Pick up a recent issue of Glamour magazine and you’ll see stories
headlined “Will You Want Him Forever?” and “Stress and Your Weight.” But
you’ll also find another message – one that’s distinctly political: “It
takes a full-time working woman more than 15 months to make what a man
makes in 12,” explains an unsigned editorial. “That’s because for each
dollar he earns, we’re logging just 71 cents.” In order to help narrow the
“pay gap,” Glamour’s readers (circulation: two million) are told to urge
their senators and representatives to support Sen. Tom Daschle’s “Paycheck
Fairness Act, which would put more muscle into enforcing existing
equal-pay laws.”
[Rest of article deleted by David B because it was probably copyrighted.]
Only in America can a homeless combat veteran live
in a cardboard box and a draft dodger live in the White
House.
[Note: This message has been edited by David B]
Bubba: I’ve had to delete much of the article because it appears to be a copyrighted article (and you don’t even note where it came from). If it is available on the web, please put in a pointer to the article instead. If it is not, please select some quotes that make your point and summarize the rest.
Conservatives work to restrict a woman’s place in society. These magazines, the
fluffy nonsense that they are, at least acknowledge a woman’s place is wherever she wants to be.
Do they by any chance give a source for the statistics?
Anytime I see some, I’m suspicious.
You can write anything and it will be believed when you live in a country where fully half the population ranks below average in intelligence. :rolleyes:
Personally, I’m surprised to find any of the women’s magazines actually taking a stand on a political issue to further women’s economic well-being. I’ve always figured their main raison d’etre was to distract women from the things that are important, by getting them focused on weight, looks, how to find a man and keep him happy, and all the other ‘essentials’.
I’ll be the first to agree that equal pay for equal work is what we should strive for, but I think this 71% (sometimes 74%) number that’s always thrown around is a bit misleading. It is true on one level: if you look at the total wages of women in the workforce vs. men, the average woman is making a bit under 3/4 of what the average man is making in the USA.
But the problem is that this doesn’t account for factors like the field of work people are involved in. If one compares wages while equalizing for career, experience, and education, the numbers usually get very close to parity for most fields.
I think the real issue here is a cultural one. When I entered the workforce, many high paying fields such as engineering were virtually 100% male dominated. Although that’s not the case any more, there is still quite an imbalance in many high paying careers, and although women obtain more bachelors degrees than men, they tend to be in lower paying fields such as the humanities than in higher paying ones such as science and engineering.
So I think there’s an issue here, but it’s a different one than the media tends to say it is. Many people take this 71% number to mean that some woman with a BS in EE and 8 years of experience is likely to be making 71% of what a man with a BSEE and 8 years experience is making. But I think that’s not primarily what’s going on here - the far larger factor is the person holding the BSEE is more likely to be a man than a woman.
There are a few women’s magazines out there that do more than discuss cosmetics and the art of “keeping” a man. We won’t even go down that road. Concerning the issue of pay on man/woman. The company I work for pays by position. There are men and women in the department I am in and depending on education and experience there are different levels of pay. But both sexes can reach top pay and they do. I make as much as the men in my position. Where I see the difference is in what is considered a male oriented field. Believe it or not we have male and female I&C/Electrical/Mechanical positions. No doubt about it the male makes the higher salary. It’s not that the women do not work as hard, they are more than willing to do any job. I have yet to discover the reasoning behind this. I can’t think of many jobs that a woman would not do, not all women of course, but most. There are just some positions that a woman will never receive equal pay to a man.