Myth: The Wage Gap is Caused by Men's Higher Pay for Dangerous Jobs

NovemberTrees · 2011-10-05T15:26:07+00:00

That's just bad research. Dangerous jobs do have a premium or you wouldn't have truck drivers in Iraq being paid $80k a year. The big requirement though is that the job have a reasonable barrier to entry, which agriculture doesn't. When you can hire someone who just jumped a fence you don't pay them extra because the job is dangerous.

If he had data on pay differences within the same job in dangerous and safe areas then it would actually be a decent argument.

Offensive_Brute · 2011-10-05T12:18:21+00:00

yeah, usually the most dangerous jobs pay shitty to moderately.

The real gap in wages come from men studying practically applicable fields that make companies a shit load of money and therefore earn a higher wage, whereas women have tendencies toward the social sciences and education, which are really rather mediocre.

2011-10-05T14:56:19+00:00

Just throwing out some facts that are relevant:

In 2005, there were 5,702 work related deaths in the US (not counting military jobs which is a whole other discussion
"Males accounted for 93% of all deaths and had a work-related fatality rate approximately 12 times the rate for females"

So here is my pet peeve, why is it that feminists are always complaining about that their are not enough women in science and tech fields, but never complaining that their aren't enough female coal miners, oil rig workers, lumber workers, etc. etc. Basically, all I hear is complaining about the IT, science and math type stuff, but no inclination on their part to see more females in the jobs that are extremely hazordous. Hmmmmmmm, gee I wonder the fuck why.

ADevilNamedBen · 2011-10-05T13:55:32+00:00

It seems to be problematic for feminism whichever way you cut it to me. Either men are being paid more because they're doing more dangerous work, somewhat negating the wage gap. Or men aren't being paid more for doing dangerous work, indicating a pretty terrible inequality against mostly males of at least equal concern to the wage gap.

Demonspawn · 2011-10-05T15:05:45+00:00

The wage gap is caused by the same reasons as the cosmetics gap... men and women behave differently.

2011-10-05T16:38:41+00:00

Another case of how to manipulate data with simple charts in order to futher an ideology, in this case attempting to dis-credit the anti-feminist movement.

zyk0s · 2011-10-05T14:12:07+00:00

As in everything that has to do with system as complex as societies, the simplest explanation is the most appealing, but rarely the correct one.

It's true, there is no premium for dangerous jobs. Does that mean we should rule it out as a cause of the wage gap? Well, I would say not so fast.

Work related deaths happen evidently more in the primary and secondary sectors, with the services sector evidently leading to physically less demanding jobs. So the solution is for everyone to go there, right? Well no, food needs to be grown and materials need to be produced. Men often have to be the primary breadwinner (they don't have a choice), and if they have no qualifications beyond their physical fitness, what can they do? If they live in rural areas, there isn't enough of a service economy, so apart from the few small business owners, most of them will have no other choice than to go perform these dangerous jobs. What do women do? They sometimes will get hired in these places, but most likely offered less physically demanding, therefore slightly less paying jobs. The other women will most likely not work. Do the dangerous jobs affect pay? In this scenario, they do, indirectly. Remember that the pay gap exists when you take (all men's earnings)/(number of men) - (all women's earnings)/(number of women). When you actually compare by profession, controlling for hours worked, seniority, qualifications and experience, the wage gap is 2%.

Let's look at the service industry. There are fewer dangerous jobs, but they still exist. Best example would be fast food. Who is at the counter, and who risks burns and cuts in the kitchen? Now, this is just speculation, but it is reasonable to believe that someone who performs more dangerous tasks appears to be more hardworking, and this may bias promoting decisions. Again, I have no proof that this is happening, but supposing it is, taking on more dangerous jobs would again indirectly have an effect on pay.

So here we have it, this article is correct in its dismissal of the claim dangerous jobs directly lead to higher pay. But it doesn't give any reasonable alternative explanation, beyond the faulty assumption that the wage gap is substantial and the implication it is caused by sexism, with again, no evidence for either.

cranktheguy · 2011-10-05T16:39:14+00:00

There my not be a premium for dangerous jobs, but there are still differences in jobs that men and women do. When I was graduating from college, before graduation they had us line up outside the auditorium by major. All us graduating computer science majors stood around and joked about the lack of women and how we should have been an elementary education major because their line had all of the women. But there were no females in our line. NONE. It was 25+ males.

Who is going to earn more: a person in an education job or a person in a technical job? Should it be that way?

chavelah · 2011-10-05T11:08:52+00:00

"The problem is, there is no premium for dangerous jobs. And since the “danger premium” doesn’t really exist, it can’t explain the wage gap."

DingDingDing!

There may be other plausible non-sexism-related explanations for the wage gap, I'm not sure. I'm open to the idea. But the notion that the people (mostly men, except in agriculture) who work statistically dangerous jobs are compensated for the risks they take drives me batty. They are not. They are, in fact, screwed over time and time again.

Title	Myth: The Wage Gap is Caused by Men's Higher Pay for Dangerous Jobs
Author	2throwaway2
Upvotes	2
Comments	23
Date	October 5, 2011 10:51 AM UTC (14 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/l1l6f/myth_the_wage_gap_is_caused_by_mens_higher_pay/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/myth-the-wage-gap-is-caused-by-mens-higher-pay-for.1033623 https://theredarchive.com/post/1033623

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