Wage gap myth again

[bachelor tom]

This was reported on all the Toronto TV stations this morning:

Women Still Making A Lot Less Than Men In The Workplace: Study
Monday April 23, 2007

It's an American study but it certainly has resonance in Canada.

And if you're a working woman, it may confirm something you've long believed.

A group with the unwieldy title of the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation has discovered that females in the work force are still making significantly less than their male counterparts.

And it doesn't seem to matter what their education or experience levels are.

The study found that a year after graduating from college, the average woman was making only 80 percent of the salary of a man with similar qualifications.

And things get worse as the years go by.

By the time a woman has been out in the working world for a decade, she's  earning only 69 percent of what a guy brings home.

Researchers tried to factor in all kinds of explanations for their troubling data, including hours worked, family needs, differing types of occupations, motherhood and more.

They also looked at education, but discovered that on average, women do better in key subjects like math and science.

But men who go to what are considered to be lesser colleges still make more or the same as women who graduate with degrees from prestige name schools.

The conclusion: the findings can only be the result of what the study authors term "sex discrimination".

The group claims a lot of it stems from what employers believe a woman will do once she joins a company.

"Part of the wage difference is a result of people's choices, another part is employer's assumptions of what people's choices will be," suggests the Foundation's Catherine Hill.

"Employers assume that young women are going to leave the work force when they have children, and, therefore, don't promote them."

The study doesn't suggest how to end the problem, but researchers hope knowing that it's there will go a long way towards making employers more aware of it, and putting 'gender' on their agenda when it comes to erasing the gap.

http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_10100.aspx

Same old crap as far as I can tell

[Mr. Bad]

Ah yes, the American Association of University Women, the same group that gave us that steaming pile of horse manure "Shortchanging Girls..."   These women are some of the most untrustworthy, brazen liars in history.  Only the verifiably insane would believe what those people write.

[dr e]

Mr Bad is totally correct.  The AAUW is one of the most notorius spreaders of falsehoods I have ever seen.  They are totally ideologically driven.  I took the time (like a dope) to download their "study" and had a very quick look.  They claim to have used regression analysis to factor in various mitigating factors with the wage gap but conclude that women still earn 77 cents on a dollar?  That's the headline anyway.  Well, read their report and you get a very different story.  The report says at the bottom of page 40 of a 45 page paper buried in the methodology section:

Summary

Overall, the regression analysis of earnings one year after graduation suggests that a 5 percent pay gap between women and men remains after accounting for all variables known to affect earnings. Women who choose male-dominated occupations appear to earn more than do other women. Undergraduate majors in business and management, engineering, health professions, or public affairs and social services enhance both women’s and men’s earnings.

They go on to say that 10 years later the gap increases to 12% etc etc.  But tell me, why didn't their headline read:

Pay Gap almost Non-Existent for Young Women!

This is their own conclusion from their own study and yet they mouth the age old story about women being discriminated against?  This is really, really underhanded. 

They are supposed to testify on Capitol Hill.  I sure hope someone will be there to ask the right questions.  It took me 10 minutes.  I can't believe a staffer on the hill couldn't do the same thing.  I would bet that it will look just like the hearings for the reauth of VAWA.  No opposition testimony was allowed.  We had 10 people who were experts, authors, professors, lawyers, clinicians and they simply looked the other way and put together a north korean style dog and pony show.  The wage gap crap will likely be no different.  The bigots on the hill probably funnel money to these folks and then "select" them to testify.  This is far from government by and of the people.

[Mr. Bad]

They are supposed to testify on Capitol Hill.  I sure hope someone will be there to ask the right questions.  It took me 10 minutes.  I can't believe a staffer on the hill couldn't do the same thing.  I would bet that it will look just like the hearings for the reauth of VAWA.  No opposition testimony was allowed.  We had 10 people who were experts, authors, professors, lawyers, clinicians and they simply looked the other way and put together a north korean style dog and pony show.  The wage gap crap will likely be no different.  The bigots on the hill probably funnel money to these folks and then "select" them to testify.  This is far from government by and of the people.

Hey E., when and to whom are the AAUW scheduled to testify?  I have a bit of knowledge in statistics, the scientific method, etc., so I'm interested in contacting committee members to see if I can get some time with them.  Any background you can provide can only help with this effort.

I for one won't continue to allow those charlatans to monopolize the debate.

[Men's Rights Activist]

Connecting some more of the dots on this one...

Consider the source.  Man on man, do I have suspicions of what appears to be advocacy research, coming from the aauw - AGAIN!

http://www.amazon.com/WAR-AGAINST-BOYS-Misguided-Feminism/dp/product-description/0684849577

And from Christina Hoff Sommers, The War Against Boys, Chapter One

In 1990, Carol Gilligan announced to the world that America's adolescent girls were in crisis. In her words, "As the river of a girl's life flows into the sea of Western culture, she is in danger of drowning or disappearing." Gilligan offered little in the way of conventional evidence to support this alarming finding. Indeed, it is hard to imagine what sort of empirical research could establish so large a claim. But Gilligan quickly attracted powerful allies.

and

Gilligan's ideas had special resonance in women's groups already committed to the proposition that our society is unsympathetic to women. Such organizations were naturally receptive to bad news about girls. The interest of the venerable and politically influential American Association of University Women (AAUW), in particular, was piqued. Officers at the AAUW were reported to be "intrigued and alarmed" by Gilligan's findings. "Wanting to know more," they commissioned a polling firm to study whether American schoolgirls were being drained of their self-confidence.

In 1991, the AAUW announced the disturbing results: "Most [girls] emerge from adolescence with a poor self-image." Anne Bryant, then executive director of the AAUW and an expert in public relations, organized a media campaign to spread the word that "an unacknowledged American tragedy" had been uncovered. Newspapers and magazines around the country carried the bleak tidings that girls were being adversely affected by gender bias that eroded their self-esteem. Susan Schuster, at the time president of the AAUW, candidly explained to The New York Times why the AAUW had undertaken the research in the first place: "We wanted to put some factual data behind our belief that girls are getting shortchanged in the classroom."

At the time the AAUW's self-esteem results were making headlines, a little-known journal called Science News, which has been supplying information on scientific and technical developments to interested newspapers since 1922, quoted leading adolescent psychologists who questioned the validity of the self-esteem poll. But somehow the doubts of the experts were not reported in the hundreds of news stories the AAUW study generated.

The AAUW quickly commissioned a second study, How Schools Shortchange Girls. This new study, carried out by the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women and released in 1992, asserted a direct causal relationship between girls' (alleged) second-class status in the nation's schools and deficiencies in their level of self-esteem. Carol Gilligan's psychological girl crisis was thus transformed into a pressing civil rights issue: girls w...

And what university is Carol Gilligan a part of and in what capacity?
http://gseweb.harvard.edu/news/features/gilliganchair09101997.html

Harvard
September 10, 1997    CONTACTS:
Ariadne Valsamis, 617-496-1895
Carol Gilligan Named to Chair in Gender Studies

This is interesting
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilligan.html

There has been criticism of Gilligan's work and much of it has come from Christina Hoff Sommers, PhD. She says that Gilligan has failed to produce the data for her research. She condemns the fact that Gilligan used anecdotal evidence, that researchers have not been able to duplicate her work, and that the samples used were too small. She thinks the field of gender studies needs to be put to the test of people from fields such as neuroscience or evolutionary psychology rather than from the area of education. She feels strongly that promoting an anti-male agenda hurts both males and females. Public policy and funding has been allocated based on Gilligan's data, which Sommers says is not publicly available.

[MAUS]

Here is a shameless plug for my blog just because it addresses this very topic:

http://my.opera.com/Mick%20Wyle/blog/

Nowhere inthe Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in any consitutional document in US jurisdiction...or for that matter....

OR IN ANY.....I REPEAT ANY HUMAN RIGHTS LEGISLATION,DECLARATION,OR MANIFESTO OF ANY SORT OTHER THAN THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO IS IT STATED OR IMPLYED THAT MONEY OR WAGE LEVELS ARE A RIGHT!!!

Neither should they be.

The most poisonous word in the English language is "equality"....it implies that "quality" and the belief in it are a crime.....it is a policy and ideologicly driven obligation to be obteuse and stupid.

[dr e]

They are supposed to testify on Capitol Hill.  I sure hope someone will be there to ask the right questions.  It took me 10 minutes.  I can't believe a staffer on the hill couldn't do the same thing.  I would bet that it will look just like the hearings for the reauth of VAWA.  No opposition testimony was allowed.  We had 10 people who were experts, authors, professors, lawyers, clinicians and they simply looked the other way and put together a north korean style dog and pony show.  The wage gap crap will likely be no different.  The bigots on the hill probably funnel money to these folks and then "select" them to testify.  This is far from government by and of the people.

Hey E., when and to whom are the AAUW scheduled to testify?  I have a bit of knowledge in statistics, the scientific method, etc., so I'm interested in contacting committee members to see if I can get some time with them.  Any background you can provide can only help with this effort.

I for one won't continue to allow those charlatans to monopolize the debate.

I was wrong about the idea that they had only put the 5% number in the back of the paper.  They put it in the intro!  They are saying that there is basically no wage gap when you adjust for other factors....but then 10 years after women graduate from college it gets serious and is 12%.  So why don't we hear about 88 cents on the dollar?  Why are they still touting the 77 cent idea?  Interesting that they didn't seem to give the reporter of the original article the data about 5%.  I wonder why not???    I would be curious to hear what Warren Farrell might have to say about their study.  I bet he would rip it up. 

Here ya go, read it and weep.

E

http://www.aauw.org/newsroom/pressreleases/042307_PayHearing.cfm

AAUW Media Advisory
   

Contact:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 23 , 2007    Rebecca Leaf,
(202) 785-7738, leafr@aauw.org
 
AAUW to Testify at Capitol Hill Pay Equity Hearing
AAUW: Women Earn Less as Early as One Year After College Graduation
 

WHAT: AAUW Director of Research Catherine Hill will testify at the Education & Labor Committee’s Equal Pay Hearing on April 24. April 24 is Equal Pay Day, which is a symbolic reference to the number of days into a new year that women have to work before earning what men earned by December 31.

WHEN: April 24, 2007  |   9:30 a.m. EST

WHERE: 2175 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

WHO: The American Association of University Women will join U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), sponsor of the Paycheck Fairness Act at the hearing. DeLauro's legislation would close some key loopholes in existing law and reinstate the Equal Pay Initiative — which was eliminated by the Bush Administration in 2002 — in order to level the playing field between men and women.

“The persistence of the pay gap among young, college-educated, full-time workers suggests that educational achievement alone will not close the pay gap,” Hill said. “We need to make workplaces more family-friendly, reduce sex segregation in education and in the workplace, and combat discrimination that continues to hold women back in the workplace.”

WHY: The AAUW Educational Foundation released new research on the pay gap on April 23, 2007. This striking research, Behind the Pay Gap, shows that a wage gap still exists between men and women, as early as one year after college graduation, and that the pay gap grows over time.

AAUW believes that equal pay for equal work is a simple matter of justice for women. Wage discrimination impacts the economic security of families today and directly affects retirement security as women look down the road.

For more information or to schedule an interview with AAUW Director of Research Catherine Hill, please contact Rebecca Leaf, senior media relations associate at 202/785-7738 or leafr@aauw.org; or Ashley Carr, director of communications at 202/785-7745 or carra@aauw.org.

For more information about AAUW’s new research report, Behind the Pay Gap, visit the AAUW Newsroom.
 
###
 

 

The AAUW Educational Foundation is a leader in research on the educational and economic status of women and girls. Its research on gender equity issues raises public awareness and provides a call to action for educational institutions, policymakers, legislators, and the public. The AAUW Educational Foundation is also one of the world's largest sources of funding exclusively for graduate women. Together with the American Association of University Women, a leading advocate for equity and education for women and girls since 1881, the Educational Foundation has adopted a multiyear programmatic focus, Education as the Gateway to Women's Economic Security.
 
Because Equity Is Still an Issue ™
www.aauw.org

[MAUS]

If it is academics who are singing the loudest this anthem called "EQUALITY".....I ask any and all who are trolling and lurking this forum....


ON WHAT BASIS DO YOU MARK YOUR STUDENTS PAPERS???

[Men's Rights Activist]

Stand Your Ground, Dr. E, and this thread are mentioned at Men's News Daily.

http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/04/23/the-gender-feminist-wage-gap-myth-appears-to-be-growing-legs/

[dr e]

Thanks for pointing that out MRA and thanks to MND for helping get the word out.

I have been thinking about this.

The AAUW has it's pay gap day on April 24th to represent the extra time it would take for a woman to make as much money as a man did in 2006.  IOW's she would have to work all of 2006 and then until April 24th in order ot make what the man made in a  year's time.  I understand their intent but isn't April 24th too far into the year?  April 24th would be for a pay gap of .69 cents.  Ladies that just doesn't reflect your latest numbers!  If the pay gap is 5% shouldn't it be January 18th?  Over three months ago?  LOL!  Hey!  You are three months late!!!  Even if we use their more bloated figure of 12% it would still be February 13th.  Now here's an idea!  They could kill two birds with one stone and have V-Day and Gap-Day on the same day!  Double Gap Trap.   

If you want to see spinmeisters at work just keep your eyes on the AAUW.  They do research that disproves what they have been saying for years and they turn that into more evidence that they are correct! 

And so it goes.  I guess it is all downhill if y ou are trying to do things for women.

[Men's Rights Activist]

"Overall, the regression analysis of earnings one year after graduation suggests that a 5 percent pay gap between women and men remains after accounting for all variables known to affect earnings."

Okay, 95% of the 100% that men make.

Women make only 80 percent of the salaries their male peers do one year after college...

Okay,  80% of the 100% that men make.

Historically, in our capitalistic country the price of labor has been based on supply and demand, and if you can get more for your labor at another place as a lot of bosses say, more power to you.  The history of my 30 + years career has a number of jobs that I've used like rungs in a ladder to get the next higher salary, or the next better working conditions, depending on what I was looking for at the time.

But back to the topic at hand...  Neither 80, nor 95 (whichever number gender feminists are using this week) equals 100,  so what is the exact gender feminist rational explaining this the gap (whatever it is), if not the cultural Marxist concept of: comparable worth?

In other words, if I'm a woman and I get paid 100 nuts for the 80 nuts worth of work I do, and your a man and you get paid 100 nuts for the 100 nuts worth of work you do, is that how it's supposed to work?



http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v3n2/comparable.html

Consider that women's wages today are still only about 66 percent of men's wages. Studies show that factors such as seniority, reduced hours for child care, and maternity leave cannot account for the significant wage gap between men and women. Much of this gap, it appears, is due to large differences between wages paid for traditionally "men's jobs" and those paid for "women's jobs." Comparable worth has been promoted by feminists and advocates of women's rights as the most significant new tool in the struggle to bring women's economic positions up to the level of men's.

Like school bussing and affirmative action, comparable worth is a strategy that attempts to correct past injustices. But implementation of comparable worth risks imposing new costs on society, and raises new questions. Should public and private employers restructure their wage scales, at some costs to themselves--and possibly to society at large--in order to achieve just compensation based on the comparable worth doctrine?

http://www.payequityresearch.com/worth.htm

Comparable Worth (also called pay equity) - A reform effort to pay different job titles the same based on their value to their employer regardless of the gender predominance of those working in such titles.

At the heart of comparable worth or pay equity is the fact that jobs traditionally done by women have been systematically undervalued in the marketplace.  The net result is that jobs disproportionately held by women are paid less than comparable jobs with the same levels of skills and responsibilities but commonly held by males. This bias against women's work can be demonstrated and subsequently eliminated by assessing the economic value of different jobs through the use of gender-neutral job evaluation systems. For example, secretarial and janitorial jobs can be compared on dimensions such as the education/training needed, the working conditions, the responsibility involved and effort required.

One things for sure, if some of the “cush” women's jobs start getting the same pay as the brutal jobs men have taken to support their families, there are going to be a lot of crappy jobs going begging for a person to fill them.

The cultural Marxist concept of "comparable worth" is just as close as your ballot box, and the next Presidential election.  Does the woman (on the left) on this old Soviet medal coincidentally resemble Hillary Clinton, or am I getting eye strain from being on my computer too long?:

[Renegade]

The conclusion: the findings can only be the result of what the study authors term "sex discrimination".

How about:

The conclusion: Employers will now exclusively hire women only since they can get the same quality of labor for only 69% of the cost of hiring a man. Duh!

That never ceases to amaze me that people that perpetuate this myth never conclude: If employers can get away with only paying a woman 69% if the wages to do a job, then why would they ever hire a man!! 

[Mr. X]

The conclusion: the findings can only be the result of what the study authors term "sex discrimination".

How about:

The conclusion: Employers will now exclusively hire women only since they can get the same quality of labor for only 69% of the cost of hiring a man. Duh!

That never ceases to amaze me that people that perpetuate this myth never conclude: If employers can get away with only paying a woman 69% if the wages to do a job, then why would they ever hire a man!! 

Exactly. They do that with illegal labor and foriegn sources all the time. Nike moved down to South America JUST to pay lower wages. Women would be gaurenteed employment and would be the last to worry about being let go in a lay off.