Rant.. why feminism still matters

[beachdrivegirl]

Kayleigh and NR it is true b/c women are caddy.

(I dont think I spelled that right, but how often do i actually spell everything right in my post…)

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[rs261]

Wikipedia has some interesting information…it seems more tied to age then sex. Granted at this point in 2002, if you were just entering the workforce as a 25-29 year old, females would make .93 for every 1.00 a male did…but the older you are, the more the discrepancy shows. And of course the margin of error increases with age as well(from 1-2% to 5-7% error)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Pay_Act

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[barmargia]

I have to agree with Kayleigh, I’m a woman, I’ve worked in offices where the majority are men, and I’ve worked where the majority are women. Granted both situations had their moments where they sucked, but with the men it was much easier to deal with them. You usually know where they stand. With women (at least where I work), they are b*tchy, demeaning, moody, backstabbing, and high (or junior high) schoolish (and many many many years out of high school). I find myself to be happy when certain ones don’t come into work.

Oh and for Admin Professionals Day…blah, what a joke.

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[JanS]

lol…well this woman is self-employed, and her boss sometimes isn’t the nicest person…and the benefits can suck at times. But if anyone gets catty, well, I have no one to blame but myself – lol.

Actually, when I was employed in a regular job, have had 5 since I moved here…4 out of 5 of my bosses were female, and a lot harder to work for than the male. Having said that, that one male plunked me at the front desk and made me the receptionist, although I was there doing the same job (besides recepting) as the two other men in the office…and certainly didn’t get paid more for doing 2 jobs…ah, well…

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[Kayleigh]

NewRes and BDR, if I ever have the pleasure of working with you, I promise I will NOT stab you in the back. :-)

I joined a women’s professional organization in part to develop better female relationships and friendships. (I eventually served on its board). It helped somewhat with trust and I do have some good female friends. But I still hate the feeling of knowing someone has been talking bad about me behind my back–and we all know the feeling.

I read somewhere that female culture tends to value equality, and when a woman puts herself above other women, the other women often try to bring her down. Whereas in guy culture, the guy knows if he’s an alpha or a beta or whatever.

I don’t know what the solution is but I at least try and be supportive of the women I know. What else can we do?

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[JoB]

interesting comments… like all threads you never know where they will go…

in this day and age why do people still buy the mommy-gap argument concerning women’s wages?

after all.. a woman’s wages only count in the averages when she is working.. not when she is home and unpaid…

I would agree that there was a time when a guy went to work for one company and worked his way as close to the top as he could get and eventually retired taking his retirement with him..

But those days are long gone. Everyone changes jobs whether they want to or not.. and a new employee is a new employee.. whether they have been at another company.. laid off for six months… or home with maternity leave…

besides.. it’s often the husband on the moomy track these days… at least it is in several successful households i know:)

***********

for those who didn’t find House’s remarks demeaning.. i have to ask what you think is appropriate about replying to the wage issue with a comment about women and the sex industry? Was there no other industry he could find in which women outperform men financially… certainly he could have chosen a better example than making women sex objects…

and if not.. doesn’t that make the case all by itself?

************

catty women.. catty men… both exist..

except when a man steals your ideas and passes you over for promotion based on your hard work.. it’s considered being competetive… no hard feelings…

when a woman does it.. it’s a knife in the back… penty of hard feelings…

**************

there are a lot of stories told to maintain the status quo…

mommy track…

women just don’t ask for what they want…

women simply choose careers that are lower paying…

etc…

you could go on about them for days and i have seen a lot of books written about them…

it doesn’t make them much more than rationalizations.

can you explain to me why a man should be paid more for loading and unloading a truck than a woman is paid for heavy housework?

Or a gardener more than a nanny?

none of the rationalizations of men’s pay versus women’s pay ever take those questions into account.

*****

i will close with an example women’s inequality today that i have used before.. that of my exceedingly successful daughter…

she has been argued with.. dismissed.. told to get on with things… kept from teaching as part of her PhD… critcized for her clothing choices (this is a Talbot’s woman)… and otherwise made to feel that she isn’t up to snuff because her way of approaching problems is different than her male professors and fellow male students…

yet… she has produced award winning work both in her Masters program and in her PhD program… in spite of being told every step of the way that what she was doing would not work and that she was absessed with trivialities that distracted her from the real work…

her obsession with asking why something doesn’t fit rather than looking for what does has led to novel research and practical solutions…

yet.. even though she has been incredibly successful in both her collegiate and professional career .. her male colleagues tend to look at her as a aberation.. not as the shining example of another approach…

whether people want to look at it or not.. there is a real bias against “women’s work” and “women’s thinking” that really brings out the worst in people…

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[Anonymous]

JoB – I do love the example of your daughter, it is extremely impressive and it’s obvious that you are very proud (as you should be).

Based on that example of your daughter, I do have one question. You say that your daughter takes a different approach to things and obsessively asks the not-so-popular questions, she questions different angles. How do you know that a man who asked the same questions as your daughter and approached things the same way as your daughter wouldn’t find resistance along the way as well?

Have you considered it is the way your daughter’s mind works, rather than her sex, that has caused her struggle? I do think it is wonderful for young people to think outside the box, but this example you gave doesn’t seem to have much to do with sex as it does with the workings of one’s mind, to me anyways.

Regarding House, I think he was trying to be light and funny, not offensive. Women DO make more money in that industry, it’s not offensive, just a fact.

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[LBG]

JoB…obviously a woman’s wages aren’t taken into account when a woman isn’t working, I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.

What you failed to mention is the gap in experience that takes place.

Typically people are hired and promoted on experience. When there is a lengthy gap in experience, it would be more difficult, man or woman, to obtain the same rate of pay as someone that has not deviated from a career path.

There definitely are men that choose to be stay at home dad’s but it’s an overwhelming majority of women that stay at home to raise a family.

Even though people do change jobs on a regular basis these days, one of the first things an employer looks for is experience. Plain and simple. Life choices, maybe not yours or your daughters life choices, do affect work history and experience.

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[beachdrivegirl]

Well said LBG

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[Anonymous]

Sometimes you do have to look at who is doing the complaining. I worked in a restaurant where one terrible employee was always being reprimanded and written up. She was absolutely positive it was because she was gay and the boss was homophobic. The problem with this, there were 6 other gay people who were treated exceptionally.

As a manager myself in a downtown business, I had a employee I had to let go for bad performance. He threatened to sue me because I hate blacks. I looked at him and looked at my staff. 90 percent were black and I hired them and thought they were great employees. He still reported me and created an investigation which went nowhere.

My point is, there is very real discrimination, and there is discrimination in the eye of the beholder. As NR said, how do you know a male wouldn’t have been treated the same way approaching the job the same way.

And as BDG has said, she asked and demanded a certain level of pay and position. One of my jobs where I got paid less was that example. The male after me would not work for what I had been being paid and said so. I had never said anything. Just assumed a good performance would be rewarded.

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[JoB]

LBG…

“typically people are hired and promoted on experience”

all women wish that were true…

if it was, women wouldn’t have spent so much time training the young guys with and without more education.. but certainly without more experience who then became their supervisors…

you should ask even the men of your acquaintance if they have ever been asked to train someone with less experience who got the promotion they had worked so hard for…

it’s not all about experience… in fact.. it’s often not even about what you have done with that experience…

as for life choices…. it is not a life choice to be born female… and therefore have reproductive organs… and bear children.

though i suppose it can be a life choice to choose to physically become a man if you are a woman…

i personally don’t believe that as it is far more hassle than it is worth to try to make that change.. so i think there is more than meets the eye to the transgender issue… but we were speaking of choice…

(i didn’t address the equally transgender choice to become a woman because that one doesn’t currently come with the option of childbearing…)

women don’t choose lesser paying work because they want to keep their options open… they choose to take the work they can get… often as sole support of their families.

it’s not about choice…

new resident…

there are many ways of looking at a problem.

i hate to generalize.. but women have a larger tendency to look at a problem globally.. that is to look at any factors which could possibly influence the outcome… and to work cooperatively to produce their results.

the male dominated “academic” approach is to isolate and look only at one dimension of a problem… and to work competitively.. often not even sharing data with someone working on another aspect of the same problem.

For women who want to assess globally and work collaboratively, the current academic system is exceedingly frustrating…

and a real uphill battle…

i confess… as her mother.. i thought she ought to just play their game and get through it.. it’s what my generation did to succeed.

but she is a stubborn woman and her results speak well for her persistence in approaching her research cooperatively and assessing the problems she encountered globally.

I am very proud of her… it takes an exceptional person to return to academia in their mid thirties and to persist against strong resistance… with no support services… to produce exemplary work…

She has done that and more.

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[JoB]

i have to add this…

the very fact that the bias and discrimination against women in the work force is a matter to be debated in the face of the statistical evidence of disparity..

speaks volumes about the need to press on this issue…

as for House’s remarks..

i doubt anyone would question the sexist nature of remarking on the increased pay opportuniites for women in the sex industry as a joke if it were suggested as a higher paying option for men.. of any color.

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[Kayleigh]

I wouldn’t exactly agree that experience and performance are always what’s rewarded. What I’ve seen most often rewarded is aggressiveness, confidence and self-promotion, which are more typically masculine characteristics. I’ve seen lots of experienced, talented, people be squashed by more aggressive (and usually less talented) people.

I think the American business model rewards competitiveness, aggressiveness, self-promotion, risk-taking, etc (primarily) And for those women whose personality/style/culture/strengths/whatevers are NOT those things, it’s harder. (said as someone who is pretty traditionally feminine.)

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[LBG]

JoB…I’m glad that you think that all woman wish the statement “typically people are hired and promoted on experience” were true because typically it IS true.

I’m sure that there are variances to this statement but, in today’s world, this is simply the case. I am championing the findings, as I stated in my initial post, as a positive thing for women. The fact that women, when apples to apples are compared, make the same if not more than men in most fields would seem to be something that would be welcomed not vilified.

I am not talking about being born a women as a life choice, I am talking about the majority of parents that stay at home to raise a family are, in fact, women. If the roles were reversed between men and women, I would be making the same point in regards to a gap in a person’s career.

In regards to your last paragraph addressed to me… I never said that women take lesser paying jobs to keep their options open. Your right, sometimes women do have to solely support their family, but to say that single mom’s have to take what they can get and then infer that they don’t have a choice in the matter would seem to be the MOST demeaning statement towards women.

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[charlabob]

I’m curious — you don’t have to answer (obviously) but is there a divide here between women, say, under 35 and over 35? Anyone who wants to say, speak up — I’ll start — I’m over 35 :-)

I’m not expressing an opinion — oddly, I’m firmly in both camps, both from my “opinion” and from my “experience”.

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[Anonymous]

Under 35

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[JoB]

charlabob…

over 35.. both myself and my daughter…

though the daughter is not that much over 35… and certainly most of the PhD candidates she is working with are not over 35.

I have granddaughters who are firmly in the under 35 category..

and have mentored women well under 35 for the past 20+ years… so have sort of kept up with what’s happening in the work force for younger women.

LBG..

i don’t think it’s demeaning for any woman to take any job to support her family.. i just wish most women had more higher paying options…

other than say.. the sex industry.

and women end up staying home and taking care of children more often than men because they give birth…

we could add to that… because their working options and thus their earning potential is often limited the minute they give birth due to perceptions of their commitment to their jobs… regardless of the reality of their personal circumstances…

one would hope they give birth by choice… but that’s something that could well change…

we could go into the lifetime earning statistics for women who give birth before the age of 20 and how that “lifestyle choice” affects their earning potential if you would like… i mean.. since we are arguing the obvious here… but i don’t think that would enlighten anyone.

as for people being hired based on experience… let’s go for a totally non-feminist example here…

the experience necessary to become a manager in a software division in hubby’s last job for a manufacturing company was the naval military academey.. and successful naval experience…

you would think his company had something to do with the military or military contracts, wouldn’t you. But no.. they were a company that manufactured medical devices.. mainly for the heart.

the unacknowledged particulars of the “experience” necessary for promotion in this company might be a little more limiting than most… but i can assure you that this is not an uncommon tale…

and before you ask.. that was last year.. so it’s a current example… and no.. it wasn’t just in my husband’s division.

We won’t go into the average age of the senior programmers versus the average age of their managers.. nor into the accumulated experience of most of those programmers versus the lack of accumulated experience in either private business or software of the managers…

I use this example because it was so blatant.. but you can choose to discard it for the same reasons…

that’s not the way things are in most places….

i would counter that i have seen some version of this nearly every place i have worked or that those close to me have worked…

and we are all very successful people who aren’t in any way into the victim mentality…

even if am an older woman:)

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[beachdrivegirl]

Under 35;

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[barmargia]

I’m over 35. I think I might have read somewhere that women in the sex industry AND in the regular modeling industry do make more than men. As for experience, a lot of job ads I’ve seen say “salary based on experience”, so that might indicate that if you have experience then you will probably make more than someone that had no experience.

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[beachdrivegirl]

I do think it has more to do with hormones then actual sexism. I think that some women (including myself)are to immotional in regards to their careers at times and therefore chose to do toher things with less stress. To be successful you need to be competant, aggressive, and agreeable. i think that your sex, race, and age definitly are further back in the spectrum of things nowadays…

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[Anonymous]

JoB – I do not believe that sex is an issue in the workplace UNLESS you are a white male.

As BDG pointed out earlier, race is a bigger issue, but maybe not the way she meant.

It is so much harder for a white male to get a job than it is for any other ethnic group or woman. I know this because I spent the last year sending my white male’s resume ALL over the place. Several interviews ended with him not getting the job offer, but a woman getting it, or a hispanic, asian, etc. He would research it, believe me. They would have similar qualifications and experience.

I have toyed with the idea of getting my pilot’s license and trying to work my way towards getting hired at my present Company as a pilot. I have spoken with several people in my Company regarding this possibility and have been repeatedly told that I would be a shoe (shoo?) in because I am a woman and they want more women pilots (this by a couple different chief pilots).

So, I have to say, I really don’t see any downfalls to being a woman in the workplace in this day and age. As far as I have seen, jobs are practically being handed to us on a platter.

JMHO

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[LBG]

JoB…I will discard it because the core of my argument is sound and you continue to chew at the skin of the apple with lofty tales of disadvantage and what you perceive to be inequality.

Should I tell tales of how this friend or that friend or this woman I know did this and that….Once, in band camp, the leader was specifically looking for someone that could bang on the drums the hardest…I’m sure they were excluding women! Give me a break.

You portray yourself to be standing up for feminist ideals but you seem to contradict yourself with your posts. If something APPEARS to be criteria for a man winning a position, then you label it as sexism instead of having full confidence in the fact that women can accomplish anything they set out to accomplish, including garnering any high-paying job that they would choose to go after.

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[JoB]

LBG..

if the core of your argument were sound..

the percentage of women in top management positions would be much larger…

the percentage of women in middle management would be much larger…

Women would average nearly the same wage as men…

Uneducated women would be paid the same wage for “women’s work” as men for “common labor”.

those examples where women’s wages exceeded men’s wages would not be dependent upon their sexual attraction…

if your core arguments were strong… there would be no need to have this discussion.

But, none of that is true.

The reality is quite different.. and it would only take you a few minutes of research to figure out that for the majority of women… opportunity can be pretty limiting.

To say that i don’t stand up for feminist ideals because i acknowledge that is pretty lame…

If.. as your core argument states.. women will make less because of job interruptions due to childbearing.. then any woman who chooses to have children does not have the same opportunity as any man.

If men and women could choose equally to have children.. then the opportunity would be equal.

And it is even worse to blame women for the discrimination that exists in the workplace…

Aside from the undeniable fact that reproduction is a purely female responsibility…

and the statistics would indicate that the domestic chores are still primarily a female responsibility whether they hold down full time jobs or not…

If women’s priorities on collaborative work were valued in the workplace as much as men’s individual competitive priorities… women would be far more successful

You are telling the wrong mother that she in any way limits the possibilities for her female children and grandchildren…

in case you haven’t noticed.. i am quite proud of what my daughter has accomplished… more so because that accomplishment was made more difficult because of her sex. She is in a highly competitive male dominated field.

She is an incredible role model to both the young women and men in my extended family who literally think they can all accomplish anything…

and who are willing to do what it takes for something they care about.

You also chose to tell the wrong woman that she doesn’t fully value the unique contributions of women to both the workplace and to the functioning of our social networks… or that she doesn’t believe women can accomplish great things.

Just because my health has precluded the kind of career you would find noteworthy… don’t make the mistake of thinking i am not a woman of considerable accomplishment…

Or that the young women i have had the privilege of mentoring over the years are not accomplished.

They knew when they started that they would have to work harder than a man to overcome misconceptions about their ability to perform and have done so. In many cases, on their own terms…

Equal opportunity would have meant they did not have to work harder or play the game by rules that didn’t match their priorities to get ahead…

Equal opportunity would have meant equal opportunity for advancement and equal pay…

and if that were the norm there would be no more discrimination lawsuits…

If equal pay and equal opportunity for women were the norm, we wouldn’t have working women lamenting their “emotionalism” or “lack of incentive in demanding recognition” on this thread…

in effect.. blaming themselves for the discrimination they face.

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[LKimball]

Let’s just agee to disagree…I think you both have very valid points.

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[socrates]

JoB,

Please stop abusing the “…”

It does serve a valid purpose in the english language when used sensibly and sparingly. ;)

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[Author]

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