Apple Report Reveals Men Are Paid 5% More on Average Than Women in UK

[VulchR]

We need to survey girls and women still in schools and women in the workforce on a regular basis and find out what impediments and factors affect their choices and career paths.

End result ratios of which gender has ended up where don't even begin to tell us what we need to know.

We may find that working conditions for women in the technology sector require schedules or something else that is inimical to childbearing and the child rearing responsibilities that still fall primarily to women. Or maybe there are still too much asinine behaviors and assumptions that create a hostile work environment for women in those professions.

It is fairly recently that women are opening up about the sexual harrassment they have endured attempting to secure funding for their startups. This is one area in which women have faced significant barriers and discrimination and harrassment that men have largely not had to face. Who knows what businesses and female CEOs we would have had running amongst the likes of Bezos and Musk if so many women hadn't been told they need to sleep their way to funding.

I think some of the problems is the values we hold. In my field (science) competition occurs at every career stage, and the competition is a zero-sum game. The end result: bigger and bigger laboratory groups, even though we know that large lab groups start decreasing in efficiency, and alpha male values by those in control of the field (not to mention the egos to match). The highly capable and trained women I know who have left science just get fed up of the hyper-competitive BS.

In my field I believe that it's not enough to focus on hiring and salaries. Attitudes regarding what is counted as good performance need to change. Right now it seems like the system has the values of aggressive men who blag their way to the top.

 

[stylinexpat]

Anyone here think that the pay difference between female and male strippers is 5%? Do women make 5% more? Is the difference for female escorts also 5%?

 

[Black Tiger]

Excuse me, you’re telling a 51 year old mixed race partially disabled woman who has struggled against racism and sexism in education, medical care, and the workplace that my argument is tired and ill-informed?

Fine. Fair enough. Let’s get to know each other then. How old are you and what have you faced in life and what have you learned first hand about people? I don’t pretend racism and sexism are gone. I know better. I faced so much. I’m sick and worn down with it all.

During my lifetime, the institutionalized racism and sexism inherent in the medical studies on which so many practices are still based was particularly bad and could have killed me and has killed and disabled a lot of women and people of color and continues to this day. This problem is only just now being recognized and studied. In fairness to society, it’s only been in my lifetime that the population has become racially and ethnically diverse enough for the issue to become impossible to ignore. When lives are on the line change can’t come fast enough, I know firsthand. But harsh reality is that it takes time for solid efforts to come to fruition. Rushed stuff falls apart fast.

I’m only 51 years old and it’s only been in my lifetime that women of my mother’s generation started entering the workforce in droves and making the legal fights for equal rights. Even with all of my mother’s generations of struggle, results were still mixed for my generation. When I came out of college in 1989 and went for interviews, it leaped out at me that employers only cared how fast I could type but my male friends were asked about other skills. So yeah I ran into some obstacles, to say the least.

And even though men knew it wasn’t cool to sexually harass women at work, I had to put up with it anyway even as late as 1995. I did report it and was told by my female boss they wanted a company where people felt comfortable to joke around. So in other words, suck it up sweetheart, because boys will be boys. I met similar humiliation attempting to report sexual harassment by a doctor to an unsympathetic female referring physician. I should have fought harder for justice but I was young, poor, ignorant of any options I might have had, in poor health and easily beaten down in those days.

But I have not been guiltless of being a sexist pig myself. I once ignorantly offended a male coworker when I made some jokes about his being a male cheerleader. He pointed out the offense as the sexist idiocy it was and I promptly apologized. It was a wonderful teachable moment between two human beings.

This business of diverse people getting along is difficult and messy and likely will never run smoothly, so I have little comprehension for people who expect change to be something that happens at the flip of a switch.

Equality of opportunity and equality of treatment is an ongoing process of people learning to get along and respect each other even if they struggle to understand each other’s point of view.

But I have to say despite the pigs and pitfalls there were also decent men, black and white, who went out of their way to give me opportunities and training and support. And they expected nothing in return. If I hadn’t gotten disabled by chronic disease, they would have been the brothers who ensured I would have gone far in my career.

My husband’s mentor was a black woman who believed in fairness and merit. He owes much of his success to opportunities she opened for him and he does attempt to pay it forward but she didn’t want him to ever give anyone preferential treatment to do so. Just fair access, which is what you say isn’t the issue. I can’t agree with that. It has to start somewhere and that is with fair access to opportunities.

Okay enough about my perspective and past.

Let’s look at what’s going on NOW.

Nobody is ignoring those obstacles to higher paying jobs as they damn well better not or their companies will get sued. That is right and just.

But things now are in danger of being run by quotas and it’s now white males straight out of university who are the most vulnerable. It is not right or just that any innocent hardworking person should be made vulnerable.

They didn’t pinch women in the butt in 1979. They didn’t Harvey Weinstein women out of a career. Things are in danger of being less equal opportunity than ever, but in a way that is punitive and damaging to innocent people and patronizing and condescending to the people we mean to help.

When flawed metrics are the basis for hiring decisions, we risk candidates being judged not based on their merits, but on race and gender.

A woman candidate for a tech job will be prized for her astuteness with programming languages, right? Well one would hope. But the reality of the numbers games means her gender and possibly her race are the prime concerns, her abilities second. That’s patronizing and insulting to say the least.

Where is the fairness in that? Where is the equality?

Equal means equal. I don’t think it’s right to disadvantage anyone to try to get retribution over what was done in the past, even a recent past.

We have a chance now to make everything truly a meritocracy where people of any race, gender, orientation can advance to the positions for which their experience and education and accomplishments and work ethic best qualify them. We now have the perspective and societal maturity to see that nothing less will do for the benefit and advancement of all of us in total.

The challenge is to ensure this happens without relying on flawed metrics and ratios and statistics that show nothing more than the possibility that women aren’t drawn to Silicon Valley type careers as much as men are.

Maybe they are more drawn to medicine. I have noticed over the course of my dad’s battle with multiple cancers over the past 15 years, his surgeons and oncologists have remarkably been mostly female...and many are black or brown(Indian and Hispanic and Middle Eastern)!

We can look to see if there are any biases in education that steer one group to or away from certain careers and opportunities and do what we can to rectify that. But once the finished product comes out and is standing there as a job applicant, the only question should be are they the best applicant for the position?

I know some would argue these metrics are all the means we have to look for bias in hiring and advancement. I accept again that change comes slowly and this is the best we have for now.

But like I said, these dangerously reinforce judging people on race and gender. We need to find better ways.

You say it’s not about equal access but about barriers to women entering higher paying positions. Well again, we’ve only had about one and a half generations so far that have been legally ensured equal access. We won’t see the fruits of this equal access until the current batch of Millennials works their way up to CEO levels. Despite how much they might think it should be otherwise, that usually doesn’t happen until one reaches middle age, so let’s see what the stats are in 15-20 years.

And if we continue to skew things against white males, next generation we may see a white male underclass and have to figure out how to fix that mess. Best not to make the conditions that would create that mess NOW.

“Skewed against white males” is the most remarkable part of your rant. And speaks volumes more than this web of nonsense spun. Anyone who think that white males are some how oppressed needs to give their head a shake. Well done on missing the entire point of my post.

 

[5105973]

“Skewed against white males” is the most remarkable part of your rant. And speaks volumes more than this web of nonsense spun. Anyone who think that white males are some how oppressed needs to give their head a shake. Well done on missing the entire point of my post.

It is possible I missed the point of your post. We both need to lay down any hostilities based on misunderstandings and properly communicate. I’m open to trying to understand you.

And I’m not ranting. I do apologize if my writing came across that way. I was surprised at your assumptions of me, so I was giving some backstory to explain a bit of who I am, my experiences and my perspectives that brought me to the views I have today.

Meanwhile I still know nothing at all about you other than you are apparently angry at me for not seeing things exactly the same way as you. How can I possibly come to an understanding of your points if I don’t understand your perspective? And if you seem more intent on attacking me and my point of view without explaining where precisely your disagreements lie.

I just have to throw things against the wall and hope something sticks that addresses what you’re getting at. Which is hard because I don’t quite know what you think I’m advocating. Or even what you’re advocating.

And I wouldn’t dismiss you out of hand the way you have done to me. I gave the thumbs up to your post on another topic yesterday because I thought it was well stated and I credit you with intelligence. Compassion and patience, eh, not so much though. Maybe I’m inadvertently pushing your buttons. Again, if so, I offer my apologies but I literally know no common ground on which we can meet, yet.

I can tell you what I think I’m advocating: a society that provides fair and open opportunities for all who desire to work to make the most of them.

For people who can’t work, who through no fault of their own have a very limited set of options, I want a compassionate society that helps look after their needs with dignity and helps them fulfill their potential.

In none of this do I want gender, race, religion (or other arbitrary labels we are born under or choose) to be divisive factors that hold any of us back from finding fulfillment in life. Or from offering each other understanding and help.

I do not think white males are oppressed in general at all. That would be absurd, considering events in the history of this country all the way to current events. I quite directly said I have been victimized myself by some males and many of them have indeed been white.

But I recognize they didn’t give me trouble because they were white men. They gave me trouble because they are terrible human beings. If they had been born green with purple hair and no gender at all, they still would find some way of making other people uncomfortable and exploited because they are nasty.

I do not judge people on their skin color or their gender, but by the content of their character as demonstrated in their choices and actions.

While I acknowledge that white males in general have enjoyed a more privileged status in US culture, I think it would be folly to ignore the fact that it’s possible to set up situations and environments that inflict oppression or hostility to any one person or group, and that can include white males. But it can just as easily include Hispanic males or Inuit females. That’s because oppression and exploitation is a crime of opportunity.

We always need to be careful when trying to right wrongs in our society that we don’t inadvertently create environments of opportunity for anyone else to be abused or dismissed. Our politics favor quick fixes when more measured action and long range planning is often called for.

I want to see nobody left behind. Except the people who just want to sit back and expect everything to fall into their laps. And people like that are found in every possible permutation of human existence. They are opportunitists who are adept at exploiting the people around them regardless of what socioeconomic environment they’re in.