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Equality is definitely a goal, I think we should have more male nurses, but that's not really a priority when men are over represented in most of the higher pai

by pyrocat 13y ago

Equality is definitely a goal, I think we should have more male nurses, but that's not really a priority when men are over represented in most of the higher paid fields (doctors, lawyers, CEOs .etc). Let's work on helping the more disadvantaged party first, yeah?

stonemetal 13y ago
I don't know if we drove some men into nursing from high paying engineering jobs then there would be more space for women in engineering. Salaries would raise for everyone still in engineering so it would become more attractive to women.
msandford 13y ago
I'm an engineer. I was in grad school at the same time as some of my friends were in law school. I know lawyers who make $40k per year or even less if they're public defenders. Prosecutors don't make a lot more than public defenders. Then I moved to Houston for work. There are plenty of jobs out here that pay substantially more than what your average doctor or lawyer makes. I know of welders who are making $80/hr, quadruple what some lawyers I know earn. I know of machinists who own their house and cars and boats and whatever. I think you're confusing prestige with pay which is totally understandable. But with the education bubble having happened and the resultant unbalance in the workforce prestige != paid well, nor does "uneducated" mean bad pay. The really great part of all this is that welding or machining or some of these skilled trades are actually much easier than startup founding. It's nearly impossible to get filthy rich that way (not that a startup is any guarantee but there are more billionaire startup founders than billionaire welders) but it's much, much harder to go broke. In other words the income distribution has a shorter right tail but also a shorter left one. Trying to get more women as startup founders as a way to reduce income inequality seems like a fools errand due to the speculative nature of startups. I'm not saying that there should be fewer women founders, not at all. But to suggest that we can have more equality in the world by balancing out startups totally misses the bigger picture. It's like pushing for more women princes in Saudi Arabia. Yeah men dominate that right now, but even if you made it 100% equal you're still talking about a trivial percentage of the world's population.
Dewie 13y ago
First, it's not only a question of paychecks but about how it affects society as a whole. That you want more women leaders because you want the decision makers to have less biases and blindsights, on average. Perhaps you also want more men elementary school teachers because you want more male role models for children, and perhaps less chances of biased behaviour towards schoolchildren based on gender. Not just because you want the men who are already wanting to be elementary teachers to have an easier time. These two seem more important on the societal level than bringing more women in to tech and more men into nursing. Secondly, this looks similar to the argument that 'men are over represented in positions of power, so men are better off as a whole'. This assumes that men are a collective soup that automatically benefits from being collectively better off. Perhaps by assuming that more men in positions of wealth and power means that all men have an easier time getting into it, ignoring that men come from different backgrounds and social classes and may not ever get a shot at something like that, anyway. I doubt that many have the conundrum of becoming a big-shot CEO, or taking on a high-risk fisherman job because he needs the risk premium (yes, you've probably already read about men being over-represented in some jobs that aren't really featured items on 'career day'. They come up often enough in these threads). Another assumption behind this is that men necessarily benefit from other men being in power. That's a problematic assumption. Why would all men necessarily benefit from that? In fact, assume that a man in power things of women as inferior, and only think that men are a threat to his position of power; then he has a motivation to keep men down, or at least the swaths of men that aren't immediately useful to him.
klipt 13y ago
> Let's work on helping the more disadvantaged party first, yeah? You're right, we should pay garbagemen and janitors more. Maybe that will encourage more women to go into those fields.

by pyrocat 13y ago

stonemetal 13y ago

I don't know if we drove some men into nursing from high paying engineering jobs then there would be more space for women in engineering. Salaries would raise for everyone still in engineering so it would become more attractive to women.

msandford 13y ago

I'm an engineer. I was in grad school at the same time as some of my friends were in law school. I know lawyers who make $40k per year or even less if they're public defenders. Prosecutors don't make a lot more than public defenders. Then I moved to Houston for work. There are plenty of jobs out here that pay substantially more than what your average doctor or lawyer makes. I know of welders who are making $80/hr, quadruple what some lawyers I know earn. I know of machinists who own their house and cars and boats and whatever. I think you're confusing prestige with pay which is totally understandable. But with the education bubble having happened and the resultant unbalance in the workforce prestige != paid well, nor does "uneducated" mean bad pay. The really great part of all this is that welding or machining or some of these skilled trades are actually much easier than startup founding. It's nearly impossible to get filthy rich that way (not that a startup is any guarantee but there are more billionaire startup founders than billionaire welders) but it's much, much harder to go broke. In other words the income distribution has a shorter right tail but also a shorter left one. Trying to get more women as startup founders as a way to reduce income inequality seems like a fools errand due to the speculative nature of startups. I'm not saying that there should be fewer women founders, not at all. But to suggest that we can have more equality in the world by balancing out startups totally misses the bigger picture. It's like pushing for more women princes in Saudi Arabia. Yeah men dominate that right now, but even if you made it 100% equal you're still talking about a trivial percentage of the world's population.

Dewie 13y ago

First, it's not only a question of paychecks but about how it affects society as a whole. That you want more women leaders because you want the decision makers to have less biases and blindsights, on average. Perhaps you also want more men elementary school teachers because you want more male role models for children, and perhaps less chances of biased behaviour towards schoolchildren based on gender. Not just because you want the men who are already wanting to be elementary teachers to have an easier time. These two seem more important on the societal level than bringing more women in to tech and more men into nursing. Secondly, this looks similar to the argument that 'men are over represented in positions of power, so men are better off as a whole'. This assumes that men are a collective soup that automatically benefits from being collectively better off. Perhaps by assuming that more men in positions of wealth and power means that all men have an easier time getting into it, ignoring that men come from different backgrounds and social classes and may not ever get a shot at something like that, anyway. I doubt that many have the conundrum of becoming a big-shot CEO, or taking on a high-risk fisherman job because he needs the risk premium (yes, you've probably already read about men being over-represented in some jobs that aren't really featured items on 'career day'. They come up often enough in these threads). Another assumption behind this is that men necessarily benefit from other men being in power. That's a problematic assumption. Why would all men necessarily benefit from that? In fact, assume that a man in power things of women as inferior, and only think that men are a threat to his position of power; then he has a motivation to keep men down, or at least the swaths of men that aren't immediately useful to him.

klipt 13y ago

> Let's work on helping the more disadvantaged party first, yeah? You're right, we should pay garbagemen and janitors more. Maybe that will encourage more women to go into those fields.