Senate Republicans Block Equity Pay Measure

8 Responses to Senate Republicans Block Equity Pay Measure

1. Chris says:

   Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at 12:08 pm

   It’s not much of a race when one side is running backwards.

   How you can look at a sentence that says “Senate Republicans have succeeded in blocking a measure designed to reduce wage disparities between men and women” and think of it as a victory is a complete mystery to me.

   Reply
2. Post Scripts says:

   Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at 12:32 pm

   Chris, there is still a law on the books about pay discrimination, so nobody lost anything. What it’s done is keep the burden of proof where it belongs. I take offense to laws that make you prove your own innocense as opposed to the state bearing the burden of proving your guilt. The assumption of innocense is the cornerstone of crimimal law. Businesses are trying to get restarted and they don’t need anything that will clog up their ability to make a comeback. Obama’s law was ill conceived, but it sounded good. In practice it was a bad law.

   Reply
3. Tina says:

   Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at 3:01 pm

   Chris: “How you can look at a sentence that says “Senate Republicans have succeeded in blocking a measure designed to reduce wage disparities between men and women” and think of it as a victory is a complete mystery to me.”

   I’m not surprised it’s a “mystery” to you. This was a feminist bill based on the feminist belief that any “disparity” must mean “discrimination”.

   I can think of it as a victory because I don’t agree with the premise that woemn are suffering under wage discrimination.

   The following article excerpt points out the many flaws in thinking that drive people to think this law is necessary (follow the link to read in full):

   http://blogs.payscale.com/ask_dr_salary/2007/04/men_vs_women_sa.html

   Gender discrimination may be a factor in why the jobs that pay better have a higher fraction of men, and the jobs that pay lower wages have more women. However, there are many reasons besides gender discrimination why women may choose, rather than be forced into, the lower median salary jobs. These reasons are often not only legitimate, but can be wise.
   As reported by money.cnn.com, Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap and What Women Can Do About It, believes this is a case of comparable pay versus equal pay, or apples and oranges. He says men are more likely to make life-decisions that will lead to a higher annual salary. He says males are more apt (than women) to relocate or travel for work, take on more dangerous jobs (over 90 percent of workplace deaths are reportedly men), work in the difficult (read boring) sciences, seek jobs that require financial risk and work jobs in unpleasant environments.
   In contrast, he says, “women commonly prefer jobs with shorter and more flexible hours to accommodate the demands of family. Compared to men, [the majority of] women generally favor jobs that involve little danger, no travel and good social skills. Such jobs generally pay less. For women who earn over $100,000 per year, Farrell says they are more likely [than men at the same pay] to give up a portion of pay to spend more time with their families.
   In some careers, Farrell says women actually earn more than their male counterparts do, and he’s not just talking about the field of modeling. According to Farrell, the median salaries of women exceeded that of men’s by at least 5 percent, and in some careers, up to 43 percent in 39 occupations. Some of the 39 professions include: sales engineers, statisticians, legislators, transportation workers, automotive service technicians and mechanics, speech-language pathologists and library assistants.
   While the 77% number is not all overt sexism, gender discrimination may still be part of the story. A Cornell study found that mothers with kids are less likely to be hired, and, even if they are, the moms are paid a lower annual salary than males and females without kids. A Carnegie Mellon study found that female job applicants were less likely to be hired by male managers, if they tried to negotiate a higher salary, unlike men. Some years ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that female scientists were paid less than men are.
   What about right after men and women graduate college? Those men and women should be the least likely to show a pay gap, as typically they are not yet parents. According to a recent study by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation (mentioned on pamshouseblend.com), there is a pay scale difference between men and women out of college. One year out of college, women who are working full-time are earning 80 percent of what men earn. The study also says that, ten years after graduation, women were earning 69 percent as much as men.
   Like the 77 cents on the dollar number, this study was based on median income from all jobs. There is a logical reason behind some of the disparity. According to CNN.money.com, the gender gap in wage earning study said, Female students tended to study areas with lower pay, such as education, health and psychology, while male students dominated higher-paying fields such as engineering, mathematics and physical sciences.
   We see in the PayScale data exactly the same trends. In our database, the salaried jobs most popular with women are substantially less well paid that the salaried jobs most popular than men.

   Still, one year after graduation, the AAUW study says that the gender gap in wage earning also occurred between females and males who had the same major. The study says that women earned 95 percent as much as men earned in the field of education. In math positions, women earned 76 percent as much as men earn.
   However, the same major still is not apples to apples. For example, female math majors are more likely to go into education (poorly paid) than male math majors are.
   The AAUW study did make one definitive statement about gender discrimination one year out of college:
   “[…A]fter controlling for all the factors known to affect earnings, college-educated women earn about 5 percent less than college-educated men earn. Thus, while discrimination cannot be measured directly, it is reasonable to assume that this pay gap is the product of gender discrimination.”
   Whether this 5% difference is really gender discrimination by employers, or still some other residual difference that was not measured, is not so definitively proven. As someone who spends all day trying to construct questions to figure out why employees’ pay varies so much, I know it is hard to “control” for all the factors influencing pay. The AAUW study controlled for the factors they had measured.

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4. Libby says:

   Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at 8:47 pm

   “How you can look at a sentence that says “Senate Republicans have succeeded in blocking a measure designed to reduce wage disparities between men and women” and think of it as a victory is a complete mystery to me.”

   Oh, you haven’t been hanging here around anywhere near long enough to have become familiar with Tina’s Neanderthal view of marital relations.

   He may throttle you and diddle the children, but a husband is a husband … and if you will not keep the husband, you can starve.

   Which, you know, sort of beggars the whole question of wage equity.

   So enlightened. I’ve often said so.

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5. Tina says:

   Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at 9:34 pm

   Libby: “Oh, you haven’t been hanging here around anywhere near long enough to have become familiar with Tina’s Neanderthal view of marital relations. ** He may throttle you and diddle the children, but a husband is a husband … and if you will not keep the husband, you can starve.”

   Thank you Libby for making the 60’s feminist disfunctional hatred of men so vividly obvious. Notrhing I have ever said would suggest I advocate, or endure, any of the above.

   How a bunch of 60’s dames can pass themselves off as victims on the one hand while claiming to be strong and superior…”fierce and in your face”…in the next is beyond me. Only a helplessly weak and insecure woman feels the need to form and join a gang to intimidate her way to success and prominance. And only a dysfunctional woman would both choose and then stay with a man like you describe. Feminists took that image, made neanderthal “him” the enemy and swore to henceforth make all men pay.

   In truth for the many, many women, post 60’s feminist era, the reality today is that they still have relationships with men like that and more often than not have traded having a real husband (of their own choosing) for a big bureuacratic, impersonal government provider. They are still dependent only now they are also hoplessly locked into permanent poverty and victimhood. what’s more, they manage to give birth to more than a few children who then grow up fatherless and follow in the footsteps of mom if they don’t end up in jail or on drugs or both.

   And that, dear heart, is the unacknowledged but extremely relevant legacy fo the feminists hatred and disdain for men.

   You are among those who decide men were all chauvinist pigs. Look in the mirror!

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6. Pie Guevara says:

   Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 1:24 am

   Hi Libby!

   Horrid Neanderthals:

   http://tinyurl.com/HorridNeanderthals

   Reply
7. Pie Guevara says:

   Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 1:35 am

   Hi Libby!

   More Horrid Neanderthals:

   http://www.savelascaux.org/

   Reply
8. Pie Guevara says:

   Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 1:44 am

   Hi Libby!

   I feel the love. I feel your pain.

   “Why Left-Wing Women Hate Women on the Right”

   http://tinyurl.com/27nbhzv

   Reply