Gender Equality in Canada and the US

[sharkman]

Okay, fair enough then.

[Guest Manny]

Wow, I guess somebodies on the rag, eh?

J/K!!!

[CPCFTW]

I took a look in the control panel, but I have no idea how others did this. If you take a look at the above posters Huh and CPC, they have no gender field.

Ok I admit it! I'm a hot 21 year old girl with double D's... Can we move on?

[cybercoma]

Okay, fair enough then.

Who says people can't reach mutual understandings on a message board! haha

On another note...

I came across an article about the Marilyn Monroe memes that have been floating around social networking website. The memes claim that women with curves are beautiful. It attempts to turn modern conceptions of "beauty" on their head. However, the problem is that they're still demeaning. Instead of correcting the Beauty Myth, as Naomi Wolf called it, this just continues to pit women against each other, in particular it pits "body types" against each other. The top comment at the bottom says it all, "Good heavens, man. How on earth should I know whether she's beautiful? I only know what she looks like."

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/01/25/the-marilyn-meme/

[MiddleClassCentrist]

They didn't enter their gender when they created their profile. When I joined the forum ages ago, I put my gender in. After I decided that it was unimportant and I didn't care for the feature, I tried to make it blank. You can't though. I'm not trying to hide anything. I just don't think it's important.

The fact that this discussion has anything to do with displaying gender only gives merit to there being unresolved issues surrounding it. It shouldn't really matter.

[cybercoma]

The fact that this discussion has anything to do with displaying gender only gives merit to there being unresolved issues surrounding it. It shouldn't really matter.

I'm not sure what you mean. I was trying to address sharkman's accusations. Should I have just ignored them? Probably.

[MiddleClassCentrist]

I'm not sure what you mean. I was trying to address sharkman's accusations. Should I have just ignored them? Probably.

Read my statement again and think of it as referring to more proof of gender issues, and less as me being against you.

It shouldn't matter whether a poster is male, or female.

[BC_chick]

There are also several professions that are overwhelmingly dominated by females, yet we hear little about "gender equality" there.

The only two jobs where women earn more than their male coutnerparts are prostitution and modelling.

[Guest American Woman]

The only two jobs where women earn more than their male coutnerparts are prostitution and modelling.

.

The 15 Jobs Where Women Earn More Than Men

And for the curious, prostitution and modeling aren't on the list.

Perhaps most surprising, women out-earn men in several male-dominated construction jobs. Female construction laborers, construction supervisors, maintenance painters, and aircraft and vehicle mechanics earn slightly above the median earnings for both sexes—despite holding just 3% of these jobs.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, women also make more in a few female-dominated education and healthcare jobs. Female teacher assistants earn 105% as much as male peers. Women are 92% of the field and earn a median of $474 a week, compared to men’s $453.

[BC_chick]

Then things vastly improved since 2007....

But industry doesn't tell the whole story. Women earned less than men in all 20 industries and 25 occupation groups surveyed by the Census Bureau in 2007 — even in fields in which their numbers are overwhelming. Female secretaries, for instance, earn just 83.4% as much as male ones. And those who pick male-dominated fields earn less than men too: female truck drivers, for instance, earn just 76.5% of the weekly pay of their male counterparts.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1983185,00.html

Edited January 30, 2012 by BC_chick

[cybercoma]

.

The 15 Jobs Where Women Earn More Than Men

And for the curious, prostitution and modeling aren't on the list.

Perhaps most surprising, women out-earn men in several male-dominated construction jobs. Female construction laborers, construction supervisors, maintenance painters, and aircraft and vehicle mechanics earn slightly above the median earnings for both sexes—despite holding just 3% of these jobs.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, women also make more in a few female-dominated education and healthcare jobs. Female teacher assistants earn 105% as much as male peers. Women are 92% of the field and earn a median of $474 a week, compared to men’s $453.

Look at that. It's moving in the right direction, even though "men still earn more in almost every U.S. occupation—except in a telling few." According to your Forbes article, it only took a decade for women to move up $0.05 to $0.81 for every dollar men make. In another 40 years women might be on par.

Ultimately, men remain the top earners in America, on average and by occupation. Men also hold the majority of leadership positions. Women are just 3% of chief executives at the largest 1000 U.S. companies.

Edited January 30, 2012 by cybercoma

[cybercoma]

Then things vastly improved since 2007....

And let's not forget intersectionality theory

That's because U.S. women still earned only 77 cents on the male dollar in 2008, according to the latest census statistics. (That number drops to 68% for African-American women and 58% for Latinas.)

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1983185,00.html#ixzz1kuqHLVJQ

And the sad reality is that the 81% figure is actually included in your Time article. That's the difference when they controlled for other factors such as education and experience. They then factor occupation, industry, and union-status and it jumps to 91%. That's the difference in wages for no other reason than being a woman, even though socialization encourages women to end up in occupations and industries that are less valued. Nevertheless, women get paid almost 10% less just for being a woman.

Edited January 30, 2012 by cybercoma

[cybercoma]

Women a minority at the Davos conference:

Panels on the future of banking, energy supplies, international finance and global risks were among those with no women except moderators, even with a forum theme of “The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-29/davos-women-minority-of-one-as-sandberg-speaks.html

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook gave a TED talk where she outlines the possible reason why "women are not making it to the top of any profession anywhere in the world." She goes on to explain that "success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women."

Watch the video here:

[Guest American Woman]

Then things vastly improved since 2007....

Yes, they have in some areas - and it's continuing to improve.

This, from the UK, is interesting:

According to official statistics released last week, the pay gap between men and women – that barometer of shifting power between the sexes – has quietly shrunk to a record low and among younger women has shot clearly into reverse. Women in their 20s now earn a solid 3.6% more on average than men their age, after narrowly overtaking them for the first time last year.

link

I wonder if we'll see the same trend in our countries?

Edited January 30, 2012 by American Woman

[Bonam]

Yes, they have in some areas - and it's continuing to improve.

This, from the UK, is interesting:

According to official statistics released last week, the pay gap between men and women – that barometer of shifting power between the sexes – has quietly shrunk to a record low and among younger women has shot clearly into reverse. Women in their 20s now earn a solid 3.6% more on average than men their age, after narrowly overtaking them for the first time last year.

link

I wonder if we'll see the same trend in our countries?

Of course we will. The exact same sociocultural factors are at play. The reality is clear, a majority of people getting college degrees, which prime them for solid professional jobs with good salaries, are women. People complaining about some kind of male domination of the economy are living in the past. If you're in your 20s right now (as I am) and look around, you'd have to be crazy to hold that view. The current generation of women beginning their careers is every bit as successful and ambitious as men.

Of course this reality hasn't yet percolated to the levels of top leaders and executives (as cybercoma points out). Executives tend to be older, with many decades of experience. Most of them were going to school 20-40+ years ago. Things were very different in the 60s, 70s, and 80s than they are today.

By the 2030s-2050s, there will be vastly more women in top positions of power, quite possibly even outnumbering men, not because of any social changes, equality programs, or reforms, but simply because the women that grew up in the 1990s and 2000s will have made their way to the peaks of their careers.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Bonam

[cybercoma]

Of course we will. The exact same sociocultural factors are at play.

Canada and Britain most certainly do not have the exact same sociocultural factors at play when it comes to work, education, and class. Are you for real?

[Bonam]

Are you for real?

Yep.

Feel free to read the rest of the post.

[cybercoma]

Yeah, I read it. It ignores the factors that all of the previous articles made about why women are scarce in positions of power and the socionormative pressure for them to forego career aspirations to care for children or elderly parents. You think with the aging population it will be men looking after grandma, grandpa, and the kids? Oh sure, some of them will, probably somewhere in the neighbourhood of 6%, as it stands today.

[Bonam]

You think with the aging population it will be men looking after grandma, grandpa, and the kids?

No. I think it is obvious that the cultural trend is for grandma, grandpa, and the kids to be taken care of more and more by the state, and less and less by family members.

[Bonam]

It ignores the factors that all of the previous articles made about why women are scarce in positions of power and the socionormative pressure for them to forego career aspirations to care for children or elderly parents.

"Socionormative" pressure? You realize that the people that comprise the statistics you talk about, like the make up of the executives of top companies, are people that bucked all such pressure and did things very differently than the vast majority of their peers, right? You don't become a top executive by following the herd and bowing to "socionormative" pressure. That is true of men who come into positions of power, and it will be just as true for women that do so.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Bonam

[huh]

Yeah, I read it. It ignores the factors that all of the previous articles made about why women are scarce in positions of power and the socionormative pressure for them to forego career aspirations to care for children or elderly parents. You think with the aging population it will be men looking after grandma, grandpa, and the kids? Oh sure, some of them will, probably somewhere in the neighbourhood of 6%, as it stands today.

Yet so many women are happy doing just being women, you make it sound like every woman, or man, has career aspirations..liberal garbage.

[waldo]

Yet so many women are happy just being women, you make it sound like every woman, or man, has career aspirations..liberal garbage.

of course, career aspiration could mean nothing more than holding a job - a job for a job's sake. However, whether it suits your ideological bent, or not, I would suggest most contributing persons take pride in their work and, on varying levels, look for degrees of recognition of that work contribution. Recognition can be nothing more than respect from co-workers; however, typically, that recognition fosters itself in terms of monetary value/gain and/or job advancement. This thread is bringing forward notice of a continued gender based inequality in pay/advancement.

I trust the various studies referenced account for the statistical presence of those persons without career aspirations, those persons you highlight that are content to hold a, "job for a job's sake".

[Shady]

Women can work when they're pregnant, most often right up until their due date. They can also return to work in a few weeks typically. Of course, that would require the husband to stay home with the baby. Our sexist society makes it the woman's responsibility though.

Complete nonsense. It's much better, and in many cases necessary for the mother to be with a new-born for the first little while. Regardless, our so-called "sexist" society provides time off for a mother or a father.

[cybercoma]

Of course it does. Yet it's almost always the mother that stays home for the entire year and many times even longer than the time for which she is paid.

[Guest Manny]

there will be vastly more women in top positions

Sounds fine to me.