**
To look at it another way, men do not get to make that choice. Which is better - to have a choice or not have it? I hope that’s a rhetorical question.
**
The bottom line is nothing of the kind, though of course some people will always assume antifemale sexism in everything, regardless of reality.
Do you really think that the number of hours worked should have no effect on pay? That is the main thing you are describing as a “stupid factoid”.
There is a difference between men and women, in terms of their available choices. When the woman goes to the hospital and goes into labor, that is time that she is absolutely out: She cannot choose to work while she’s in labor. Depending on her job and the circumstances of her pregnancy, she may also have to take off some number of months before that. A man, by contrast, can easily work while the woman is going through labor, or homebound by pregnancy.
The disparity continues even after birth. A woman can suckle a baby, while a man cannot. Of course, either parent can equally well bottle-feed the baby, but many couples consider this to be an inferior alternative.
No matter how you look at it, a woman has to invest considerably more time into procreation. This is not something which the law or public opinion can remedy: It is an inherent property of our biology. Is it fair? Maybe not, but them’s the breaks.
I apologize, angilion for being unable to work the quote coding.
Men don’t get to make the choice? In the sense that they are considered downright loopy to not work in the job market but raise their own kids, I suppose that’s true. However, they don’t have to choose between having children and keeping their rate of pay constant. (And men can choose to have children as long as their states allow adoptions by singles or two men–moreover the choice to be a father, not just a biological parent, is certainly a choice solely within each man’s discretion).
And, I was not particularly clear on what I meant by stupid factoid. I was actually thinking of things the column did mention, and the way the courts look at differences to decide whether they’re legitimate. I was also thinking about a situation very close to home–my husband and I at one time were in the same occupation. I was hired by a government office at one rate of pay. Three years later, he was hired by the same office. Although I had more seniority and more experience in the area I worked, he was hired at a higher rate of pay than I made at that time. The justification given by the office was that he was in a different division–even though the work we did was nearly identical. Chances are good the decision was legal. It still reeked of bias.
However, I meant to come at the issue from a different perspective. The way this issue is analyzed is to look at it as if the single person is the ideal. Our standard work week is 40 (maybe 35 by Dep’t of Labor standards) hours (more in many professional jobs) with certain benefits only becoming possible at that 40-hour threshhold level. Men with families have had to either pay for childcare or have a partner willing to provide it for “free.” Society reinforced this choice (as did employers by at one time paying women less for the identical work), which helped perpetuate the system. What if the standard work week were 25 hours, and anything over that was overtime? I think that more men would take advantage of the flexibility and share more in child care. Maybe not.
Finally, hours worked are not the ideal yardstick. It is hard to believe that all people in salaried positions concentrate fully on a task for their employers every minute of the day they are at work. Additionally, based on the human attention span and the phenomenon of burnout, it seems likely that the greater the number of hours worked, the less productive a person will be per hour. Therefore, I dispute that merely pointing to number of hours worked should settle the issue.
Finally, I also think frankly that the government should subsidize childcare to make it easier for both women and men to equally share in all aspects of life–both work and family.
Personal anecdote: when my kids were little, my wife was hospitalized and unable to take care of them. We had the kids in day care, and I told my boss that I would need to work an 8-hour day, leaving at 5 PM on the nose to get the kids. My boss said that was fine, that was my decision, and that I should be aware that working restricted hours (40-hour week) would have an impact on my pay raises. Top performers were expected to work 50 to 60 hour weeks.
I acknowledged that, and was willing to make that trade-off for the period of time until my wife recovered. Kids or cash. Fairly simple.
Uh, that’s what I’ve been telling you. 'Cept I think most men like it that way.
Hogwash. Men can choose not to have sex, they can choose to use birth control, they can choose to have sex with women who use birth control, they can choose to have sex with women past child-bearing age, they can choose any number of things, including getting women pregnant and running away, or paying child support and refusing to visit (and if you think paying child support makes you a father, you’re missing the point of this discussion).
And a woman can only be a parent if a man chooses to get her pregnant (not counting artificial insemination, which I’ll admit men can’t use – but men control the source material:D).
This is the last post I’m going to make addressing this men’s rights whining hijack. Men can’t get pregnant, and there are costs and benefits associated with that. If most men didn’t think it evens out, the costs and benefits would be allocated differently.
You should also note that all these options apply to women too. And just like men, there are those who choose not to bother with contraception. Unfortunately, if a woman CHOOSES not to use contraception, and the man CHOOSES not to use it either, then invariably, the woman will end up getting pregnant. If this happens, the man has NO CHOICE whether he wants to become a father or not. It is 100% in the hands of the woman, and if she chooses to have a child, then tough luck to the man. He has to pay child support for the next 20 years. He has no choice in the matter, the woman does.
You may argue that it is the man’s fault for not using contraception - well it takes two to tango, and the woman is every much as responsible as the man. That means he should have as much say as to whether he should be a father or not, but the law does not reflect that.
And if the woman chooses to be impregnated by the man. Remember, there are ten times more contraceptives for women than there are for men. The only way a woman can (and should) get pregnant these days is if she chooses to be. Or she’s just plain stupid.
Nametag, I love the way you just go on blindly asserting things that I have already said were untrue. I personally know of two couples where the wife makes more than the man. One guy had a problem with it, the other is doing most of the child care while his wife pursues her career.
Do my wife and I have this option? No. Why? I have my college degree, she doesn’t. That pretty much explains any disparity in our pay levels thank you.
**
Not completely true. While it is rare for a woman to rape a man, it does happen.
I’m sure you’ve seen anti-abortionists saying that if a woman doesn’t want to be a mother, she should be celibate. You’re making the same argument.
The only birth control available to men has an 85% success rate. It does not allow a man to choose not to be a parent - it merely allows him to reduce the odds.
In which case it’s still the woman’s choice as to whether or not the man becomes a father, unless you have a perfect form of contraception for women and you think men should be able to force women to take it if they say they will.
That’s the first thing that’s actually true. Now…how would you react if women were given the choice between having sex with men over 50 or having whatever man they have sex with controlling their fertility, while men could have sex with any women they pleased and control both their fertility and that of the women they have sex with? Would you be able to see that situation would place women at a disadvantage?
Which makes them a father and a fugitive.
A father is a father regardless of what he does or does not do. He may not be a good father, but that’s a different argument.
That is completely untrue. A woman can be a parent if she has sex with a man. He does not have to chose to “get her pregnant”. He doesn’t even have to choose to have sex with her. He doesn’t even need to be conscious at the time.
If you were able to tell one man apart from another, you’d realise how stupid that statement is.
Ah, the usual line. I was expecting that. If any of those silly men get uppity enough to point out that men don’t get all the advantages (heresy!), they must be ridiculed. They must be hairy-legged dykes, or something. Oh, wait, that was how people like you ridiculed women who raised any reasonable points.
If you bother to read my posts, you’ll see I haven’t said anything about men’s rights. I’ll say something about it now - I think there shouldn’t be any men’s rights, or women’s rights. Rights should not be only for people of the “right” sex, any more than they should be for people of the “right” skin colour, for example.
So why have you spent your time ridiculing men who have pointed that out?
What on earth makes you think that?
I’m a little unsure on it myself, which is why my posts are excessively spaced at times. I think the forum software automatically inserts carriage returns, so I won’t do so and see what the preview looks like.
The pressue is much the same - men are considered to be failures if they do, women are considered to be failures if they don’t. Men as stay-at-home fathers are in approximately the position of women in the workplace many decades ago though - the law is biased against them and they have little or no support for being outside the role allocated to them. In many cases, the support is explictly denied them (e.g. mother and toddler groups), in other cases the denial of support is simply social (e.g. mothers collecting their child(ren) from school are far more likely to talk with other mothers doing so than with a father doing so). In some cases, the sexism is quite vicious, based on the unfortunately common idea that the only interest men have in children is abusing them. I’ve known schools who will refuse to release children to any man, including the child’s father, without written permission from the mother and formal identification carried by the father.
Neither do women, if they choose to be parted from their children for almost all of their children’s waking lives until the child is at least 5 years old, and almost all after that, if they choose to miss their child’s first words, their first steps and a myriad of other wonderful things because they have dedicated the majority of their waking lives to working for money to support their children. Think about that - does it really sound like a privilege to you? Imagine a mother doing it - does it still sound like a privilege?
In short, if a mother and a father choose to arrange their lives in the same way, it has the same effect on their pay.
My country does not. It doesn’t negate my point, anyway. The man doesn’t get the choice - the government gets to choose whether it’s legal and the adoption authorities get to choose if a specific man gets to be a parent. It’s their choice, not his.
OK…tell me how a man can act on that choice. Assume that I have just chosen to be a father. How do I do so? I can’t - the choice is a facade. I may as well choose to paint my neighbour’s house purple and knock their garage down. Actually, I have far more of a choice in that respect - I could do it without their consent, if I was nasty enough to do so, so it is a real choice. I suppose I could choose to be a father, but I have absolutely no ability to make that choice reality. Nothing I can do can give me the immense power of becoming a parent as a result of my choice. In essence, power is the ability to choose, and that 's a choice of primal importance and is therefore great power.
That has very little effect on average pay for men and women. The hours worked alone accounts for over three-quarters of the gap.
Bias, yes. Sexism, maybe. Did you make a comparison with the pay of men doing the same work in your division, or with women in his? The bias might well have been based on the division. You have given absolutely no evidence that it was based on sex.
Since the men were the sole financial support for an entire family, including that partner, it was hardly free in any sense of the word. I appreciate the meaning of the quotation marks you placed around free, and I’ll assume you do too, but I’d like to stress that it’s actually a major expense.
Society still does. We’ve had decades of increase in the choices women and only women get, while men have been ignored at best. This has left men with half their old role, if they are lucky, and little or no choice in the matter. One of the reasons why the rate of suicide amongst men is more than 4 times that amongst women. It also has an unintentional but inevitable restriction on women’s choices, as men don’t have the corresponding freedom of choice. It’s impossible to have the benefits of both the old male role and the old female role and the disadvantages of neither, and only the most spoilt brat-like people would think they’re entitled to that.
If you changed society to allow them that choice freely, then IMO yes. The biggest complaint I hear from fathers at work is that they don’t see enough of their children.
True, but it’s also hard to believe that people who work fewer hours concentrate on their work for such a greater proportion of those hours that they actually do more work than people working longer hours. In any case, in many waged jobs concentration isn’t needed. For example, one of the jobs in my workplace merely requires a person to be present and awake most of the time. An eight-hour shift may involve as little as two hours work, split over three periods of time.
If you can demonstrate that women working fewer hours do as much work as men working more hours, please do so.
That would work…if the government’s money didn’t come from people who work. Actually, I don’t think it would work. How would giving parents other people’s money make it “easier for women and men to equally share in all aspects of life–both work and family”? It’s just a bribe for have children and a fine for not having children. Ignoring the moral aspects of forcing people to pay for other people’s choices, for the moment, how would it do what you think it would do?
A very very good argument, indeed, for the need to develop an easily-reversible vasectomy operation.
That initially sounds like a good idea, but it cannot work. The current surgical procedures for vasectomies can usually be reversed by a competent surgeon, but that does not restore the man’s fertility in many, even most, cases. Merely reconnecting the tubes is only a part of the problem - unless the vasectomy was performed shortly before, the man will still either be sterile or have significantly reduced fertility.
In addition, it is quite expensive to have the vasectomy reversed. Even if it was guaranteed to restore the man’s fertility, which it can’t be, it still wouldn’t be equality even in just the negative aspect of the primal power of being able to choose to be or not be a parent. It would be a great improvement over the massive inequality that exists now, though.
There are also quite a few attempts to develop useful contraception to give men the power to choose not to be a parent, but it’s an innately difficult task, far more difficult than it is for women (hormonal contraception for women just has to mimic a naturally occuring state). There have been trials on volunteers, but the side-effects are much too severe to even propose putting the drugs forward for approval.
The area is chronically underfunded because there are neither political nor economic reasons to fund it. Drug companies have looked for a potential market - and haven’t found one. Very, very few women would trust their partner with contraception, so there isn’t a market in long-term relationships, and the drug wouldn’t provide any protection against STDs, so there isn’t a market amongst people who have casual sex or in the early stages of a long-term relationship. Drug companies quite reasonably don’t see a potential for profit, so they don’t see a reason for investing money in the area.
angilion said:
No, it doesn’t. Reread what was said.
See, there’s an if, which makes it conditional. He has not asserted that all or even many bosses are sexist, just what happens if they are sexist.
40 hrs per week is the deciding point for full-time vs. part time. However, that line is somewhat blurred between jobs that pay for 1 hr lunch and jobs that don’t. The standard “9 to 5” job is not really standard, at least where I live. It’s more of a “7:30 to 4:00” with 30 min unpaid lunch or “8 to 4:45” with 45 min unpaid lunch. YMMV.
nanite2000 said:
I don’t think that’s relevant. The issue is not who has the greastest income from all sources or who has the greatest expenses or who is spending more or less money or what government sources of income are available to help out single mothers. The issue is are women paid equally for equal work. That is independent of the number of hours worked, because that should be figured in. (Fewer hours means unequal work.) That is independent of child care from divorced fathers because that is a separate condition (the father is also responsible for paying for the expenses of the children). That is wholly separate from the compensation for the work done.
minty green
Look again to the thread. porkchop was explaining to Nametag comments made by angilion.
Nametag:
So if anyone was hijacking, it was angilion. Except angilion was responding to a comment by a previous poster.
Stella*Fantasia said:
So really it’s Stella*Fantasia that hijacked the thread. Ad infinitum. Or you could say the conversation drifted through various issues being raised and addressed, kind of like conversations do.
Nametag said:
That comment does not consider if porkchop and his wife have different career fields, which would effect who gets paid more. If porkchop is a doctor and his wife is an elementary school teacher, I think you can see the discrepancy independent over how they are paid in their respective fields.
Chronos, thanks for beating me to that excellent point about the absolute discrepancy in amount time a woman must commit that a man cannot.
The Witch said:
Whoa whoa WHOA! That is definitely a hijack and worthy of its own GD thread.
nanite2000 said:
Accidents do happen. Birth control methods are not 100%. Some are pretty close, but not perfect.
[regarding my comment that the previous poster’s argument relied on the assumption that antifemale sexism is endemic to “prove” their point that antifemale sexism is endemic, a circular argument]
In order for that sexism to explain the very large difference between the number of women and men working part-time, it would have to be endemic.
I was, but not the one you said I was responding to. I was responding to a question about how to reduce the difference between the average amount of time mothers and fathers spend on direct childcare (as opposed to the indirect childcare of working for money to support your children, which is not seen as childcare because it’s mostly men who do it). The proposed solution was to maintain the huge perceived superiority of mothers, with fathers remaining as optional extras at best, and give mothers lots of public money. I replied that a radical option would be to treat fathers as being as much parents as mothers, which would minimise the difference (mothers who were pregnant and gave birth would have to take extra time off for those reasons, so there would still be a small difference).
Eh…the OP was talking about wage discrepancies in entry level low end jobs. I don’t know if that’s true or not, and I would like to see an answer or something about it. Most of the posts have been about post-entry level jobs, or when people are already in the middle or top of their career.
KarlGrenze, I strongly suspect the drift towards discussing compensation well into the career may have to do with that being a point where most people see the most noticeable wage discrepancy (the difference in “average” pay is probably skewed at the top end by more males being top executives and veteran professionals, and at the bottom by more females having interrupted job histories).
At the bottom, entry-level end, entry-level with a year continuous service is not necessarily the same as entry level with a week’s service. IOW if you have, for the sake of argument, women who because of family obligations have to continually quit and restart in the entry-level jobs, they’ll (a)forever be at the absolute rock-bottom minimum wage as new hires and (b) in the average year end up earning less anyway for they won’t be employed the whole year.
jrd