3 ms·

Pew's writeup of their own research is a better read than the BBC article. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/28/young-women-are-out-earning-young-m

Pew's writeup of their own research is a better read than the BBC article. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/28/young-women-are-out-earning-young-men-in-several-u-s-cities/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/28/young-women... The problem with anything written about this topic is that 99% of the time, ideology comes first and the goal of the writer is to either be pro-women, or anti-feminist. It's never a balanced view. Pew's analysis seems pretty balanced. They looked only at young people who work full-time. Within this demographic: 16% - are in metro areas where women earn parity to men, or up to 20% more than men. 47% - are in metro areas where women earn 90-99% of what men earn. 37% - are in metro areas where women earn <90% of men. It also notes that men work 4-5% longer hours than women. What it doesn't dare to touch (I don't blame them) are gender roles and proclivities. Questions like: how much of this is due to men being on average more competitive, and valuing career/financial success more than women do? How much of it is due to women prioritizing family over work? How much of it is due to the professions each gender gravitates toward? Those questions are all based on pretty well established observational data, but people find it very uncomfortable to acknowledge that gender roles exist and men and women continue to have very different preferences about how to live their lives, despite over a century of feminism. I think it's because one camp fundamentally believes that these preferences should be eradicated and the other believes they are natural and acceptable.

badcppdev 4y ago
Thanks for the excellent summary. And very good point about the Overton window aspect of this issue. There's a large number of things in this world that might potentially be improved but people aren't allowed to discuss the problems or solutions freely.
arrrg 4y ago
Those aren’t the only two possible perspectives. I believe systems should be dismantled that reward being competitive and do not reward care work.
- belorn 4y ago
  The word "reward" here is doing some heavy lifting, especially since the above comment don't include it. Who is doing the rewarding and what is the reward? Is getting higher wages for doing longer hours at work a reward? Are vacation days rewards? Is it a reward to get higher paid if you do a night shift compared to a day shift?
- luckylion 4y ago
  What about competitive care work?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
brnt 4y ago
> Those questions are all based on pretty well established observational data, but people find it very uncomfortable to acknowledge that gender roles exist and men and women continue to have very different preferences about how to live their lives, despite over a century of feminism. I think it's because one camp fundamentally believes that these preferences should be eradicated and the other believes they are natural and acceptable. You are forgetting there's no experiment controlling for culture. Naturally, laws and cultural habits don't change in lock step, the latter not even equally over all in a particular cultural zone. It is therefore to be expected that ingrained habits disappear only slowly over the generations. This should not be seen as validation of the existence of gender roles. Nor is it even about that (I know politicians try to make it about identity, it's the easiest way to rile up a base). It is about enabling all sorts of habits. Those gender roles you refer to are not and were not shared by all, and those people are thankful for change.
7952 4y ago
A broader question is to ask if it is really optimal to favour super-competitive workaholics. It is possible that for many organisations people who are more cooperative and want a good work life balance actually make more effective managers.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  What does favor mean here? If a cat makes it into a den full of mice, those mice are going to die. There's no favoritism, it's just how reality works. People who work harder have a strong tendency to be more successful at the thing they're working at. This is just as true for the high school athlete that puts in 4 extra hours on the weekend as it is for the person working 60-80 hours/week. ---- And if I may, this is a major problem. Society has been built such that many people have been able to successfully exist without an innate acceptable of reality. They've been able to do this because they've never had to actually contend with what it means to poke a bear (hint: you'll get eaten) and over time its colored their view of everything as being negotiable (with little to no respect for reality). But just as smoking crack for years on end has certain realities that you cannot get away with, people working harder than you also has certain realities (such as them giving up family time but making more money).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- zzzzzzzza 4y ago
  this ignores the fact that often (the majority of the time in my experience) the super workaholics are the cooperative ones lol.
WithinReason 4y ago
Wikipedia actually does a decent job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap In the United States, for example, the non-adjusted average woman's annual salary is 79% of the average man's salary, compared to 95% for the adjusted average salary.
darkwater 4y ago
> but people find it very uncomfortable to acknowledge that gender roles exist and men and women continue to have very different preferences about how to live their lives, despite over a century of feminism. TBH I don't think anybody is uncomfortable acknowledging this as "a thing". The issues arise when there are people saying that it's biological and it is how it is because women and men are inherently different while others say it is due to society, beliefs and costumes.
- safety1st 4y ago
  There's absolutely a biological component and it's discussed openly and freely until politics are introduced, at which point mentioning it becomes taboo. Without even getting into genetics, we have mountains of empirical evidence that sex hormones influence behavior. E.g. if you suppress or increase someone's testosterone, you'll tend to see their level of aggression change. If you administer cross-sex hormone therapy to a transgender person, their behavior will tend to change. Doctors are well aware of all this and tell their patients about it because doing so is important for the patient's well-being. We've done brain scans of people who are exposed to changes in their sex hormone balance, and found that it physically changes the brain, some parts get bigger, some get smaller. None of this is to suggest that you should be locked into a certain role in life because of your sex. But it's equally damaging to deny that biology has any role in your personality, because if you do, you're setting yourself up for a lifetime of internal conflict. This polarity of masculine vs feminine behavior is real and biological. That doesn't mean there isn't a great deal of overlap - some women are predisposed to act more masculine, and some men are predisposed to act more feminine. Which is all fine, as a society we should never deny people access to opportunities because of their biological makeup. But the poles are absolutely real and at least partially rooted in biology. The recent trend of trying to deny their existence, or claim that they're fabricated by patriarchal power structures or whatever, is anti-science.
  - belorn 4y ago
    The trouble with science around sex hormones is that people both in the past and present tend run with a conclusion even when science has proven the conclusion to be false. Sex hormones in generally do not do what people think it does. People have done studies where they have increase someone's testosterone (within human levels) and observed if there was any changes in aggressive behavior. It was proven repeatably to not cause any change. This caused a bit of surprise among researchers and resulted in a new theory called challenge hypothesis, but popular opinion still believe the old theory that testosterone increase aggression. An even older theory thought estrogen to cause emotional hysteria, and a mountain of research illustrated how wrong that was. To make a car comparison, how much oil is being pumped in a car has a direct relation to how fast it is going. If it has zero oil the speed of the car is likely to go to zero. Oil is required to reach high speeds (or rather high rpm), and oil has a correlation to speed. Oil has a direct effect on most part of the engine. Oil doesn't however cause high speed, and increasing the oil does not make the car go faster.
mint2 4y ago
You forgot “how much is it due to women in many households are forced to take more than their fair share of household work for which they do not get paid, which prevents them from having the ability to work as intensely or as long at their paid job” Edit: Oof looks really bad on users of a predominantly male site that that factual observation is downvoted.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  No, you're being down voted for posting irrelevant information sarcastically.
  - mint2 4y ago
    Okay, that confirms that the downvotes are out of denial because it’s undeniably and clearly relevant as a reply to the quoted major portion of the parent comment shown below > “ What it doesn't dare to touch (I don't blame them) are gender roles and proclivities. Questions like: how much of this is due to men being on average more competitive, and valuing career/financial success more than women do? How much of it is due to women prioritizing family over work? How much of it is due to the professions each gender gravitates toward?”
RHSeeger 4y ago
I think your questions at the end are super important ones, and it's frustrating that they are far less commonly discussed; presumably because it's very easy for a person to be called sexist by even bringing up the idea. > How much of it is due to the professions each gender gravitates toward I think it is even more interesting and complicated than that, too. Assuming that "women tend to more commonly take roles that pay less", you can ask the followup question of whether those roles pay less _because_ women traditionally fill them. Is cause and effect one way, the other way, or both ways? Overall, it is a REALLY interesting topic. It is also, however, one where it's very easy to start out having an innocent conversation and accidentally turn out being considered "the bad guy". So it's a hard conversation to have widely.
- belorn 4y ago
  > Assuming that "women tend to more commonly take roles that pay less", you can ask the followup question of whether those roles pay less _because_ women traditionally fill them. Is cause and effect one way, the other way, or both ways? Men have been seen to be more sensitive to changes in wages and to generally leave professions faster when wages are dropping. Men tend to also rush to professions when wages are suddenly rising. Since wages can change to external factors, there does seem to indicate the order of the cause and effect. It would be interesting to know if the same could be said about work hours. If you extend work hours (overtime), do women tend to leave the profession, and if you reduce it (like 4 day work week) do women rush to that profession?

badcppdev 4y ago

Thanks for the excellent summary. And very good point about the Overton window aspect of this issue. There's a large number of things in this world that might potentially be improved but people aren't allowed to discuss the problems or solutions freely.

arrrg 4y ago

Those aren’t the only two possible perspectives. I believe systems should be dismantled that reward being competitive and do not reward care work.

belorn 4y ago
The word "reward" here is doing some heavy lifting, especially since the above comment don't include it. Who is doing the rewarding and what is the reward? Is getting higher wages for doing longer hours at work a reward? Are vacation days rewards? Is it a reward to get higher paid if you do a night shift compared to a day shift?
luckylion 4y ago
What about competitive care work?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

brnt 4y ago

> Those questions are all based on pretty well established observational data, but people find it very uncomfortable to acknowledge that gender roles exist and men and women continue to have very different preferences about how to live their lives, despite over a century of feminism. I think it's because one camp fundamentally believes that these preferences should be eradicated and the other believes they are natural and acceptable. You are forgetting there's no experiment controlling for culture. Naturally, laws and cultural habits don't change in lock step, the latter not even equally over all in a particular cultural zone. It is therefore to be expected that ingrained habits disappear only slowly over the generations. This should not be seen as validation of the existence of gender roles. Nor is it even about that (I know politicians try to make it about identity, it's the easiest way to rile up a base). It is about enabling all sorts of habits. Those gender roles you refer to are not and were not shared by all, and those people are thankful for change.

7952 4y ago

A broader question is to ask if it is really optimal to favour super-competitive workaholics. It is possible that for many organisations people who are more cooperative and want a good work life balance actually make more effective managers.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
What does favor mean here? If a cat makes it into a den full of mice, those mice are going to die. There's no favoritism, it's just how reality works. People who work harder have a strong tendency to be more successful at the thing they're working at. This is just as true for the high school athlete that puts in 4 extra hours on the weekend as it is for the person working 60-80 hours/week. ---- And if I may, this is a major problem. Society has been built such that many people have been able to successfully exist without an innate acceptable of reality. They've been able to do this because they've never had to actually contend with what it means to poke a bear (hint: you'll get eaten) and over time its colored their view of everything as being negotiable (with little to no respect for reality). But just as smoking crack for years on end has certain realities that you cannot get away with, people working harder than you also has certain realities (such as them giving up family time but making more money).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
zzzzzzzza 4y ago
this ignores the fact that often (the majority of the time in my experience) the super workaholics are the cooperative ones lol.

WithinReason 4y ago

Wikipedia actually does a decent job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap In the United States, for example, the non-adjusted average woman's annual salary is 79% of the average man's salary, compared to 95% for the adjusted average salary.

darkwater 4y ago

> but people find it very uncomfortable to acknowledge that gender roles exist and men and women continue to have very different preferences about how to live their lives, despite over a century of feminism. TBH I don't think anybody is uncomfortable acknowledging this as "a thing". The issues arise when there are people saying that it's biological and it is how it is because women and men are inherently different while others say it is due to society, beliefs and costumes.

safety1st 4y ago
There's absolutely a biological component and it's discussed openly and freely until politics are introduced, at which point mentioning it becomes taboo. Without even getting into genetics, we have mountains of empirical evidence that sex hormones influence behavior. E.g. if you suppress or increase someone's testosterone, you'll tend to see their level of aggression change. If you administer cross-sex hormone therapy to a transgender person, their behavior will tend to change. Doctors are well aware of all this and tell their patients about it because doing so is important for the patient's well-being. We've done brain scans of people who are exposed to changes in their sex hormone balance, and found that it physically changes the brain, some parts get bigger, some get smaller. None of this is to suggest that you should be locked into a certain role in life because of your sex. But it's equally damaging to deny that biology has any role in your personality, because if you do, you're setting yourself up for a lifetime of internal conflict. This polarity of masculine vs feminine behavior is real and biological. That doesn't mean there isn't a great deal of overlap - some women are predisposed to act more masculine, and some men are predisposed to act more feminine. Which is all fine, as a society we should never deny people access to opportunities because of their biological makeup. But the poles are absolutely real and at least partially rooted in biology. The recent trend of trying to deny their existence, or claim that they're fabricated by patriarchal power structures or whatever, is anti-science.
- belorn 4y ago
  The trouble with science around sex hormones is that people both in the past and present tend run with a conclusion even when science has proven the conclusion to be false. Sex hormones in generally do not do what people think it does. People have done studies where they have increase someone's testosterone (within human levels) and observed if there was any changes in aggressive behavior. It was proven repeatably to not cause any change. This caused a bit of surprise among researchers and resulted in a new theory called challenge hypothesis, but popular opinion still believe the old theory that testosterone increase aggression. An even older theory thought estrogen to cause emotional hysteria, and a mountain of research illustrated how wrong that was. To make a car comparison, how much oil is being pumped in a car has a direct relation to how fast it is going. If it has zero oil the speed of the car is likely to go to zero. Oil is required to reach high speeds (or rather high rpm), and oil has a correlation to speed. Oil has a direct effect on most part of the engine. Oil doesn't however cause high speed, and increasing the oil does not make the car go faster.

mint2 4y ago

You forgot “how much is it due to women in many households are forced to take more than their fair share of household work for which they do not get paid, which prevents them from having the ability to work as intensely or as long at their paid job” Edit: Oof looks really bad on users of a predominantly male site that that factual observation is downvoted.

xboxnolifes 4y ago
No, you're being down voted for posting irrelevant information sarcastically.
- mint2 4y ago
  Okay, that confirms that the downvotes are out of denial because it’s undeniably and clearly relevant as a reply to the quoted major portion of the parent comment shown below > “ What it doesn't dare to touch (I don't blame them) are gender roles and proclivities. Questions like: how much of this is due to men being on average more competitive, and valuing career/financial success more than women do? How much of it is due to women prioritizing family over work? How much of it is due to the professions each gender gravitates toward?”

RHSeeger 4y ago

I think your questions at the end are super important ones, and it's frustrating that they are far less commonly discussed; presumably because it's very easy for a person to be called sexist by even bringing up the idea. > How much of it is due to the professions each gender gravitates toward I think it is even more interesting and complicated than that, too. Assuming that "women tend to more commonly take roles that pay less", you can ask the followup question of whether those roles pay less _because_ women traditionally fill them. Is cause and effect one way, the other way, or both ways? Overall, it is a REALLY interesting topic. It is also, however, one where it's very easy to start out having an innocent conversation and accidentally turn out being considered "the bad guy". So it's a hard conversation to have widely.

belorn 4y ago
> Assuming that "women tend to more commonly take roles that pay less", you can ask the followup question of whether those roles pay less _because_ women traditionally fill them. Is cause and effect one way, the other way, or both ways? Men have been seen to be more sensitive to changes in wages and to generally leave professions faster when wages are dropping. Men tend to also rush to professions when wages are suddenly rising. Since wages can change to external factors, there does seem to indicate the order of the cause and effect. It would be interesting to know if the same could be said about work hours. If you extend work hours (overtime), do women tend to leave the profession, and if you reduce it (like 4 day work week) do women rush to that profession?