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by netfire 3034 days ago
The same could be said for the racial-based statistics, since race might be tied to cultural opinions which could impact how many hours a week or years in a lifetime someone works.
2 comments

Why should we care the reason people make their choices? What if I like surfing, so I decide to work part time which allows me to surf more? Does my skin color or gender matter? If I want to participate in this "surf culture," why would you feel the need to either force me to work more or demand that others subsidize my surfing habit?
I’m just saying there is a factor that could impact the statistics and that how much a person works should be taken into account for all the findings. Not just the gender-based one, so that we have accurate data from which to make decisions from.

I didn’t say anything about forcing anyone to work or subsidizing habits. I think these charts are trying to claim that discrimination is happening and if how much someone is working isn’t taken into account, they don’t support that claim very well.

To be clear I’m not stating that discrimination is or isn’t happening. I’d just like better data.

Well, the difference between race and gender is that most women have children, which take up a lot of time and require taking at least some time away from work. If the difference is due to cultural issues then maybe it makes sense to worry about the differences and try to address them, but if the difference just comes down to women have children so they work less that's a less compelling reason to try to equalize men's and women's wages (and as I noted, in some areas young women out earn men already, partly because they tend to be more educated).
Men have children too. There are not many kids that have no biological father.

I mean these comments talk about it as if kids and work around them had zero to do with men and we're some kind of female hobby. Among some men it is so as they don't care, but many men do actually care and do spend time with them.

Taking numbers from Norway, there is twice as many childless men than there is childless women. 24% vs 12%.

If that has a impact on the economical state of everyone involved is up to debate, but there is a distinctive difference.

You cant take numbers from Norway when talking about Americans incomes. Norway is way less christian and way more socialist. Precisely this kind of statistics differ between countries. I have no idea how America compares. (For example Norway has similar suicide rates for women then America, but less of them for males. That is the one on top of head.)

Also, male incarceration is much higher then female one, that is another difference that should push income the other way round. And some babies without fathers are due to incarceration and people in prison are not earning all that much.

I mean, I get argument that women are more likely to do kids work and more likely to say no in work because something kid related, but it kinda rubs me wrong when people talk about kids and female only thing. I see too many good caring fathers around me and also fathers who did made choice to spend more time with kids in expense of career. They deserve a bit of recognition too.

You don’t need to know the reason why someone isn’t working or is working less to have better claims for or against discrimination. I’d just like to see something that says that a certain demographic who work a certain number of hours a week differs from a different demographic who works the same number of hours a week.