I’ll give Sofia, the antifeminist bloggress behind the blog Sofiastry, credit for one thing: unlike a lot of Men’s Rightsers, she doesn’t deny that there is a wage gap between men and women. She just thinks that it’s justified – that women should be paid less.
Why? Well, I admit I don’t quite understand her explanation, which has something to do with women getting worse grades in school, working less, and, well, whatever the hell she’s trying to say here:
women who are likely seen in executive and higher-earning positions are estrogenically flawed in their lack of sufficient desire to prioritize family life. Its the equivalent of a man who has no creative, intellectual or ambitious drive — all hallmarks of testosterone.
Oh, and because, like Barbie, women think that math class is tough:
can it not simply be reduced to the fact that the average man has more of of an aptitude for finance and numbers than the average woman?
No, I’m pretty sure it can’t.
In a followup post, Sofia raised a critical issue that she somehow had overlooked in her earlier analysis: women are a bunch of blubbering crybabies.
I couldn’t count on one hand the number of times a female co-worker cried on the job (myself included), but I couldn’t name a single male (homosexuals excluded & even then…). Women are more emotional, more likely to take days off for such reasons (or no reason) and quantifiably put in less hours on the job. Depending on the field, I’d also wager that women are less likely to revolutionize an industry or make the same amount of exceptional contributions men do.
Seriously, gal. Don’t be a bunch of Lady-Boehners. Stop all of your sobbing! (Oh, oh oh.)
No, it is not. The GAO found that even when controlling for hours worked (and half a dozen other factors), women are still paid 80% of what men make.
Why do you think it’s such a social taboo to talk income?
There are defenses, some legitimate. It used to be claimed that the wage gap was a result of experience earned, and you know, 20 years ago that was a legitimate point, but it’s still there now and women keep entering
Because men are still hired in greater numbers, for more pay, in better positions. Spreading that meme, even though it’s not really the whole story*, does not, and can not, disadvantage you in the work place. It doesn’t strengthen, spread, and reinforce a dominant social idea that is used to keep men out of higher paying jobs, or better jobs. It does not reinforce, strengthen, and spread a dominant social idea that disadvantages men at all. It is gendered, and if it’s correct it isn’t strictly a function of gender, but it isn’t actually promoting anything that makes men’s lives worse.
If gender relations were inverted, with women the dominant societal class, it would be misandric. But that’s Bizarro World, not the real one.
*It may be true, actually, and I’m unfortunately not willing to discard it for a simple reason; women get cut less slack. It’s more or less the gender relations, workplace version of an observation I’ve made in my life; black and brown people take far more effort to not do illegal things than white kids of the same class and subculture, because guess what happens to PoC in the justice system. I suspect that in an equal society, both sexes would be equally lazy, if there’s even a difference now.
If there’s proof and even then, it’s a complicated, delicate process, fraught with issues. Take a look at the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Dukes vs. Walmart.
To clarify one point: I don’t also believe that women are less lazy at work yet. I can see how it would be possible, but I lack any serious evidence for such a claim.
Well, Rutee, that’s fair enough, but then I’m not “willing to discard” the assumption that women are lazy, arrogant couch potatoes who often sit around and expect things to come to them because of their vagina. It very well might be true. And, according to your logic, that’s not misogynist. Oops.
BTW, wymyn, if you don’t want to take maternity leave, here’s a fucking shocker: don’t shit out womb turds. I know, I’m a fucking genius.
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to say that women are inherently less lazy or anything, simply that hours isn’t a good way of measuring laziness and that since so many women *have* a second shift, they might be more motivated to get the hell out of the office when their day is done.
Crying is coded as feminine and a sign of weakness in North American culture, and boys are formally and informally trained from early childhood not to cry. Boys who cry are shamed by their peers as well as frequently by their parents and teachers, while girls who cry might be told to shut up and get over it, but aren’t told they’re doing something unnatural and shameful. Adult men who cry in public are mercilessly shamed by pretty much everyone. So yeah, it’s not surprising that sofia’s female coworkers sometimes cry on the job.
But crying hasn’t always been seen this way – in earlier eras, crying was seen as a sign of refined masculine emotion. Ever read The Sorrows of Young Werther? Werther cries *all the time* (when he’s feeling down, when he sees Charlotte’s wedding ring, when they talk about poetry, etc), and he was sort of the Edward Cullen of the late 18th century. And yeah, he’s a hateable skinny emo boy too, but is there a single reference to Edward crying in any of the Twilight books? IIRC he doesn’t cry in any of the movies even when he thinks Bella is dead.
Because crying just isn’t manly, and even a non-threatening sex object for 12-year-old girls can’t get away with it anymore.
So maybe, just maybe, men and women would have similar levels of tearfulness if we didn’t make crying taboo for men. And maybe it has exactly zero to do with the wage gap.
I always thought the wage gap was off. I mean if I was a profit seeking company and I could systematically pay women 25% less than men for the same work…I would hire only women and cut my labor costs by 25% by just excluding men.
I think some are wising up to this. Like my boss. Out of nine employees we have only one dude on staff. (And he’s about to be fired for incompetence, but that’s irrelevant to my point.) It’s been that way for a long time, and it’s not a field that’s known for being dominated by one gender.
I have a misandrist working environment. And it’s being perpetuated by conservative Republicans. Who knew?
Sofia: Levitt: I’ve looked at his stats. I’ve also looked at the other economists who’ve looked at his stats.
He makes errors. When called on it he says, “well, if you make it much more complicated, then the mistakes I made aren’t as large”.
women DO perform most of the child-rearing not included in mat leave, but shouldn’t she be addressing this issue with her partner? not her employer?
I think we ought to take up with people who say the proper place for women is in the home, esp. with the one’s who try to dress it up with nonsensical babble about being, estrogenically flawed in their lack of sufficient desire to prioritize family life.
huh? i’m not saying all women should reproduce. i’m talking about the wage gap. but i do think women at the top of professional fields are less traditionally feminine.
facetious in the sense that i don’t think they’re biologically NOT women.
Ah, so you do think they are 1: estrogenically challenged [citation needed], and ought to be at home rearing children.
You also think men are inherently more “creative” and suchlike.
i do believe v. successful women in professional fields are generally less feminine. do i personally care? no
Then why are you going to so much effort to justify discriminatory behavior?
As to getting an education making you less feminine, I don’t that’s true. Acting “butch” that would make you less femme, but education has nothing to do with that.
Hengist: Overtime is compensated. A large number (perhaps the majority) of MBA positiions are salaried (whether they are legitimately exempt from OT is a different issue, and one of the most common violations of labor law), and spending more time at the office isn’t rewarded with immediate increase in pay.
The argument is being made the extra time the men spend in the workplace magically equals benefit to the company, and so they deserve the pay differential which can be seen across the board.
Why this should be unequal at the entry level, before actual productivity has been measured is a question for the ages; though I think the answer is discrimatory practice, justified with nonsense like the OP.
Because when one looks at equivalent positions, women are still making about 80 cents on the dollar to men; with the same skill sets, the same time in the field, the same sorts of resumes.
Hengist: Maybe I’m being ignorant here, but isn’t being paid less for the same job illegal and grounds for suing?
If you know about it. Since many employers have, as a condition of employment, a clause which forbids (on pain of termination) telling anyone else at your workplace what you earn, it can be very hard to determine that one is being unjustly paid a different wage.
Even when one did find out about it (as in the case of Lily Ledbetter) the courts have said that, unless one knew of it at the time one couldn’t sue.
That’s what the flap about the law being changed to address that was about. Ledbetter (and her compatriots) had been systematically underpaid for decades. She was told she had waited too long to sue, even though she filed the suit as soon as she found out about it.
Well, yes, if women are paid less it’s because they EARN less. In reality, men work harder, more dangerous, more challenging jobs, and they work more hours, and for more years. If women make less money than men on average, it’s entirely their own problem.
See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704415104576250672504707048.html
Men are the ones who are *actually* discriminated against through affirmative action and other policies that advance women over men such as “diversity targets”. And many young women professionals today earn more than young male professionals precisely because of unjustified discrimination in favor of women, perpetuated by feminist lies about a “wage gap”. In reality, if women’s many entitlements and privileges in the workforce were taken away, we’d probably see professional women’s average wages go down where they should be, beneath men. Sorry ladies, but at the top, men will always beat you out.
Nah, it was because he didn’t like you and didn’t want to spend any time with you.
Correlation does not equal causation.
“In reality, men work harder, more dangerous, more challenging jobs, and they work more hours, and for more years.”
I’m still unconvinced that “dangerous” = “more money”. Figure modeling pays $18 an hour.
“it’s not stupid. women crying more at work is indicative of a larger pattern of women bringing more of the personal into work, and taking time off of work for the same reasons.”
Bullshit. I’ve cried at work exactly once in 12 years of professional life, and that was due to another coworker (go team!) screaming at me. I got so frustrated because I couldn’t tell the bitch to go fuck herself eight ways to Sunday, I cried instead. Nothing personal, just business, amirite?
NWO Lite, I mean TAB, just stop it. Next you’ll tell us you hunted mammoth.
Dangerous jobs are the purview of hte poor. The poor control far less wealth in the USA. If you don’t want to control within jobs, danger has not-a-fucking-thing to do with why women make less as a gender than men make less as a gender. It’s just a cheap attempt to wow people.
Yeah, and somehow I make more as a software engineer than I would as a meat packer. Curious.
I found this list of the top 10 most dangerous jobs in America, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/07/pf/2006_most_dangerous_jobs/index.htm?postversion=2007080912
I’m going to guess that exactly 100% of these jobs, on average, pay less than mine does, and less than most jobs for people with a college degree in a technical field.
Yep, no one has ever died in childbirth.
“men work harder”
Citation please?
“more dangerous”
Why aren’t women working these “dangerous” jobs? Are they not willing or because they are discriminated against? Also how dangerous is stock broking? Do those bear markets contain actual bears?
“more challenging jobs”
To whom? Are they height challenged and can’t reach the top shelf for a stapler?
“and they work more hours”
Productively? Because as a manager I would hire people who culd get their work done in their scheduled 8 hours.
“and for more years.”
Wait, I thought women had a longer life expectancy? Those slacker men that can’t get their jobs done in 8 hours keep dying off, the lazy bastards!
You’re getting a little hysterical there, TAB. Why don’t you take your testosterone pills so that you can think logically about this.
Things Are Bad, I’m going to ask you the question I always ask of people whose stance is “women are just more worser”–why is this?
Do you think it’s inherent, or socialized? Do you think that a man raised as a woman would be equally bad at general being-a-human-being? How about a woman raised as a man? Do you think there’s a genetic basis for women’s stinkyheadedness?
Usually MRAs take the tack of “women are worse because they have too many privileges,” but you claim that women would still be worth less without any social privileges. Why is this?
Citation needed
Men do tend to do more dangerous (in terms of possible physical harm) however they also are less likely to read directions and follow them then women are.
Citation needed
TAB: Care to cite something with data? Because that’s an Opinion piece. Lacking actual links to the “data” referenced (some recent studies, really?), and unfounded, and unsupported, assertions, Men, by contrast, often take on jobs that involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions (which is also why men suffer the overwhelming majority of injuries and deaths at the workplace). They put up with these unpleasant factors so that they can earn more.
So lets take a look at Ms. Lukas.
Ms. Lukas is executive director of the Independent Women’s Forum.
And what can we see about the IWF…
The Independent Women’s Forum is dedicated to building support for free markets, limited government, and individual responsibility. IWF, a non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and educational institution,seeks to combat the too-common presumption that women want and benefit from big government, and build awareness of the ways that women are better served by greater economic freedom. By aggressively seeking earned media, providing easy-to-read, timely publications and commentary, and reaching out to the public, we seek to cultivate support for these important principles and encourage women to join us in working to return the country to limited, Constitutional government.
So there is no reason to think she might be pursuing, as some have said about other claims, “a political agenda” in writing a piece for the Opinion Section of the Wall Street Journal.
Nope. That would be unfair to her.
Nice try though. B for Effort, C for Execution. The E. German Judge gives you a 10.0 for Style.
The chart Sofia’s OP refers to, “anecdotally supporting” the inverse relationship between femininity and education (http://www.rooshv.com/the-relationship-between-femininity-education), is funny to me because right now I have two attractive and feminine history professors. One of those even dresses rather stylishly from time to time, and by the way also has a reputation as a hardass. In fact, in other semesters and in this semester I have had rather feminine and rather masculine female professors, and I have not found either to correlate with their levels of education. But I guess as a bisexual my “latent homosexuality” makes my opinion not count when it comes to femininity. Because when they’re wearing tight pants and are turned around writing something on the board, one’s arousal is totally stymied by their butch doctoral degrees. Yeah, right. The only thing that chart measures is how much certain men find it attractive to have some sort of dominance or imagined superior status relative to a woman.
TAB, the article you linked discusses a single study done of single, childless workers. As it’s already been made abundantly clear in this thread, child-care is a major factor in why women tend to work fewer hours and end up falling behind men career-wise. As a species, we obviously can’t all opt to go childless, so that study is rather pointless. The cultural expectation that women must do the majority of child-rearing work is at the heart of the wage gap issue.
The highest paid jobs in this society are not dangerous, nor physically demanding. Unless of course, you classify the inevitable consequences of a sedentary lifestyle as a “danger”. As others have noted, dangerous jobs pay higher than non-dangerous jobs only in the narrow category of unskilled labor.
It is also not true that high-paying jobs involve particularly long hours. In virtually any company, executives and managers work less than the rank-and-file — but of course, the difference may be due to the fact that I am not willing to define “business lunches” at Michelin-starred restaurants and trips to basketball games as “work”.
As for emotion, I have never, ever in my life actually heard of a woman taking a day off because she felt sad. Most people I know, both men and women, go to work with stomach flu, broken bones and cancer. When I was giving birth, I saw other women at the hospital who brought laptops and documents with them to work between contractions. If that’s not dedication to a job, I don’t know what is. Nor have I ever seen a woman cry at work, except once — a secretary who had just gotten a call that her father had died. I’m not sure her momentary loss of composure means she should be paid a quarter less than a man for the same work over her entire life.
But the most disgusting aspect of MRA’s argument on this subject is faulting — yes, faulting — women for going through childbirth and taking days off to care for sick children, as if this represents a shirking of grown-up responsibilities; as if these women’s hypermasculine husbands’ indifference towards their own children and reluctance to equitably distribute the burdens of family-related responsibilities between TWO working people is a point in those men’s favor. And then, of course, the same “activists” turn around and complain about feminists prioritizing careers over family.
Oh, and — in societies where girls and women get equal educational opportunity and encouragement they perform as well as men in math, or better.