Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jaume on October 28, 2009 at 10:51am

One swallow does not a summer make. (Or even 4 :-)

Maybe 5 is the magical number? I remember that not long ago, the top 5 spots in New-Zealand were held by women - Elizabeth II (Head of State), Susan Clark (Prime Minister), Silvia Cartwright (Governor-General), Sian Elias (Chief Justice), and Margaret Wilson (Speaker of the House of Representatives).

And btw, I can certainly swallow a summer cake ;-)

Permalink Reply by Jaume on October 28, 2009 at 11:07am

Edit: Helen Clark, not Susan

Permalink Reply by Aaron S. (USA) on October 28, 2009 at 4:44pm

I think The Nerd posted some of those numbers, also regarding the number of women that are murdered, hurt, or raped, by men every year (while the numbers for the opposite side of the equation are vanishingly small). To feel safe is part of privilege.

I don't know if it's fair to discount violence against men that's perpetrated by other men. I should be able dig up the numbers if people really think it's necessary, but most violence, I believe, is still perpetrated against other men - and that's not counting a decent amount of abuse that men are subject to since it's considered masculine or just plain normal. Men may certainly not perceive women as a regular threat, and it's certainly a real issue that women are so much more vulnerable than men, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that men are "safe".

Permalink Reply by Daniel W on October 29, 2009 at 11:20am

Nerd,
THis is really helpful and the link is dense with content. I read part of it and intend to read more later. It needs to be taken in smaller bites. It is helful to read the graphs and statistics. It does support the inequality argument, rather than the equality argument offerred in HuffPost.

Jason also commented on the family care aspects. This would seem to be a big aspect - given that we are either sociologically or biologically or both continuing to have the major childcare roles for women.

I commented in another part of this discussion, that maybe (anecdotally) in families where a grandmother takes on the role of rearing young children, the mom has more freedom to progress in her job. One woman I know strongly criticised American families for NOT doing this, stating that her mother came to the US from China to take care of her children, and none of her American relatives did that. Now she's helping care for her mother who is declining, and again her American relatives don't do that either. In the US, land of the rugged individual, the role of the family is less, and the expectation of government and employer is more. In a sense, the 'deal' seems to be 'I take care of your kids for a while, and you take care of me when Im old". Again, purely anecdotal, so I will slap my own wrist for saying it.

The fly in the ointment here is, in a capitalistic society, where productivity theoretically (not always) is a big factor in pay, how is childrearing factored in?

(I wouldn't say that Iran is a good example of supporting women, even if they do give 90 days. They may well want to give permanent leave....)

Permalink Reply by Gold Guy on October 28, 2009 at 2:55pm

It isn't that being fair skinned (white) does not result in some advantages in our culture. It does. The problem is when someone labels persons with that trait as being "privileged." The entire enterprise of doing so is wrong. Consider the first sentence of your quote by Blumenfled:

Many forms of oppression (and dominant group privilege), however, are not as apparent, especially to members of dominant groups.

There are three highly evaluative, dare I say, damning terms used there. "oppression, dominance, privilege" That isn't by accident. It is the application of a political groups analysis which is built upon the perspectives of waring groups. Everything is viewed as if people are locked into waring tribes, even where it makes no sense, as with the sexes. The way of thinking that results in that sort of judgmental political analysis of social groups is a rampant cognitive bias in humans. It isn't really much different that the discrimination they think they're fighting. That we get sucked into this error is sad. People get so convinced of that dogma that they can't see other ways of thinking about humans or social processes. When someone disagrees they make condescending comments like the one above, that you don't agree with a political groups analysis because you're (sic) privileged.

Permalink Reply by Mike Hein on October 28, 2009 at 3:01pm

I would like to comment on the numbers, Adriana but a) you and Daniel are doing a pretty good job of it and b) I have a spreadsheet of power plant operations data that is using up all of my number-think right now. I hope to look at the detail tables this evening.

Permalink Reply by Jason Spicer on October 28, 2009 at 3:40pm

Not sure what this means:

"Women hold more management and supervisory positions than men, by a margin of 37% to 31%."

Are the remaining 32% of management and supervisory positions held by children? Robots?

Since advantages accruing to race or gender are so subtle and amount to varying levels of opportunity, I'm not sure it's really possible to tot them up satisfactorily. We'll probably have to be satisfied using percentages in the population compared to percentages in specific job categories as a proxy. It should more or less work for race and sexual orientation, but biological differences between males and females will always be there and will likely account for some amount of variance, particularly in certain jobs, and probably overall with respect to pregnancy. I doubt it will ever be possible to precisely compensate for career income disparities due to pregnancy, childbirth, and child-care discrepancies during infancy. Actuarial science could get you close to averages, but individual decisions around these issues will always lead to variance. In any case, we can't and shouldn't aim for equal outcomes, just equal opportunities with an equitable floor underneath.

Permalink Reply by Jason Spicer on October 28, 2009 at 4:17pm

Hmm, that's a heckuva rounding error. And if that does mean the margin of error spread, the statistic is saying that management and supervisory positions are held by 31% to 37% more women than men? That seems unlikely. That would mean that two-thirds of management and supervisors are women. I think those numbers aren't stated correctly.

I think we basically agree on the second part. We should aim for equality. If we don't precisely hit it, well, nothing's perfect. The important thing is that we're heading in the right direction.

Permalink Reply by Nate on October 28, 2009 at 9:07pm

I wonder what "professional" means?

Architects, computer programmers, dentists, doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists, therapists, etc.

Permalink Reply by Jason Spicer on October 29, 2009 at 2:08pm

Daniel, that's an interesting point about Asian grandparents. There are definitely different cultural attitudes about how extended families should be involved with child and elder care. It would be interesting to see a study about grandparental involvement in childcare and how it correlates to economic success.

Permalink Reply by Aaron S. (USA) on October 28, 2009 at 5:00pm

What would be really nice, not just in gender but for the sciences in general, is if there were some publicly-available resource for scientific studies so that the public could see the results of the studies themselves, as they happen, instead of having to wait for someone (possibly with an agenda) to interpret everything for us. It seems like it would make so many things easier if we could just paste a link to all the relevant studies involved when we're talking about something.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page