Is male life expectancy the MRA equivalent of the wage gap?

[The Ranting Man]

I came upon a stray though and though it required further examination by your good selves.

On a lot of articles about men’s rights bring up the issue of the average life expectancy of men being much lower than women. This always reminded me of the standard feminist cant about the wage gap representing the powerlessness of women, but both issues have similarities.

For the wage gap the average salaries of men and women are compared and then a conclusion is drawn from the results based upon ideology, many of us argue against this rightly but does not he same thing happen when we write about the life expectancy of males?

We all know that men have more hazardous jobs and take more risks, also men seem to be a little more adventurous, sign onto a clips based virals site like break.com and you will find a cornucopia of clips of boys hurting themselves in various ways on bikes, skateboard, sky-diving etc. I know that they don’t die but it shows that they are more into a dangerous lifestyle which could lead to accidents and possibly death. So when we add up the life expectancy of men vs. women then I don’t think it’s unreasonable that women live longer than men.

Also, take my mother’s attempts to get everyone on our family to eat more healthily, many times she doesn’t succeed, we all just like our fry-up in the morning a little too much.

Points about government spending on medial issues for men being much less than for women have validity and should be the direction where we go. But maybe much of the issue of life-expectancy comes down to personal choice like the wage gap does? After all, if you want to live a healthy life, then you can do so.

[ghost]

I think most of the gap is due to cigarettes and alcohol.

[Mr. X]

I think most of the gap is due to cigarettes and alcohol.

I thought it was we had to date and marry women.

[ghost]

That too.

[Men's Rights Activist]

Is male life expectancy the MRA equivalent of the wage gap?

No, the unnaturally shortened life span of men is real.  
The wage gap is a myth. :?

[The Ranting Man]

The wage gap isn't really a myth, it exists. It's whether you really think it's a problem or not. Feminist say yes, I say no. because it is due to the choices that women make. My main point is that a parallel can be drawn between this and the life expectancy issue.

As in your pictures above. A combat job is a choice and a dangerous job is a choice. It's a matter of personal opinion is to whether suicide is a choice, personally I think it is. Homicide is a problem but I do not believe it is oppressive against males in an abstract way. I would like it if you could explain your position in a little more detail Men's Rights Activist.

[Johnny]

I think most of the gap is due to cigarettes and alcohol.

Really?  I think it's a stress issue.

[Men's Rights Activist]

The wage gap isn't really a myth, it exists. It's whether you really think it's a problem or not.

As a matter of fact, it is a myth, a feminist myth.  :?  Feminists are saying that women are doing the equivalent work of men and that is completely false.  When women do the equivalent work of men, they earn just as much as men or slightly more.  Read Warren Farrell's book, or

http://www.iwf.org/issues/issues_print.asp?ArticleID=515

IWF Busts Wage Gap Myth
by Various  
6/1/2001

For years IWF has been combatting myths about women's economic opportunities. One of the most persistent has been the claim that women earn only 76 cents on the male dollar. But, as the work of IWF's Women's Economic Project and its publications such as Women's Figures reveal, this is a deliberately misleading claim that fails to account for a number of commonsense facts about women's workplace experiences. Women actually earn 98 cents on the dollar when factors such as age, education, and experience are taken into account.  

On April 3rd, the IWF stole the spotlight again at a press conference on Capitol Hill.  Immediately before our event, the National Committee on Pay Equity -- the group whose mission is to propagate the myth of the wage gap-held a press conference of their own. The IWF struck back and countered claims of widespread discrimination with the facts.

Thanks to the IWF, the feminists' annual Equal Pay Day stunt did not go unchallenged. With numerous media mentions and appearances, the IWF can claim a major victory in changing the terms of the debate about the wage gap.


Nancy Pfotenhauer

IWF President and CEO

The IWF celebrates the progress women have made economically, academically, and personally in the recent past. While some might choose to deny or belittle this progress, we believe that any unbiased assessment would show that women are holding more and better jobs, receiving a greater number of college and graduate degrees, starting more businesses, making more money, and competently choosing the trade-offs they feel best fit their families.

While these statistics are worth celebrating, the real news is that our future looks even brighter. We have an incredible amount of female talent in the academic pipeline right now. College enrollment throughout the United States is well over 50% female, and over 60% in liberal arts universities. Women are a majority in some professional schools, and, indeed, are expected to be half or more of the students entering law school this coming Fall.

But one challenge awaiting these young women is the same challenge faced by working women today: the balance between work and family. We want as much flexibility as possible to excel both at home and in our profession. We want the option to telecommute. We want comp time and flex time. We want the ability to freely contract our services with our employers in a way that suits our families' needs, and we don't think highly prescriptive, government-mandated, cookie-cutter solutions work for us.

We do believe in vigorous enforcement of the 1963 Equal Pay Act to combat individual incidents of injustice. But so long as women are making employment decisions and trade-offs based on factors other than salary alone, it makes no sense to assume that wholesale discrimination is occurring as alleged by the promoters of the wage gap myth.

We at the Independent Women's Forum believe women fare best when they have a wide range of economic opportunities and choices available to them, and the working woman's best friend is a good economy. When jobs and capital are plentiful, a woman can choose the job and working conditions she wants, or even start a business of her own. And women's extraordinary progress and accomplishments in recent decades are proof that just as women work, freedom and opportunity work as well.


Karen Czarnecki Miller

American Legislative Exchange Council

As an organization of state legislators, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) believes in equal pay for the same work, the law of the land for over 35 years. Men and women who perform the same job and have the same credentials are entitled to the same pay. But we adamantly reject the radical and archaic proposal known as comparable worth. Whether you hear it called comparable worth or paycheck fairness, this proposal says that men and women should receive the same pay for different jobs.

Many states are facing this issue despite the fact that past attempts at implementation have failed so miserably. In fact, the two states operating under comparable worth are finding that it does not achieve the goals they thought it would. A 15-year study examining Australia's comparable worth program found that it did virtually nothing to improve women's wages, which was the intention of the program at the beginning.
 
We should be looking to free markets and employers to determine the value of particular jobs. Politicizing pay practices is not an appropriate action. Comparable worth is also a dangerous proposal because it increases litigation costs. People can sue employers for shortchanging them even if they are not as qualified as someone they compare themselves to. Finally, comparable worth violates payroll confidentiality laws and opens our markets up to even more litigation.
 
Comparable worth by any name is a highly subjective formulation that allows government bureaucrats to determine what we're worth.

Enforcing the federal equal pay act is the only way to guarantee that men and women are paid fairly and honestly.  


Terry Neese

Business owner & former president of the National Association of Women Business Owners

As a woman who is a business owner, daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother, it is my opinion that every person deserves and should be paid what they are worth for the work they do. The employees at Terry Neese Personnel Services in Oklahoma City, and the temporaries we employ throughout the state, are getting more than equal pay. That's because I work hard to make sure my employees' needs are met. Oftentimes, these employees are more concerned with time than they are with money, a situation that I think faces us all.

My employees want time off to care for their children, to care for their parents, or sometimes, just a day off to do something nice for themselves. Women business owners understand this issue all too well because we are running our companies, employing people, taking care of our families, volunteering in the community, and even getting involved in legislative activities. We all want the flexibility to provide our employees with comp time, the flexibility of job sharing, and even the flexibility to help them go out and start their own businesses.

Women are leaving corporate America in record numbers to start their own businesses, and many are staying home to run a business while they care for their family. According to the National Foundation for Women Business Owners, as of 1999, there are 9.1 million women business owners in America today. These businesses employ 27.5 million people, and generate $3.6 trillion in annual revenues.

The question to be asked is this: Do we want the federal government to place new and onerous demands on all these growing companies? Maybe special interest groups and others who believe in comparable worth should talk to some real women business owners who are living in the real world. We'll be happy to provide them with some solutions and concrete steps to make sure all employees make what they are worth.

One thing we could certainly tell these advocates is that when the heavy hand of the federal government involves itself in micro-managing the personnel functions of small businesses and growing companies, these enterprises will operate much less effectively, which hurts the opportunities for their employees.

Federal intervention like pay mandate proposals just make it more likely that everyone will get paid less than they are worth, especially women and minorities who have put everything on the line to go out and start their own businesses.  


Elizabeth Robbins

Society for Human Resource Management  

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the world's largest membership organization dedicated to human resources, or HR, management. Our membership includes the HR staffs in various-sized entities from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, with representatives in virtually every industry. It is the HR professional who must ensure that employers are in compliance with workplace civil rights laws and regulations.

SHRM supports equal pay for equal work-period. Compensation programs should be designed to ensure the fair treatment of all employees. It should be determined by the market and employer needs, not by the dictates of government or special interest groups. Because of the complexity of administering, the difficulty of enforcing, and the in-efficiency of regulating private sector compensation practices, SHRM strongly opposes any efforts to legislate or regulate comparable worth.

Proponents of comparable worth have labeled this issue the "equal pay issue." However, equal pay for equal work is not what they are advocating. Comparable worth does not compare equal pay for like jobs. Instead, different jobs are compared to each other in light of their value to the employer. Such a system compares apples to oranges and it is not equal pay for equal work.  

A significant concern for the HR professional is the actual implementation of a comparable worth pay system. Determining the employer's wages for work is a very complex process and takes into account a number of factors, including skill, education, experience, and market forces. The complexity of a comparable worth system has already been demonstrated at the state level. In the 1970s and '80s, 23 states conducted comparable worth job evaluation studies. All but two abandoned their implementation efforts due to the fact that the evaluation teams could not even agree on the myriad job classifications necessary for the scheme to work.

I'm sure debate will continue to exist over whether or not there's a wage gap in the United States and the need for government intervention in the form of comparable worth. But it is unrealistic to think that the federal government can successfully implement a comparable worth system if almost half the states have already found that it doesn't work.

and:

http://www.iwf.org/issues/issues_print.asp?ArticleID=117

Equal Pay Day 2001: Economic Choices for Women
4/3/2001

Women And Wages: Busting The Myths

Equal pay for equal work" has been the law of the land since the Equal Pay Act of 1963, backed up by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Since then women have made, and continue to make, enormous strides in business, professions, education, politics and all walks of life.

Not everyone is willing to recognize women's economic progress nor the tremendous benefits of classic civil rights laws passed in the 1960s. The National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) and its allied labor unions and feminist groups conduct an annual observance of "Equal Pay Day" -- not to celebrate women's success but to call for more laws, more government programs, and fewer economic choices for women and families.

On Tuesday, April 3rd, the NCPE and friends will claim that the "wage gap" between women and men is 72 cents on the dollar and that the only way to bridge this gap is to pay everybody equally for -- different work.

Yes, the NCPE's idea of "equal pay" is to pay the same wages to parking lot attendants and child care workers, teachers and truck drivers, carpenters and cooks. Naturally, the NCPE also wants to pass new laws to set up big government bureaucracies that will force employers to pay, and employees to accept, so-called "equal" pay.

How would this concept of "equal pay" help women? It's really just a new name for "comparable worth" -- a misguided notion discarded years ago by Congress and the courts, and proven ineffective wherever it's been adopted.

Here are a few of the myths you'll probably hear on "Equal Pay Day," followed by the facts about women, wages and work.

Myth #1: Women earn 72 cents for every dollar that men earn.
If this myth were true, employers would be eager to replace their male workers with cheaper (and better) female workers, and thus increase their profits. But the "72 cents" claim is misleading because it only refers to the median wages of all men and all women in the work force, without regard to age, education, occupation, experience or working hours -- factors that even the NCPE admits are valid explanations for different pay rates. When those key factors enter the equation, the "wage gap" disappears. Studies based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, taking into account these key variables, reveal that among people ages 27-33 who have never had a child, women's earnings are actually 98 percent of men's.

Myth #2: The "wage gap" is the result of discrimination.
Remember, such discrimination has been unlawful since 1963. You would not be surprised to know that bosses earn more than their assistants or that full time workers are paid more than their part-time colleagues. Market forces and common sense dictate that some people earn more than others because of their education and skills, their experience, the demand for their services, or their willingness to work longer, harder or under more difficult conditions. Differing wages exist for many reasons and are not in themselves an indication of discrimination.

Myth #3: Women are funneled into low-paying jobs by a sexist society.
The NCPE claims that certain jobs (like sales, clerical and service work) are paid less because they are held by women, and they say that any earnings differences not explained by differences in education, experience or time in the work force are "proof" of discrimination. But the NCPE is overlooking some important facts. First, the value of a job is determined by the supply and demand of able and willing workers. Women who might be able to hold a better-paying job often choose a job that pays less but provides more flexibility. This is not discrimination.

And the jobs women tend to avoid (such as farming, forestry, maintenance) are not all that wonderful. Twenty-three out of the 25 worst jobs in the Jobs Rated Almanac are more than 90 percent male, and men account for 92 percent of all job-related deaths.

Myth #4: The "Glass Ceiling" prevents women from holding top corporate jobs.
This myth has been hanging around since 1995 when the Glass Ceiling Commission found only 5 percent female senior managers at Fortune 1000 and Fortune 500 companies and assumed discrimination. Their finding was politically useful but statistically wrong. It was based on the number of women in the total labor force, rather than the number of women actually qualified through education and experience to hold top positions.

A further look would have disclosed that while only 11 percent of corporate boards included women in 1973, by 1998 women sat on the boards of 72 percent of major corporations. As women continue to move through the "pipeline," toward the positions that typically require an MBA and 25 years experience, and as women increase their numbers in previously male-dominated fields and professions, more and more women will continue to achieve senior management positions in business and other fields.

Myth # 5: Stronger laws are needed because "some jobs are still paid based on who is doing the work, instead of the value of the work."
Here is the NCPE's call for "comparable worth" -- a bad idea gone wrong. It has been tried in the United Kingdom, where regulators can order one company to pay higher wages than its competitor, producing "arbitrary, inconsistent and inefficient outcomes." Here in the United States, Minnesota has ranked fire fighters and librarians as having "comparable worth." (1)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) Lawrence W. Reed, "Comparable Worth or Incomparably Worthless?" (September, 1994) Midland, Michigan: Mackinac Center for Public Policy Research; Steven E. Rhoads, "Would Decentralized Comparable Worth Work? The Case of the United Kingdom," Regulation (1993 #3) pp. 1-7, Washington, D.C., the Cato Institute

and:

http://www.iwf.org/issues/issues_print.asp?ArticleID=123

Women in the News -- Our Weekly Round Up
by Christine Stolba
6/18/2001

Equal Pay Pandering
Bad ideas never die, especially in Washington. Case in point: Last Tuesday, a group of Congresswomen and Senators gathered to call once again for passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which they claimed would help "strengthen and enforce" the Equal Pay Act of 1963. In fact, as IWF has noted on many occasions, the Paycheck Fairness Act, whose main sponsor is Senator Tom Daschle, would do something different: it would lay the groundwork for the return of an idea thoroughly discredited in the 1980s, namely comparable worth -- the practice of having the government determine wage scales for male and female-dominated professions (with the intent of artificially inflating wages in female-dominated fields).

The new comparable worth campaign now enjoys the high-profile services of New York's junior senator, Hillary Clinton, who used Tuesday's press conference to argue vociferously and incorrectly that "equal pay doesn't exist for women and families in the 21st century," and that "jobs held predominantly by women are consistently shortchanged and undervalued in pay compared to jobs primarily held by men."

Hillary was joined as well by the National Women's Law Center, an advocacy group that frequently files lawsuits on behalf of feminist causes. The group praised the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act for allowing "employees to file class action lawsuits to recover both compensatory and punitive damages," a boon for women in their line of work, clearly -- but not necessarily for the rest of us.

Now that Daschle is Senate majority leader, and the bill has been sent to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (chaired by Senator Kennedy), the drumbeat on comparable worth will only intensify. Stay tuned.

[The Ranting Man]

Thank you for those texts mra, I've read most of them before and I agree with the points they make. But I'm worried that you aren't listening to what I'm saying. I'm worried that you've cast me into a camp, that because I say a gap exists that I must be arguing the feminist view, this is not so.

The points that all those articles make are ones that I have made over and over to friends and the like. But those points indicate a difference between women and men, women and men don't do equivalent work like you said they don't and this disparity creates a "gap", ergo the wage gap. I don't want to sound like I am repeating myself but I feel this is so obviouse, please please please read what I write. But I don't want to get sidetracked in this issue, this is not what the thread is about. I am interested to discuss at hand with you.

[Matt99]

don't forget heart disease. I was under the impression that it was the major cause of the difference in life expectancy between men and women. The fact that inherently, male and female hearts are different. Men's being stronger but weaker in old age, and women's being pretty much the same all the way to old age.

[dr e]

The wage gap argument is very deceptive.  They make a big thing about the median wage difference between men and women and then they passively imply that the difference is related to discrimination.  Ask any person on the street about the wage gap and why it exists.  They will be glad to tell you that  men and women are not paid the same amount for the same work and that women are routinely paid less simply because they are women.  Their deception has been effective.  This is the meme they have intentionally left and have tried to amplify.  It is deceitful and underhanded.

The gap in life expectancy may also have some choices involved as you have pointed out but it basically is what it is and no one is making claims about some invisible discrimination.  We are simply saying that men die earlier and this is true.  These men may have had some choice involved.   So what?  Dead is dead and is an indicator of degree of expendability.  Very different from the wage gap IMO.  

The death gap also is much more instructive and illustrative.  Notice that white women are the beneficiaries of the longest lifespan followed by black females who edge out white men by a hair.  Black men are left in the dust being the unfortunate recipients of both racism and anti-male sexism.  Black females also suffer due to racism but this is largely regained by their benefit of being female thus putting them ahead of white males.   So is the death gap a "oppresion-ometer"?  There could be arguments going either way.  Importantly you don't hear men crowing about how they are oppressed.

[Ricash39]

Certainly some of the death gap is explained by men doing the dangerous work, men dying in wars, men killing each other during the commission of a crime etc. These things however can only make a small difference, as (even taking them together) they do not make it into the top 20 list for causes of male death. The numbers are simply too small to be any sort of an explanation.

No - I feel the death gap cannot be explained by physical or even life style factors. Consider this:
1. Male smoking rates are falling, womens are rising
2. Drug taking and binge drinking (as evidenced by admissions to hospital) are rising amongst women and falling amongst men
3. As more women than men now have university degrees, it is an assumption that they are then leading professional lives (with the resulting stress, long hours, etc).

Yet the death gap continues to grow. According to the ABS a woman of 25 in Australia can expect to live to 85, and a man of 25 can expect to live to 75.

The fact that woman are now making the same bad lifestyle and health decisions that men have been making for generations, and yet are not paying a death gap penalty, suggests that looking for an explanation for the death gap in the area of physical health is wrong.

Instead we should be looking for an explanation in the area of mental health.

We know that men have a 4 times higher overall suicide rate than women, yet I cant find any research as to why. I am sure when we work that out we will have a answer to a lot more than just the suicide rate.

The culprit is in my opinion female domestic violence. We know the result of being exposed to long term psychological and physical violence include self-destructive behaviour, depression and suicide. It also affects general health, making a person more susceptible to infections, less willing to "fight for life" in the event of a serious illness and such like. We also know that much female domestic violence is "soft" violence - nagging, low level slaps and so on. I genuinely believe that large numbers of men exposed to this incidious form of violence year after year simply give up on living and succumb to suicide or diseases that they should not have got, or should have been able to survive.

When will women understand you do not meet a man and then nag him to be just the way YOU want him to be. Nagging is domestic violence, it is soft violence with a hard centre - death!

[Christiane]

I think the gap in life expectancy and the wage gap are totally different animals.   The wage gap being a myth, and the life expectancy gap being very real.

In the not so distant past (somewhere in the 1800's?  Somebody who is better informed can correct me, sorry), women had lower life expectancies than men.   This was true of most of recorded history, due to childbirth.   It's just a fact.   It's a messy business, and when one goes through that 8, 10, 15 times....  well, one of 'em is likely to get you through infection or some other complication, when you've got primitive health care.   Modern medicine has easily solved that problem.

That said, the modern gap in life expectancy is another deal, and needs to be considered separately.   Take away the child birth factor, and the risks to men's mortality come into sharper focus.    War, hazardous jobs, suicide, etc.    But even when you factor those in, there's still a discrepancy.

I don't think we fully understand this.   And it concerns me greatly on a personal level, obviously.   As with most complex human tendencies, there are probably a number of factors at work.  Hormones must be key, lifestyle, what??  

We have made some strides in recent years I think in getting men to take better care of themselves.   Men are much more comfortable today seeking routine preventive care for example.   We're doing better, I think, but men are still very much second class citizens in the medical research community, and that needs to change.

How to accomplish this, I don't know.   I often feel this way around here...  You know....   This sucks, and what can we do about it.   Not much.   Well, that sucks too.

[lovingly angry young man]

Does the feminist explanation of wage gap stand? Apparently not. Does the MRA explanation of lifespan gap do? At least partially.

In any case, is it disputed by anyone that the shorter lifespan of men is a concern for men, or alternatively, that men would like to live longer? The wage gap, I think, is not the kind of thing that concerns most women, save for the self-proclaimed marxist 'leaders' of them, feminists.

As in your pictures above. A combat job is a choice and a dangerous job is a choice. It's a matter of personal opinion is to whether suicide is a choice, personally I think it is. Homicide is a problem but I do not believe it is oppressive against males in an abstract way. I would like it if you could explain your position in a little more detail Men's Rights Activist.

Suicide reflects a problem.

[Christiane]

The culprit is in my opinion female domestic violence

You are a woman,  Ricash39?   Sorry if that's too personal.

You believe the elevated suicide rate among men is due to female domestic violence perpetrated on men?

Just wanting to make sure I heard you correctly.