Is Gender Discrimination the Main Reason Women Are Paid Less Than Men?

It's my experience most men are sexist dicks.

 

Apart from producing semen, peeing standing up or winning an arm wrestling contest I would love to know what you think a man can do better than a woman and why it's relevant to any job your company might hire for.

 

I've left out the people I think are clearly kidding. But this kind of post is really surprising to me. You must surround yourself with exceptionally stupid bimbos as a rule.

I'm not trying to say either gender is inherently smarter than the other, but if I had to choose my experience tells me women are smarter, more efficient and more effective than men in 90% of cases at least. I know a great lot of very smart people and, among them, it's not even close.

 

Look at everything made with blood and sweat, and the majority would be produced by men.
In my line of work, automotive repair, I've never seen a female worth half of what a man is as far as repairing a car goes. Rather, those that ARE in that position, get the benefit of keeping that job just because they are a woman, regardless of company benefit. I had a lady service advisor who couldn't cut it, so she went into the shop to work as a PDI worker (new car prep, easy job). She always told me she really wanted to be a tech. She can't even understand enough to pass a state inspection course, which she has failed 6 times.
The women where I work are there to look pretty, or sell cars. The only disadvantage the men have is in the pretty dept.

I suppose the majority of men could take on the jobs that most women can command, but then the women would be forced to take on the other jobs that men once occupied, which they would be physically unequipped to handle.

Granted, if the same position is held by a man and woman, and the qualifications are the same, then the pay should be the same as well.

 

Who knows, maybe God created men and women different but with equal overall rights.

If I'm hiring and cost is a concern, I'd be weary of hiring a newly-wed female and you would be lying if you said you think otherwise.

It's just statistics. Men are less likely to get pregnant, more likely to work overtime, and less likely to give up work altogether.

On one side, almost all inventions are created by males. On the other hand, who was the last female rogue trader? It evens out.

Just different. Not less, or more, not better, not worse. Just different. I don't understand why this isn't acceptable. We live in a world where men are trying to be women and women are trying to be men. I don't see why. One is not better than the other. It's just different. Not to say that women can't do what they want. But there is a natural barrier and unless we all become some kind of unisex beings, one side will be better at some things than the other.

 

I could address other parts of your sexist post (with all due respect!), but the comment about overtime jumped out at me. I'll have to make sure and mention it to my wife (an executive at an important Texas state agency) the next time she works a 70 hour week to meet a deadline.

Geez... I wish some of you would consider the fact that there's a huge world out there beyond your narrow one, and that women all over the world are working huge numbers of hours, in all kinds of fields. Literally. I'm sure women doing back breaking work in the rice patties of Southeast Asia would like to talk to you about it. Different kind of work from that of my wife. Funny how women seem to be doing all sorts of jobs all over the world, usually making less than a man doing the same thing, if men are willing to do the job. They must have missed the memo.



Impeach Bush.

 

In a lot of cases, the woman takes of many months, or quits for a couple years. I knew a trader who planned to come back after a month of pregnancy. After a year she still hasn't gone back. If she does go back after a couple more years, she will understandably be paid less. Not EVERYONE does it, but those who do will, and should, get paid less.

Who the heck is assuming that? It's usually the woman who takes the extended time off. No one is assuming anything, it's just what happens.

Except the woman often chooses to be home. The point is, employers arent paying women less because they predict they will take time off. It's the other way around. Women take more time off, so they get paid less.


http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/womenspay.htm
In attempting to explain the discrepancies in pay between men and women, the GAO concluded:

Women in the workforce are also less likely to work a full-time schedule and are more likely to leave the labor force for longer periods of time than men, further suppressing women's wages. These differing work patterns lead to an even larger earnings gap between men and women - suggesting that working women are penalized for their dual roles as wage earners and those who disproportionately care for home and family.

Men with children appear to get an earnings boost, whereas women lose earnings. Men with children earn about 2% more on average than men without children, according to the GAO findings, whereas women with children earn about 2.5% less than women without children.

Women have fewer years of work experience.

 

Mr. Clutch, I don't get it. In your own post, you perfectly illustrated the discrimination against women that exists in the workforce. Read it again and thanks for helping to show everyone that women aren't treated equally. And I say that with the greatest respect. It is my belief, based on my own experiences and those of women I know and have known, as well as men, that not only does discrimination exist against women, but many of the men who practice it truly do so without the slightest realization of what they are doing, and hold their positions honestly... honestly wrong, in the sense that it is without conscious malice, and frequently without actively discriminating themselves. In my opinion, of course.



Impeach Bush.

 

That 2-2.5% is a statistically insignificant margin, probably well within the error threshold. Real life is not a set of fixed numbers.

 

Deckard,

I don't disagree with you that it happens, but surely you are not arguing the likelihood of the things I mentioned?

I mentioned them as probabilities. Not certainties.

I think it's important to be rational. No one is telling you that women can not do it. I said that, as a whole, men are statistically more reliable in being able to commit to a job.

Obviously, we don't interview entire groups of same-sex people for jobs. We interview people individually for exactly the reason you're talking about. But given identical assessments in an interview, you will have to go with either your feelings or the statistics/probability.

 

I'm all for gender equality, and I concede that there are many workplaces that simply are hostile to women. However, after many years of working with women, I do see a pattern among the average female employees.

First, women tend to care more about the status and risk of a position than the pay. They shy away from difficult, high paying jobs. Second, married women tend not to have the pressure to be the breadwinner that men do, and therefore have no incentive to work hard and demand more money. Third, they have a much higher tolerance, it seems, for others around them making more money for similar work, and aren't willing to demand better pay at the risk of quitting their jobs. A man who finds out his coworker is making more than him will demand more money, based on a personal belief that he is equal or superior in value. I haven't seen that reaction from women.

I've encountered two general types of people in the workplace when it comes to salary: those who will fight for every dime, and those who seem to be happy with what they get. By and large, women tend to fit into the second category more than men. They just see work differently. I wish they didn't but they do.

 

Judging from the post in this thread I think the answer to the question is "Yes."

 

For one thing, most gender gap pay statistics take NO account of the jobs. They take the average women salaries and average men salaries, and do NOT take into account what jobs are being worked.

ALMOST all of the the gender pay gap can be explained by choices that the genders make in their careers. Women dominate lower earning positions such as teaching that bring down the average earnings significantly. On the other side, men dominate the engineering and technical fields that tend to pay higher.

When relative studies are done that compare men and women in the same positions, the pay gap goes to near nothing, usually less than 3%.

Add in to the fact that basics such as more women work reduced schedules and a great many take significant amount of time away from work to have children, it almost completely explains away the gap.

Let's put it this way, in my group, we pay for performance. Last year, our highest performer was a woman, she got paid the most. This year she goes on maternity leave and will be gone AT LEAST six months. This year, she won't be the highest performer. She will perform half the work someone else in the group will perform. She still gets leave and has her job waiting for her, but she basically loses six months of her career and fall behind everybody else in the group by six months. If average raises this year are 5%, she falls behind 2.5% raise-wise. Next year, if she's the highest performer again, she will get a good raise, but it may just catch her up to everybody else who didn't leave work for six months.

Heck, she even mentioned she may work reduced schedule, which takes her salary down 30%.

We're not making the choices that make her make less, she is.

 

I'm somewhat stunned at how backwards this thread is. My goodness.

 

What's your beef with the WNBA? They could dunk too.

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Oh I forgot to say. Candace Parker is hottttt. WNBA rules!

 

doesn't your wife have a fairly high paying job? do you think she isn't paid as well as her male peers. I know its only one person, but I'm curious as to what drives your opinion.

 

She has a very high paying job for a state executive, but that's after 30 years of hard work. She's bumped up against the "glass ceiling" before, herself, and like a lot of women executives, has had to fight against prejudice to prove she is as good, or better, than the men doing the same job. The agency she works in is easily 60% women, probably over 60%, yet she is the only female executive of the half dozen who run it.

I won't say it's because of her that I feel this way, however. In my own experiences in the workforce, I've seen numerous instances of women being discriminated against. Recently, I posted about one example:


My wife's a feminist, as I've mentioned before, and I like to think of myself as one. I came very close to being fired from a job I had in the 1960's while going to school, because I went to management and complained heatedly about the fact that I had been given a much larger raise than the women there, who made up the large majority of the people I had been working with for all of 2 months. The manager told me I was crazy, and if I said another word, I could take a hike. That was not the only effort I made personally to change things, but it's one that sticks in my mind, largely because of the bigot's jaw dropping when I unloaded on him. Those women had families, bills to pay, and most had been working hard there for many years, knowing some rediculously high multiple of the amount I knew about that job. I think some of you have either not experienced discrimination against women in the work place first hand, or simply couldn't tell it was going on under your nose. And if you think it has largely gone away, you are much mistaken.

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=149252&page=4&pp=20&highlight=women


I hope you enjoyed that quote, because I had hell finding it!



Impeach Bush.

 

Yep. Pretty stunning. So much for the alleged liberal skew on this board.

 

Allow me to also agree with the above sentiment.