The Left ... Need Some Thoughts ...
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There is a lack of precision to all of these issues.
Sweeping statements, generalisations, emotive pleas and perceptions.You can't solve these, or any, problems without the actual truthful, real data of what the current situation is.
Everybody has been lied to too much in life to blindly accept someone's perception
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I didn't compare them, you did. I just attempted to answer the question using evidence from my local situation to illustrate some points.
But, if we must have sources from 'western' contexts (btw, some would include Japan as an OECD country), I'll use a few studies from the 'West' (EU, USA, Canada, Aus, and NZ) to discuss some ongoing issues.
Firstly, there is a lack of good data. Many of the current claims are built on very small experimental studies or huge correlational studies - and teasing out the underlying factors relies on interpretation, so one may see it as choice while others may see it as discrimination (e.g., hours of unpaid work in the house).
Nevertheless, using doctors again, there remains an unobserved difference (i.e., after accounting for other factors using multivariate analysis) of about $19,000 between female and male doctors. Furthermore, as I've pointed out before using a great study of jockeys, women are (slightly, but significantly) undervalued.
For mothers, I think there is sufficient evidence to suggest that mothers are discriminated against beyond their actual abilities, experiences, etc. An older (e.g. 2007) experimental study demonstrated a 'Mommy' penalty and 'daddy' benefit, and that study is now being replicated in other contexts (e.g., Switzerland last year).
Interestingly, the motherhood penalty appears to be lower in the USA compared to other countries- but is this good news? The U.S. labor market consistently tends to most strongly reward continuous labor market attachment - which emphasizes taking off less time, and may lead less women to choose to get married and have babies - major causes of population problems in countries such as Japan.
Anyway, I know there are other factors, such as women turning down opportunities after having kids, which is a "penalty" that many mothers choose for various reasons, but it also seems clear that companies treat men and women differently. Women can erase the penalty by presenting themselves as a the breadwinner, but if where males present themselves as the caregivers, they continue to receive leadership training after specifying themselves as the caregiver, even though women don't.
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The situation for mothers is interesting, and there's no easy answer either. The structure of society when it comes to the roles of men and women is radically different these days to what it was even 50 years ago.
I think there are massive benefits to having children as early as possible. That way when women do start getting positions of responsibility in their 30s, time off to care for young children is not such an issue.
I don't think that's a great solution though, more a workaround to how thing work at the moment. Ideally, and I was rightfully called out on this in the NZ Pol thread with regards to Jacinda, a woman should not be punished for having children. There is a lot of variation to how companies deal with this - I imagine it would be very hard for a small business to cater for a staff member taking a full year off, whereas some of the larger corporations have really good policies in place to ensure the woman returns to the same role and even paying out lost earnings while on leave should they return and stay.
This is probably a point where I am on board with some of the lefts policies - more financial support for mothers, particularly young mothers - to ensure they are able to have a family with as little impact financially and career wise as possible.
I saw a story on the news recently, TBH I don't remember all the details, but basically a woman that was studying lost her student allowance after having a child which was just so wrong.
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My team is all female, and there have been 6 babies born over the last 4 years. That's meant at any one time we've always had at least one fixed term contractor providing parental leave cover. Often that has worked well as we've gotten people in for full-time cover. Whereas my permanent staff have returned to part-time hours initially, and often for a number of years. Basically having your entire team in flux over an extended period has been pretty challenging.
Then there's the balancing of that against people wanting to advance their careers... but you need time in the saddle to get that exp and develop further skills. That only gets more drawn out when you are talking about having multiple kids or needing to return to mahi .6 or less. Can be really tough when people are only in a couple of days a week too.
Note only one of those babies is mine!! and not to a team member - to my boss aka the wife!!
Note #2 I'm sure all of the above would be just as challenging if I had a team of dad's that were actively taking leave too. I took nearly 3 months and that required a lot of work to not leave things in the lurch.
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I recently met a female doctor who took a few years off from practicing to look after her kids. She's now back part time. So when compared to an equally qualified male doctor there will of course be a significant "gender pay gap". These kinds of decisions have to be taken into consideration when analysing this "problem". Unfortunately, the attitude is more often a case of "men earn more money on average, therefore we need to change this". That starting point is of course complete horseshit.
With regard to Japan, I don't think a single person here would deny that Japan is different to the other countries we would regard as the "West" in terms of culture and the treatment of women.
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@gt12
Great post thanks for taking the time.So far we have no evidence to the claim (that all of us have heard ad nausium) of widespread disparity of pay based on being a female in the west. 75cents to the dollar is an often used headline.
Or have I got that wrong?
Motherhood creates issues and we need more work here, there's never been a denial of that challenge.
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No Quarter said:
The situation for mothers is interesting, and there's no easy answer either. The structure of society when it comes to the roles of men and women is radically different these days to what it was even 50 years ago.
I think there are massive benefits to having children as early as possible. That way when women do start getting positions of responsibility in their 30s, time off to care for young children is not such an issue.
I don't think that's a great solution though, more a workaround to how thing work at the moment. Ideally, and I was rightfully called out on this in the NZ Pol thread with regards to Jacinda, a woman should not be punished for having children. There is a lot of variation to how companies deal with this - I imagine it would be very hard for a small business to cater for a staff member taking a full year off, whereas some of the larger corporations have really good policies in place to ensure the woman returns to the same role and even paying out lost earnings while on leave should they return and stay.
This is probably a point where I am on board with some of the lefts policies - more financial support for mothers, particularly young mothers - to ensure they are able to have a family with as little impact financially and career wise as possible.
I saw a story on the news recently, TBH I don't remember all the details, but basically a woman that was studying lost her student allowance after having a child which was just so wrong.
In the end it's all about sacrifice. As I see it, men are more willing to sacrifice their free time and time spent with their family for their careers and/or cash. To their credit, not nearly as many women are like that and will therefore not make those kinds of sacrifices. That will of course be reflected in how much the respective sexes earn.
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Siam said:
Motherhood creates issues and we need more work here, there's never been a denial of that challenge.
Not convinced that's a place for bureaucrats to inject themselves in. If a company values the employee, they'll make considerable concessions to keep them. For mothers that are thrown on the employment scrapheap, unfortunately that's a function of your comparative market power in an economy not constrained by full employment.
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The 75% claim is often true - in that females tend to earn about 3/4 of what males do across the economy. See here, and here for two examples found in 5 seconds without even going to google scholar and looking at research studies.
However, what causes that? I don't agree with the 75% claim being due only to sexism (nobody should), but I also do not think that any studies can point to it being only due to women's choices - hence I pointed you towards the Doctors study above. Studies have unexplained variance (i.e., after controlling for all factors such as experience, education, time off etc.) For that reason, I added the doctor study, which did a pretty good job of 'controlling' for the main factors (years of work, hours, same job title, ranking, output, etc). That's what the multivariate analyses do - the original difference between doctors in that study was about $50,000 - but $20,000 of that isn't accounted for using the metrics that most 'what gender gap' people would argue..
So, what causes that unexplained variance?
Firstly, the explained variance. Without using outside sources (apologies, but you can find most of this yourself and I don't think there is a much debate about this), there is a lot of evidence to suggest that women's choices account for the greatest amount of variance (choice of career, time off for babies etc). There are also personality factors (women are more agreeable, so less likely to push for a raise).
However, there is a debate about why women make those choices (i.e., the underlying reasons that inform those observable phenomena), so where some people simply see it as rational based on choice (she chose kids, so too bad for her that she gets paid less; she worked less), others see it in a social context (women are often pressured by their husbands or families to leave work based on outdated stereotypes about gender roles that no longer should apply, such as in the past men would work, women would stay home, but if both work full time, why should women only be required to take leave? And, why do women continue to do most of the unpaid work (cooking, cleaning, childcare) while men aren't out protecting the household, but are watching the footy?
Beyond that, there is also the unobserved variance in studies, which can be as low as accounting for the 5% of the difference between genders, but also higher, and again there is debate about how much of that can be attributed to discrimination (hence me providing the experimental study to highlight that mothers get about 3% penalty and fathers a 3% benefit). Studies also show that these things act in a compound manner (like saving your interest on bank account), so a small advantage in the early years becomes a huge one later (the same as putting $1000 in your kids bank account, and never touching it, with compounding 5% interest, it'll double in about 14 years then double that after another 14 etc etc).
So, I think it's a complex topic that should be discussed accordingly - what I am sure of is that, although we are close to gender opportunity equality in the 12% of the world that accounts for the 'west', there are still some underlying cultural factors that haven't been addressed, some of them industry dependent (I'm looking at you my sleazy lawyer friends), and they are important ones to me, such as how household duties are divided between couples.
Beyond that 12% of the world, it's much easier to see a bigger influence of discrimination, but it's an important matter everywhere, because women aren't stupid - they'll just stop getting married (which is what is happening in Japan) as men can't show their value in modern, tertiary societies.
Getting purely to my opinion now, I also think that there remains an attitude that women can do anything they want, so it's no longer a problem. However, I think that also prevents us from examining whether we, as men, actually provide value to our relationships, and do actually act as partners. I personally know plenty of guys who expect their wives to work, and also to take care of all the household duties. He dries the dishes and thinks he's contributing his share. Such attitudes should be examined IMO, because I think we can have healthier and longer relationships when we are actually sharing duties more effectively. And, on that note, I'm off to feed the baby
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As a side note I have a policy never to hire a anyone who I suspect is going to take 12 months paternity or maternity. I am not going to waste time and money on it. The govt has made it such a laborious hassle.. it is easier just to hire people who you know are not going to be pain.
I know from a fact I am not alone on that policy, and it must really suck for career females in their 20's and 30's. -
It's complex alright, looking at that multi-variant analysis on the doctors you can see there are still variables not being controlled for such as hours worked, availability, time out of the workforce.
Adjustment for faculty rank, age, years since residency, specialty, NIH funding, clinical trial participation, publication count (total as well as first- or last-authored articles), total Medicare payments, and graduation from a medical school ranked among the top 20
The amount of variables are immense and very hard to control for.
The bottom line however does not change. It is absolutely immoral to intentionally pay someone more or less based upon their genitalia. Unfortunately the consequence of this needed 'correction' to the gender imbalance is to do just that. Treating perceived discrimination with actual discrimination.
My company actively does this. They want to address their 'perceived' pay disparity. So they run female only recruitment drives, they put in place policies where 50% of shortlisted applicants for a position must be female otherwise the job is re-advertised (its a tech company). I know of one particular employment situation where two receptionists were hired at the same time, the male although having more experience and more qualifications was offered a salary $5,000.00 less than the female. I don't know for certain why, but in a company that is doing everything it can for 'gender equality' you can't help but feel it's penis related.
It is a complex area but the 'solutions' pushed by corporate's and government seem to be based on the simplistic apparently accepted 'gender paygap' belief which is at best extremely flawed.
gt12 said:
I personally know plenty of guys who expect their wives to work, and also to take care of all the household duties. He dries the dishes and thinks he's contributing his share. Such attitudes should be examined IMO, because I think we can have healthier and longer relationships when we are actually sharing duties more effectively.
I'm curious about this. I've had similar arguments with others that have gone down this route about expectations in the home, always seems to be a notion that 'other' couples have this issue and that something needs to be done about it. I always wonder why something needs to be done and what that should be specifically?
I don't like the idea of anyone else being responsible for a personal relationship than the participants themselves..anything else seems pretty frightening.
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Baron Silas Greenback said:
As a side note I have a policy never to hire a anyone who I suspect is going to take 12 months paternity or maternity. I am not going to waste time and money on it. The govt has made it such a laborious hassle.. it is easier just to hire people who you know are not going to be pain.
I know from a fact I am not alone on that policy, and it must really suck for career females in their 20's and 30's.Can you elaborate on what the laborious hassle is? I'm not a business owner and have no idea how this works.
Is there anything that you can think of that could resolve this without introducing additional discrimination?
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@rembrandt depending on the timing and role you will likely need to find a fixed term replacement or distribute the work to other staff, without disestablishing the role. Finding people takes time, they will prob need training and while the person providing cover may have potential you are training them to ultimately be replaced. Then there are the variables about when someone takes the leave, how close to their due date etc. Mix in health, family and the rest and it's a heady mix on many fronts. All part of life etc but it's not just swap in and out.
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Rancid Schnitzel said:
No Quarter said:
The situation for mothers is interesting, and there's no easy answer either. The structure of society when it comes to the roles of men and women is radically different these days to what it was even 50 years ago.
I think there are massive benefits to having children as early as possible. That way when women do start getting positions of responsibility in their 30s, time off to care for young children is not such an issue.
I don't think that's a great solution though, more a workaround to how thing work at the moment. Ideally, and I was rightfully called out on this in the NZ Pol thread with regards to Jacinda, a woman should not be punished for having children. There is a lot of variation to how companies deal with this - I imagine it would be very hard for a small business to cater for a staff member taking a full year off, whereas some of the larger corporations have really good policies in place to ensure the woman returns to the same role and even paying out lost earnings while on leave should they return and stay.
This is probably a point where I am on board with some of the lefts policies - more financial support for mothers, particularly young mothers - to ensure they are able to have a family with as little impact financially and career wise as possible.
I saw a story on the news recently, TBH I don't remember all the details, but basically a woman that was studying lost her student allowance after having a child which was just so wrong.
In the end it's all about sacrifice. As I see it, men are more willing to sacrifice their free time and time spent with their family for their careers and/or cash. To their credit, not nearly as many women are like that and will therefore not make those kinds of sacrifices. That will of course be reflected in how much the respective sexes earn.
Yeah, for sure. The drive for many women to spend time with their kids instead of working is biological. Now my boy is at school and has made friends we've gotten to know some of the parents - nearly all of the other mums are either part-time or not working, choosing to stay at home. They do this because they can afford too - they and their husbands are/were both high earners so the drive for money pales in comparison to time with their children.
I've seen studies that show the gender pay gap nearly disappears among low earning households (will have to look it up when I have time). Rich people contribute a lot to the pay gap as women who would be earning a lot just stop working altogether in their 30s, whereas in poorer households the woman cannot afford to take the time off.
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Paekakboyz said:
@rembrandt depending on the timing and role you will likely need to find a fixed term replacement or distribute the work to other staff, without disestablishing the role. Finding people takes time, they will prob need training and while the person providing cover may have potential you are training them to ultimately be replaced. Then there are the variables about when someone takes the leave, how close to their due date etc. Mix in health, family and the rest and it's a heady mix on many fronts. All part of life etc but it's not just swap in and out.
Cheers for that.
What is the government involvement in the process?
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Good on you for being upfront about it. I agree that it should be as painless as possible (plus I'd add tax benefits or something too) to encourage companies (especially small ones) to deal with the hassle. I saw similar issues with my Mum after the employment law was changed and it became harder to hire part-timers - she just stopped doing it - and closed her shop occasionally instead.
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@rembrandt my understanding is the role gets held open for a max of 12 months unless both parties agree to something different. Your role could still get disestablished as part of a bau restructure. But you'd have the same rights as any employee. Returning to work also sees both parties negotiating, at least in my experience. Where someone might not come back fulltime etc
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Another thought on this is that all of the pay gap stuff ignores the family unit. Women actually account for a far larger percentage of spending than men, despite earning less. You'd have a very hard time convincing me that my sons friends mum's are in any way oppressed given the lavish lifestyles they are living.
As I've gotten older I've come to realise how insanely powerful a strong family unit is. There really is no need for any government assistance if you have two people working in partnership with each other to earn enough money while raising a family.
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Good to see some open discussion here.
I'm quite large on being a non believer of the gender pay gap. That doesn't mean that I physically don't believe men get paid more than woman - stats are stats; it means that I don't believe that a woman gets paid less to do the same job as a man.
Every industry sector is different, but the truth of the matter is that generally there are more possibilities available to men, primarily because men push harder for them. I can't speak for all men, and don't profess to, but it's fair to say that a higher percentage of woman value work-life balance over men. And they are prepared to make sacrifices for this.
Whoever takes maternity or paternity leave is going to naturally put themselves at a disadvantage against their peers, because they simply aren't there. People pay up for experience, promote experience, and have more opportunity to see how people with more experience cope in the edge cases of working life. If your job is a photo copier, you don't get rewarded for photocopying. You get rewarded for how you handle it when the photocopier is out of toner, the supplier is not contactable, the phones go down, the power goes off, and smoke come out the back of the thing, when you have a deadline to hit, which can't be missed.
Fixing and sorting this, may take extra time. Time, which perhaps, working parents don't have. If you have the time and commit to fixing it, as opposed to leaving to do the school run, is it fair that you are rewarded for this? Or is it unfair that you are rewarded for this, as your colleague had to leave to commit to other responsibilities?
It used to be the former, where at year end when you got promoted, your colleague would say "congratulations, well done, I don't have the time I used to anymore, and I really appreciated you fixing those issues when I had to get my children from school". But now, it's "thats not fucking fair, I'm being discriminated against because I have children, I'm going to the media, fuck you, you'll pay, you'll fucking pay for this".
You can see why BSG is unlikely to be alone in his approach.
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MajorRage said:
Every industry sector is different, but the truth of the matter is that generally there are more possibilities available to men, primarily because men push harder for them.
Men have access to a wider range of opportunities just through physical strength/endurance. Women are at such a disadvantage in the skilled trades (and the career pathways that follow) from a strictly biological perspective.
Many of those occupations contribute to the 9:1 workplace death rate that men experience - surely warranting some premium.