The gender pay gap is a myth - so why do so many buy it?

Clockw0rk · 2015-03-14T23:38:17+00:00

I think it's fairly simple, really.

The US gave women autonomy decades ago. Equal pay, fair employment, voting rights, property rights; the whole shebang.

Now some 20, 30, 40, 50+ years later.. Why aren't women equally represented in leading fields of industry, business, and politics?

The feminist answer is: OPPRESSION!

...But what oppression? It's illegal to discriminate on gender. It has been since 1964.

The real answer is much harder to deal with than a boogyman trying to keep you down: Free will.

The fact is, the fully autonomous woman wasn't terribly eager to rush into the working world instead of being a housewife. Feminists try to paint a different picture now, but during the liberation movement and the suffrage movement, there were quite a few women who didn't want it to happen.

The glamour industry is driven by women. Fashion, makeup, hair care. If this was all "the patriarchy", you wouldn't see Cosmo being staffed and run almost entirely by women. "Unrealistic body image", signed off on by women. "Dressing provocatively for attention", endorsed and encouraged by women.

The ugly truth is that women are choosing not to succeed in certain fields. Sometimes it's due to the scientific fact that women are highly social, and tend to acclimate easier in people facing roles than non-people facing roles. Othertimes it's simply lack of interest. Women have been choosing not to enter/complete STEM degree programs, so they don't end up in STEM jobs.

The reason why men don't have abuse shelters is the same reason why women aren't leading more political offices. They didn't want to. They didn't see the need for it. Call it social conditioning if you like, but men have been taught to "suck it up". And women have been taught to "be attractive". To that affect, men don't report abuse from female partners as often because it makes them seem weak. And women would rather be office managers than cubical drones, so they go for an MBA rather than a Data Analytics degree. Being the boss is attractive, being the receptionist is attractive, they're both very visable jobs; being the wrench jockey in maintenance or the server admin orchestrating backups is not.

Unfortunately, thankless jobs make the world go round. You will never know the name of the person that keeps the HVAC system running, you won't see the picture of the person who rotated your tires on the employee of the month wall in the dealership, the person that checks power lines for wear and outage alerts does not get a cookie cake on the 10,000th pole climbed. You don't see feminists breaking down the door for gender equality in these male dominated fields because they aren't visible, they aren't attractive. Like many manual labor jobs do, they grind you down into dust until you can't work anymore; you very rarely get promoted from delivery truck driver to VP.

We outlawed the bad kind of sexism, we didn't do shit about benevolent sexism. Hiring quotas, general ed classes just for girls, "ladies' night"; what do you think those are? And it's no real surprise that feminists don't want to remove benevolent sexism, most of them anyway. Men are still buying women dinner, buying them drinks, giving them gifts, far more than the other way around. Strangely, not a whole lot of resistance to the good kind of sexism.

The pay gap myth persists because women don't seem to be very good at taking responsibility for their actions. The very idea that women prefer less difficult, lower paying jobs appears to be offensive to feminists, even though very few high profile feminists have high power positions. Happy housewives don't fit the feminist narrative, and there's plenty of examples of women who are happy housewives being shamed for taking care of the kid and the house instead of finding work.

Freedom, is apparently, anti-feminist.

Psionx0 · 2015-03-14T21:27:10+00:00

1) A misunderstanding of statistics and research. Or, just an outright ignorance of what was said in the research. For instance the Labor Boards report on the pay gap mentions two statistics: the overall average (where there does appear to be a wage gap), and a corrected average (where things like job choice, hours work, etc. are analyzed). The first gives the 30 cents number that most pay gap fighters know, the second gives the statistically accurate number of 5-7 cents. So, it's a combination of not knowing statistics and research, and willfully ignoring the other numbers presented so that your narrative remains important.

2) It's a "visible" issue

3) Most people only hear the soundbite with the bad statistics and instead of actually doing the research they just accept the sound bite.

Vandechoz · 2015-03-14T22:00:25+00:00

Say something often enough and people will believe it. It's really that simple.

2015-03-15T00:59:29+00:00

I've never understood this shit, if women really were intentionally paid less than men, wouldn't more women be employed than men as a cost savings measure? I've just never seen an exec, middle management, HR or hiring managers say "women need to be paid less" or even express anything similar. Now to be fair, I have seen women get turned down for tech roles simply because they were way under qualified and likely to be disruptive to the work place, but that's pretty different. I've also seen women with absolutely no qualifications try to flirt in interviews while dressed provocatively to land a gig. That didn't work out either.

On the flip side I've also known some very capable java developers who happened to be women and were paid much more than their male counter parts because of their capability. They certainly weren't whiny "progressive" entitled feminists either. Do women have struggles in the work place however? Absolutely they do but I've never seen wage gap due to sexism as being one of them.

MonkeyCB · 2015-03-15T01:35:28+00:00

Because the people who are in power (politically or otherwise) would rather have everyone discuss non issues rather than focus on real issues, like our current economic problem, stagnating wages, the student loan bubble, the fact that house prices are still inflated, etc.

Cysioland · 2015-03-15T00:00:55+00:00

Because it is "chivalrous" to protect women.

ralphswanson · 2015-03-15T04:03:11+00:00

An army of well-paid, professional feminists keep this myth alive with a host of lies. They actually claim that women are prevented from the dangerous, dirty, isolated jobs, like mining, that pay well. These factors are never considered in feminist wage studies. Those silly men with 95% of the workplace deaths. Despite research clearly showing that women win few elections only because they choose to run less frequently, feminists cry sexism. Few talented women choose the 70 hour work week that leads to CEO, but feminists demand quotas. Maybe quotas on child custody would be more effective, as it would free women to work harder. Women work less, retire early, choose interesting and comfortable careers, choose security and benefits over income. Yet, feminists demand affirmative action.

AloysiusC · 2015-03-14T22:52:06+00:00

People in general are inclined to buy myths. You'd be surprised how much of what you believe and hear spoken is pure fantasy. But it's not recognized as fantasy when it's shared with enough peers. Religion is probably the most prominent example of this.

bakedpotato486 · 2015-03-15T07:42:14+00:00

Handwringing over the gender pay gap seems to guarantee media coverage for the dullest public figures and this news-as-campaign generates hashtags and page clicks.

http://archive.today

Not saying it's necessary for this particular article, but at least half of the articles posted here on MR are inflammatory and clicking them only supports their stance. Just look for any post with "feminism" or "discrimination." Merely downloading such an article from the server is submitting your upvote.

PLEASE, if you know an article will get you angry, go to the comments and look for a link to an archive.today mirror.

guywithaccount · 2015-03-16T08:50:16+00:00

Religion requires faith from its adherents.

v573v · 2015-03-15T08:05:23+00:00

It is widespread and repeated often by people with social influence and it faces very little resistance because in order for a person to champion that truth they take a risk of losing their own social influence.

freshouttasheks · 2015-03-15T13:54:24+00:00

Worthless individuals take up group causes to magnify their own importance. Believing lies about the injustices your group is exposed to is the bread and butter of a cause attractive to worthless people. It allows them to feel important without them have to have done anything to deserve it. In fact, the entire lie is based around the fact that "I did nothing and they just hate me for being me!"

If you try to tell them "nobody hates you for anything aside from potentially for your shitty behavior if you are in fact acting shitty" you have taken away their position of doing nothing and benefiting from it in some manner. They can't have that, can they?

Title	The gender pay gap is a myth - so why do so many buy it?
Author	JohnKimble111
Upvotes	120
Comments	18
Date	March 14, 2015 9:22 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/2z23rg/the_gender_pay_gap_is_a_myth_so_why_do_so_many/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/the-gender-pay-gap-is-a-myth-so-why-do-so-many-buy.985791 https://theredarchive.com/post/985791

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