when celebrities speak..

[JoB]

JD

can you explain to me the relevance of the percentage of women in the work force to the wage gender gap.. to their individual incomes?

and are you aware of the economic reasons why workers in minimum wage or below jobs work an average of 35.8 hours a week?

just a hint.. you might ask yourself why an employer would choose to employ a “full time” worker for less than 40 hours a week..

and how that could impact the number of hours worked by those at the bottom of the pay scale?

You are making my case.. not your own.

Share This

[Jd seattle]

JanS – If the numbers not important you should call up the media and the White House and tell them to stop parroting that number day in and day out.

I never said men work harder, first time that came out was from your mouth. As to men working longer, the government said it, not me. I’m just the delivery boy.

I’m trying to find common ground on what inequality is. Not how much is happening.

Share This

[Jd seattle]

JoB – tsk tsk, your twisting facts here again. It’s 35.8 hours for ALL working women, not minimum wage and below. That figure was from 2012 so no, it had zero to do with the ACA.

“can you explain to me the relevance of the percentage of women in the work force to the wage gender gap.. to their individual incomes?”

Yes I can. If you have more men working in the U.S., math should tell us their combined total will be more than women. .77 is a total of all men and women compared against each other, so individual wage doesn’t come into play here.

Example:

You have 10 men working 40.8 hours per week. That’s a total of 408 hours worked

Now you have 8 women working 35.8 hours per week. That’s a total of 358 hours worked.

408>358

One can conclude the men will make more money as a group. That explained away a good chunk of that .77 number. So we go into more detail, what career are they in. 6 men are doctors 4 are nurse. 3 of the women are doctors while the othe 5 are nurses.

Again, we can conclude the men will make more combined because more of them are doctors as opposed to nurses.

Now we can look at the men and women doctors/nurses individual wages agains each others. The male doctor is making 5% more than the female doctor. THAT IS THE REAL INEQUALITY.

Share This

[JoB]

Smitty..

did you just say that breathing while female is a lifestyle choice? because that’s how it read.

Lol.. i don’t know how to explain this to you but i had no more choice about whether to be born female than you had about whether to be born male..

And i definitely didn’t come into a world into which women enjoyed anything even vaguely resembling equality.

I didn’t stop being the “ward” of my closest male relative until some time in the 70s…

requiring the written permission of the man i was divorcing to get a job after he left to go live with his girlfriend and declined to continue supporting his children.

Those kinds of employment practices had an adverse economic impact on the women of my generation’s lifetime earnings and were definitely not a matter of personal choice..

Abortion was not legalized in this nation until 1973 … a factor which had a definite impact on the lifetime earnings of the women over 65.

If you can’t control reproduction it is pretty difficult to sustain constant full time employment.

I wish i could say that the ability of women to control their own pregnancy is now a thing of the past.. an economic factor impacting only current retirees.. but that’s not true.

We are currently fighting in state courts not only for the right to end our pregnancies but to have access to economical birth control and to make our own lifestyle and medical choices during pregnancy.

being female is not a lifestyle choice but i definitely can limit your employment options.

We could move on to speak about the lack of options for advancement for women in just about every industry that curtailed those lifetime earnings…

or the sexual harassment that impacted those earnings…

or the attacks on the availability of reliable child care..

Those factors and dozens of others i could relate definitely impact women’s lifetime earnings.

Smitty, I graduated from high school and began my adult life in 1969 …

and turned 65 this year.. joining the ranks of women whose lifetime earnings you say were impacted by their “lifestyle” choice.

i have had a front row seat on the factors that created the current gender disparity in the incomes of those over 65.

and just between you and me..

i had a whole lot more economic opportunity than most of the women who are currently retired.

lifestyle choices my …..

Share This

[JoB]

JD…

LOL.. I thought you understood statistics

the number of women working full time 40+ hour jobs are what keeps the average above the 30 hour window for denying benefits to low wage workers…

and the percentage of women in the work force as contrasted with the number of men in the work force is not enough to explain the disparity in income…

unless of course a whole of those men make a whole lot more than the best paid women…

do the math.

Share This

[Jd seattle]

JoB – you can keep deflecting facts with LOLs and drifting into helthcare bennifits all you like. I’ve allready done the math and laid it out right in front of you. Are you going to do some math to disprove it or come back with another diversion?

Share This

[Smitty]

“y’all are still making this about numbers”

Nope.

The White House and all their friends in the media are though (and Oscar winners too!).

“did you just say that breathing while female is a lifestyle choice? because that’s how it read.”

No.

Share This

[JoB]

JD..

“The male doctor is making 5% more than the female doctor. THAT IS THE REAL INEQUALITY.”

tell that to the retired women subsisting on 16 thousand a year.

Share This

[JoB]

JD

not only do women make less than men as physicians.. there are significantly fewer of them making that wage…

Professionally Active Physicians by Gender

and the number is only that high because the number of women who have recently completed residencies is roughly equal to that of men.

https://www.aamc.org/download/313228/data/2012physicianspecialtydatabook.pdf

there’s the real inequality

you know. .the one you ignore

Share This

[Jd seattle]

That answers my question, more diversion.

Share This

[JanS]

diversion from what?

you say that JoB is drifting from facts…I say you have drifted from the original topic, and you won’t quit until you hear “Yes, Jd, you’re right” from everyone.

Some questions:

> Do you think there is income inequality between men and women?

> Do you think there is inequality for women when it comes to healthcare and it’s costs?

> If not, why?

>If so, should it be rectified, and if yes, how?

Share This

[JanS]

but, you know, smitty (and perhaps Jd, too), I finally did understand a little about your argument, after your post #107. This isn’t about women’s equality for you…it’s about proving Obama and the White House wrong.

and, please, please…don’t forget Benghazi ..

Share This

[Jd seattle]

JanS – drifting from the original topic? Is this somehow new to the WSB? What was it, post #5 that the .77 figure came into the discussion? What are we on now, 111? I think we’ve established what we are currently talking about. Proving Obama and the White House wrong? Well ya, not because it’s Obama himself though. I could care less who is in the White House. I think it’s discusting when our POTUS knowingly uses deceptive statistics such as the RAW wage gap to decive people into thinking it is entirely a product of discrimination. If it was a GOP president making similar claims I would be doing the same thing because the GOP is not my party. Just because someone disagrees with our president doesn’t mean they are doing it because it’s Obama. Maybe some, but not me.

I see that me being critical of the .77 number has portrayed me as a wage discrimination denier. Probably my fault for pursuing this so much. I assure you that is not the case. While I may not be a women I am surrounded by many that I love very deeply. My wife, my daughter, my sisters, my mother. Do I want to see them discriminated against? Absolutely not. But it is possible to be critical of something you support. I just don’t like being misled when the facts present the case quite well by themselves.

I’ll stop with .77 thing, if I haven’t got my point across yet I know I won’t be able to. I will be happy to discuss ways to combat the discrimination we do agree on though. Unfortunately as I stated earlier, I don’t have any great ideas of my own at the moment.

Share This

[JoB]

JD

if you take a good look you will find i am the OP on this topic..

and i haven’t drifted at all from my point

i do want to thank you for proving absolutely the need for celebrities to make statements about gender inequality.

which was my point

the only one fixated on 77 is you..

ok maybe smitty too …

but the point is that 77 is NOT the point.

Share This

[Jd seattle]

For how hard .77 was being defended I wouldn’t have guessed that. But thank goodness for the enlightend celebrities showing us common folk how the world really is.

Share This

[JTB]

The issue is: How do you refer to wage inequality in a short comment to simply highlight the problem? The very broad, aggregated number of .77 is based on comparing the median value for men and women working full-time. So from the get-go, we know even that number doesn’t represent the conditions of the total workforce.

But in order to provide a more sensitive number, you have to go through a process of qualifying and narrowing categories. That might be useful if your audience is a particular category of worker. But I don’t think a general audience is going to take it in for long if the speaker tries to explain statistical methodology, profile of various workers, etc., etc.

I don’t know of any politician today who attempts to discuss macro issues by delving into the underlying details that inform them.

Perhaps Jd or Smitty can present a short phrase, a sound-bite they feel is intellectually satisfactory and would work in the time frame Patricia Arquette had. I don’t recall the last time I heard a President provide an analytical discussion on a broad topic. Of course there are several reasons for that, but I suspect the main one is they know the public has no interest in that sort of thing—-it is conditioned to need simple, even memetic sound bites for retaining most anything.

Share This

[wakeflood]

And therein lies the rub. Complex issues that defy really reductive solutions and cause shutdown in our ADHD-prone society.

We owe a large part of our ungovernability to ourselves. We’ve allowed ourselves to be jerked around by sloganism.

Share This

[JoB]

jd..

here is a site full of all kinds of numbers..

http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/cps/highlights-of-womens-earnings-in-2013.pdf

you can start with the first graph which compares average earning for full time and salaried wage earners in the US in 2013..

women’s average wages were 82% of men’s average wages.

that’s about as apples to apples as it gets..

but hey.. let’s go further

let’s look at median weekly earnings for men and women in management, business and financial operations

women 1049/wk men 1412/wk 74%

computer and info systems managers

women 1549/wk men 1898/wk 81%

chief executives

women 1811/wk men 2266/wk 80%

female chief executives averaged a lower wage per week than male computer and info systems managers

I could dig through that report and many others and the data would all show exactly the same thing….

there is a huge measurable difference in women’s and men’s income in the United States, regardless of the type of work that is compared.

the only area in which there is relative equity is in starting wages for college grads .. and even there you will find that male candidates are given preference and higher starting wages…

in 2011 the US Congress Joint Economic Committee concluded that even when unexplained inequities decreased.. the gender pay gap remained relatively stable…

You can quibble all you would like about the number used by President Obama and the Press.. 77%

which by the way is the difference between the median wage of full time workers…

but the truth is that when you throw out all those women you say are choosing to work in lesser paid jobs out of the equation… when you put management positions head to head …

the pay disparity doesn’t rise even to the national average for all full time workers.

I don’t care how many rationalizations you throw at this it still ends up in the same place…

the majority of single parent households existing in poverty in the United States are headed by working women.

the median income for single women over 65 in the United States is 60% of that of their male counterparts and that’s with data that underreported male income by $2000 yr

You want data.. that’s data

You can quibble about how you are going to analyze that data and cherry pick only the stats that you think will make your point…

your point being ” the fact that on average women choose lower paying careers. They also are more likely to take up a more family supportive role after becoming parents. Nor does it account for career, experience, job title, etc. Men also on average work more hours than women.”

which was followed by some ridiculous number (8% ?) that adjusted data to account for those assumptions…

but the data speak for themselves.

two generations of working women past when all things supposedly became equal..

i am not going to look for the source but one report stated that if the progress in eliminating the gender wage gap continued at the current pace.. it would be another century before we achieved pay equity.

If it takes celebrities speaking out to hasten that progress.. i am all for it.

Share This

[Smitty]

“there is a huge measurable difference in women’s and men’s income in the United States, regardless of the type of work that is compared.”

That is 100% true.

What your link/study does not take into account is time on the job/experience. A HUGE factor in the average persons salary. So, it is not apples to apples until adjusted for those.

The salary measurement needs to compare the average woman at a fortune 500 company against the average man at a fortune 500 company – who have the same (or close) amount of experience.

You could be comparing a 30 year old CEO with a 55 year old, and the fact that more women are graduating college more recently means this group has not reached the experience level yet (as a group – there are obviously exceptions).

Not sure how to put it any simpler.

Share This

[JTB]

Smitty, a simpler, more comprehensive way of putting it would be to compare

the median wage for women working full time to the median wage for men working full time.

Comparing an experienced-based salary value for female CEO’s to one for male CEO’s would be immediately dismissed as irrelevant in the eyes of most working Americans, I think.

Share This

[Jd seattle]

JTB – it’s not even the .77 number used by itself, it is the way it is strung together with other key phrases.

“Today women make up about half of our workforce, yet they only make .77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong. And in 2014, it’s an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work.” ** Obama’s 2014 state of the union speech**

Stringing those words together in that fashion is purposely misleading. As if to say discrimination is solely responsible for this. Let’s say we made a law and were able to enforce 100%. Every women is paid exactly the same as their male counterparts with similar qualifications. Are we to expect no more wage gap? Because that’s what one would expect from that speech.

Share This

[Jd seattle]

JoB – statistics are only as good as the data used to make them. When important factors are left out they become less useful.

The article below explains it quite nicely. While I have no idea about the acuracy of payscale.com, you used them as a source and defended their figures in the Longshorman thread. So I assume you view them as reliable.

http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2013/04/fallacy-of-the-gender-wage-gap

Share This

[singularname]

I can barely parse this thread with so much going on (my failing, not a complaint toward y’all), and I can’t read page 3 at the moment ’cause of a tech glitch, but … Stats. One of my main co-departments was Usability/UX–comprised entirely of Ph.D.s in statistics or psychology or both. Stats are not an exact science (‘cept maybe in baseball?) .77, .68, .98, whatever … I think I’m correct that all in this thread have agreed there is a wage gap between genders in one post or another? And that even those who have listed out the parameters responsible for such gap have still given nod to at least “a little bit of a gap”? And then there’s a jump to what do “we” do about it?

What are YOU doing about it? If a manager, business owner, or work peer with a modicum of influence, do you bring it up in group or private meetings when the topic is on the table or an appropriate time to bring it up, or do you just cover your own a$$? Do you make ANY effort to find some woman-run businesses whose services and/or products you can in true confidence get behind? (Figured out some years ago for my twice-a-year-pedicure to go to a woman-owned and -operated salon. Irks me to no end to see 10 women doing ‘cures and the only dude taking the money.) Ever decide to give a female plumber a shot at your sewer problem, or does that subconsciously wreck your last nerve? Ever frequent a customer service desk where you’ve never seen a “woman in charge” and mention that to the male on staff there? (It IS your business if they want your business. Frankly, I’ve never seen a woman *authority* at the Met Market desk. Think I’ll ask next time I’m there–might be some reasoning, but I’ll ask and see if they can explain that. I’ve detected an interesting bias behind the Safeway desk, even with some female managers in authority positions.) etc. etc. Just put some touches on the immediate world around you to get some traction going.

As to somewhere about “I have a wife, daughters, etc.” So did my dad–most loving, supportive, and sexist man you’d ever have the pleasure to meet outside of a religious compound. There’s “a thing” now–“daddy feminism”–that I noticed before I found the term for it. It’s breathing down my neck–all these men I worked with in their 20s and 30s for a decade or so (in the video games industry–I’ve got stories) who now have daughters and suddenly think they’re the savior for the female sex. Basically, they’re just turning the matte white box walls into translucent ones–they don’t think to get rid of the damn box.

I’m at an age where I look back and see I’ve fought a good and fair and communicative “fight” on behalf of myself and other women. It didn’t get me or anyone else too far. Sexism against women is RAMPANT in this world. I’m now officially radical, with no apologies if I’m a hypocrite at times. If that bothers anyone, keep your wives, mothers, and daughters away from me–if you can.

Share This

[Jd seattle]

Singularname- I am involved in the hiring process at my company and I work in an industry that I believe is in the bottom percentile for women workers. Out of the roughly 400 or so applications that have come across my desk not a single one has been a women. I would gladly welcome it though.

Share This

[singularname]

@JD … Okay, mister. Then I guess you’re on the hook to go get some pedicures this spring/summer at a woman-owned nail salon!

Share This

[Author]

Posts