BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?

Subject: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 11:49 AM

Study Ties Wage Disparities To Outlook on Gender Roles

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 22, 2008; Page A02

Men with egalitarian attitudes about the role of women in society earn significantly less on average than men who hold more traditional views about women's place in the world, according to a study being reported today.

It is the first time social scientists have produced evidence that large numbers of men might be victims of gender-related income disparities. The study raises the provocative possibility that a substantial part of the widely discussed gap in income between men and women who do the same work is really a gap between men with a traditional outlook and everyone else.

The differences found in the study were substantial. Men with traditional attitudes about gender roles earned $11,930 more a year than men with egalitarian views and $14,404 more than women with traditional attitudes. The comparisons were based on men and women working in the same kinds of jobs with the same levels of education and putting in the same number of hours per week.

Although men with a traditional outlook earned the most, women with a traditional outlook earned the least. The wage gap between working men and women with a traditional attitude was more than 10 times as large as the gap between men and women with egalitarian views.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/21/AR2008092102529.html

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 11:56 AM

So, does having a traditional attitude make a man earn more? Or does earning more money make you adopt more traditional attitudes?

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 12:14 PM

Greg, you beat me to the punch ~ that was exactly my first reaction, too. I lean towards the latter: that making (or simply having)more money leads one to accept traditional attitudes as justificaiton for one's life of privilege.

Those guys making upwards of a grand a month more than everybody else need to convice themselves that they enjoy their status for good reason. Being male is probably just one facet of their "qualifications"; having been born into the "right" segment of society (as a male) must have helped as well.

Being well-educated, and having chosen a remunerative career path, are better explanations for having risen to the top of the economic ladder, and probably have less to do with the results of this study than other factors related to varous accident-of-birth factors.

I'm reminded of a witticism I read a couple of weeks ago, during the Republican convention. Someone repeated an old joke to the effect that Bush the Elder "was born on third base, and grew up believing that he hit a triple." The corollary, in regard to G.W. Bush: "He was born on third base and then stole second."

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 12:26 PM

People with more money, in my experience,always tend to believe that life rewards the industrious, virtuous etc etc. The poor tend not to believe that. Funny, isn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: Peace
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 12:37 PM

I think the study didn't take into account the influence of Unions, the beginnings of Globalization and the increase in Offshore business transactions and shenannigans (sp?). The ugly term, downsizing, became anoth factor in the 25-year process of data gathering and subsequent sets of interpretation.

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 12:51 PM

One factor may be that men with more egalitarian attitudes don't place as much value on being in positions of power as their more traditional coworkers. Men who fully share domestic and child-rearing responsibilities tend to value family life over careers, and may be less willing to put up with frequent relocations, long hours, and the other things executive level jobs often demand.

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: Wesley S
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 12:57 PM

I'd rather make less money and have my values intact.

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: Peace
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 02:18 PM

The people making giant money do have their values in tact. What does THAT say about this world in which we live?

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 03:53 PM

The bible says women must obey.
So does the Babtist Evangelican President

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: Peace
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 03:55 PM

I never took enough drugs to really understand or warm to that guy.

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: artbrooks
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 04:10 PM

Having been a manager in an organization in which there has always been a significant number of "traditionalist males" (although I confess that I didn't think of them in that way) in mid-upper and upper level leadership roles, I can see that this does reflect reality to some extent. A male who is outspoken in his opinion that there is no real gender-based difference in management potential would have trouble with obtaining the positive references from higher-level managers that are vital for his own organizational advancement, not because of any vast right-wing conspiracy but because they would have the unthinking gut reaction that "he is not one of us".

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: Peace
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 04:22 PM

I see something similar on emergency response crews. Emergency departments draw responders who are Alphas for the most part. They think they are the people for the job and NO job is too big for them. That's why a chain of command HAS to be instilled in the various departments. Leave ten guys and gals unsupervised at a fire or MVC scene and you'll have ten people doing their own thing by telling the other nine what to do and likely getting killed or hurt in the process. And Art's assessment is true to the situation I have mentioned. A new scene commander had better have come up through the ranks or he/she will not be trusted for quite a while.

Business and other organizations that actually pay employees operate on a top down basis and the flow of information is sent through those closer to the top. It is more efficient, but than it opens the door for good suggestions to be side-tracked if they don't help to further someone higher's agenda. Play the game and up ya go. The opposite holds true, imo.

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 05:17 PM

Say you're a married man in the middle or lower income tier, and you and your wife both work, and you know your wife gets paid less than you do even though she's equally smart, talented, educated, etc.

Even if you once held "traditional" views, it's likely to dawn on you sooner or later that the most logical way for your family's income to increase would be if your wife's value were recognized so she would be paid more. This insight would turn you into a feminist (to some degree) even if you weren't before.

If you're in the upper income tier, and your wife doesn't work, because she doesn't need to, then you're probably satisfied with your situation and nothing is likely to make you change your mind.

People in the upper income levels do try to increase their income, but it's more because salary is a status symbol than for practical reasons. Increasing your income by having your wife go to work wouldn't bring as much satisfaction (to the husband anyway) as getting a promotion, because it wouldn't raise your status.

We were all once traditionalists. Those without (much) money have changed their opinions. Those with money haven't.

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 11:34 AM

What I get from this article is a resurgence of Spencerian "Social Darwinism" (never advocated by Charles Darwin). "Traditionalist" brings to question what does that term mean? Authoritative abuse? Men somehow make more if they bully women? Or if they are more aggressive than men and women who are not?

It sounds like a real puff piece to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Top Wages to traditionalists?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:22 AM

One thing that has struck me in my very mixed office, is that if a child is unwell or needs looking after in the holidays, it is usually the mother that has to take time off work to do the caring.

Saying that when a child is unwell it needs its mother is just piffle. There are more male doctors than female, so men are obviously just as capable as women in dispensing Calpol and cough mixture. They're certainly able to clear vomit off the floor and change a bed sheet. So why is it the woman who has to take the time off?

This reinforces the perception that women in the workforce do not matter, that their jobs are just 'pin money' and bring no appreciable income to the household - the 'traditional' view.

There are many aggressive women in top jobs, even more in the lower paid ones... it's the middle ground that seems to be lacking. Take the Inland Revenue in the UK...   something like 50% of all female employees are on the lowest pay scale/5th grade. The other 50% are scattered unevenly throughout the other 4 grades, with one particular grade having only about 2% of that remaining half.

There are more women than men in the Revenue that are still at the same grade after 10 years of working - even without taking career or maternity breaks. Until fairly recently, those women who took career or maternity breaks were not granted pensions for that time off, whereas the men who took career breaks were still given pension rights. At least we've stopped firing women just for getting married.

LTS