Is it time for Affirmative Action for Men?

No, it is not.

 

We could talk all day long about Iraq, Israel and illegal immigration, and I still wouldn't get half as ticked as I do hearing about this fake, phoney issue, and I'm a freaking guy. Public beatings for burkha violations, breast ironings in Cameroon (where my father grew up), and Sandra Day O'Connor only getting clerical job offers after graduating honors at Stanford Law in the same class as Bill Rehnquist, tells me all I need to know about any gosh darn mother flunking gender gap.

I'd like to see a female presidential nominee, or Hootie Johnson not likening the prospect of accepting female members at Augusta to being bayonetted, before I see or hear any more of this crap. The worst part is that this notion is probably driven more than anything by petty, resentful, ignorant women who have underachieving sons or husbands they depend on for support. (Or just assholes.) Although, if I had sons I would probably post the "lazy boys" section of the this article on the fridge (callin' up at two in the morning askin' who Nasser was. Even I know he was, uh, some guy in Egypt who did something once with a Canal.)

And as a college-educated black man, there is nothing more flattering to me than seeing two black students "joking" about not wanting to be "caught" in a library, near the front page of the New York Times. And playing video games six hours hours a day, god damn. I bet Ward Connerly and Lino Graglia are high-fiving each over right now, before they drive over to Kinko's to get that picture, and caption, poster-sized. (Call me Trig, cuz I'm off on a tangent.)

 

Affirmative Action should exist, but its only criteria should be income.

 

Why are women working so hard in college? Because they have to clearly do better than men if they want to have a prayer of making the same salary in upper management.

An example:

(this is from The NonProfit Times, a magazine that covers management in the non-profit sector of the economy)

Women executive directors lag behind their male counterparts in salary.

Male executive directors were paid $108,555 on average last year, while females holding the same position received $77,086. Men executive directors are expected to receive $109,516 this year (2005), and women executive directors are slated to receive $79,992.

http://www.nptimes.com/Feb05/sr1.html


Another example, from CareerBank.com, a website for accounting, finance and banking jobs:

The average 2004 salary for those women respondents from the accounting, finance and banking professions (including CPAs) rose nearly $2,000 to $52,012 while the average salary for men in the same fields dropped $190 to $69,848.

http://www.nysscpa.org/society/PR/12-27-04releasea.htm


Another example, from Information Weekly:

The persistent salary gap between women and men, especially in management, got larger this year. Male IT staffers command a median base salary of $70,000, compared with $64,000 for women IT staffers, a 9% difference. Among IT managers, men are earning an average of 15% more than women in base salary this year, compared with 10% more in 2005. Throw in bonuses, and the gap gets larger: Male staffers make $8,000 (12%) more, and male managers $14,000 (16%) more.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=186500737


Another example, from UCLA, comparing the pay of their male and female professors:

In 1990 male professors at UCLA earned an average of $4,033 more than female professors.

By 2005 that gap had grown to an average of $7,400 in favor of men.

http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?ID=36133#



I could do this all night. Women have figured out that if they want to have a prayer of coming close to making near the same salaries that men make in upper management, and the professions, they have to really stand out. This isn't new news, because it's been this way like... forever. There are exceptions, but that is the way it is. In some fields it is improving, in some it's actually gotten worse. This ain't Rockets science. Women get screwed in the workforce. And if they take time out for kids? Screwed even worse. Why do you think the birthrate is going down in developed countries? In large part because women are waiting longer and longer to have children, and having fewer of them. Why? Because IT RUINS THEIR CAREER.


Tiger, I'm really not sure what the point of the article is. More women are going to college and working harder at it BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO! They continue to get screwed by the "glass ceiling." Believe me, I know. My wife is an executive with nearly 30 years experience, a highly successful one. I've been hearing stories from her about this for years. She's one of the exceptions. Why? Because she works her freakin' ass off.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

Translation: Women no longer are learning how to cook, clean, or sex a man. This country is falling apart.

 

They still have the, "sex a man," thing down pat, from where I'm hangin' out.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

Like others have mentioned, its because men think they don't have to work as hard and still get paid or promoted as much.

The numbers might shift to women in the long run, but as long as there isn't any large scale wars or a stoppage of women being sex and child bearing objects things won't change.

 

Men get more jobs, more money for the same job, etc despite having underperformed women for some time now. Women need to have job equality before men start complaining about anything.

 

Affirmative Action = Discrimination. By definition.

I don't understand why some people claim to hate discrimination but support AA. I'm perfectly fine with someone supporting Affirmative Action as long as they don't also claim to hate discrimination.

 

I still believe that men are better leaders, and ultimately work better in any workforce.

 

With all due respect, I think that are ludicrous statements by both of you, even with your "qualifier," tiger. In my opinion, it's no different than what used to said of Blacks, back in the day. (and still said by too many ignorant people) The fact is that women can do as well, or better, in any field that doesn't require someone to be a 300 lb. NFL lineman, or the equivilent.

I can't believe I still see statements like this from otherwise highly intelligent people. It's just rediculous.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

I agree. In any field that doesn't rely on physicality, women should be just as well regarded as men. I would think men would have an advantage for all of the more physically demanding jobs though (loading trucks, dockworkers, athletes, etc.)

 

I only speak from my experience. I have seen that often times if there is a problem or disagreement in the workplace a female worker holds it against you for a longer time. A man in the same situation would just let the problem go, ignore it, or not show any after effects of having that disagreement.

I do understand your correlation of my statement to what was said about Blacks many years ago though.

 

So women are unprofessional. That is great.

I'll be sure to tell my wife - who is in senior management for a large company - that she has problems. You must be like some of her team members (all male) that have trouble with women in power positions. They provide good dinner conversation but it is also sad how stupid men can be.

 

While I agree with you to some extent, there is an interestingly similar philosophy that Republicans generally support: trickle-down economics.

The idea behind trickle-down economics is that you give one group an advantage (tax breaks for the wealthy) and that will trickle down and benefit everyone as new jobs are created, investment booms, etc. With affirmative action, the idea is the same, but with a different group. You offer more opportunities to minorities, and that helps fight the cycles of poverty and other issues facing minorities, which benefits society as a whole, and helps grow the economy, etc in the long-run.

We do it all the time in economics to incentive certain behaviors, whether it be tax breaks for education or home ownership or hybrid vehicles. The idea is that we reward certain behavior because we believe it benefits society as a whole - though its unfair for certain groups who don't get those benefits. AA is essentially the same thing.

 

Sorry that is total BS.

I have a female supervisor. I always love it when outsiders assume that the MIS Director must be a man. I'll say, "I have to check with my manager." The person will go, "well tell him". I'll stop them and say, "he is a she". That always causes a momentary pause.

 

I've worked in corporate America for 6 years now in a fairly progressive corporation. In the last 3 months I have gotten my first male manager. Every other manager that I have had has been female, and all are darn good.

I work with almost a dead even number of women and men. The women are skilled at their jobs and highly educated. (In fact my group is highly motivated, skilled, and educated overall, men and women)

However, I do see some differences, and I don't know if these can count for some of the differences in salaries and promotion we might see overall, but I will lay them out from my point of view.

1. Most of the women I work with have children. Most of them have multiple children. The women with children, while highly skilled and hard workers, do have other (and I think better) priorities most of the time. They may not stay as late as the men or the women with no kids. They may not put in that extra weekend work here and there. They may leave at 4:50 instead of 5:30. I don't think what they do is bad. In fact, I think they have a better balance than most men, but the fact remains, when review time comes every year, those little things are noticed and accounted for. The women with kids are not penalized, its just that the ones that worked an extra weekend, or stayed late a little more often were rewarded. Thus, you would have the start of a gap.

2. Having a baby in itself works against a woman. Most women miss 3-5 months when having a baby. In my corporation, they keep their same job and pay, but, everybody else has just worked 3-5 months more. So 3-5 months of tenure is lost. So if a man and woman both started working in 1998, and the woman has had 2-3 kids, she has basically lost 12-18 months of seniority or tenure to the equivelent male. That's 12-18 months less in promotions, benefits and salary. So basically, the man is an 8 year veteran now with the company, and the woman is a 6-7 year veteran. There will be a gap. The woman is now only rated on 6-7 years of performance compared to 8.

3. The leadership qualities that corporations, organizations, nations, ect. value tend to be male dominated traits. I'm not saying a woman can't have these traits, and would not be rewarded if she did, but men, on average, are more likely to have them.

4. Most of the women I work with just plain don't want the leadership positions. They don't want to deal with managing people. Most of them say they would rather contribute as a worker bee and do their job, not manage.

5. Almost every man I have worked with, myself included, promotes themselves better or with more confidence than most women. I see it with my wife. My wife is a CPA that graduated with a 4.0 undergrad and graduate. She is WAY smarter than me, I'll admit it. She has an advanced degree and a CPA, while I only have a bachelor's degree. She had 10 job offers from college. She got headhunted out of her first job after only a year of experience. She has basically taken over the department in which she works at her new company. Basically she kicks ass. BUT, she has a heck of a time putting a value on her work, asking for raises or promotions, and pretty much takes what is offered. She just does not have the personality to aggressively fight for advancement. I, however do. So as a result, we both make about the same salary, when she should really be making 20% more than me. I think its the same in my office. Many of the women don't promote themselves, don't market themselves, don't ask for promotions or raises, ect. with the same tenacity and agression that their male counterparts do, so they get left behind in the gap. All they have to do is ask for more money in a lot of cases.

6. "Good ol' boy" Networking. Despite the fact I work in a progressive company and industry, their still is the networking that exists for high level positions. I'm not saying its right, but its the way it is. The beer after work, golf on Friday, B-B-Q on Saturday network that gets you that nice postion later in your career. I think its hard for women to break into this network, and I think a lot of women don't even want to bother with it depite the fact that they can break into it. I've seen some women do it and succeed, but most women don't even try.

Anyways, that's some of the observations I've made in my short career. I think some of these things are similar in a lot of companies and might have to do, at least in part, to the gap that may exist.