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Your second paragraph basically posits that 1950's America would have been filled with companies hiring minority workers at lower wages to achieve superior fina

Your second paragraph basically posits that 1950's America would have been filled with companies hiring minority workers at lower wages to achieve superior financial results, but this didn't happen to any significant degree. Was life for African Americans in 1955 one of manifest equality and fairness?

zamadatix 7y ago
That's a bit of a strawman, the second paragraph never posited this unless you really think discrimination against women in 2015 is comparable to discrimination against blacks in 1955. What I think the second paragraph fails to talk about is truly rampant discrimination leads to less opportunity for people to achieve the same quality/throughput of work as those not discriminated against. If you're in a group that has been systematically discriminated against it's not really reasonable to expect that group to have equal representation in an in a high skill pool they've not generally been allowed in. Back to talking about the original point made by the comment though: The conversation and data (usually) isn't "Jane has shown herself to be equally as valuable as John but nobody will hire her for more than <smaller>% the rate of John" it's "women are not in the same high paying roles as men in the same field, by some percentage, why is that" and usually people can agree it's not that women are naturally <x>% worse performing than men in every way so there is something discriminatory we are doing wrong as a society still.
logicalmonster 7y ago
Purely from a logical perspective, this counterargument would only seem to be valid if all humans in all circumstances are always entirely fungible. Are they?
belorn 7y ago
Discrimination at the education level made sure that very few companies could do that. Discrimination at the military draft made sure to ship out the maximum of African Americans to die in the war. In addition the African American demographic had significant less money that other demographics, and discrimination against lower classes has always been a source for fear and hostility. You add all those up and you get most of the equality and fairness of 1955 African American life. None of it can be applied to women in 2019.

zamadatix 7y ago

That's a bit of a strawman, the second paragraph never posited this unless you really think discrimination against women in 2015 is comparable to discrimination against blacks in 1955. What I think the second paragraph fails to talk about is truly rampant discrimination leads to less opportunity for people to achieve the same quality/throughput of work as those not discriminated against. If you're in a group that has been systematically discriminated against it's not really reasonable to expect that group to have equal representation in an in a high skill pool they've not generally been allowed in. Back to talking about the original point made by the comment though: The conversation and data (usually) isn't "Jane has shown herself to be equally as valuable as John but nobody will hire her for more than <smaller>% the rate of John" it's "women are not in the same high paying roles as men in the same field, by some percentage, why is that" and usually people can agree it's not that women are naturally <x>% worse performing than men in every way so there is something discriminatory we are doing wrong as a society still.

logicalmonster 7y ago

Purely from a logical perspective, this counterargument would only seem to be valid if all humans in all circumstances are always entirely fungible. Are they?

belorn 7y ago

Discrimination at the education level made sure that very few companies could do that. Discrimination at the military draft made sure to ship out the maximum of African Americans to die in the war. In addition the African American demographic had significant less money that other demographics, and discrimination against lower classes has always been a source for fear and hostility. You add all those up and you get most of the equality and fairness of 1955 African American life. None of it can be applied to women in 2019.