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Randomly, I’ve been reading much more about feminism and women’s issues lately than I normally do, and while my thoughts are fresh in my mind, I thought I’d do well to put them on paper.
I recently read the following CNN article: http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/08/opinion/york-equal-housework/ - and to me this sums up a lot of problems I have with the present-day feminist movement. The crux of the article is this: according to a study, on average, women spend about 2 hours more time each day on personal care, household chores, buying stuff, caregiving, etc. Meantime, men spend an additional 1 hour 16 minutes every day working, 40 minutes every day on sports/leisure, and four minutes on eating and drinking (you’ll note: she not-so-subtly puts the 1h 16m of work at the end of her list, which is apparently organized in order from most galling to least). She’s careful not so say it outright (as couching it in statements like “our choices for how we use our time need to be evaluated to ensure we are being equitable” allows her to leave her accusations unsaid), but she comes very close at the end of the article, saying “those 1.17 more hours per day that women spend on household and caregiving activities-” (note how earlier it was 2 hours split between a larger number of activities, down to just 1 hour, 10 minutes now) “-translates to 18 days per year. So we could set January 18 as Equal Housework Day to show that it takes men over 12.5 months to do what women do in 12 months”.
Here’s the thing – I have no doubt that there is still more household work being done by women and more outside-the-house work being done by men. That expectation isn’t fair to men who want to stay home or women who want to get a job. But what we should be paying attention to isn’t that “more” is being done by men here, more done by women here – it should be the magnitude of the “more” that we pay attention to. When basically every woman is being told that they must stay home, raise children and do housework (as was the case not even 100 years ago), that’s a big problem. When basically every woman must miss the episode of “Malcolm in the Middle” that a man can sit and watch, because societally he’s less on the hook for housework? Yeah – it’s still “unequitable”, but really, don’t we have bigger issues to worry about?
Like unfair pay, for instance – I have heard numerous sources cite that women make 77 cents on the dollar for the same work that a man does. Except… that the real number when you account for equal education/area of expertise is 93 cents on the dollar (SRC: http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/07/the-pay-gap-is-not-as-bad-as-you-and-sheryl-sandberg-think/ ). And I want to point out that this is just 50 years after it was actually legal to pay women less, just because they’re women, and tell them so – back when women were making 58.9 cents to a man’s dollar (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0193820.html), not 77 cents (58.9 isn’t the right statistic, but I’m not sure the one for 50 years ago exists).
What do I mean by making these women’s issues out to be relatively minor? I don’t mean to overlook social ills, or say that 93% of pay is “close enough”, but there is another gender, too. And what are men’s issues looking like? Well, for one, men have, in the last 50 years, gone from outnumbering women in college 1.6:1 (around the time of women earning half what a man makes) to being outnumbered 1.4:1 (http://www.nber.org/digest/jan07/w12139.html ). Then, there’s the fact that 80%+ women get custody of children in a divorce (http://www.divorcenet.com/resources/divorce/for-men/divorce-for-men-why-women-get-child-custody-over-80-time ). About 9 times as many men are committing crimes, compared to women (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime ) –and for black men, there are more in prison than there are in college.
The fact of the matter is that we’ve had a period where we felt like we were accomplishing something by bringing women from a place where they’re basically only good for childbearing, sex and beatings, and bringing them to nearly equal standing with men in a lot of places. That feels good and we want to keep fighting that fight (because it’s a fight we know). But while women’s identities has been radically altered, we still haven't altered our views on male identity. To some extent, the blame there can lie at the feet of men’s choices – but if it’s a societal problem, it should be one we treat as a society (instead of blaming individuals). And even if you don’t think we should be working on men’s issues, how about we work on racial equality or religious equality (let’s just say American Muslims are probably owed some apologies for the last 20 years, for instance).
But, let’s face it – though individual men and women are still victims of gender stereotypes and hate crimes, women aren’t the beleaguered and helpless social group they once were. They have a right to vote, representation in congress, a strong bid for the white house, close-to-fair pay, and a close-to-fair distribution of roles in the home. Isn’t that enough? Can’t we turn most of our attention as a society elsewhere now? Or if we're going to make social commentary in the lens of feminism, can't we at least make certain our commentary overshadows more pressing matters at hand? It's just plain disrespectful to oppressed groups everywhere when we spend our time complaining about which gender gets to have more chips with their nachos - which I'm sure women overseas who still refer to rape as "Monday" will completely understand and identify as a major women's issue. Perhaps January 18th should be National Bitch-About-Almost-Nothing Day. I could use a day to complain about SC2 race balance, anyway (zing!).
 
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Gender equality unbalanced! Men imba!
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Sweden5554 Posts
On April 10 2013 00:11 Treehead wrote:
And I want to point out that this is just 50 years after it was actually legal to pay women less, just because they’re women
So... if something has been illegal for 50 years, it's okay that we still do it today?
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Does anyone know why we still pay women less these days? It doesn't really make sense to me. Feminists have been complaining about it for many years know but nothing seems to have happened.
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I guess this comes with the fact that you just can't please a woman. 
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On April 10 2013 00:34 Pjorren wrote:
Does anyone know why we still pay women less these days? It doesn't really make sense to me. Feminists have been complaining about it for many years know but nothing seems to have happened.
I don't see any rational reason not to pay them equally. yet on the other hand there are still jobs that are mainly women's job like nurses, or hygienists etc. and they also have lower salaries compared to similar job (in term of education, degree, etc.) that are mostly male job.
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Honestly, why do women have to compare themselves to men? It's not even an apples to apples comparison. The simple fact is that men and women are different. Ex. Men typically swim faster than women due to body shape. This even extends to races. Ex. Black people run faster than other races due to their bone structure. I'm not being racist or anything, but certain races have their advantages and disadvantages. As for the the feminism argument, I can understand the saying that "women can do anything that men can do", which society has also accepted. Almost all jobs are available to women. But, isn't that enough? If females keep beating at this topic till the point where female salaries are equal or EVEN higher than men's salaries. Then a whole "masculinism" debate will come up where men want equality against women. It'll become a cycle of pointless argument. There's a point where one should accept one's successes and not push it. Let's not be little kids where we push our limits till our parents punish us. We don't have "parents" to punish us in real life.
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On April 10 2013 01:10 Desires wrote:
Black people run faster than other races due to their bone structure.
I'm wondering if you could point me in the direction of some resources on this finding. It seems to be a pretty serious claim. Not denying you, since I've never touched that subject, but I'm interested to see some of the actual research too. Google didn't work :/
You drew an interesting comparison between comparing sexes to comparing races. On that topic I would say that women and men are much more distinct than individuals from the same sex but different race.
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On April 10 2013 01:20 FallDownMarigold wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2013 01:10 Desires wrote:
Black people run faster than other races due to their bone structure. I'm wondering if you could point me in the direction of some resources on this finding. It seems to be a pretty serious claim. Not denying you, since I've never touched that subject, but I'm interested to see some of the actual research too. Google didn't work :/ You drew an interesting comparison between comparing sexes to comparing races. On that topic I would say that women and men are much more distinct than individuals from the same sex but different race.
Olympic results?
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Not to stir anything up, but I'd probably pay somebody less if I was required by law to give them a year of vacation out of the blue (because they get pregnant). You are simply less valuable if you can just up and leave for a year and I'm compelled by law to not hold it against you.
Maternity leave laws vary from country to country though.
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On April 10 2013 01:26 Desires wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2013 01:20 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 10 2013 01:10 Desires wrote:
Black people run faster than other races due to their bone structure. I'm wondering if you could point me in the direction of some resources on this finding. It seems to be a pretty serious claim. Not denying you, since I've never touched that subject, but I'm interested to see some of the actual research too. Google didn't work :/ You drew an interesting comparison between comparing sexes to comparing races. On that topic I would say that women and men are much more distinct than individuals from the same sex but different race. Olympic results?
That's not scientific proof though.
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Just curious, did you take time spent working into account when normalizing the wage gap? $.77/$1 doesn't account for that.
On April 10 2013 01:20 FallDownMarigold wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2013 01:10 Desires wrote:
Black people run faster than other races due to their bone structure. I'm wondering if you could point me in the direction of some resources on this finding. It seems to be a pretty serious claim. Not denying you, since I've never touched that subject, but I'm interested to see some of the actual research too. Google didn't work :/ You drew an interesting comparison between comparing sexes to comparing races. On that topic I would say that women and men are much more distinct than individuals from the same sex but different race.
Those of African ancestry have denser bones on average, which predisposes them to be better at many sports (but not swimming, in which their bone density reduces buoyancy). That's also why they are less likely to suffer from osteoporosis in old age. Not a controversial claim at all.
You wanted a source, here's one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9024231
Bone density at sampled sites was 4.5-16.1% higher (after normalizing for confounding variables) for black males than for white males, and 1.2-7.3% higher for black females than white females.
This may not sound like a huge difference, but small increases in bone mineral density (like 5-10%) can improve bone strength by over 60% and make far less vulnerable to stress fractures.
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On April 10 2013 01:10 Desires wrote:
Honestly, why do women have to compare themselves to men? It's not even an apples to apples comparison. The simple fact is that men and women are different. Ex. Men typically swim faster than women due to body shape. This even extends to races. Ex. Black people run faster than other races due to their bone structure. I'm not being racist or anything, but certain races have their advantages and disadvantages. As for the the feminism argument, I can understand the saying that "women can do anything that men can do", which society has also accepted. Almost all jobs are available to women. But, isn't that enough? If females keep beating at this topic till the point where female salaries are equal or EVEN higher than men's salaries. Then a whole "masculinism" debate will come up where men want equality against women. It'll become a cycle of pointless argument. There's a point where one should accept one's successes and not push it. Let's not be little kids where we push our limits till our parents punish us. We don't have "parents" to punish us in real life.
Wow.. Just wow.
"women can do anything that men can do", which society has also accepted. Almost all jobs are available to women. But, isn't that enough? If females keep beating at this topic till the point where female salaries are equal"
Why on earth shouldn't the salary be equal if you acknowledge that it's the same job?
What does running/swimming have to do with anything? How do advantages in those fields apply to functionality within society?
Your entire post is like a snapshot of the 50's copy pasted and used as flame bait in equality debates.
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On April 10 2013 01:44 Demonhunter04 wrote:
Just curious, did you take time spent working into account when normalizing the wage gap? $.77/$1 doesn't account for that.
I didn't. I don't have the empirical data - just the results as reported by the statisticians.
On April 10 2013 00:29 salle wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2013 00:11 Treehead wrote:
And I want to point out that this is just 50 years after it was actually legal to pay women less, just because they’re women So... if something has been illegal for 50 years, it's okay that we still do it today?
This isn't what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that in 50 years, we've gone from (best estimate for the time) 56% of pay to women to (best estimate for today) 93% of pay to women. I'm saying that's better - so we don't need the warhorns today that we did 50 years ago.
Simple "more" and "less" statements are easy to make and easy to understand - but they don't really reflect the reality of the topic at hand. If I were to state that in my profession, women make 100.5% of a man's wages - therefore I'm underpriveleged, you'd laugh at me, I'd hope. This isn't all that different.
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Almost all comments about unfair pay could have been answered before posting by reading http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/07/the-pay-gap-is-not-as-bad-as-you-and-sheryl-sandberg-think/
On April 10 2013 01:10 Desires wrote:
Honestly, why do women have to compare themselves to men? It's not even an apples to apples comparison. The simple fact is that men and women are different. Ex. Men typically swim faster than women due to body shape.
This is why men and women don't compare themselves based on swimming speed (see: Olympic competitions). They compare themselves based on quality-of-life statistics, which should be (and very nearly are) similar.
My viewpoint is that if Elizabeth Cady Stanton could get a job, could be well-educated (in present day better so than her male counterparts), had social power over her husband, had the ability to vote, and had female representatives to vote for - she probably need not have done any of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cady_Stanton
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I'll tell you what. This stat is right and that stat is wrong and your sexist.
Did you really think "here they’re basically only good for childbearing, sex and beatings," was some sort of clever funny?
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United States22883 Posts
On April 10 2013 01:44 Demonhunter04 wrote:Just curious, did you take time spent working into account when normalizing the wage gap? $.77/$1 doesn't account for that. Show nested quote +On April 10 2013 01:20 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 10 2013 01:10 Desires wrote:
Black people run faster than other races due to their bone structure. I'm wondering if you could point me in the direction of some resources on this finding. It seems to be a pretty serious claim. Not denying you, since I've never touched that subject, but I'm interested to see some of the actual research too. Google didn't work :/ You drew an interesting comparison between comparing sexes to comparing races. On that topic I would say that women and men are much more distinct than individuals from the same sex but different race. Those of African ancestry have denser bones on average, which predisposes them to be better at many sports (but not swimming, in which their bone density reduces buoyancy). That's also why they are less likely to suffer from osteoporosis in old age. Not a controversial claim at all. You wanted a source, here's one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9024231Bone density at sampled sites was 4.5-16.1% higher (after normalizing for confounding variables) for black males than for white males, and 1.2-7.3% higher for black females than white females. This may not sound like a huge difference, but small increases in bone mineral density (like 5-10%) can improve bone strength by over 60% and make far less vulnerable to stress fractures.
Look at how they "measure" race. Part of the problem with this, and most studies dealing with race in general, is that race isn't a real thing. It's a classification based on skin color, but skin color doesn't really tell you that much about a person's genetic makeup. The easiest example is in cats, where a calico male is an anomaly because those coat colors are attached to the X chromosome, so no one considers calico cats a separate breed, although by our definition they would be a race. That's what we have today. Especially in America, genetic makeup is so jumbled up that making classifications on skin color alone is problematic.
Second, you haven't linked it to athletic performance nor shown the ranges. Athletes aren't given their bodies, they're shaped (including things like bone density and musculature) based on the activities they do and the setting they're in. The Olympic sports with the highest bone density requirements (gymnastics and weightlifting) don't show any "black dominance." Similarly, marathon runners often have lower bone density yet there the Africans dominate.
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United States22883 Posts
The article is accurate, but it's only getting halfway there. Because of that, I think you're missing the issue
Which brings us to the bringing-it-on-ourselves part. Your occupation greatly dictates income, and women disproportionately enter low-paying fields such as teaching, nursing and social work. One could argue that those fields are low-paying because they’ve traditionally been occupied by women who were denied other career paths and were therefore devalued by society and in economic terms, but regardless, if we truly wanted to narrow the pay gap, women need to enter more lucrative fields.
To be able to do that, women must choose to study subjects that lead to more lucrative occupations — information technology or economics over art history, for example. But they are not. Amazingly, the percentage of undergraduate computing and information-science degrees earned by women has actually dropped from 37% in 1985 to 18% in 2009, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. No wonder the Labor Department also reports that from 2002 to 2012, the percentage of female programmers dropped from 25.6% to 20%. The issue is that there's a cultural reason why women are directed more towards low paying fields like teaching (and perhaps we value teaching less because of that, but that's a different debate) and men are directed towards higher paying fields like engineering. Then when either group tries to cross over (men in teaching, women in engineering) they're met with a fairly hostile attitude that discourages them from continuing. For women, it might be office sexism/harassment. For men, it might be accusations of pedophilia (which is a horrible stigma male elementary school teachers face)
That's the stuff we need to look at. The wages are skewed because women are in low paying fields and older women were denied opportunities. As the older women retire, the wage gap lessens but the areas of study thing remains an issue.
That doesn't mean you get to declare gender equality "not a big deal anymore."
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The fascinating thing about feminism to me is that the equal opportunity the movement was based around has been somewhat marginalized, at least in the selected statistics.
I mean, in order to truly equalize the absolute wage gap (the 77 cent one) you'd actual have to do some incredibly awkward social engineering and institute quota programs for men and women in various disciplines. Until you have a male nurse for every female nurse and a female plastic surgeon for every male one, you won't close this absolute gender gap.
The more persuasive statistics, to me, would be whether women that *want* to be surgeons are able to become surgeons. Whether women that *want* to become engineers are able to become engineers. To say that it's "wrong" for there to be more female than male nurses implies that we should somehow forcibly change the minds of the women that would like to be nurses, which seems incredibly degrading to me.
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On April 10 2013 02:19 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2013 01:44 Demonhunter04 wrote:Just curious, did you take time spent working into account when normalizing the wage gap? $.77/$1 doesn't account for that. On April 10 2013 01:20 FallDownMarigold wrote:On April 10 2013 01:10 Desires wrote:
Black people run faster than other races due to their bone structure. I'm wondering if you could point me in the direction of some resources on this finding. It seems to be a pretty serious claim. Not denying you, since I've never touched that subject, but I'm interested to see some of the actual research too. Google didn't work :/ You drew an interesting comparison between comparing sexes to comparing races. On that topic I would say that women and men are much more distinct than individuals from the same sex but different race. Those of African ancestry have denser bones on average, which predisposes them to be better at many sports (but not swimming, in which their bone density reduces buoyancy). That's also why they are less likely to suffer from osteoporosis in old age. Not a controversial claim at all. You wanted a source, here's one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9024231Bone density at sampled sites was 4.5-16.1% higher (after normalizing for confounding variables) for black males than for white males, and 1.2-7.3% higher for black females than white females. This may not sound like a huge difference, but small increases in bone mineral density (like 5-10%) can improve bone strength by over 60% and make far less vulnerable to stress fractures. Look at how they "measure" race. Part of the problem with this, and most studies dealing with race in general, is that race isn't a real thing. It's a classification based on skin color, but skin color doesn't really tell you that much about a person's genetic makeup. The easiest example is in cats, where a calico male is an anomaly because those coat colors are attached to the X chromosome, so no one considers calico cats a separate breed, although by our definition they would be a race. That's what we have today. Especially in America, genetic makeup is so jumbled up that making classifications on skin color alone is problematic. Second, you haven't linked it to athletic performance nor shown the ranges. Athletes aren't given their bodies, they're shaped (including things like bone density and musculature) based on the activities they do and the setting they're in. The Olympic sports with the highest bone density requirements (gymnastics and weightlifting) don't show any black dominance. Similarly, marathon runners often have lower bone density yet there the Africans dominate.
How do you know how they measured race? They didn't say they used skin color. This is just one study finding that black people have denser bones on average. As for Olympic sports, if what you say is true, then I was wrong. Perhaps maximum mineralization is no different, I don't know. And yes, I know that the body is shaped by what you do.
Calico cats are usually female...the males are XXY, which is not considered a separate race in humans. Neither is albinism or any other condition causing such a change in skin color. I understand your point, but poor example. Homogeneity in racial background cannot be expected, but it can be expected that a person will be mostly of one background or another. At least for now. But by then there will be more reliable ways of determining someone's racial background than what we have at present.
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EPT
