courtney@hp-pcd.UUCP (09/15/83)
#N:hp-pcd:19100013:000:114 hp-pcd!courtney Sep 14 12:45:00 1983 A national average... Women make 59 Cents to every dollar made by a man for the same work! courtney loomis
mjs@rabbit.UUCP (09/19/83)
If you must quote statistics, please cite sources and dates. It isn't
that I don't believe your statistic, but it would carry more (or less)
weight depending on the source.
--
Marty Shannon
UUCP: {alice,rabbit,research}!mjs
Phone: 201-582-3199cng@burdvax.UUCP (09/19/83)
You should check that statistic again. I believe it says that on the AVERAGE of ALL workers, women earn 59% as much as men. It has nothing to say about men and women doing the same work. Tom Albrecht
charlie@cca.UUCP (Charlie Kaufman) (09/21/83)
Recent posting:
A national average: women earn 59 cents for every dollar
men earn for the same work.
Do people believe this? Do you believe that greedy old big business
could cut their labor costs by 41% by replacing all their men with
women, but that their greed is overcome by an altruistic love of mankind
(read *man*kind)?
Fat chance.
The wage differential is caused by differences in levels of training and
experience; the remedies are improved education and training... and
time.
--Charlie Kaufman
charlie@cca
...decvax!cca!charliebch@unc.UUCP (Byron Howes ) (09/21/83)
>>>The wage differential is caused by differences in levels of training and >>>experience; the remedies are improved education and training... and >>>time. Horse Puckey! I am 39 years old. In 1962 I heard people saying the same thing about blacks. Let's face it: People who do the same work deserve the same wage, irrespective of experience, education or what- ever. I'd demand it on the job and so would you. Anything else is the worst kind of "benevolent" sexism. Byron Howes UNC - Chapel Hill
jim@ism780.UUCP (Jim Balter) (09/21/83)
1) There are women with the proper skills available to take all of the jobs of men. 2) Reducing salaries by x% reduces labor costs by x%. 3) Business people always make rational decisions. 4) There is no cost in replacing one worker with another. 5) Two people (in particular one man and one woman) who do comparable work are necessarily perceived as doing comparable work by employers. These are just some of the false assumptions made by Charlie Kaufman in his statement: Do you believe that greedy old big business could cut their labor costs by 41% by replacing all their men with women, but that their greed is overcome by an altruistic love of mankind? Jim Balter (decvax!yale-co!ima!jim), Interactive Systems Corp --------
cjh@csin.UUCP (Chip Hitchcock) (09/21/83)
This figure has been around for a while, but the NATIONAL N.O.W. TIMES
claims it is still accurate. In rebuttal to Charlie Kaufman's remarks I will
note the following:
1. In large organizations (the study I was involved with looked at the Dept.
of Defense) it is common for women to be slotted into career tracks. Jumping
tracks is difficult and generally results in a drop of several grades.
2. It is a common complaint (frequently backed up with evidence that depends
significantly on interpretation) that available work in many areas is divided
into "men's work" and "women's work", and that comparison of jobs in these
categories that require similar skills/effort/experience/responsibility shows
the "women's work" being recompensed at a much lower level. Shifting between
these categories is even harder than in (1).
3. There is still a tendency to pay women significantly less than men for
work under the same title. Laws about this vary from strong (e.g. Mass. and
Penna. ERA's) to nonexistent (more frequent). Why don't such companies shift
entirely to female workers? Sheer inertia. (The free market became a
nonsensical fiction many decades ago; one of the things that killed it was the
increasing number of dinosauroid companies that couldn't move with anything
like the quickness Adam Smith describes and so settled for stability instead.)
Workforce turnover can cause all sorts of problems. To be fair, union contracts
in many situations make such turnover difficult.
So pay differentials reflect job distribution as well as simple unfairness.
So? Are the job distributions fair? Generally not. . . .
CHip
(Chip Hitchcock)
ARPA: CJH@CCA-UNIX
usenet: ...{!decvax,!linus,!sri-unix}!cca!csin!cjhsmb@achilles.UUCP (09/21/83)
Byron is right; the differences are quite real (although I believe the original submitter stated the conditions incorrectly; see below). For example, the Labor Department compared salaries for male and female scientists, controlling for differences in education, experience, etc. The result: on the average, women earned about 80% of what their male colleagues with *similar backgrounds* earned. I saw this written up in Science News about 4 years ago; I can probably dig up the exact citation if necessary. As for the exact figures: my recollection is that the $.59 number is an average for all women, as compared with all men, and hence does not take into account education and experience. It also does not take into account the sexual differentiation of the job market -- it can be hard to compare women and men in the same job categories, because most jobs are predominatly female or predominantly male. (A new goal of the feminist movement is "equal pay for equal value", which is an attempt to equalize wages among different job categories that are nevertheless equally valuable to the employer.) But -- as I mentioned above -- when all these factors are controlled for, women still earn far less than men. And on the average -- a female college graduate earns less than a male high school dropout.... --Steve Bellovin
steven@qubix.UUCP (Steven Maurer) (09/22/83)
>> Let's face it: People who do the same work >> deserve the same wage, irrespective of experience, education or what- >> ever. I'd demand it on the job and so would you. Anything else is >> the worst kind of "benevolent" sexism. You do not seem to understand what the original author was saying. Let me try to simplify it for you: To earn higher wages you must be at a higher level of authority within the company at which you work. To rise to that level, you must have one (or more) of these attributes that your company is interested in: 1] Experience 2] Education 3] Intelligence (2 & 3 are not always associated) 4] Enthusiasm 5] Qualifying Skills (not to be confused with 1, 2, or 3) 6] Luck People at higher levels of authority might occasionally do the same work that people at lower levels do, but they are usually expected to do a better job and/or will take more heat if they blow it. Steven Maurer p.s. I once read in a Socialogical report that said this: The reason why women get disparate wages compared to men is that most women enter the job market after they have taken time off for child rearing. This puts them at a disadvantage. I am not sure I believe that report, but it may be true. Any comments?
heretyk@abnjh.UUCP (S. Heretyk) (09/22/83)
In "Games Mother Never Taught You" the author Betty Lehan Harragan
states that "on a national average women are paid half men's salaries.
In specific categories such has college graduates, or professional
and technical specialty jobs, women get two-thirds of what men get
in their paychecks." Furthermore she writes:
"Never underestimate the underpayment of women by the 'nicest'
corporations."
Harragan states "If you haven't asked for raises but merely accepted
whatever was offered, your increases have been minimal compared to
men who've been playing the game all along."
Shelley Heretykrenner@uiucdcs.UUCP (09/23/83)
#R:cca:-574200:uiucdcs:31600022:000:516
uiucdcs!renner Sep 22 19:58:00 1983
"People who do the same work, deserve the same wage..." Quite.
But are we talking about the same work? The 59% figure (or whatever
it is this week) is a nationwide average, is it not? I think that when
women in fact do the same work, their income will be much closer to
that of males. Meanwhile...
"The wage differential is caused by differences in levels of training
and experience; the remedies are improved education and training...
and time."
Scott Renner
...!pur-ee!uiucdcs!rennereich@uiuccsb.UUCP (09/23/83)
#R:cca:-574200:uiuccsb:12700006:000:650 uiuccsb!eich Sep 22 18:38:00 1983 But under the 1965 Civil Rights Act as amended, women have a legal right to equal pay for the same job (note same job rather than "equal work"). The lumpen-statistics show only the differences owing to the low female union membership, training/education differences (for various reasons), a turnover rate 10-12 times higher than the male rate, etc. These figures provide no ground for concluding that active discrimination, especially by one employer paying a man more than a woman for the same job, is the cause. That may indeed be a factor, but it must be demonstrated by more specific evidence (perhaps suits filed under the current statutes?)
charlie@cca.UUCP (Charlie Kaufman) (09/24/83)
>> The statistic is very clear. On average, women doing the same >> work as men earn $0.59 for every $1.00 men earn. This is not >> "essentially similar" work, but the *same* work, by proportion >> of time spent at various tasks. If you don't believe the >> statistic, then you are probably as shocked about it as I was >> when I first heard it. It is, however, a valid statistic. >> >> There are whole bunches of people in his world who do the same >> work. Salespersons, clerks, garbage collectors, even >> programmers. I guess I just don't believe it. I'm not questioning whether you heard it somewhere. I'm questioning the techniques used by the statistics gatherers. I see two problems in gathering such statistics accurately: 1) There are considerable variations in the type and quality of work done by salespersons, clerks, garbage collectors, programmers, and widget frobbers. Further, there are intangibles in job performance, such as whether the employee adds to or detracts from the morale of the workplace, which are difficult for a good manager to detect, much less a statistician. By choosing how to observe or fail to observe these variables, "good" statisticians could cook the results to reflect their biases. I do not know how one would begin to collect "unbiased" statistics. 2) If a company had a policy of separate salary structures for the same job for men and women, they would be in violation of federal law. That is not to say that would stop them, but very likely they would be prudent enough to try to hide the discrimination from nosy statistics gatherers by creating separate job titles and parallel career paths for essentially the same job. I claim that no statistician could break through such subterfuge *on a national basis* without also ignoring differences in jobs which are of true economic significance. In a recent posting, which included statistics by "profession", the largest discrepancies were: computer specialists (20% women) $.72 for a man's $1 insurance, real estate, stock agents & brokers (26% women) $.49 for a man's $1 retail trade, self employed (22%) $.50 for a man's $1 The range of jobs I have personally observed under the title "computer specialists" is staggering - ranging from key punch operators (almost entirely women) to VP/Data Processing (almost entirely men). The "self-employed" category defies explanation by charging discrimination by employers, and the second category, which usually operates on a commission basis, has similar problems. I do not doubt that discrimination against women exists. Indeed, I have seen direct evidence of it: in my experience, the women I have worked with have, on average, been more competent at their jobs than the men I have worked with; i.e. they seem to be less likely to be promoted to their level of incompetence. My experience may not be typical, my judgement may be biased, and my sample is small, but it is enough to convince me. What I question is the mechanism and the effects of that discrimination. I don't know anyone who would pay a 69% salary premium to hire a man for a given position if he or she believed a woman could do as good a job. While I don't doubt such people exist, I don't believe companies that employed many of them could stay in business in even a slightly competitive market place. Yet the 59% statistic implies that the 69% salary premium is the *average* over all of business. I find it easier to believe that the problem is a matter of women employed in jobs beneath their level of competence. This is the problem to attack. It results not in a transfer of wealth from women to men, as salary discrimination would, but in loss of the wealth that could be generated if people were "fully employed". --Charlie Kaufman charlie@cca ...decvax!cca!charlie
courtney@hp-pcd.UUCP (09/27/83)
#R:cca:-575700:hp-pcd:19100017:000:498 hp-pcd!courtney Sep 26 09:11:00 1983 In point "1)", Charlie seems to be saying that the statistician doesn't see the "intangibles in job performance" such as the "type and quality of work" or "whether the employee adds or detracts from the morale of the workplace". In implying that the statistician is not seeing these things when exposing a "59 Cents" wage discrimination, Charlie is saying that men are doing all of these "intangibles" better than women, hence justifying the wage differential. And I say to that: HOGWASH! c.l.