LKL wrote:
TM wrote:
hyperlexian wrote:
even with all of those factors explained, women make less than men at the same job.
Yeah, I'm going to need sources for that claim.
Ok, you NEVER, EVER get to complain when someone else asks you for sources, ok?
(ps: see above for sources)
You don't get to tell me what I can and cannot do, if you want to do that you're going to have to pay me 20% more than I'm currently paid at my job and I doubt you can afford that, given that women make 80c on the dollar.
Directly copied from my copy of "Economic Facts and Fallacies" by Economist Thomas Sowell.
Quote:
SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS
Among the many factors which influence male-female economic
differences, the most elusive is employer discrimination. Since no one is
likely to admit to discriminating against women, which is both illegal and
socially stigmatized, in principle discrimination can only be inferred
indirectly from the disparities between women and men that remain after all
the other factors have been taken into account. In practice, however, there
is no way to take all other factors into account, since no one knows what
they all are and statistics are not always available for all the factors we do
know about. What we are left with, after taking into account all the factors
that we are aware of and for which statistics are available, are residual
differences which measure the upper limit of the combined effect of
employer discrimination plus whatever other factors have been overlooked
or not specified precisely. That residual is often much smaller than the gross
income differences between women and men, sometimes is zero, and in a
few instances women earn more than men whose measured characteristics
are similar.
The empirical fact that most male-female economic differences are
accounted for by factors other than employer discrimination does not mean
that there have been no instances of discrimination, including egregious
instances. But anecdotes about those egregious instances cannot explain the
general pattern of male-female economic differences and their changes over
time. Those changes are continuing. While in the period from 2000 to
2005 most women were still holding jobs making less than the weekly
median wages, women were also 1.7 million out of 1.9 million new workers
earning above the median wages.
While hard data are preferable to anecdotes, even hard data have their
limitations. Statistics may not be available on all the factors that determine
hiring, pay, or promotions. Nor can the direction of causation always be
determined when the data are available.
For example, the effect of marriage on women's economic opportunities and rewards may be estimated by
comparing women who seem to be comparable in things that can be
measured, but what if women who are more driven to pursue a career are less
likely to marry early or perhaps at all? That is not measurable, which is not
to say that it is not important. Income differences between less driven and
more driven women may be falsely attributed to marriage, when in these
cases differences in marriage patterns may be an effect rather than a cause.
In other words, it need not be marriage, as such, which accounts for income
differences between married and unmarried women.
It can sometimes be difficult to distinguish income differences between
the sexes caused by external barriers confronting women and differences
caused by choices made by the women themselves. In addition to choices
of educational specialties, occupations, and continuous or discontinuous
employment, many married women have chosen to allow their husbands'
best job opportunities to determine where the couple will live, with the wife
then taking whatever her best option might be at that location, even if there
would be better options for her somewhere else. Such wives' reduced
occupational opportunities in such cases are in effect an investment in their
husbands' enhanced occupational opportunities.
This is a special handicap for women in the academic world, where the
wife of a man who teaches at Cornell University, for example, will not have
a comparable academic institution in which she can pursue her own career
within a hundred miles. It would be quite a coincidence if there was an
opening in her field at Cornell at the same time when there was an opening
there for her husband in his field. In some places, anti-nepotism policies
would preclude her being hired, even if there were such an opening. While
some professors have sufficient clout to make the hiring of a spouse a
precondition for accepting an academic appointment at a given institution,
such a precondition can reduce the number and quality of the institutions
that will make an appointment to either husband or wife.
A more general indicator of wives' investments in their husbands' earning
capacity is the changing ratio of husbands' earnings to their wives' earnings
over time. As far back as 1981, one-third of all wives in the 25 to 34 year
old brackets had higher earnings than their husbands— but that percentage
declined successively in older age brackets, so that less than 10 percent of
wives who were age 65 or older had higher earnings than their husbands.62
In other words, the passage of time increased husbands' earnings more than
the wives' earnings, another indication suggesting wives' investments in their
husbands' earning capacity.
Given the numerous factors that impact the incomes and employment of
women differently from the way they impact the incomes and employment
of men, it can hardly be surprising that there have been substantial income
differences between the sexes. Nor can all these differences be assumed to
be negative on net balance for women— that is, taking other factors into
account besides income. For example, the wives of affluent and wealthy men
tend to work less and therefore to earn less. But the wife of a rich man is
not poor, no matter how low her income might be. In homes where the
income of the husband exceeds the income of the wife, the actual spending
of that income cannot be determined by whose name is on what paycheck,
and research indicates that the wife usually makes more of the decisions
about how the pooled family income is spent than the husband does.6 3 Such
ultimate realities are beyond the reach of most statistics— but whatever
arrangements wives and husbands agree to between themselves are certainly
no less important than what third party observers might prefer to see.
While fallacious inferences can be based on gross income data, the fallacy
is not in the undisputed fact of male-female income differences but in the
explanation of that fact. Much also depends on whether the social goal
should be equal opportunity or equal incomes. As Professor Claudia
Goldin, an economist at Harvard, put it:
Is equality of income what we really want? Do we want everyone to have
an equal chance to work 80 hours in their prime reproductive years? Yes,
but we don't expect them to take that chance equally often.64
Research by another female economist lends empirical support to that
conclusion.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett surveyed more than 2,000 women and
more than 600 men. Her conclusions:
About 37% of women take an off-ramp at some point in their career,
meaning they quit their jobs— but just for an average of 2.2 years.
Another substantial number take scenic routes for a while—
intentionally not ratcheting up their assignments. For instance, 36% of
highly qualified women have sought part-time jobs for some period,
while others have declined promotions or deliberately chosen jobs with
fewer responsibilities. . . The data show that highly qualified women
aren't afraid of hard work and responsibility. But it's hard to sustain a 73-
hour workweek if you have serious responsibilities in other parts of your
life.
Hopefully posting this excerpt doesn't count as piracy.
08 Apr 2012, 3:03 pm
It's rainy here and I'm bored. Feminism is only slightly annoying to me. I live in Texas, so... it's not like I'm bombarded with it.
