I think the other thing to consider is that feminism in its purest form is the practice of "universal equality", if Bell Hooks is to be believed. So the question then becomes, in my opinion, "If feminists want equal rights for everyone, why is their cause named after their gender?"
Why not name it something like universality or something that doesn't sound quite so dumb as "universality"?
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Sorry I don't know how to respond to set the quotes so that it looks like I'm responding to one quote at a time.
You have to edit the tags. When you click 'quote' it automatically attributes it to the person you're quoting. You want it to look like this: [quote]Thing you're quoting[/quote]. Does that help?
The commonly used 77 cents per each dollar is a myth. A quick search online will show plenty of evidence. Christina Hoff Sommers has a very good video about this on youtube. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post links here, so I'll refrain from doing so.
The adjusted wage gap is something like 5-15%. I'm not saying I know why that is exactly, or that it's attributable to inherent bias (even among women) or socialization of men to be more aggressive negotiators. For recent college graduates with the same degree going into the same field, the pay gap is still something like 15%. For the average workforce, it's more like 5%.
It's important to differentiate between the term wage gap, which doesn't take any factors into account like different jobs, and the adjusted wage gap, which accounts for similar positions in similar fields. Anyone who quotes you the 77% or doesn't adjust for different jobs in different fields doesn't know what they're talking about.
The biological differences are very real. I was a decent athlete in high school. But there was no way that I could compete even with the "low end of the spectrum" members of the boys basketball team. We were at a disadvantage in both height and weight. I have heard about the military issue. I'm sure there are some super athletic in shape women who can cut it with the Army Rangers (ie Commander Jane Shepard!!!), but the average female Ranger will never match up well with the average male Ranger. This is what I meant by biological differences. You can't have the mens' sports teams compete against womens' sports teams - assuming equally ranked (that means high school vs high school; college vs college; etc) in anything other than a super friendly all star game event. The mens team will win every time.
This isn't necessarily true, and not true of all events. Averages are irrelevant for this discussion, the bell curve of genetic predisposition means that there will always be women who can compete. Sometimes it means they compete slightly different, sure, and maybe the average female athlete can't measure up exactly, but like I said that's irrelevant. What's important is giving those that can the chance to do so.
I also mentioned the accomplishments section as a break from the biological differences. I work in medicine, and I don't consider myself at a disadvantage due to gender. In my training, I have been on teams where I felt like I was doing a better job than my male peers, and I have been on the opposite of that - where my peers were clearly doing a better job than me. Biological differences would not account for any of those. This is where all that matter are the individual's talents, determination to learn and get better, and willingness to put in the hours required to achieve something.
I think we talked about this before, but my wife is also a physician. She is most definitely superior to her male peers. But if you work in medicine, you know there is prejudice against female doctors - especially in the "Boy's Club" disciplines like surgery, and things are deliberately made more difficult for them.
1. There's a brand issue trying to gain traction with men, namely because of "feminism" and "female" makes a splice. This is like talking about the Black Empowerment Movement, which is now today branded as the Civil Rights Movement that is heavily associated with the BEM and Feminism proper and now can be extended to gays.
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here.
The language associated with feminism is different than what most people are used. There are key phrases like privilege and cis that don't translate well into common speech without learning the aspect of those languages. Privilege itself is a loaded term and doesn't do well whenever trying to speak to people about issues.
While I agree that privilege is an often misused term, as it takes the focus away from the disadvantaged and gives the equity discussion a bent toward bitterness at the advantaged rather than helping solve the problems of the disadvantaged. People who use it widely tend to be more interested in tearing down than building up.
That said, it's a very real phenomena that people should be aware of, although it doesn't quite mean what people think it to mean.
So with one sentence we can name a level of complexity, and the issue is that being more inclusive over time to begin programs and building them and shutting them down if they do not work.
This is basically what I said in my first post, about how historical issues affect today.
You're very right, the wage gap myth is simply a myth. The "study" that "feminists" use doesn't take into account 2 very important factors:
1. Women consistently gravitate to lower paying jobs (teaching, nursing, customer service)
2. Women consistently take more time away from work and drop out of the workforce more often than their male counterparts.
For 1, see my response to imgio. I cut the second part of your response, but it addresses that as well.
For 2, that's a social problem that also needs to be addressed. It's not like women are naturally inclined to be lazier than men, women are often stuck as the primary childcare provider. Part of what needs to be addressed to fix that are the cultural attitudes towards parenting. It's changing with the millenials, more and more guys are taking paternity leave to spend with their children, or their wives are the primary income in their family. But it's going to be a while before that's more readily accepted.
The adjusted wage gap is something like 5-15%. I'm not saying I know why that is exactly, or that it's attributable to inherent bias (even among women) or socialization of men to be more aggressive negotiators. For recent college graduates with the same degree going into the same field, the pay gap is still something like 15%. For the average workforce, it's more like 5%.
It's important to differentiate between the term wage gap, which doesn't take any factors into account like different jobs, and the adjusted wage gap, which accounts for similar positions in similar fields. Anyone who quotes you the 77% or doesn't adjust for different jobs in different fields doesn't know what they're talking about
This "adjusted wage gap" is only taking SOME of the different choices men and women make into account. There are still hundreds of other variables such as women more often negotiating for better benefit packages at the cost of higher wages that are known but at this time not enough data has been collected to accurately gage how much of the "gap" is caused by this difference in preferences.
I think the other thing to consider is that feminism in its purest form is the practice of "universal equality", if Bell Hooks is to be believed.
Are you familiar with the concept of the motte and bailey?
As humans, we have a tendency to cling to ideologies. Any positive set of beliefs can quickly turn malevolent once treated as ideology and not an honest intellectual or experiential pursuit of greater truth. Ideology does in entire economic systems and countries, causes religions to massacre thousands, turns human rights movements into authoritarian sects and makes fools out of humanity’s most brilliant minds. Einstein famously wasted the second half of his career trying to calculate a cosmological constant that didn’t exist because “God doesn’t play dice.”
I am in 100% total opposition to the idea that there is a "correct" percentage of males / females that should be doing anything - it shouldn't matter whether the primary childcare provider is a man or woman. Everyone deserves equality of opportunity, not outcome. Outcome should be decided by merit and merit alone.
The issue is that ever since women were allowed into the workforce, they were the ones expected to stay at home, and men were expected to be the primary breadwinners. The change in culture attitudes is so that couples can choose what proportions to do so, when previously men couldn't take the leave or women were pressured out of their jobs to do so.
This "adjusted wage gap" is only taking SOME of the different choices men and women make into account. There are still hundreds of other variables such as women more often negotiating for better benefit packages at the cost of higher wages that are known but at this time not enough data has been collected to accurately gage how much of the "gap" is caused by this difference in preferences.
More expensive benefits doesn't equal better benefits, remember. Women typically overpay for health insurance compared to men, for one thing, so I'm going to need to see a source for this one, because a quick google search doesn't really turn anything up in your favor.
I’ve received many, many times my “fair” share of privilege/advantage/opportunity. I don’t believe that we have reached parity (on any legally protected class) and I’m delighted that there are institutions and individuals advocating for greater parity. I only mourn when these advocates are ineffective or counterproductive and don’t achieve their objective.
Do you think sexism is something that only someone that suffers it everyday can identify or classify?
No, but someone who does suffer it everyday probably has more moral authority on the topic.
What exactly do you mean by that? Does this 'moral authority' holds value in any logical argument? I don't mean to seem cold or insensitive, it is just that I think some things are not justification for other things.
I’m not saying that it’s a logical argument (so I agree with you). I’m saying that logic alone isn’t enough. Feelings and experiences can’t be ignored if you want to change someone’s mind. [And even logical individuals may disagree.]
My only intention was to illustrate a point: that people can start to act irrationally under the flag of their ideology, without stop to thinking about what they're saying, causing overreaction and sometimes even aggressiveness towards people that disagree with them, even if they do so in a polite, reasonable manner.
I agree! Also, your friend approach wasn't at all effective in changing your mind.
I was actually expecting someone here to defend the thesis that Slave Leia's costume was, in fact, sexist, but since no one has said anything it seems everyone agrees with the text (or just didn't read it). I think you can defend that using reasonable arguments (though I'm still inclined to think that it isn't sexist), but not saying 'yeah, it is because I said so and I know what I'm talking about'.
I’m not an authority on sexism. I do think, though, that regardless of how it may have been intended artistically by the content creator in the context of the movie, that Slave Leia’s costume has been appropriated by viewers in an entirely different manner. Though Carrie is trying to take back the narrative...
Right, but women already have the right to choose to not be the one to stay at home, so what is your complaint? That they shouldn't? If that's what they and their partner decide, then what's the problem? You're complaining about something that women already have the ability to do if they want; it's a complete non-issue. If they don't want to be pressured into it, don't have children with people that are going to pressure them into it, or just say no. It's that easy.
Given the large difference in outcomes, you might be underestimating the amount of pressure involved and/or the way that a lot of small pressures can aggregate.
According to Pew, there are 10.4MM stay at home mothers and 2.0MM stay at home fathers.
Since, you know, it’s so odd for men to be stay at home, Pew needed to ask the dads additional questions like – is it because you are unemployed? Retired? Maybe you're too ill to work? Sure enough, only 21% of that 2MM were stay at home dads because they wanted to care for their family. (Anecdotally, my brother is the stay at home dad by choice and he is ACUTELY aware that he is an outlier. Lots of mommy support groups - very few daddy support groups.)
I'm not sure how to respond to the thesis that inequality is fine. I don't require 50-50 on all dimensions (women are more effective at breast feeding, for example), but 80-20 (or 84-16) feels like a pretty good indication that women are freely "choosing" from a stacked deck.
I don't know how to address the imbalance. I agree with you that direct intervention would not be either wise or effective. Cultural norms would need to change, and those take a LONG time to shift.
Inequality of outcome IS fine if that's what people are choosing to do of their own free will. The playing field here isn't tilted; everyone is just as capable of making any possible decision and thus will often gravitate towards the one that serves them best. There's no law or anything that is dictating inequality (like say segregation laws in the past).
Are you saying that just because there is no law to the contrary that everyone has free choice? That's how I read it, but if that's not your actual point, I don't want to waste our time responding to something I misunderstood.
I am looking at the opportunity of choice and seeing "Yes, the people that made these decisions had the opportunity to make other decisions" which is the only thing that matters. There is nothing preventing families from deciding to have the woman work and the man take care of the children, so to me, it doesn't matter whatsoever if they choose to do that or not. It also doesn't matter how many people make that decision, because all of them make that decision independently of each other.
If decisions were completely free and independent, I might expect to see random distribution - some years might be X, other years might be Y. A long term trend of 100-0 female-male (I'm using hyperbole here) to 84-16 female-male would not appear to be characteristic of free and independent. How would you evidence that decisions have all been freely made and independent? That seems like a pretty difficult assertion to support.
[And to be clear, I'm not saying that taking care of kids is "bad" or not worthwhile. I am saying that this is one example where we have legal freedoms, but social norms still form limitations. And it's not just pressure on women. There are likely a bunch of dads out there that would like to be the stay-at-home parent but don't feel empowered to do so. At least, that's how I read the increase in stay-at-home fathers who did so because they WANTED to (not because they didn't have other options) from 5% to 21% between 1989 and 2012. Since that % started from such a small base, I suspect - but cannot prove today - that this percentage will grow further in future years.]
I agree with you that families will optimize the happiness/meaning/joy of decisions to the extent possible taking into account their needs, their partner's needs, their child's needs and other pressures. I also agree with you that biology exists and therefore equilibrium may not be equal.
I disagree with you on these two points: 1) the significance of social norms on an individual's decision making, and 2) while legal protections help, there is too much research to the contrary for me to agree that legality alone is enough to drive equality - among any of the legally protected classes.
Are you saying that just because there is no law to the contrary that everyone has free choice? That's how I read it, but if that's not your actual point, I don't want to waste our time responding to something I misunderstood.
Yes; that's exactly what I am saying. There is nothing preventing people from making that decision if that is what they wish. You do not have to succumb to "social pressure" or anything else if you don't want to, and frankly no one should because that's a horrible way to live your life, trying to appease everyone but yourself. That decision may have consequences, but that's how literally everything in life works. You want to do something, you weight the consequences of doing it vs not doing it, and then you decide what's more important to you. Everyone already has equality in this choice, therefore, I don't understand why there is a need to crusade for it.
I think we're in agreement that gender is a protected legal class and therefore what remains is social pressure (and a long history).
I'm certainly not immune to social pressure. I brush my teeth every day, shower, wear pants, try to maintain my weight, use my polite words... Lots of things that I might not do if no one else was there to observe me.
It may be that women on average value spending time with their children more than men do...
Please share your research! From what I've found via cursory research (and personal experience), this is not true.
We find that both mothers and fathers engaged in child caregiving enjoy their time spent in child caregiving; fathers as much, or even more so, than mothers...
It does not logically follow that just because you personally don't like that a certain percentage of people make a particular decision that there has to necessarily be some unfair influencing factor in that.
I am specifically saying that the disparity in percentage (as well as trend towards more equilibrium) is indicative of unequal social pressure.
I'm not sure how you could look at the statistics or trend and conclude that family decisions are being made entirely independently? I mean, we can learn other people's decisions, so our decisions are not blind...
And this decision is important since it is linked to women's career outcomes (though cause-effect isn't clear, as per the following quote):
[I]t is difficult to distinguish cause and effect in family time allocation. Do women tend to devote more time to housework and childcare than men do because their wages are lower, or are their wages lower because they devote more time to housework and childcare?
If decisions were completely free and independent, I might expect to see random distribution - some years might be X, other years might be Y. A long term trend of 100-0 female-male (I'm using hyperbole here) to 84-16 female-male would not appear to be characteristic of free and independent. How would you evidence that decisions have all been freely made and independent? That seems like a pretty difficult assertion to support.
It is a fact (an actual fact, something very few things are) that the male and female brain on average is structured differently from the very beginning of development in the womb to every stage of life that follows. It is also a fact (Yes a fact, not like evolution or gravity that are just theories) that two things that are structured differently CANNOT function identically.
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As humans, we have a tendency to cling to ideologies. Any positive set of beliefs can quickly turn malevolent once treated as ideology and not an honest intellectual or experiential pursuit of greater truth. Ideology does in entire economic systems and countries, causes religions to massacre thousands, turns human rights movements into authoritarian sects and makes fools out of humanity’s most brilliant minds. Einstein famously wasted the second half of his career trying to calculate a cosmological constant that didn’t exist because “God doesn’t play dice.”
It is a fact (an actual fact, something very few things are) that the male and female brain on average is structured differently from the very beginning of development in the womb to every stage of life that follows. It is also a fact (Yes a fact, not like evolution or gravity that are just theories) that two things that are structured differently CANNOT function identically.
While it is true that male and female brains function differently, it is absolutely not true in general that things which are structured different cannot function identically. That's just silly.
No one is under any obligation to do anything they don't want to as long as it's legal; what more could you possibly want than that? That is literally the best that we will ever be able to do as a society while not infringing upon anyone's basic human rights.
I don't think we'll ever agree on this. Our government does more than just pass laws. And NGOs believe they can have an impact. And individuals believe that they can have an impact. All are part of our society.
You may find that other people choose not to associate with you because you smell bad, but that's just a predictable consequence to your choice.
...
Bottom line is, if you're letting your friends / family / neighbors decide whether you or your spouse should be the primary breadwinner for your family, then YOU are the one with the problem, because that is not rational behavior.
This appears to acknowledge that other people may impose a cost on me if I don't follow their expectations, but then suggests that taking into account those social costs is irrational. That appears inconsistent.
Just because you claim to not follow the expectations of anyone else (despite all evidence to the contrary - including our current interaction of polite discourse, which follows social norms), it would not follow that no one else does.
I'm sure a mental health expert will correct me, but look at the bolded portion of the definition for antisocial personality disorder (i.e., "sociopathy") - "People with antisocial personality disorder typically have no regard for right and wrong and often disregard the rights, wishes and feelings of others." (Emphasis mine.)
It is rational, healthy, and very human to consider the wishes and feelings of other people!
And I am telling you that as long as there exist legitimate possible reasons for the disparity, you cannot just say "There's a difference, thus it must be a problem". That a disparity exists, by itself, is NOT indicative of anything...
I agree. Differences may exist, which would then suggest further research. In this case, though the cause is so self-evident that no one has bothered doing the research to confirm it.
We've had a long tradition as a country of "traditional" gender roles. We only added legal protection for sex in 1964 (and that protection MAY have been inserted to prevent the entire bill from passing). And we are moving, slowly, toward more gender equality on a number of dimensions. And despite they way that you might wish for individuals to live, people take into account society's expectations (if they are even conscious that bias exists - the theory of unconscious bias is getting a lot of attention these days).
Women commit less crime. A larger % of women go to college (71% vs. 61%!). Women live longer. Women are less likely to die in an accident. Men don't get to spend as much time with their children (even though they enjoy it as much).
These are all differences that I believe are worthy of research and seeing if/how society can help the men out.
Government does not exist to push social agendas; it exists to protect your human rights and that's it. Tell me what exactly you think you can do that would actually make any sort of difference without restricting people's basic liberties.
Government invests today in social programs - for example, parental leave. I don't think governments ALONE can drive change (nor did I say that) - i.e., there is a role for NGOs and individuals (perhaps even the feminists referenced in the OP) to advocate for more equality as well.
As an aside, the purpose of governments is open to debate (and not a topic I care to get pulled into). Also, I've never said that I know the solution for gender equality.
I would hope you are not implying that advocating for people to make responsible, intelligent decisions for themselves is somehow demonstrative of antisocial behavior.
No - I said that it is rational for individuals to consider the wishes of others.
Can you please address the apparent inconsistency of acknowledging that social expectations form a cost, but asserting that it's irrational to consider that cost?
You can choose to factor in the feelings of other people, but quite frankly when it comes to something as important as deciding the future of your family, the only other person's input that should be relevant whatsoever is your spouses.
This is a should statement - i.e., it appears to say how you might like the world to work. It doesn't appear to support that this IS how the world works.
I would certainly like to see the impact of social norms on these types of personal decisions to continue to diminish over time in our broader quest for equality.
In this case, though the cause is so self-evident that no one has bothered doing the research to confirm it.
Uh, no. It is not "self-evident"; you do not get to just blatantly assert that without evidence and then say that it's so obvious it doesn't need evidence.
I was asserting that one reason we are predominately following traditional gender roles ... is the tradition of gender roles.
I'm not sure that it's possible to attribute relative weightings, but here are some possible causes for this inequity -
Compensation. Mothers who earn less for equal work. I probably need to learn more, but I find it POTENTIALLY problematic when women select careers that pay less - or careers that pay less since they are predominately female.
Other? Maybe mothers are better parents than fathers? Aliens?
When we've crossed off everything but biology, then I'll be happy.
As an additional aside, I think it's an interesting question at where we draw the line in equality of social norms. When do you think our society will seriously question differences in attire (dresses vs. suits), for example? It took a while to get to voting rights, then ability to work outside the home, then compensation, then athletics (Title IX), and we're just starting to shift our perspectives on child rearing...
While it is true that male and female brains function differently, it is absolutely not true in general that things which are structured different cannot function identically. That's just silly.
I'm sorry but you are for a fact wrong.
definition of identical-adjective; similar in every way; exactly alike
There are 20.4 million college students today. About 11 million of them are women.
Going by the feminist "1 in 5" stat, that means 2.2 million women will be raped during their 4 years in college, which is 550,000 women per year. There are about 11,000 campuses, so that's an average of 50 rapes on each campus per year.
If 91% of those (10,100 campuses) are reporting no rapes, that means there are 505,000 unreported rapes. The other 9% (900 campuses) are only reporting a few rapes each, so that's at least another 40,000 unreported rapes.
Feminists would have you believe that less than 1% of women report their rapes. Does this make sense to any of you?
As humans, we have a tendency to cling to ideologies. Any positive set of beliefs can quickly turn malevolent once treated as ideology and not an honest intellectual or experiential pursuit of greater truth. Ideology does in entire economic systems and countries, causes religions to massacre thousands, turns human rights movements into authoritarian sects and makes fools out of humanity’s most brilliant minds. Einstein famously wasted the second half of his career trying to calculate a cosmological constant that didn’t exist because “God doesn’t play dice.”
The fact that different structures can function identically is a significant problem in some subfields of neural network study. It's known as the "competing representations" problem, in which two networks have differing topology and weights, yet compute identical functions.
A link to the differences in male and female brains does not support your contention that different structure must imply different function. I've already agreed that male and female brains function differently:
it is true that male and female brains function differently
What I disagree with is your broader claim that different structures must necessarily have different function:
It is also a fact (Yes a fact, not like evolution or gravity that are just theories) that two things that are structured differently CANNOT function identically.
This is a statement that displays a complete lack of knowledge, but is phrased in such a way as to imply complete certainty.
Again, non-sequitur. Just because they exist does not mean that is why people are making decisions in line with it. It may be that there are indeed valid reasons for this; you don't know unless you can prove it.
I am aware that correlation does not prove causation.
I think we're looping on this central disagreement - you see unequal social expectations and similarly unequal social outcomes, but conclude that the one has nothing to do with the other. I see that same fact pattern and conclude that one is likely impacting the other.
We might need to agree to disagree.
Compensation. Mothers who earn less for equal work. I probably need to learn more, but I find it POTENTIALLY problematic when women select careers that pay less - or careers that pay less since they are predominately female.
If you or anyone else ever knows of a case where a woman is being paid less for the exact same work in the exact same job as a man, then don't waste your time posting about it on social media; immediately report it to the authorities. It is extremely illegal to pay someone less because of their sex, race, etc.
Despite the legality, studies like this one are published. I don't know if this study is more valid than any of the others, but looking at wages out of college - before family obligations intervene - seems to provide a useful perspective.
Other? Maybe mothers are better parents than fathers? Aliens?
When we've crossed off everything but biology, then I'll be happy.
I think you'll have a hard time crossing off Other if you don't really know what reasons it encompasses.
Fair
I really do believe that we've reached a point where we don't really have that many civil rights issues left (at least here in the west), and that a lot of people seem to be slow to accept the idea that they can just live/be however they want.
I would prefer not to go down the rabbit hole on this one - but let me see if I can sneak in a comment anyway.
That's why I just don't understand why everyone is so hellbent on obsessing over what is considered "the social norm". It's a much wiser decision to spend that time and energy just living how you want to live.
The people that do care about social norms can get together and do the research so we can discuss and decide if we want to do anything differently. They offer a product that can be consumed (as we have) or ignored (if we instead wanted to live an unexamined life).
Looping back to career choice / female engagement in STEM for a moment, check out how much research has been done on the topic of identifying what might be driving the difference in outcomes, as well as which techniques might be most effective for changing those outcomes! With her parents armed with this type of information, maybe my (4 year old) daughter will make it through the High School gauntlet! Or maybe she'll decide she still wants to be a princess, like Elsa.
1) Yes, I am aware that the report was authored by a woman. I've read a few of the studies and it looked like explained factors decreased the gap, but didn't fully close the gap. Also, some of the reasons cited as explained factors (i.e., women negotiate less - but are also more likely to be punished by negotiating; number of hours spent working at home; choice of career) may in turn be linked to gender discrimination. Please let me know if you believe any of the sources referenced in Wikipedia are reliable.
The extent to which discrimination plays a role in explaining gender wage disparities is somewhat difficult to quantify, due to a number of potentially confounding variables. A 2010 research review by the majority staff of the United States Congress Joint Economic Committee reported that studies have consistently found unexplained pay differences even after controlling for measurable factors that are assumed to influence earnings. They attributed this to gender discrimination.[3] Other studies have found direct evidence of discrimination – for example, more jobs went to women when the applicants sex was unknown during the hiring process.[3]
2) Thanks for sharing your story. My dad played guitar on the street corner for money when I was an infant. My older sister would sing along - passerbys apparently loved that.
Some Stats 101:
Suppose we want to explain a phenomenon Y, we can propose explanatory variables (Xs). We can propose as few a 1 or as many as we can measure. However, no matter how many Xs you add there will always be residual error, aspects of Y unexplained by Xs.
If we want to explain the gender gap, we might want to "control for" things such as occupation choice, time out of the workforce, or any number of variables. But no matter what we pick or how many we pick, there will always be residual.
The general flaw in the argument is that any residual MUST be discrimination, when really it could be any of literally infinitely many possible other covariates. A work-around for this flaw would be to explicitly attempt to measure sexist attitudes or discriminatory practices. If these measures explained a high % of Y, then there would be positive proof for discrimination. However, as is, most evidence is negative evidence, which is inherently a weaker argument.
To date, there are >20 variables (to my knowledge) which explain at least a portion of the gender pay gap. There is no reason to think that there aren't 200 more. This isn't to say that discrimination and bias are not real, they assuredly are, but until positive proof is discovered, this "all the residual must be sexism" argument doesn't really hold water.
Some Stats 101:
Suppose we want to explain a phenomenon Y, we can propose explanatory variables (Xs). We can propose as few a 1 or as many as we can measure. However, no matter how many Xs you add there will always be residual error, aspects of Y unexplained by Xs.
If we want to explain the gender gap, we might want to "control for" things such as occupation choice, time out of the workforce, or any number of variables. But no matter what we pick or how many we pick, there will always be residual.
The general flaw in the argument is that any residual MUST be discrimination, when really it could be any of literally infinitely many possible other covariates. A work-around for this flaw would be to explicitly attempt to measure sexist attitudes or discriminatory practices. If these measures explained a high % of Y, then there would be positive proof for discrimination. However, as is, most evidence is negative evidence, which is inherently a weaker argument.
To date, there are >20 variables (to my knowledge) which explain at least a portion of the gender pay gap. There is no reason to think that there aren't 200 more. This isn't to say that discrimination and bias are not real, they assuredly are, but until positive proof is discovered, this "all the residual must be sexism" argument doesn't really hold water.
On the other hand, suppose we have two possible explanatory variables, X1 and X2. We control for X1 and Y disappears. Does this imply X2 is not a cause of Y? No, it does not. X1 and X2 may be (possibly causally) correlated. If they are, controlling for X1 is also controlling for X2. It may well be that X2 causes both X1 and Y.
Now suppose we have three possible variables, X1, X2 and X3, and we know that all three are independent of one another. We control for X1 and Y disappears. Does this imply X2 is not a cause of Y? Again, no. It may be the case that X3 is negatively correlated with Y. That is, if we controlled for X1 and also X3, Y would appear again, leaving something for X2 to explain.
So, while it is true that "whatever's left must be sexism" is a flawed argument, it is also true that "when we control for x,y and z the gap shrinks/disappears, therefore it must not be sexism" is also flawed.
A work-around for this flaw would be to explicitly attempt to measure sexist attitudes or discriminatory practices. If these measures explained a high % of Y, then there would be positive proof for discrimination. However, as is, most evidence is negative evidence, which is inherently a weaker argument.
I might be missing your point, but I thought we had studies that showed direct gender bias. Like this? Or lawsuits?
Edit: Stepping back, I like this article (both writers). It suggests comparable wage gap is perhaps 2-6% (i.e., non-zero, but also probably not 10%). [This was also based on data that's 15 years old, so if the gap really has been narrowing, maybe it's less today.] Anyway, what I liked about the article was that it spends a bit more time talking about women's ability to invest in their human capital in a relatively succinct way.
[W]hat do we make of the gender wage gap? Perhaps it is best used to indicate the underlying expectations and social norms that drive our career and workforce decisions, which themselves may be affected by other types of gender discrimination.
...
The issue of occupational segregation is a significant component of the wage gap because studies have shown that the more women are represented in a particular occupation, the less money it is likely to be paid.
...
The issues of experience and training are also significant. If women have less workplace experience than men do, it is typically because they have taken time out for family care-giving. In today's economy, women are still expected to bear the brunt of this responsibility. Furthermore, given their lower earnings, women are usually the parent in dual-income families who takes time off to raise small children. In this sense, the wage gap can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
...
Career preparation and training are also affected by gender norms. Women are encouraged to pursue certain types of work and discouraged from pursuing others. These gender role expectations can be very subtle, such as when the mass media stereotypes what is considered appropriate behavior for women, or they can be profound, such as when women enter traditionally male-dominated fields and encounter hostile work environments. Recent legal settlements indicate that women at Home Depot were discouraged from floor sales positions and steered toward cashier jobs, while male technicians at CBS were more likely to be offered lucrative overtime assignments than women.
...
One might argue that the fact that mothers are expected to bear a greater share of child care duties is itself a form of societal gender discrimination. While this is probably true, it is also probably true that other factors are important. For example, single-parent families are disproportionately ones in which the mother is present and the father is absent, meaning that the mother has no option but to assume the main role in child care and to bear the resulting labor market consequences. Similarly, because many babies are breast-fed, there are simple biological reasons for the mother to be more heavily relied upon. Finally, because husbands tend to be older than their wives, they will also tend to have more labor market experience and, therefore, higher wages. So, even if a husband and wife are in the same occupation and the wife faces no wage discrimination, the wife would have the lower wage and, because of this, might end up bearing more of the child care duties.
I'm going to say I think your conflating similar to identical but whatever. What I was hoping to get at is it makes no sense to believe all the differences in outcomes we see between men and women are purely the result of socialization if this is true
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As humans, we have a tendency to cling to ideologies. Any positive set of beliefs can quickly turn malevolent once treated as ideology and not an honest intellectual or experiential pursuit of greater truth. Ideology does in entire economic systems and countries, causes religions to massacre thousands, turns human rights movements into authoritarian sects and makes fools out of humanity’s most brilliant minds. Einstein famously wasted the second half of his career trying to calculate a cosmological constant that didn’t exist because “God doesn’t play dice.”
To Cme: The critical sentence in the Wall and Reed article is "The remaining 6.2 cents of the gap, which is unexplained, is the maximum that can be attributed to wage discrimination." This is itself the core of the problem. The approach taken is always: observe gap, add covariates, see if gap disappears. This is a fundamentally different argument than observe gap, measure discrimination, see if gap disappears. In the former case we are seeing if extraneous things (not sexism) potentially explain the gender pay gap, and then when they don't inferring sexism. In the second case, we are actually measuring directly if discrimination is causing the gap instead of inferring from absence.
Side Note: Law suits don't prove truth, at least in terms of a scientific point of fact.
To Tiax: Your argument holds for Multiple Regression, but not for Path Analysis. To the extent that researchers are using MR, you have a point. To the extent researchers are using SEM or Path Models, not so much. For better or worse, a lot of the literature is a smattering of both.
The approach taken is always: observe gap, add covariates, see if gap disappears. This is a fundamentally different argument than observe gap, measure discrimination, see if gap disappears. In the former case we are seeing if extraneous things (not sexism) potentially explain the gender pay gap, and then when they don't inferring sexism. In the second case, we are actually measuring directly if discrimination is causing the gap instead of inferring from absence.
Thanks for the explanation.
I appreciate that it's difficult to measure with the tools we have. Let's say that the wage difference is actually zero in the real world. Do you have any thoughts on why so many (all? nearly all?) of the studies point to the same result? I might have thought that if the actual number was zero, that we'd see studies with a range from (let's say) 90-110%, with a cluster near 100%?
I'm also curious on how you look at the explained differences that potentially be construed to have a component of discrimination. i.e., some of these studies use % of females in the occupation as a factor (with more females = lower wages)?
Side Note: Law suits don't prove truth, at least in terms of a scientific point of fact.
Are you making the technical point that settled lawsuits differ from research studies, or are you suggesting that wage discrimination did not actually occur in the settled lawsuits?
Thanks - I'm very clear on your perspective. I was interested in newshadow23's perspective. I know that there COULD be another explanation, I was asking newshadow23 whether s/he BELIEVED that there was another explanation.
Edit:
I would be interested in whether there is anything that would convince you that there is an issue with female compensation. There are research studies behind all of these statements.
We have a history of sexism as a country. These beliefs are still held today by a minority of individuals.
We have a history of wage inequality. We have current studies that are unable to fully explain the wage gap (and those studies even include gender in the industry/occupation as one of the explanatory factors). There are studies that show that traditionally female occupations pay less than traditionally male occupations. There are studies that show that equivalent work (i.e., administrative) offers higher wages in a traditionally male industry than a traditionally female industry.
There are studies that find that identical performance by a male is more likely to end in a job hire.
There are studies that show that identical resumes with male vs. female names at the top result in higher offered compensation for the male names.
There are studies that show that performance reports treat males more favorably than females. There are studies that show females are promoted at a lower rate than males.
There are studies that show that females are more likely to experience negative consequences when negotiating for higher wages.
We have ongoing lawsuits that demonstrate wage inequality. And this is despite the fear of retaliation (which currently happens to be the #1 EEOC complaint).
To CME:
1) Assuming 0 gender gap wouldn't we expect a clustering of between 90%-110% with an average of 100%?
Its important to remember that statistically you cannot have 110% of anything (unless you make a computational mistake). So to an extent, there will be a ceiling effect. Even under completely ideal conditions, one would expect a negatively skewed distribution with a median of say 98% and mean 95%. This is not what we're seeing, so therefore, either discrimination is real, or there are additional factors that need to be accounted for.
2) What about those identical resume studies/performance report studies/etc.? These are examples of positive evidence. As these accrue the case for sexism (vs. other covariates) improves. That said, these tend to be experimental studies and are not measured within major corporations to see what direct effect they have on wages. We have positive evidence that they potentially have impact, but little to no evidence that they do "in the real world".
3) Lawsuits are not won or lost on the basis of scientific evidence alone. If one is interested in whether sexism is real or not, lawsuits do not provide any answer. (If one is interested in how sexism is perceived in the population however, they may be of interest.)
4) Might the covariates which explain the gender gap themselves be explained by gender. Yes, of course, which is why you use Path Analysis or SEM instead of simple Multiple Regression, as I explained to Tiax.
5) My personal views - sexism is real and explains a reasonable proportion of the gender gap. That said, scientifically, not all of our ducks are in a row. There are major holes in most studies, and many improvements to the way research in this area could be conducted. As such, I cannot say with full scientific confidence that sexism explains a reasonable proportion of the gender-pay gap. (compare this to the scientific consensus on climate change).
6) Related to 4 and 5) The mechanisms through which gender influences gender-pay are exceedingly poorly misunderstood. To what extent does gender explain choice of field? pay of respective fields? initial salary? salary over time? hours worked? time taken off? willingness to work "Bad jobs" either boring or inhumane or dangerous? The degree and the mechanisms through which gender acts on all of these avenues are at best hypothesized, which leads to the dilemma how to I tackle this problem? Do I tell women to forgo "societally-friendly" jobs like nursing and teaching to go into "unfriendly jobs" like hedge-fund manager, garbage collector, or soldier? Do I tell women to go into STEM or to forgo college entirely and become plumbers or electricians or welders? Without an understanding of not only whether but how gender influences the pay gap there is little actionable information.
7) Related to 6) Should corporations be ultimately held responsible for the gender-pay gap? Only if variance associated with the corporations proves to be meaningful. If resumes/interviewing/salary negotiation type variables prove to be the smoking gun, then corporations should be held to account. If choice of occupation/# of hours requested to work/% requests for part-time work prove to be meaningful variables, then society as a whole needs to reconsider the role of women, but I would consider the individual corporations to be off-the-hook.
Jabba represents greed and gluttony, like most Hutts. He imposed his will on Leia by making her one of his slave girls for his pleasure. Leia, being the woman of action she is, kills him with the same chains he put her in.
What's the point of all this? Let's look at it from an extradiegetic perspective. George Lucas needed to make Jabba a threat, but also needed to make him disgusting and vile to us, so having him put Leia through that accomplished both things. Since GL is a great writer (but not necessarily a good director), he had Leia save herself so her character isn't damaged by being Jabba's slave girl.
It's not meant to be fanservice since she's clearly distressed and Jabba is slime. Just because she's showing more skin doesn't mean it's meant to be a male power fantasy (how can it be when the only thing Jabba gets from her is a heaping helping of death?).
Anyway, Ash, feminism is a good thing. What the internet purports as feminism is toxic, however. At its core, feminism is just "women should be equal to men," and that's okay. I mean, if someone has a problem with that core belief, then that person's kind of a bigot and should go lock themselves in a dark space. Internet and millennial "feminism" is, in a word, a joke and far too often degenerates into misandry.
Rambling aside, pulling Slave Leia from merchandising is also pulling away one of Leia's best moments and stems from 2 causes: 1) An overabundance of political correctness, 2) Disney's image as a family company.
Why not name it something like universality or something that doesn't sound quite so dumb as "universality"?
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The adjusted wage gap is something like 5-15%. I'm not saying I know why that is exactly, or that it's attributable to inherent bias (even among women) or socialization of men to be more aggressive negotiators. For recent college graduates with the same degree going into the same field, the pay gap is still something like 15%. For the average workforce, it's more like 5%.
It's important to differentiate between the term wage gap, which doesn't take any factors into account like different jobs, and the adjusted wage gap, which accounts for similar positions in similar fields. Anyone who quotes you the 77% or doesn't adjust for different jobs in different fields doesn't know what they're talking about.
This isn't necessarily true, and not true of all events. Averages are irrelevant for this discussion, the bell curve of genetic predisposition means that there will always be women who can compete. Sometimes it means they compete slightly different, sure, and maybe the average female athlete can't measure up exactly, but like I said that's irrelevant. What's important is giving those that can the chance to do so.
I think we talked about this before, but my wife is also a physician. She is most definitely superior to her male peers. But if you work in medicine, you know there is prejudice against female doctors - especially in the "Boy's Club" disciplines like surgery, and things are deliberately made more difficult for them.
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here.
While I agree that privilege is an often misused term, as it takes the focus away from the disadvantaged and gives the equity discussion a bent toward bitterness at the advantaged rather than helping solve the problems of the disadvantaged. People who use it widely tend to be more interested in tearing down than building up.
That said, it's a very real phenomena that people should be aware of, although it doesn't quite mean what people think it to mean.
This is basically what I said in my first post, about how historical issues affect today.
For 1, see my response to imgio. I cut the second part of your response, but it addresses that as well.
For 2, that's a social problem that also needs to be addressed. It's not like women are naturally inclined to be lazier than men, women are often stuck as the primary childcare provider. Part of what needs to be addressed to fix that are the cultural attitudes towards parenting. It's changing with the millenials, more and more guys are taking paternity leave to spend with their children, or their wives are the primary income in their family. But it's going to be a while before that's more readily accepted.
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This "adjusted wage gap" is only taking SOME of the different choices men and women make into account. There are still hundreds of other variables such as women more often negotiating for better benefit packages at the cost of higher wages that are known but at this time not enough data has been collected to accurately gage how much of the "gap" is caused by this difference in preferences.
Are you familiar with the concept of the motte and bailey?
More expensive benefits doesn't equal better benefits, remember. Women typically overpay for health insurance compared to men, for one thing, so I'm going to need to see a source for this one, because a quick google search doesn't really turn anything up in your favor.
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I’ve received many, many times my “fair” share of privilege/advantage/opportunity. I don’t believe that we have reached parity (on any legally protected class) and I’m delighted that there are institutions and individuals advocating for greater parity. I only mourn when these advocates are ineffective or counterproductive and don’t achieve their objective.
I’m not saying that it’s a logical argument (so I agree with you). I’m saying that logic alone isn’t enough. Feelings and experiences can’t be ignored if you want to change someone’s mind. [And even logical individuals may disagree.]
I agree! Also, your friend approach wasn't at all effective in changing your mind.
I’m not an authority on sexism. I do think, though, that regardless of how it may have been intended artistically by the content creator in the context of the movie, that Slave Leia’s costume has been appropriated by viewers in an entirely different manner. Though Carrie is trying to take back the narrative...
Given the large difference in outcomes, you might be underestimating the amount of pressure involved and/or the way that a lot of small pressures can aggregate.
According to Pew, there are 10.4MM stay at home mothers and 2.0MM stay at home fathers.
Since, you know, it’s so odd for men to be stay at home, Pew needed to ask the dads additional questions like – is it because you are unemployed? Retired? Maybe you're too ill to work? Sure enough, only 21% of that 2MM were stay at home dads because they wanted to care for their family. (Anecdotally, my brother is the stay at home dad by choice and he is ACUTELY aware that he is an outlier. Lots of mommy support groups - very few daddy support groups.)
Does this thread need to move to Debate?
I don't know how to address the imbalance. I agree with you that direct intervention would not be either wise or effective. Cultural norms would need to change, and those take a LONG time to shift.
If decisions were completely free and independent, I might expect to see random distribution - some years might be X, other years might be Y. A long term trend of 100-0 female-male (I'm using hyperbole here) to 84-16 female-male would not appear to be characteristic of free and independent. How would you evidence that decisions have all been freely made and independent? That seems like a pretty difficult assertion to support.
[And to be clear, I'm not saying that taking care of kids is "bad" or not worthwhile. I am saying that this is one example where we have legal freedoms, but social norms still form limitations. And it's not just pressure on women. There are likely a bunch of dads out there that would like to be the stay-at-home parent but don't feel empowered to do so. At least, that's how I read the increase in stay-at-home fathers who did so because they WANTED to (not because they didn't have other options) from 5% to 21% between 1989 and 2012. Since that % started from such a small base, I suspect - but cannot prove today - that this percentage will grow further in future years.]
I disagree with you on these two points: 1) the significance of social norms on an individual's decision making, and 2) while legal protections help, there is too much research to the contrary for me to agree that legality alone is enough to drive equality - among any of the legally protected classes. I think we're in agreement that gender is a protected legal class and therefore what remains is social pressure (and a long history).
I'm certainly not immune to social pressure. I brush my teeth every day, shower, wear pants, try to maintain my weight, use my polite words... Lots of things that I might not do if no one else was there to observe me.
Please share your research! From what I've found via cursory research (and personal experience), this is not true.
I am specifically saying that the disparity in percentage (as well as trend towards more equilibrium) is indicative of unequal social pressure.
I'm not sure how you could look at the statistics or trend and conclude that family decisions are being made entirely independently? I mean, we can learn other people's decisions, so our decisions are not blind...
And this decision is important since it is linked to women's career outcomes (though cause-effect isn't clear, as per the following quote):
It is a fact (an actual fact, something very few things are) that the male and female brain on average is structured differently from the very beginning of development in the womb to every stage of life that follows. It is also a fact (Yes a fact, not like evolution or gravity that are just theories) that two things that are structured differently CANNOT function identically.
While it is true that male and female brains function differently, it is absolutely not true in general that things which are structured different cannot function identically. That's just silly.
This appears to acknowledge that other people may impose a cost on me if I don't follow their expectations, but then suggests that taking into account those social costs is irrational. That appears inconsistent.
Just because you claim to not follow the expectations of anyone else (despite all evidence to the contrary - including our current interaction of polite discourse, which follows social norms), it would not follow that no one else does.
I'm sure a mental health expert will correct me, but look at the bolded portion of the definition for antisocial personality disorder (i.e., "sociopathy") - "People with antisocial personality disorder typically have no regard for right and wrong and often disregard the rights, wishes and feelings of others." (Emphasis mine.)
It is rational, healthy, and very human to consider the wishes and feelings of other people! I agree. Differences may exist, which would then suggest further research. In this case, though the cause is so self-evident that no one has bothered doing the research to confirm it.
We've had a long tradition as a country of "traditional" gender roles. We only added legal protection for sex in 1964 (and that protection MAY have been inserted to prevent the entire bill from passing). And we are moving, slowly, toward more gender equality on a number of dimensions. And despite they way that you might wish for individuals to live, people take into account society's expectations (if they are even conscious that bias exists - the theory of unconscious bias is getting a lot of attention these days).
Women commit less crime. A larger % of women go to college (71% vs. 61%!). Women live longer. Women are less likely to die in an accident. Men don't get to spend as much time with their children (even though they enjoy it as much).
These are all differences that I believe are worthy of research and seeing if/how society can help the men out.
As an aside, the purpose of governments is open to debate (and not a topic I care to get pulled into). Also, I've never said that I know the solution for gender equality.
No - I said that it is rational for individuals to consider the wishes of others.
Can you please address the apparent inconsistency of acknowledging that social expectations form a cost, but asserting that it's irrational to consider that cost?
This is a should statement - i.e., it appears to say how you might like the world to work. It doesn't appear to support that this IS how the world works.
I would certainly like to see the impact of social norms on these types of personal decisions to continue to diminish over time in our broader quest for equality. I was asserting that one reason we are predominately following traditional gender roles ... is the tradition of gender roles.
Here is some evidence of the existence of those roles - About half (51%) of survey respondents say that children are better off if a mother is home and doesn’t hold a job, while just 8% say the same about a father.
I'm not sure that it's possible to attribute relative weightings, but here are some possible causes for this inequity -
As an additional aside, I think it's an interesting question at where we draw the line in equality of social norms. When do you think our society will seriously question differences in attire (dresses vs. suits), for example? It took a while to get to voting rights, then ability to work outside the home, then compensation, then athletics (Title IX), and we're just starting to shift our perspectives on child rearing...
Here is one additional data point for why we might have a problem - Some 46% of fathers say they are not spending enough time with their children, compared with 23% of mothers. Poor dads!
Golly we are far afield from Princess Leia...
I'm sorry but you are for a fact wrong.
definition of identical-adjective; similar in every way; exactly alike
http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains-differ
Special Pleading?
To go back to the OP's topic...http://www.aauw.org/article/clery-act-data-analysis/
There are 20.4 million college students today. About 11 million of them are women.
Going by the feminist "1 in 5" stat, that means 2.2 million women will be raped during their 4 years in college, which is 550,000 women per year. There are about 11,000 campuses, so that's an average of 50 rapes on each campus per year.
If 91% of those (10,100 campuses) are reporting no rapes, that means there are 505,000 unreported rapes. The other 9% (900 campuses) are only reporting a few rapes each, so that's at least another 40,000 unreported rapes.
Feminists would have you believe that less than 1% of women report their rapes. Does this make sense to any of you?
The fact that different structures can function identically is a significant problem in some subfields of neural network study. It's known as the "competing representations" problem, in which two networks have differing topology and weights, yet compute identical functions.
A link to the differences in male and female brains does not support your contention that different structure must imply different function. I've already agreed that male and female brains function differently:
What I disagree with is your broader claim that different structures must necessarily have different function:
This is a statement that displays a complete lack of knowledge, but is phrased in such a way as to imply complete certainty.
I think we're looping on this central disagreement - you see unequal social expectations and similarly unequal social outcomes, but conclude that the one has nothing to do with the other. I see that same fact pattern and conclude that one is likely impacting the other.
We might need to agree to disagree.
Despite the legality, studies like this one are published. I don't know if this study is more valid than any of the others, but looking at wages out of college - before family obligations intervene - seems to provide a useful perspective.
Fair I would prefer not to go down the rabbit hole on this one - but let me see if I can sneak in a comment anyway.
By way of analogy, let's just say that we had comparable income for everyone today - it would be generations before we had comparable wealth. The wealth of white households was 13 times the median wealth of black households in 2013, compared with eight times the wealth in 2010. And it's not clear that we have equal income yet.
The people that do care about social norms can get together and do the research so we can discuss and decide if we want to do anything differently. They offer a product that can be consumed (as we have) or ignored (if we instead wanted to live an unexamined life).
Looping back to career choice / female engagement in STEM for a moment, check out how much research has been done on the topic of identifying what might be driving the difference in outcomes, as well as which techniques might be most effective for changing those outcomes! With her parents armed with this type of information, maybe my (4 year old) daughter will make it through the High School gauntlet! Or maybe she'll decide she still wants to be a princess, like Elsa.
2) Thanks for sharing your story. My dad played guitar on the street corner for money when I was an infant. My older sister would sing along - passerbys apparently loved that.
Suppose we want to explain a phenomenon Y, we can propose explanatory variables (Xs). We can propose as few a 1 or as many as we can measure. However, no matter how many Xs you add there will always be residual error, aspects of Y unexplained by Xs.
If we want to explain the gender gap, we might want to "control for" things such as occupation choice, time out of the workforce, or any number of variables. But no matter what we pick or how many we pick, there will always be residual.
The general flaw in the argument is that any residual MUST be discrimination, when really it could be any of literally infinitely many possible other covariates. A work-around for this flaw would be to explicitly attempt to measure sexist attitudes or discriminatory practices. If these measures explained a high % of Y, then there would be positive proof for discrimination. However, as is, most evidence is negative evidence, which is inherently a weaker argument.
To date, there are >20 variables (to my knowledge) which explain at least a portion of the gender pay gap. There is no reason to think that there aren't 200 more. This isn't to say that discrimination and bias are not real, they assuredly are, but until positive proof is discovered, this "all the residual must be sexism" argument doesn't really hold water.
On the other hand, suppose we have two possible explanatory variables, X1 and X2. We control for X1 and Y disappears. Does this imply X2 is not a cause of Y? No, it does not. X1 and X2 may be (possibly causally) correlated. If they are, controlling for X1 is also controlling for X2. It may well be that X2 causes both X1 and Y.
Now suppose we have three possible variables, X1, X2 and X3, and we know that all three are independent of one another. We control for X1 and Y disappears. Does this imply X2 is not a cause of Y? Again, no. It may be the case that X3 is negatively correlated with Y. That is, if we controlled for X1 and also X3, Y would appear again, leaving something for X2 to explain.
So, while it is true that "whatever's left must be sexism" is a flawed argument, it is also true that "when we control for x,y and z the gap shrinks/disappears, therefore it must not be sexism" is also flawed.
Edit: Stepping back, I like this article (both writers). It suggests comparable wage gap is perhaps 2-6% (i.e., non-zero, but also probably not 10%). [This was also based on data that's 15 years old, so if the gap really has been narrowing, maybe it's less today.] Anyway, what I liked about the article was that it spends a bit more time talking about women's ability to invest in their human capital in a relatively succinct way.
Finally, I thought it was interesting that Among parents with children younger than 18, mothers (56%) are less likely than fathers (69%) to say it is better for children to have a parent at home.
I'm going to say I think your conflating similar to identical but whatever. What I was hoping to get at is it makes no sense to believe all the differences in outcomes we see between men and women are purely the result of socialization if this is true
Side Note: Law suits don't prove truth, at least in terms of a scientific point of fact.
To Tiax: Your argument holds for Multiple Regression, but not for Path Analysis. To the extent that researchers are using MR, you have a point. To the extent researchers are using SEM or Path Models, not so much. For better or worse, a lot of the literature is a smattering of both.
I appreciate that it's difficult to measure with the tools we have. Let's say that the wage difference is actually zero in the real world. Do you have any thoughts on why so many (all? nearly all?) of the studies point to the same result? I might have thought that if the actual number was zero, that we'd see studies with a range from (let's say) 90-110%, with a cluster near 100%?
I'm also curious on how you look at the explained differences that potentially be construed to have a component of discrimination. i.e., some of these studies use % of females in the occupation as a factor (with more females = lower wages)?
Are you making the technical point that settled lawsuits differ from research studies, or are you suggesting that wage discrimination did not actually occur in the settled lawsuits?
Edit:
I would be interested in whether there is anything that would convince you that there is an issue with female compensation. There are research studies behind all of these statements.
We have a history of sexism as a country. These beliefs are still held today by a minority of individuals.
We have a history of wage inequality. We have current studies that are unable to fully explain the wage gap (and those studies even include gender in the industry/occupation as one of the explanatory factors). There are studies that show that traditionally female occupations pay less than traditionally male occupations. There are studies that show that equivalent work (i.e., administrative) offers higher wages in a traditionally male industry than a traditionally female industry.
There are studies that find that identical performance by a male is more likely to end in a job hire.
There are studies that show that identical resumes with male vs. female names at the top result in higher offered compensation for the male names.
There are studies that show that performance reports treat males more favorably than females. There are studies that show females are promoted at a lower rate than males.
There are studies that show that females are more likely to experience negative consequences when negotiating for higher wages.
We have ongoing lawsuits that demonstrate wage inequality. And this is despite the fear of retaliation (which currently happens to be the #1 EEOC complaint).
1) Assuming 0 gender gap wouldn't we expect a clustering of between 90%-110% with an average of 100%?
Its important to remember that statistically you cannot have 110% of anything (unless you make a computational mistake). So to an extent, there will be a ceiling effect. Even under completely ideal conditions, one would expect a negatively skewed distribution with a median of say 98% and mean 95%. This is not what we're seeing, so therefore, either discrimination is real, or there are additional factors that need to be accounted for.
2) What about those identical resume studies/performance report studies/etc.? These are examples of positive evidence. As these accrue the case for sexism (vs. other covariates) improves. That said, these tend to be experimental studies and are not measured within major corporations to see what direct effect they have on wages. We have positive evidence that they potentially have impact, but little to no evidence that they do "in the real world".
3) Lawsuits are not won or lost on the basis of scientific evidence alone. If one is interested in whether sexism is real or not, lawsuits do not provide any answer. (If one is interested in how sexism is perceived in the population however, they may be of interest.)
4) Might the covariates which explain the gender gap themselves be explained by gender. Yes, of course, which is why you use Path Analysis or SEM instead of simple Multiple Regression, as I explained to Tiax.
5) My personal views - sexism is real and explains a reasonable proportion of the gender gap. That said, scientifically, not all of our ducks are in a row. There are major holes in most studies, and many improvements to the way research in this area could be conducted. As such, I cannot say with full scientific confidence that sexism explains a reasonable proportion of the gender-pay gap. (compare this to the scientific consensus on climate change).
6) Related to 4 and 5) The mechanisms through which gender influences gender-pay are exceedingly poorly misunderstood. To what extent does gender explain choice of field? pay of respective fields? initial salary? salary over time? hours worked? time taken off? willingness to work "Bad jobs" either boring or inhumane or dangerous? The degree and the mechanisms through which gender acts on all of these avenues are at best hypothesized, which leads to the dilemma how to I tackle this problem? Do I tell women to forgo "societally-friendly" jobs like nursing and teaching to go into "unfriendly jobs" like hedge-fund manager, garbage collector, or soldier? Do I tell women to go into STEM or to forgo college entirely and become plumbers or electricians or welders? Without an understanding of not only whether but how gender influences the pay gap there is little actionable information.
7) Related to 6) Should corporations be ultimately held responsible for the gender-pay gap? Only if variance associated with the corporations proves to be meaningful. If resumes/interviewing/salary negotiation type variables prove to be the smoking gun, then corporations should be held to account. If choice of occupation/# of hours requested to work/% requests for part-time work prove to be meaningful variables, then society as a whole needs to reconsider the role of women, but I would consider the individual corporations to be off-the-hook.
The author of that article was right.
Jabba represents greed and gluttony, like most Hutts. He imposed his will on Leia by making her one of his slave girls for his pleasure. Leia, being the woman of action she is, kills him with the same chains he put her in.
What's the point of all this? Let's look at it from an extradiegetic perspective. George Lucas needed to make Jabba a threat, but also needed to make him disgusting and vile to us, so having him put Leia through that accomplished both things. Since GL is a great writer (but not necessarily a good director), he had Leia save herself so her character isn't damaged by being Jabba's slave girl.
It's not meant to be fanservice since she's clearly distressed and Jabba is slime. Just because she's showing more skin doesn't mean it's meant to be a male power fantasy (how can it be when the only thing Jabba gets from her is a heaping helping of death?).
Anyway, Ash, feminism is a good thing. What the internet purports as feminism is toxic, however. At its core, feminism is just "women should be equal to men," and that's okay. I mean, if someone has a problem with that core belief, then that person's kind of a bigot and should go lock themselves in a dark space. Internet and millennial "feminism" is, in a word, a joke and far too often degenerates into misandry.
Rambling aside, pulling Slave Leia from merchandising is also pulling away one of Leia's best moments and stems from 2 causes: 1) An overabundance of political correctness, 2) Disney's image as a family company.
Your mods are terrified of me.