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You make this general point (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your argument is that feminists care more about equality at the top end of the scale than the bottom) a couple of times in this thread. I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say. If you mean that feminists don't pursue discrimination cases when it comes to low-pay/low-prestige/high-risk jobs, that's demonstrably false: There are many examples of "women's lib" folks organizing factories or migrant workers or whatever. Many of the related Supreme Court cases (e.g. Ledbetter, Chrapliwy) were about discrimination in blue collar jobs at factories. It is likely that these groups spend more time and money pursuing discrimination issues in blue-collar and low-wage workplaces than they do in the higher-salary, higher-prestige jobs, not least of which because (a) discrimination is probably more blatant and common there and (b) more people, men and women both, have below average (arithmetic mean) incomes than have above average salaries and (c) more women have low-pay, low-prestige jobs than men. If you mean that feminists hold up the gender imbalance in high-wage, high-prestige jobs when advocating for their cause, of course they do. Everyone would. What middle class donor is going to pull out their wallet to ensure their daughters can get janitorial jobs? The aspirational jobs are simply more inspiring. Moreover, ensuring a gender balance in the lowest-wage, lowest-prestige job categories while leaving the top end alone isn't really achieving equality, is it? By the way, I don't think your notion that women are under-represented in low pay/low prestige jobs holds up to scrutiny anyway. Women are over-represented in the lowest end of the scale, and under-represented in the highest end of the scale. Take a look at BLS or Census Bureau data on the highest and lowest paying jobs and the distribution of women and men in each. Here's an interesting table of unemployment rate by occupation and sex: http://www.infoplease.com/business/employment-rate-occupatio.... Note that the unemployment rate pretty closely correlates to what you'd expect from a gender bias: the unemployment rate in traditionally feminine occupations is higher for men than for women, the unemployment rate in traditionally masculine occupations is higher for women than for men. I think the only claim in your line of thinking that holds up to the least bit of scrutiny is that men are over-represented in dangerous job categories, or more to the point that men account for a disproportionate share of workplace fatalities. This is true (although your numbers are a bit off). The breakdown of hours worked by sex is around 55% men to 45% women. The breakdown of fatal injuries is around 93% men and 7% women. But with only 4,300 workplace fatalities in the United States in 2009, we're talking about one fatality for every 59 million hours worked. Workplace fatalities are not the biggest labor problem in the US, probably not even for the most dangerous occupations. I don't mean to flog this thread that is fairly dead at this point, but seriously, the level of largely unchallenged inaccuracy, "truthiness", and borderline misogyny in this thread is not only well below HN's typical level of quality, but frankly it is disturbing. This conversation needs some balance. The parent comment here currently has 15 upvotes. Another comment on this page claiming there hasn't been gender based discrimination "for a very long time" has 3 upvotes. Many of the claims made in these posts are simply demonstrably false. They seem to represent some kind of knee-jerk, well, not misogyny, but something approaching it. Is there a term for "dislike of women" in place of "hatred of women"? I'm male, but gender inequality and discrimination in the workplace is obvious to me, let alone to the women in my life. Gender isn't the dominant factor in predicting income, rank or career success. It may not even be among the top few factors. But it is certainly a factor, and not a negligible one at that. To be candid I'm both astounded and troubled this isn't obvious to more of the participants in this conversation. |