Posted on 10/14/2004 9:34:14 AM PDT by No Surrender Monkey
You will enjoy my decimation of her irrelevant and often contradictory 'support documents,' I think.
No, it's liberal because it's not by a source that's unbiased. And I didn't say anything about it being liberal because it's not Libertarian, contrary to your feeble attempt to distract with a straw man. In fact, you quote a fascinating non-Libertarian NRO article that does much to demonstrate that you are naught but a pontificating leftist idiot who can't read even your own posts. I love conservative support, support which you will not find for your claim because it does not exist. But you'll get to that in a minute.
In the meantime, stop posting illogical tripe, and insulting people, and answer the questions I posted.
"Stop ordering me around. Every day I pity your wife."
I suppose you haven't noticed that when you continue to use the same lame retort, I am forced to repeat myself as well.
Here goes:
Oh, no, I wouldn't want you to obey me. That might start a trend where you actually listen to what people have to say, and that could overload both your heavily burdened brain cells. I have no need to order anyone around, and in fact, my politics and personal opinions are all about nobody ordering anybody around. But that would be obvious if you read what other people post occasionally.
No, when I tell you to "stop insulting people and answer my questions," I'm suggesting you follow the rules of logic and debate, wherein you attempt to actually civilly answer questions posed to you and respond to arguments posed by others. To repeat, I am suggesting. I can't order you to do anything. You have freedom of speech and volition, and I just post things here. I have no other power over you than persuasion.
I have nonetheless recognized that attempting to persuade you is exactly the same as trying to convince a liberal to accept responsibility. I don't expect to persuade you to be an adult and accept logical discourse as a standard to post by, but I try, because not trying, not struggling to improve this world, is akin to expecting the world to provide me with its riches. Sort of the opposite of you, expecting the world to provide for you because you're the "victim" of a "male-dominated society." I don't expect you to accept logic as your guide here, because based on your past record on this thread, you would continue to eschew logical discourse even if a big logic monster with logic-laden eyes and logic-laden breath and logic-laden fangs dripping with logic-laden blood bit you on the ass. Notwithstanding my pessimism, I continue addressing you to utilize you as a useful example to others of illogic and its folly. So even though I doubt you may one day learn to argue like a grownup, you still serve a purpose for others.
Again, your irrelevant comments are intended to obscure the issue here, which is your original claim that women are paid less than similarly qualified men for the same work, a claim for which you have refused to provide any evidence, beyond a single anecdote you will not properly qualify.
Stop posting illogical tripe, and insulting people, and answer the questions I posted.
Sorry, that you're surprised that I would discount crap from the NY Times, based on DOL stats that I've already shown irrelevant to the discussion really doesn't make any difference to the fact that your 'support' isn't supportive at all. Biased statements made based on statistics that don't show what you claim don't help your claim.
Stop posting irrelevant crap and answer the questions I posted.
Right, you would hire the woman because her experience is more relevant to the time of hire.
Feel free to add in some of those other reasons of which you speak. I find this new tack fascinating.
Nonetheless, as you take us on this journey into the mind of BITM, feel free to answer the questions I posted.
Sorry it took so long, by the way. I was sleeping off a hard day of subjugating women to the heartless male hierarchy. How's life as a tool of the patriarchy?
Ted Kennedy on women’s earnings: Senator Kennedy, stumping for the Democrat ticket this week, repeated the canard that women only receive “78% of the wages of men.” The purpose was to fool women into supporting Democrats again in wide numbers. The reason was that the gender gap has almost entirely disappeared in this election, according to the polls.
What is the truth of male-female relative wages? When you make an apples-and-apples comparison, employees with the same educational backgrounds and the same years of work experience, the difference between men and women is an effective tie. Women earn 98% as much as men, in the same occupations.
The lie is based on ignoring the biological fact that women have babies, and the life choice that many mothers stay out of the workforce when their children are very young. And this oft-repeated charge by Ted Kennedy demonstrates why political lies work.
Try reading what a real conservative woman thinks about the issue, at the Independent Women's Forum:
WASHINGTON, DC -- The Independent Women's Forum denounces Senator Kerry's misuse of statistics about the wage gap during his speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. IWF calls on the senator to instead support measures that would increase workplace flexibility like comp-time and flex-time.
"It is disappointing that Senator Kerry is dragging out misleading statistics to try to win women's support," says Nancy Pfotenhauer, president of the Independent Women's Forum. "Some women experience discrimination, which needs to be addressed through legal channels. But to suggest that women regularly receive three-quarters of what men earn due to discrimination is just plain wrong."
The Department of Labor regularly issues reports on the median wage of full-time working men and full-time working women, which shows that women earn about 76 percent of men's earnings. However, this statistic does not take into account factors such as the worker's years of experience, education, and occupation.
"Women often make different choices than men. Some women choose jobs that offer greater flexibility so that they can spend more time with their families," said Pfotenhauer. "Many women are willing to trade more money for more flexibility. This is a choice that women should be able to make."
Certain feminist organizations have supported proposals to "fix" the wage gap by requiring businesses to report to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission their process for setting and adjusting wages.
"Proposals to 'fix' the wage gap by having government micromanage pay scales could backfire on women. Many companies would likely simply no longer offer the very flexibility that many women want," Pfotenhauer continued.
"Instead of fixating on this misleading statistic, Senator Kerry should focus on policies that will make it easier for women to balance work and family. When it comes to flex-time and comp-time, the Independent Women's Forum actually encourages Senator Kerry to flip-flop and support these important policies that will give working women greater workplace flexibility," Pfotenhauer added.
Try a free market approach to the issue from Pacific Research Institute - excerpted from Free Markets, Free Choices II: Smashing the Wage Gap and Glass Ceiling Myths by Naomi Lopez:
The Wage Gap
The wage gap is the alleged difference between female and male earnings. In 1959, women earned about 59 cents for every dollar a man earned.6 Today, the wage gap has narrowed to about 74 cents for every dollar a man earns.7 See Figure 3. When we compare educational attainment, we still find a significant gap even as education rises. See Figure 3. Based on these disturbing numbers, it is easy to see why there is so much interest in this issue. But this is only part of the story.
Women do earn less than men, even at the highest educational levels. Upon further examination, however, we find that field of study has a major role in determining earnings. A 1970 U.S. Census Bureau study revealed that, among men with four-year degrees or higher who had earnings in 1966, fields of study accounted for wide disparities in subsequent earnings.8 Men specializing in law, health professions, and engineering garnered the highest earnings, while men specializing in religion, the humanities, education, and the biological sciences earned lower.9 While we know that women made significant strides in educational attainment earlier in the century; we do not have detailed information on their field of study until the mid-1960s.
A 1976 Census Bureau study examined field of study for two- and four-year college students between 1966 and 1974. While this study did not provide information on matriculation, level of degree earned, or highest degree earned, it indicated the rapid entrance of women into higher education; the dramatic increases of women in most non-humanities fields of study; and, with the notable exception of the health profession, a concentration of women in lower-yield fields of study.10
Decades later, whether between men and men or men and women, field of study is still an important factor in subsequent earnings. In fact, many of the high-yield fields in the mid-1960s continue to be among the most lucrative today. Women are continuing their pursuit of these fields as evidenced by a continuous gravitation towards these high-yield fields and attainment of graduate degrees in these fields. See Figures 5-7.
What is particularly striking is that, for women between the ages of 25 and 34 with bachelor’s degrees, there does not appear to be a wage gap with their male counterparts in some of the same fields of study that require "men’s" quantitative and scientific aptitudes. Architecture and environmental design are male-dominated fields but women’s earnings in this area are a full 95 percent of men’s. Engineering, another male-dominated field, yielded women 99 percent of men’s earnings. Women earned 97 percent of men’s earnings in chemistry and 94 percent in computer and information sciences.12
Women between the ages of 35 and 44 with bachelor’s degrees leaped ahead of men in architecture and environmental design, at a rate of 109 percent. Economics, another male-dominated field, saw women break even at 100 percent of men’s earnings.13 One must question how these women managed to fare this well in some of the most competitive, highest-paying, and male-dominated fields in the face of rampant gender discrimination, which some claim begins in the earliest years of one’s education.
Love and Marriage
The remaining piece of the wage gap puzzle lies in continuous time spent in the workforce. This factor is critical because it is not readily apparent at first glance. For example, knowing that six out of every ten women were in the workforce in 1997 does not reveal whether they were the same six still in the workforce in 1999.14
According to U.S. Bureau of the Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data, men consistently log more work activity than women, regardless of educational level. In the aggregate, however, women are actually earning more per hour than men. In these ways, time spent away from the workforce adversely affects earnings and seniority.15
As women’s roles have changed from homemaker to breadwinner, women still assume a disproportionate share of housework. Economists Joni Hersch and Leslie S. Stratton found that wives’ domestic responsibilities adversely affect income and that time spent on housework is responsible for eight or more percent of the wage gap.16 While this may not come as a surprise to mature wives, there are indications that Generation X couples are likely to more equally divide domestic responsibilities which should mitigate this housework/income trade-off for wives.
Since the early 1970s, never-married women in their thirties with continuous labor force participation earn slightly higher incomes than their male counterparts with the same background. Furthermore, women without children have earnings approaching 98 percent of men’s.17
In addition to changing the composition of the American workforce, married women are also "bringing home the bacon." Today, about one out of five married women is earning more than her husband.18 This trend will likely continue in the future, especially as men assume more domestic responsibilities and as women have fewer children and bear them later in life. Some households are now relocating to new cities to accommodate the wife’s job, a trend almost unheard of in the 1960s.
Personal decision making—choices such as level of education attainment, field of study, time spent in the workforce, and, yes, time spent in the kitchen—plays a far greater role in determining women’s pay and promotion than gender discrimination.
The Glass Ceiling
Good For Business: Making Full Use of the Nation’s Human Capital, the report of the 1995 Federal Glass Ceiling Commission, claimed that only five percent of senior managers at Fortune 1000 companies are women.19 This finding has since become a rallying cry for advocates of gender-based preference policies. The "glass ceiling" refers to the idea that discrimination against women in the workplace remains a formidable barrier to their upward mobility in the corporate world.
While disturbing, this figure both fails to reveal the dramatic gains women have made in management over the past few decades and the future trend of women in these positions. This figure overlooks the fact that, of the qualified labor pool, women are accurately reflected in these senior management positions. Furthermore, this five percent figure is a minuscule portion of managers in a small, select group of companies, not reflecting the wide array of management positions in the broader workforce.
U.S. Department of Labor statistics reveal that, though they represent only 46 percent of the U.S. labor force, women hold about half of all management jobs, and in the aggregate, hold fewer bachelor’s and higher degrees than their male counterparts.20 Since the Glass Ceiling Commission report was released, the number of women in Fortune 500 senior management positions has tripled.
What about the future prospects of women in the Fortune 500? The typical qualifications for senior corporate management positions are a MBA and 25 years in the labor force. Looking back 25 years, fewer than 7 percent of MBA graduates were women.21 Assuming that no women left the workforce over the 25-year period between 1974 and 1999, one would only expect to find around 7 percent of women holding these jobs—far less than the current 11 percent.22 And with women representing more than one third of MBA graduates, women are now in the "pipeline" for these positions.
Rather than choosing to climb the ladder in corporate America, many women are instead seeking success in their own firms and are fulfilling their desire for more flexibility and independence.
Today, women-owned businesses account for one third of all firms in the United States. According to the National Foundation of Women Business Owners (NFWBO), there were almost 8 million women-owned businesses in the United States in 1996. Estimates also reveal that the number of women-owned firms grew by 78 percent between 1987 and 1996 and that employment in those firms grew by 183 percent.23
Women are also engaging in job-sharing arrangements and telecommuting in greater numbers, reflecting both the individual’s desire for a more flexible lifestyle and employers’ desire to allow greater freedom.
Did you read it or are you just replying as usual, without thinking about it? And when you do reply, consider answering the questions I posted.
I wondered why I wasn't feeling very oppressed.
DAMMIT! Are your male superiors lying down on the job AGAIN!
Well, I'll have to give them a call and tell them to get the old hierarchical dominance machine fired up again. :)
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