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It's a bigger problem than that, unfortunately. There are, for better or for worse, traditionally male roles, and traditionally female roles. The argument (as
by jeremysmyth 14y ago
It's a bigger problem than that, unfortunately.
There are, for better or for worse, traditionally male roles, and traditionally female roles. The argument (as you suggest) seems to go in one direction only - why aren't there more female (developers|CEOs|politicians)?
The problems are more complex:
1) One problem is related to the fact that society values male roles more than female. A traditional skilled "female" role earns considerably less than a similarly qualified "male" role. While this isn't immediately relevant to the current conversation, it crops up along with the "glass ceiling" argument about CEOs and other high-status traditionally male roles.
2) Another, and the one typified in the OP, is the mockery or prejudice that applies from men to those who take jobs in roles more typical of the opposite gender. You know the jokes about male hairdressers, and male nurses also have to overcome such jokes. The jokes that females in typically male roles have to overcome are similarly well known, and even less palatable.
Personally, I don't care about gender balance, numerically at least: I don't think the world needs more male nurses or hairdressers, or female developers or construction workers (more power to them if they want to do it though). I do think the world needs to accept (without orthogonal prejudice) when they make the choice and try as hard as I did when I started out in this career.
- leovingi 14y agoI have always found that the argument of pay inequality doesn't really make any economical sense. If a woman is as qualified as a man, yet is ready to work for less pay, wouldn't that be an incentive to hire loads of women? And if someone, regardless of gender, is OK with the salary they are being offered, why should anyone else care if a separate group of people, who have also accepted the salaries they got offered, are earning more?
- UnoriginalGuy 14y agoPay inequality does exist but it is mostly used in an intentionally misleading way to "prove" the extent of sexism/discrimination. There is pay inequality caused by "unknown factors" (potentially including sexism) of around 5%. The rest of the pay differential is caused by known factors (e.g. taking time out of work for children, career choices, etc). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-gap_b_2073804.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-ga...
- dfxm12 14y agoThe world does need men & women to be making the same amount of money for doing the same job. It also needs to shatter the idea of gendered roles. I thought we already had...
- papsosouid 14y ago>The world does need men & women to be making the same amount of money for doing the same job. The world already has that.
- papsosouid 14y ago>One problem is related to the fact that society values male roles more than female. Only when we put blinders on and look at the top end of the spectrum. Male roles like CEOs and politicians are attractive, so we only look at them, and decide men must be getting advantages women aren't. Look down, there's other male roles too. Like prisoners, the homeless, the people committing suicide, the people taking dangerous jobs and dying. 97% of work related deaths are men, and obviously nobody is pushing to fix that imbalance.