away, because if for whatever reason an employee found out that they where being paid less than everyone else and also happened to be the only <insert group> while everyone else is <insert another group>, you had better believe their going to be talking to a lawyer, their EO rep, and other companies. What you are saying as that these companies are basically morons, and asking to be put out of business, take massive PR hits, and to be investigated for all kinds of lawsuits. Sure, there will always be some amount of prejudice, but I don't think it's at the scale you imply it is.
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Among more blue-collar positions, it seems that, based on the articles that I have read over the last 24 hours, indeed, when men and women perform the same job functions, they get paid the same amount of money (which makes sense, historically, because I believe the tendency has always been that there is more pronounced gender equality among the lower classes; not to mention the past 50 years of legislation), and that most of the gender pay gap results from "men's jobs", for whatever reason, paying more than "women's jobs."
This is basically my position as well. The gender pay gap 1) is far more pronounced in executive positions, and I have a hard time giving two craps about people who are already rolling in filthy lucre and 2) is largely attributable to, as you say, a disparity in pay for "men's jobs" and "women's jobs," which is not likely something that can be fixed or appropriately addressed by legislation.
The answer, short of revolution, is to decide, as a society, that positions like teacher and nurse ought to be paid more, not because of the risk they're put at daily (VSL calculations) but because we like what they do and want more of them and of higher quality.
Seems to me she was doing the same job she should have been paid the same wage.
I support the Lily Ledbetter act, for the record.
But this is an incredibly simplistic view. So, say there's worker 1, and he has been working for the company for 20 years. He has been stuck in middle management for most of that time, has accrued 20 years of length of service raises, has about a month of vacation every year, and a pension.Person 2 comes along, gets a promotion to middle management. They're both, ostensibly, doing the same job; do you think it's fair that person 2 gets all the benefits that person 1 has been slowly accruing for 20 years? If so, you're not incentivizing company loyalty.
I'm not saying this is what happened in Ledbetter's case, or any case of gender pay disparity. I'm merely parsing your statement with exactitude and showing you the flaws.
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Which of course never happens.
What are you talking about? Apparently, as you linked it yourself, it does. She did find what she felt was discrimination and did go talk to lawyers, EO, and did sue.
But this is a different argument. You were claiming that if men were being paid higher, there had to be some extra unknown factor so that it made business sense.
By other factors, we are talking about one individual having more schooling or certifications related to the job, more experience in the job, seniority and/or having worked at the company in a different capacity before then. Working extra. Now if all of those are the same, yes we agree she should be paid just as much. Another reason that women tend to have less (direct) pay is they typically get more in other benefits, particularly health and family care. So if she opted to get a pay for a better health care plan, or extended coverage, that's a whole different story than her just being paid less because she's a woman.
Also, did you actually read the case?
"Justice Alito held for the five-justice majority that each paycheck received did not constitute a discrete discriminatory act, even if affected by a prior decision outside the time limit."
"The Court did leave open the possibility that a plaintiff could sue beyond the 180-day period if she did not, and could not, have discovered the discrimination earlier."
"The District Court found in favor of Goodyear on the Equal Pay Act claim, because that Act allows pay differences that are based on merit. The court allowed the Title VII and other claims to proceed to trial. Ledbetter claimed that she had been evaluated unfairly because of her sex and therefore had been paid significantly less than her male colleagues. Goodyear claimed that their evaluations were non-discriminatory and focused only on worker competence."
So it looks like he said/she said, and the Supreme Court did not find evidence for sexual discrimination, even if she had been within the time limits, but then at the same time suggested she has the option to further investigate under other laws.
That being said, if it actually was sexual discrimination and not her poor work, good for her. I support and man or woman getting equal pay for equal work.
Also all your second link says is that there is another case that the Court found to have enough merit as a case to go to trial. What was that supposed to show?
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The answer, short of revolution, is to decide, as a society, that positions like teacher and nurse ought to be paid more, not because of the risk they're put at daily (VSL calculations) but because we like what they do and want more of them and of higher quality.
While I want to agree, it's unrealistic. I mean we like what trashmen do, and security, and firemen, and plumbers, and daycare workers, and locksmiths, and etc. . . In essence, well we like what everyone does (for the most part) and want more of them.
While I want to agree, it's unrealistic. I mean we like what trashmen do, and security, and firemen, and plumbers, and daycare workers, and locksmiths, and etc. . . In essence, well we like what everyone does (for the most part) and want more of them.
Now one way to encourage an industry to be paid more is to encourage them to unionize (I'm sure CA will concur).
As an example, here in Wisconsin, basically they've neutered all public sector unions...except police and fire/rescue where men are overrepresented. Which is f*##ed.
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Why does it make you angry if the wage gap is in fact a lie? This is what the US Government found when they tackled the subject on their own, it isn't creative math. It finds that the assumption that women make less when compared to men, under the same conditions and work, actually make the same amount, if not slightly more. As in, there actually is no discrimination, and that the perception that there was actually based up faulty, misrepresented facts.
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Supposing that Lily started working around the same time as her fellow managers, did the same work, but the difference is that Lily didn't make any noise is that fair?
Yes and no. I don't think that seems fair, but we live in a system where the market determines the price of goods and services (for the most part) and the price of labor is determined by the bargaining of demand and supply actors, i.e. employers and employees. From a market perspective it's completely fair; if you believe in the power of markets you believe that this type of bargaining is indeed the only fair way to determine prices. But I also recognize the failure of markets, unlike most.
I do find that when I see women are paid on average 77 cents to the dollar a man makes I get upset, and when people use statistics and creative math to suggest that woman actually make 1% more then men I get angry.
So you believe the people who skew the statistics to make it seem as if your average woman makes 77% of a man doing the same job which absolutely, positively is not what that number represents rather than actually trying to parse the statistics and see a much smaller gap for the vast majority of people. I'm perfectly happy to attribute a 5% or even 10% genuine pay gap to prejudice and institutional sexism, and work to close that gap with social campaigns and/or legislation. It's just, ya know, important to me to be honest about the problem. A priority you don't seem to have.
You trust the government to tell you the truth? How quaint. Personally I think it was damage control. These things were supposed to have been fixed 20 years ago but there's still a gap and so bring in the number crunchers to make the problem go away.
This illustrates the problem.
You have chosen to believe something because it jibes with your pre-existing belief structure and allows you to act righteously indignant. Actually examining the numbers, or even listening to how the experts break it down, causes cognitive dissonance to you who already has a true faith belief in the alternative.In fact, evidence to the contrary only galvanizes your belief in what you believe because, hey, you must be on to something if the gubment is willing to obfuscate! It's called a self-reinforcing delusion.
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Now one way to encourage an industry to be paid more is to encourage them to unionize (I'm sure CA will concur).
As an example, here in Wisconsin, basically they've neutered all public sector unions...except police and fire/rescue where men are overrepresented. Which is f%*%ed.
I'm not really sure unionizing would help either teachers or nurses. There's already far too much red tape and restrictions, both are notably insecure (as far as location) jobs.
How is it a bad thing that fire/rescue and cops are overrepresented? As it stands now, they are one of the many organizations that are focusing on targeting women for entrance. Not bad in and of itself, but they are handing out pretty crazy incentives as well as unfairly penalizing men for pay and promotion, based only on gender, because they want more women. Doesn't sound to terrible, but it is leading to a large amount of unrest, and a reduction in standards for females (only) so that they can meet said standards. It's the same deal in the military. And it's not the right answer. It leads to a position where the best at the very competitive job are simply held back while those that can not even pass the basic standard are handed out the opportunity to advance. It really leaves feminism in a very tight spot politically/morally. Do they fight for women, or do they fight for actual equality?
There is a similar issue with nurses, in reverse, where nursing is extremely competitive, (and for those that have not experienced it, among the most juvenile of high school BS girl's club shenanigans), but everyone needs more male nurses, to be able to better tend to male patients (propriety) as well as sometimes for more physical aspects, and yet there is no hand outs incentivized to encourage more male nurses. In fact trying to even get a nursing education is still very much sexually discriminated, despite needing more male nurses, at all levels.
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the reverse could also be true.
Thing is, most other people seem open to looking at both sides and deciding based on the evidence. You (general you) are not really bringing any facts or evidence to counter argue your points, or trying to show holes in the arguments presented, just clinging to "the one true truth" and not at least accepting that it might have been wrong all along.
As an example, here in Wisconsin, basically they've neutered all public sector unions...except police and fire/rescue where men are overrepresented. Which is f%$!ed.
I think that has less to do with being a male dominated industry and more to do with keeping the police between themselves and the protestors rather than joining in the protest.
the reverse could also be true.
Saying the reverse is true is saying that the Obama administration, whose first act was signing the Lily Ledbetter act into law, has somehow cooked the books to make the genuine pay gap smaller...thus undercutting the importance of their own progress and conflicting with their own agenda.
It also means that, based on your interpretation, the average woman working a job makes 77% per hour of laborof what her male peers make, which is so outrageous it can't be true. Literally, because it would mean making less than minimum wage.
Framing the statistics on a pay period basis as opposed to a per hour basis (where it's at virtual parity) and framing it as people in the same age group as opposed to the same job, is pure sophistry.
As an example, here in Wisconsin, basically they've neutered all public sector unions...except police and fire/rescue where men are overrepresented. Which is f%$!ed.
I think that has less to do with being a male dominated industry and more to do with keeping the police between themselves and the protestors rather than joining in the protest.
I absolutely agree, but it's just one example of the type of policy that allows for a perceived gender pay gap; due to Act 10 legislation, teachers pay was reduced (a profession dominated by women) and police and fire/rescue pay (professions dominated by men) has continued to climb. Which leads to a wider gap between peers of the same age in the same municipality with the same employer (the city).
You do realize what "on average" means don't you? It means that while most menial jobs pay the same to both male and female workers, once you get an education or get advanced into management positions that's where the gap begins to show. Now I'm sure personal choice factors into the situation, why go into nursing or teaching when you could get into banking or business? But when you have a case like Lily Ledbetter was paid less for doing the same job you begin to see what's under the white wash.
I do know what average means, do you? The statistics you prefer use a mean average, which means that discrepencies in CEO/executive, where the gap is much higher and people are making, what, 350 times as much, skew the statistics. Which is why, in comparison of income and wealth, economists and statisticians use median not mean. Using a mean average should automatically be suspect.
But you seem to agree with me, that for the vast majority of workers the gap is far far less than it is for CEOs, who I can't be arsed to care too much about anyway.
Which is of course perfectly fine and has no bearing on the gender gap, since the only thing that can be considered with regard to that is people with the exact same qualifications doing the exact same jobs.
No, I'm saying that's the only thing you can effectively solve through legislation; enforcement of equal pay laws. It's much more difficult to enforce through legislation the choices that individuals make that track them for higher or lower paying careers.
Why should it be fair to compare my friend Zee who just got her Masters in sociology and works for $10/hr as a barista to my friend Roman who got his masters and works as an automotive engineer making $200k/year, even though they ostensibly are the same age and have the same level of education?
You're not going to get me to disagree that there is a great discrepancy in the career paths chosen by men and women, by the types of degrees they pursue, and by the way that our culture inculcates gender roles re: men should make more money and pursue work that will earn more. We won't agree that it's necessarily institutional prejudice that makes this so, however.
Well, I can't speak for Comrade Meatrace, but I got the idea from his reply to me above that he agrees that it is institutional prejudice and, in his words, "The answer, short of revolution, is to decide, as a society, that positions like teacher and nurse ought to be paid more, not because of the risk they're put at daily (VSL calculations) [I have no idea what those are, btw] but because we like what they do and want more of them and of higher quality."
I don't know if there is any answer short of revolution, but I think he's agreeing with you.
I do give two craps about even plutocratic gals suffering from the special oppression of women, but not much more than two craps.
I've got some other thoughts percolating around my head on this issue, but I haven't totally formulated them. They've got to do with how the second wavers dealt with their gender wage gap, paid maternity leave, and the need for a workers government.
[This isn't something I'm contending. What I'm saying is this isn't an acceptable excuse. If there were gender equality there would be just as many female CEOs / executives making disproportionately large salaries.
No. That's gender sameness. That's like saying that if there was true gender equality 50% of pregnant people would be male.
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News flash: change takes time.
Furthermore, you're working BACKWARDS from the assumption that, given the same opportunities, males and females will make exactly the same choices in life; that nature, genetics, brain chemistry, evolutionary biology et al. doesn't play at all into it. Under those circumstances, you're right, you would expect to see everything split right down the middle.
In my mind, there will always be some deviation from a straight 50/50 split when it comes to choices and gender, if only a statistical abnormality. Not everyone is exactly the same, both nature and nurture play into peoples' behavior.
What I'm far more worried about is stamping out institutional prejudice and ensuring that all children regardless of gender get the same quality of education. I think that sort of stuff still exists and we can agree it needs to improve.
I'm far more concerned with ensuring that everyone is treated equally under the law, including equal opportunities for employment and advancement. If, after that has been achieved, there are still discrepancies, who will you blame? If there aren't exactly 50% of, say, investment bankers that are female, will you force women who really wanted a nursing degree to instead go into finance, just to shore up the numbers?
News flash: change takes time.Glad you at least see our point. Change does take time but at least we're acknowledging that there still needs to be change rather then pretending that the pay gap doesn't really exist.
You clearly haven't read a single damn one of my posts. Not one. I have REPEATEDLY acknowledged that there is a pay gap, and that furthermore there are other institutional problems that manifest themselves as pay discrepancies. Cooking the books to make it seem like a 23% gap doesn't help your case, because it's MISLEADING AND INACCURATE!
And it will continue to narrow.
And it will continue to narrow.I hope so.
Finally some common ground!
but gender equality in regards to child rearing and raising would have just as many men choosing to put their families first
I highly doubt this. Females have a lot more invested in their children than males do, leading to a stronger drive to care for the kids.
Cooking the books to make it seem like a 23% gap doesn't help your case, because it's MISLEADING AND INACCURATE!
I don't know, I'd have to go back and look at what the bourgeois feminists and the Democrats are actually claiming again, but I don't think it's cooking the books.
It's not a myth that women make 77 cents for each dollar a man makes, it's only a myth that women make 77 cents for each dollar a man makes at the same job (leaving aside yuppies and CEOs for the moment).
If it's true that the bourgeois feminists are consciously misleading people into thinking the latter, well, I can't say I'm surprised. Upper-class white women mobilizing their lower-class and minority sisters behind demands that will help the former and do very little for the latter is a time-honored feminist tactic--see Ain't I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks.
Also, to get back to earlier stuff:
I was over my comrades' house yesterday and we were shooting the shiznit and I mentioned Angelina Jolie. My female comrade--a nurse who hasn't yet grasped the theoretical differences between feminism and Marxism--heard the words "Angelina" and "breast cancer" and went on a hilarious and obscenity-laden rant about $3,000 genetic tests and clueless rich biznitches and I was like "Hee hee! You been following the ISO/CounterPunch debate?" and she was like "What debate?"
Also, also, it turns out that Ruth Fowler is pretty f@@&in' hawt.
I'm going to put this BBC series here, because I'm not sure where else I'd put it:
I didn't catch the whole thing, but it goes from Freud and Edward Bernays to Wilhelm Reich to est and the adoption of focus groups by big business to get a handle on the post-hippie consumerist market to how Clinton and Blair betrayed their respective party's populist and/or socialist tradition with sidetracks along the way to include the 1953 CIA coup against Guatemala, the CIA's experimentation with LSD and all kinds of goodies.
One of the best parts was about how in the late 60s/early 70s, one of these radical psychoanalysts brought their evolving techniques to an American convent with such great success that, within a year, the sisters had voted to get rid of their habits, half of them renounced their vows, and the rest of them turned into a sect of radical lesbian nuns! (Jump to around 2:20:00 if you're interested.)
History: you can't make this shiznit up.
NSFW--lots of naked people once you get to the seventies.
Shouldn't women be raging at the medical system for making medical testing so expensive?
You need to pay for someone to get a college degree and you need to pay for that gene sequencer they're running: that's not cheap. Its getting cheaper, it will get cheaper, but right now its just the reality of it, not an artificial construct.
