Women earn $0.77 for every $1 men earn.

[sana8410]

I think you are making my point. There is no substitute for "being there," whether at work or on the home front. That's why people who have breaks in their careers, for whatever reason, have a harder time advancing and make less money. Think of it like Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours requirement. If you miss a substantial amount of work, which is roughly equated with experience, you are worth less to most employers.

If someone chooses to take parental leave--paid or unpaid--and loses out on experience, there is always a penalty. If you leave work early on a regular basis or are otherwise not available because of family obligations, there is a penalty, just the same as if you work too much, there is a penalty with your family. Society makes women more likely to incur the penalties because of expectations for women. But it's not a particular institution that is creating the problem. There are women who forego families or at least the majority of the day to day of family life and, I'm willing to bet, their careers and salaries end up comparable to men with like experience.

Short of employers or the law treating men and women differently, there is no way to correct this other than a remodeling of societal expectations, which are hard-coded into our culture, if not our DNA. I, for one, do not want to see the law treat people differently based on race or gender or any other immutable characteristic, so I am opposed to anything that would attempt to level the playing field, especially since negative side effects are very tough to gauge.

As to your last point, I would just say that men and women are and should be equal, but they are not interchangeable. There are certain tasks and jobs that men are better suited to, just as there are some that women are better suited to. That said, I am opposed to any discrimination that does not have a basis in merit.

I don't see how that is "making your point" when your attempted point was that perceptions of discrimination are more damaging than discrimination. The example you gave has nothing to do with what your attempted point was.

The scenario you painted isn't the result of direct discrimination from the employer, nor from perceptions of discrimination from the employee.

But it absolutely is unfair, and is the type of thing that one would naturally and justifiably complain about. There are a lot of other factors though outside of mere maternal leave, ways in which our work institutions are set up that are harder on women than on men and ways our cultural perceptions of what women should do is also a contributing factor (and one easily observable across cultures).

[jcoin200]

The 2 reasons are:

1) They spend less years in the workforce overall, due mainly to having children <----This is a statistical FACT

2) They tend to work in lower paying occupations, like teaching, retail work, etc

[sana8410]

If someone chooses to take parental leave--paid or unpaid--and loses out on experience, there is always a penalty. If you leave work early on a regular basis or are otherwise not available because of family obligations, there is a penalty, just the same as if you work too much, there is a penalty with your family. Society makes women more likely to incur the penalties because of expectations for women. But it's not a particular institution that is creating the problem.

This is actually addressed directly in the article that I posted on the first page. There are institutional items that can be changed.

There are women who forego families or at least the majority of the day to day of family life and, I'm willing to bet, their careers and salaries end up comparable to men with like experience.

Yes and no, they ultimately have to make the choice and if work is chosen it tends to have negative consequences for the children which is a social problem.

[Rigon]

In many institutions, the actual practice is not especially damaging compared to the perception. It's tough to make much of anecdotal evidence, but I offer a recent one. A close colleague of mine recently had a baby. That is, his wife had a baby. Our firm offers equal paid parental leave for men and women, up to 18 weeks. As the delivery date approached, he was advised by one of our superiors to not take more than 2 or 3 days. He ended up taking just the delivery date because it fell on a Friday, and was back to work Monday morning.

Putting aside whether this is fair for right, it raises several interesting questions. Would the male supervisor have advised a woman the same? How would the woman have reacted compared to my friend (who had planned to take 2 or 3 days in any event)? Putting aside the advice, if the woman took several weeks of leave and it affected promotions, salary or bonuses, what would she attribute it to? What would a male in a similar situation?

then dont have a baby if you cant afford it but dont want to miss out on career, god damn it. giving in to peer pressure and then bitching and blaming instead of taking responsibility for your action.
almost every woman i know wants to have babies just because other women do, although she has no fucking career or any idea what she would do to provide a decent life for them. worse, some of them were still in the ages where they haven't finished being children themselves (16-24), still living at home, yet they keep talking about having baby NOW as if it was like getting a doll from the store.

Says the person who doesn't have to choose between having a career and having a family.

The entire point here is that women have these costs to their ability to be successful in their career and are forced to make these expensive tradeoffs that many men don't have to. It represents a mathematical disadvantage to women in the work place, compounded by our cultural perceptions that it should be women who handle the bulk of unpaid domestic work as well.

you think men don't have to choose between having a career and family?

yes, women have just as many choices as men do. or are you telling me the same women who can choose to have sex and then scream rape the next day can't choose to not get knocked up?

No one forces you to have baby. no one forces you to do unpaid housework. many of you want to have baby only to be "in the club", to remain in your social circle. matter of fact, many women these days have wise up to that fact and decided to make the same choice men did, which is not to have baby, at least until both of them together can afford it. many couples i know share the house work. the wife cooks, the husband washes the dishes. the wife does the laundry, the husband takes out the trash. the wife cleans the house, the husband mows the lawn

[sana8410]

Short of employers or the law treating men and women differently, there is no way to correct this other than a remodeling of societal expectations, which are hard-coded into our culture, if not our DNA.

Yes and no. Changing the work week schedule wouldn't have to be gender specific but I also think that culture is absolutely something that we can, and have changed over time. We no longer measure women's skirts at the beach to ensure modesty compliance, or escort girls when they go on dates.

[sana8410]

In many institutions, the actual practice is not especially damaging compared to the perception. It's tough to make much of anecdotal evidence, but I offer a recent one. A close colleague of mine recently had a baby. That is, his wife had a baby. Our firm offers equal paid parental leave for men and women, up to 18 weeks. As the delivery date approached, he was advised by one of our superiors to not take more than 2 or 3 days. He ended up taking just the delivery date because it fell on a Friday, and was back to work Monday morning.

Putting aside whether this is fair for right, it raises several interesting questions. Would the male supervisor have advised a woman the same? How would the woman have reacted compared to my friend (who had planned to take 2 or 3 days in any event)? Putting aside the advice, if the woman took several weeks of leave and it affected promotions, salary or bonuses, what would she attribute it to? What would a male in a similar situation?

then dont have a baby if you cant afford it but dont want to miss out on career, god damn it. giving in to peer pressure and then bitching and blaming instead of taking responsibility for your action.
almost every woman i know wants to have babies just because other women do, although she has no fucking career or any idea what she would do to provide a decent life for them. worse, some of them were still in the ages where they haven't finished being children themselves (16-24), still living at home, yet they keep talking about having baby NOW as if it was like getting a doll from the store.

Says the person who doesn't have to choose between having a career and having a family.

The entire point here is that women have these costs to their ability to be successful in their career and are forced to make these expensive tradeoffs that many men don't have to. It represents a mathematical disadvantage to women in the work place, compounded by our cultural perceptions that it should be women who handle the bulk of unpaid domestic work as well.

you think men don't have to choose between having a career and family?

yes, women have just as many choices as men do. or are you telling me the same women who can choose to have sex and then scream rape the next day can't choose to not get knocked up?

No one forces you to have baby. no one forces you to do unpaid housework. many of you want to have baby only to be "in the club", to remain in your social circle. matter of fact, many women these days have wise up to that fact and decided to make the same choice men did, which is not to have baby, at least until both of them together can afford it. many couples i know share the house work. the wife cooks, the husband washes the dishes. the wife does the laundry, the husband takes out the trash. the wife cleans the house, the husband mows the lawn

Mathematically not nearly in the same way. They can, but due to cultural gender norms and I think also motherly biology, it, on average does not. We actually have mathematical proof of this in (drum-roll please) our wage gap. You realize that it is the woman, and not the man that has to get "knocked up" yeah? Can you choose to give birth?

[sana8410]

No one forces you to have baby. no one forces you to do unpaid housework

This doesn't in any way, counter anything that I have posted. Perhaps you should try reading my post again while not frothing at the mouth and rambling on about rape.

many couples i know share the house work. the wife cooks, the husband washes the dishes. the wife does the laundry, the husband takes out the trash. the wife cleans the house, the husband mows the lawn

What you are talking about are egalitarian marriages, and yes, they are becoming more common, but they, socially speaking, have not been the norm in the US, nor do they solve all of the issues associated with opportunity costs when it comes to women and the workplace.

[Rigon]

No one forces you to have baby. no one forces you to do unpaid housework

This doesn't in any way, counter anything that I have posted. Perhaps you should try reading my post again while not frothing at the mouth and rambling on about rape.

many couples i know share the house work. the wife cooks, the husband washes the dishes. the wife does the laundry, the husband takes out the trash. the wife cleans the house, the husband mows the lawn

What you are talking about are egalitarian marriages, and yes, they are becoming more common, but they, socially speaking, have not been the norm in the US, nor do they solve all of the issues associated with opportunity costs when it comes to women and the workplace.

AGAIN for the umpteenth time, no one can force the women to be pregnant.

Your man can choose to have more freedom in his career, or have babies and be anchored down, and limited to whatever career options that leaves him with, in order to support you AND the babies. even after you divorce him and choose not to work, he still has to pay.
Likewise, you can choose to have your career, or have the babies and be limited to whatever career options the babies leave you with.
Even then, you can still choose to go to work and hire a nanny. regardless of what you choose, his only choice is to pay.

[Rigon]

No one forces you to have baby. no one forces you to do unpaid housework

This doesn't in any way, counter anything that I have posted. Perhaps you should try reading my post again while not frothing at the mouth and rambling on about rape.

many couples i know share the house work. the wife cooks, the husband washes the dishes. the wife does the laundry, the husband takes out the trash. the wife cleans the house, the husband mows the lawn

What you are talking about are egalitarian marriages, and yes, they are becoming more common, but they, socially speaking, have not been the norm in the US, nor do they solve all of the issues associated with opportunity costs when it comes to women and the workplace.

your inability to have babies without being pregnant (let's assume novelties like adoption or surrogates are out of the question) is a part of your gender package, just like his inability to not pay after knocking you up is part of his. each package has its own advantages/disadvantages. you can't use feminist rhetoric to compare apple to orange so that you can have your cake and eat it too.

[umair127]

In many institutions, the actual practice is not especially damaging compared to the perception. It's tough to make much of anecdotal evidence, but I offer a recent one. A close colleague of mine recently had a baby. That is, his wife had a baby. Our firm offers equal paid parental leave for men and women, up to 18 weeks. As the delivery date approached, he was advised by one of our superiors to not take more than 2 or 3 days. He ended up taking just the delivery date because it fell on a Friday, and was back to work Monday morning.

Putting aside whether this is fair for right, it raises several interesting questions. Would the male supervisor have advised a woman the same? How would the woman have reacted compared to my friend (who had planned to take 2 or 3 days in any event)? Putting aside the advice, if the woman took several weeks of leave and it affected promotions, salary or bonuses, what would she attribute it to? What would a male in a similar situation?

then dont have a baby if you cant afford it but dont want to miss out on career, god damn it. giving in to peer pressure and then bitching and blaming instead of taking responsibility for your action.
almost every woman i know wants to have babies just because other women do, although she has no fucking career or any idea what she would do to provide a decent life for them. worse, some of them were still in the ages where they haven't finished being children themselves (16-24), still living at home, yet they keep talking about having baby NOW as if it was like getting a doll from the store.

Says the person who doesn't have to choose between having a career and having a family.

The entire point here is that women have these costs to their ability to be successful in their career and are forced to make these expensive tradeoffs that many men don't have to. It represents a mathematical disadvantage to women in the work place, compounded by our cultural perceptions that it should be women who handle the bulk of unpaid domestic work as well.

you think men don't have to choose between having a career and family?

yes, women have just as many choices as men do. or are you telling me the same women who can choose to have sex and then scream rape the next day can't choose to not get knocked up?

No one forces you to have baby. no one forces you to do unpaid housework. many of you want to have baby only to be "in the club", to remain in your social circle. matter of fact, many women these days have wise up to that fact and decided to make the same choice men did, which is not to have baby, at least until both of them together can afford it. many couples i know share the house work. the wife cooks, the husband washes the dishes. the wife does the laundry, the husband takes out the trash. the wife cleans the house, the husband mows the lawn

Mathematically not nearly in the same way. They can, but due to cultural gender norms and I think also motherly biology, it, on average does not. We actually have mathematical proof of this in (drum-roll please) our wage gap. You realize that it is the woman, and not the man that has to get "knocked up" yeah? Can you choose to give birth?

I'm pretty sure abortion is still legal in the United States, as are Plan B, female condoms, and IUDs.

To act like pregnancy is something that men do to women is absurd. The "blame" (for lack of a better word) goes both ways.

[Rigon]

In many institutions, the actual practice is not especially damaging compared to the perception. It's tough to make much of anecdotal evidence, but I offer a recent one. A close colleague of mine recently had a baby. That is, his wife had a baby. Our firm offers equal paid parental leave for men and women, up to 18 weeks. As the delivery date approached, he was advised by one of our superiors to not take more than 2 or 3 days. He ended up taking just the delivery date because it fell on a Friday, and was back to work Monday morning.

Putting aside whether this is fair for right, it raises several interesting questions. Would the male supervisor have advised a woman the same? How would the woman have reacted compared to my friend (who had planned to take 2 or 3 days in any event)? Putting aside the advice, if the woman took several weeks of leave and it affected promotions, salary or bonuses, what would she attribute it to? What would a male in a similar situation?

then dont have a baby if you cant afford it but dont want to miss out on career, god damn it. giving in to peer pressure and then bitching and blaming instead of taking responsibility for your action.
almost every woman i know wants to have babies just because other women do, although she has no fucking career or any idea what she would do to provide a decent life for them. worse, some of them were still in the ages where they haven't finished being children themselves (16-24), still living at home, yet they keep talking about having baby NOW as if it was like getting a doll from the store.

Says the person who doesn't have to choose between having a career and having a family.

The entire point here is that women have these costs to their ability to be successful in their career and are forced to make these expensive tradeoffs that many men don't have to. It represents a mathematical disadvantage to women in the work place, compounded by our cultural perceptions that it should be women who handle the bulk of unpaid domestic work as well.

you think men don't have to choose between having a career and family?

yes, women have just as many choices as men do. or are you telling me the same women who can choose to have sex and then scream rape the next day can't choose to not get knocked up?

No one forces you to have baby. no one forces you to do unpaid housework. many of you want to have baby only to be "in the club", to remain in your social circle. matter of fact, many women these days have wise up to that fact and decided to make the same choice men did, which is not to have baby, at least until both of them together can afford it. many couples i know share the house work. the wife cooks, the husband washes the dishes. the wife does the laundry, the husband takes out the trash. the wife cleans the house, the husband mows the lawn

Mathematically not nearly in the same way. They can, but due to cultural gender norms and I think also motherly biology, it, on average does not. We actually have mathematical proof of this in (drum-roll please) our wage gap. You realize that it is the woman, and not the man that has to get "knocked up" yeah? Can you choose to give birth?

I'm pretty sure abortion is still legal in the United States, as are Plan B, female condoms, and IUDs.

To act like pregnancy is something that men do to women is absurd. The "blame" (for lack of a better word) goes both ways.

what she wants is a world where both partners just spit into a bottle, and then baby would grow out of it. that way her gender would still get to have all the privileges that women are enjoying without having to have the responsibilities that entitled them to those privileges in the first place

[tsoPANos]

Well, women tend to get less rewarded from men.
But it is justified by many factors.
To start with, women tend to get a child inside them, which makes them unsuitable for work in the last 4 months of pregnancy. Also, they are less productive than men in jobs requiring physical fitness.
On jobs which require mental abilities rather than fitness, the differences are almost non-existent.
But hey, we live in a free market, and the successful men are many more compared to women as women don't like taking risk, which is required to succeed as a businessman!
So yes, women really get rewarded less, but it's perfectly natural.
Inequality is natural.
Women tend to have pussies while men have balls, making them much better at taking decisions.
If women are so unhappy with inequality, they have better complain to God or Mother Nature.

The End

[sana8410]

No one forces you to have baby. no one forces you to do unpaid housework

This doesn't in any way, counter anything that I have posted. Perhaps you should try reading my post again while not frothing at the mouth and rambling on about rape.

many couples i know share the house work. the wife cooks, the husband washes the dishes. the wife does the laundry, the husband takes out the trash. the wife cleans the house, the husband mows the lawn

What you are talking about are egalitarian marriages, and yes, they are becoming more common, but they, socially speaking, have not been the norm in the US, nor do they solve all of the issues associated with opportunity costs when it comes to women and the workplace.

AGAIN for the umpteenth time, no one can force the women to be pregnant.

Your man can choose to have more freedom in his career, or have babies and be anchored down, and limited to whatever career options that leaves him with, in order to support you AND the babies. even after you divorce him and choose not to work, he still has to pay.
Likewise, you can choose to have your career, or have the babies and be limited to whatever career options the babies leave you with.
Even then, you can still choose to go to work and hire a nanny. regardless of what you choose, his only choice is to pay.

No one is talking about that. You should really look up the concept of opportunity cost so that you can understand what I am saying. Or just understand the basic concept of tradeoffs and how different genders experience different (and unequal) sets of tradeoffs when it comes to decision making.

[Rigon]

so even when a woman can choose not to have babies, and the husband sharing the housework with her, it still "doesn't solve all of the issues associated with opportunity costs when it comes to women and the workplace"? what else do you want?

[sana8410]

A man generally doesn't have to pick either having a family or having a successful career though. They might, and some absolutely do, but traditionally women have had to bear the brunt of that. It forces them to choose in ways that men often aren't forced to choose which is one reason why men can dedicate themselves more fully to work: lower costs to doing so. No one is arguing that they don't have a choice, so I'm not sure why you keep ranting about that.

your inability to have babies without being pregnant (let's assume novelties like adoption or surrogates are out of the question) is a part of your gender package, just like his inability to not pay after knocking you up is part of his. each package has its own advantages/disadvantages. you can't use feminist rhetoric to compare apple to orange so that you can have your cake and eat it too.

This comment doesn't even make any sense within the context of this thread.

[sana8410]

what she wants is a world where both partners just spit into a bottle, and then baby would grow out of it. that way her gender would still get to have all the privileges that women are enjoying without having to have the responsibilities that entitled them to those privileges in the first place

I think you're just threatened by the strength of my sexuality. You keep us women down because you're jealous of the fact that my body can turn heads while still being capable of doing work as well as (or better) than you can and yours can't.

[Rigon]

A man generally doesn't have to pick either having a family or having a successful career though. They might, and some absolutely do, but traditionally women have had to bear the brunt of that. It forces them to choose in ways that men often aren't forced to choose which is one reason why men can dedicate themselves more fully to work: lower costs to doing so. No one is arguing that they don't have a choice, so I'm not sure why you keep ranting about that.

your inability to have babies without being pregnant (let's assume novelties like adoption or surrogates are out of the question) is a part of your gender package, just like his inability to not pay after knocking you up is part of his. each package has its own advantages/disadvantages. you can't use feminist rhetoric to compare apple to orange so that you can have your cake and eat it too.

This comment doesn't even make any sense within the context of this thread.

then dont put yourself in a position where you have to choose. dont waste too much time in front of the mirror and in shopping malls, get educated, have a career, rely on yourself, dont have kid just because everyone and their mother do. matter of fact, all non stupid or non lazy women these days do that.


this is the scenario when the women have to make the choice:
1-she wants to have a baby
2-he wants to have a baby
3-both of them want to have a baby
4-she got knocked up by accident
tell me how often each happens, and who is the ultimate decision maker in all cases

[Rigon]

what she wants is a world where both partners just spit into a bottle, and then baby would grow out of it. that way her gender would still get to have all the privileges that women are enjoying without having to have the responsibilities that entitled them to those privileges in the first place

I think you're just threatened by the strength of my sexuality. You keep us women down because you're jealous of the fact that my body can turn heads while still being capable of doing work as well as (or better) than you can and yours can't.

there you go, exactly what i wanted you to understand when i said that it's all part of a gender package. congratulation on grasping the concept

[sana8410]

Fact is that women get pregnant and men do not and you would have to take every pregnancy or child care factor out of all the data in order for it to be more of an apple versus apple comparison then what it is now.

Good analysis does exactly this. Or rather doesn't rely on a single variable model and can see which explanatory variables most impact the constant variable. One might explain 7% of the differences seen in relative wage rates, another might explain 3%, etc

Getting back to the 20th century, and what still directly affects our culture today, is that if the men came back alive but injured or otherwise affected by the horrors of war, those whom they had the "honor" of "serving" would fight like hell to deny them treatment and care beyond that which was politically expedient. Once the wars were "over," everyone tries to forget about it. The former slaves receive substandard care if they receive any at all. These days they're fighting with backlogs and waiting lists that might take years before they get treatment.

This has created a culture wherein men are viewed as disposable. Men believe themselves to be disposable. And if they dare to assert their rights, then they're wimps, sissies, cowards, etc.

Yesallmen is a feminist hashtag that some women use when complaining about things that guys do. They are angry that some guys interrupt with "not all men do that" and see it as an attack on the hardships that women have to put up with via their interactions with the male gender. It became a feminist meme and one that is actually pretty damaging to feminism. It really means pretty much what it says: all men do XYZ. It's sexism.

Ahh, I see. I didn't realize that #YesAllMen was being used by feminists. I figured it was probably being used by men to try to counter the #YesAllWomen activism.

For the most part I have very little appreciation for third-wave feminism. I don't think it will end well when equal rights movements that address racism, homophobia, ageism, heightism, men's rights, etc. are co-opted and bundled under the "feminism" umbrella. I mean, I can sympathize with the notion that feminism has more political clout, and I think they often mean well, but putting feminists in charge of handling all social injustices is the same as having old rich white men in charge of it.

That's how #yesallmen was started. i'm not a very big twitter person, so I haven't followed its evolution, but it seems that guys are appropriating it now as the male version of the other hashtag #yesallwomen. Personally (and I'm sure this will come as a surprise) I'm more inclined to more in depth / long winded discourse than twitter can provide.

But I agree that a very important part of feminism is tackling the inequalities and gender stereotypes that men face too. It's gender equality really more than pure feminism even if women have historically been more vulnerable and restricted under patriarchal social structures.

I can't stand angry feminism, especially that feminism which targets males as an enemy because it alienates a group of people who it is vital to secure positive buy-in from if true and sustainable change is what is desired.

[noviapriani]

An executive was interviewing a young woman for a position in his company. He wanted to learn something about her personality, so he asked, "if you could have a conversation with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?"

She quickly responded, "The living one."