[classicsnoot]

It is only a paradox if one has calcified their thinking about the desires of women _in general_ in a particular way. If one starts from the presumption that men and women are exactly the same (in terms of desires and methods), than it is indeed a paradox. If one retains the traditional perspective, a much disliked but surprisingly defensible position, of the disparate desires of men and women, these results comport well with the presumption. Why you end up where you do is either confusing or predictable based on how you start, particularly in the world of unverified assertion.

[KirinDave]

> If one retains the traditional perspective, a much disliked but surprisingly defensible position, of the disparate desires of men and women, these results comport well with the presumption.

It's odd though how so often this "traditional" viewpoint is eager to suggest, "These are the preferences of women and their outcomes," when it's suggested women result in a net disadvantage, but is a crisis when men see these outcomes.

An excellent example of this is how a 6-10% wage gap is considered an acceptable outcome of biological differences and choice, but a 10% average difference in primary education among young men is a crisis, with multiple think tanks suggesting society caters too much to young women and that being a young man is "a liability."

This position is so common you can find it represented internationally in both the US and several European nations. It shows up in think tank materials like PraegerU videos and on America's Fox news.

In the context of the paper at hand, it seems particularly poignant how much effort goes to making one case but not the other.

[castlecrasher2]

>but a 10% average difference in primary education among young men is a crisis

I don't know how a PragerU video convinced you that this is considered a crisis outside the right-leaning think tanks but I haven't heard a single soul talk about it outside that sphere. It's easy to prop up what a political opponent labels important as something a lot of people care about but I certainly don't see this issue come up in entertainment or the public sphere at all yet the wage gap shows up everywhere.

[KirinDave]

It was on Fox news not even a week ago, and I've seen UK news segments on this as well.

I am fairly sure some of the audience here is acutely aware of this line of thinking. Note, for example, how many people are assuming I'm talking about the more common complaint of college statistics. I never once mentioned college or university. They think they know the argument I'm presenting even though I used language that in fact didn't present this population at all. The majority of respondents to my post have read into the argument, because they're aware of a variant of it, and have filled in the perceived gaps.

[classicsnoot]

It is a general courtesy to indicate when you have retroactively edited your post.

More to the point, you were responding to a comment that had already introduced the caveat "outside of right wing circles," thereby rendering your observation a bit redundant.

[KirinDave]

1. I didn't substantially change the content of my post, only expanded on it in an obvious way.

2. "Outside of the political block with control of 2/3 of your government and an unpredictable split on the remaining third" is an absurd restriction to place on me for this conversation. Of course I ignored it. It was a disingenuous attempt to exclude politics from a subthread I had started specifically about government policies.

[classicsnoot]

You conflating political rhetoric with government policies is predictable but no less disappointing. Throughout this thread you have moved the goal posts, begged the question, and strawman'd in circles, all to signal to presumably someone just how virtuous you are. Pathetic, really, but again expected.

[tomp]

> An excellent example of this is how a 6-10% wage gap is considered an acceptable outcome of biological differences and choice, but a 10% average difference in primary education among young men is a crisis, with multiple think tanks suggesting society caters too much to young women and that being a young man is "a liability."

That's just so wrong... (1) it's not that 10% wage gap is considered an acceptable outcome, it's that wage gap (as a sexist discrimination) is a bogus concept in itself - obviously people with better/worse education, more/less experience that spend more/less time working are going to be paid more/less - e.g. noone complains about the much greater wage gap between old and young workers; (2) 10% education gap is a problem, just like it was a problem when less women went to school compared to men... and even that's mainly a problem because for a society it's beneficial to have highly-educated people, so it's worth considering the possibility that we're actually doing something "wrong" when it comes to education everyone and that maybe we could be doing something better (especially given that it's generally accepted that there is no difference in intelligence between the sexes).

[KirinDave]

(1) Young, talented people do this all the time. If your idea of how to dismiss this criticism is to suggest wage gaps themselves are fake and that somehow men are inherently more valuable to the workforce at an intrinsic level, you're going to have to do more than compare it to seniority-based compensation schemes.

(2) Tom, to be crystal clear: I think both dismissals are equally bad things to do. My point is that people, you included by the look of it, will suggest it is natural to see differences when said differences disadvantage women. But if a similarly important disadvantage befalls men, it is "a problem" which implies it must be corrected.

Why can't both things be bad?

[repolfx]

Jordan Peterson said it best: There is no wage gap. There is an earnings gap.

So, nobody is suggesting that wage gaps are fake. They're asserting it as undisputable fact. Find a place where men and women of equal experience, time at work and so on are being paid differently because of their gender and you have an easy lawsuit on your hands. In practice this doesn't happen because such discrimination doesn't happen.

Women nonetheless earn less because of choices they make, like choosing to work in HR instead of software engineering. This is not a crisis.

Re: (2) you seem to be cherry picking. It's been shown that female primary school school teachers are biased towards girls and some researchers have even started suggesting that this is partly responsible for increased female grades over time. Regardless, virtually nobody is claiming the total and absolute dominance of women in primary-age teaching is a crisis or a problem that needs solving. In fact it's trivial to find cases where men appear to be disadvantaged relative to women and there's absolute silence from the media, from politicians, etc.

[KirinDave]

> Find a place where men and women of equal experience, time at work and so on are being paid differently because of their gender and you have an easy lawsuit on your hands. In practice this doesn't happen because such discrimination doesn't happen.

There are hundreds to thousands of such lawsuits every year. And within a month of California rolling back forced arbitration, more popped up. Including 2 high profile class action lawsuits.

Maybe instead of listening to a man who thinks synonyms are clever life advice, you should research the actual subject. Comments like this suggest you don't have any understanding of the subject at all.

[mcny]

» There are hundreds to thousands of such lawsuits every year. And within a month of California rolling back forced arbitration, more popped up. Including 2 high profile class action lawsuits.

Why can't we require all employers to disclose, if not to the public then at least to all employees, contractors, and associates, everyone's compensation information? Why do we allow this information to be private?

I've talked to a few people who are "woke" but when I bring up transparency, almost everyone balks. Almost everyone thinks they are above average when it comes to salary negotiation but I don't know why they prefer to drive blindfolded.

They say things like privacy but salary is public information for public sector employees.

Thoughts?

[repolfx]

There's a list someone is maintaining here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gender_equality_lawsui...

It only has one in the last three years. Moreover, a quick news search for 'gender pay discrimination lawsuit' shows that most news articles discussing such things are actually more about #metoo / sexual harrassment stuff and always only allegations, it's much harder to find reports of actual findings of systematic discrimination. And in the rare cases it has happened, it's always arguable because the jobs are usually not directly comparable e.g. high level executives where personal performance can vary wildly and people are comparing across quite different jobs but claiming they're equal.

Your reply doesn't give me any new information to work with, and my own experiences and checks says this doesn't happen. In cases where men are getting paid more than women, it's usually because they're being more effective, not because their boss explicitly decided women should get paid less.

[olleromam91]

10% less education is similarly important to 10% less pay? One is opportunity, one is outcome...I think that's the idea

[KirinDave]

A person who is paid more has many more opportunities in their life should they choose to exercise that power (and in the case of poverty, the lack of money can literally determine your opportunity to live.

So I'm not sure I could possibly agree with your assertion as written.

[AnthonyMouse]

> An excellent example of this is how a 6-10% wage gap is considered an acceptable outcome of biological differences and choice, but a 10% average difference in primary education among young men is a crisis, with multiple think tanks suggesting society caters too much to young women and that being a young man is "a liability."

You're comparing a difference in wages to a difference in population. The maximum range of a population difference is 100%, e.g. 0% of men go to college and 100% of women, which would be a scandalously large difference. The maximum range of a wage difference is arbitrarily large, e.g. a $200,000 doctor makes 1000% of what a $20,000 fast food worker does and that is not at all unexpected. It isn't even maximally large of the differences that exist in practice -- compare the compensation of Fortune 500 CEOs with part time migrant workers.

Moreover, if you want to see a large difference, what's with the gender balance in the prison population?

[KirinDave]

> You're comparing a difference in wages to a difference in population.

This is not actually correct (and in fact, I'm not talking about college and these numbers are not correct for college participation!), but even if it were, we can formulate wage problems in terms of populations.

> Moreover, if you want to see a large difference, what's with the gender balance in the prison population?

And it's a popular argument among MRAs, literally headlining much of their materials, that women receive much better treatment in the prison system than men. This is just another example of my argument: it's a problem if there is a bad outcome for men. It's not a problem if there is a bad outcome for women, it's "choice."

[AnthonyMouse]

> This is not actually correct (and in fact, I'm not talking about college and these numbers are not correct for college participation!), but even if it were, we can formulate wage problems in terms of populations.

But then the numbers are completely different. If you look at something like gender balance at the 20th or 30th percentile income level for full time employees, there are more men at those below-median income levels than women. Then men are underrepresented around the middle, but women are highly underrepresented at the top. The people making millions or hundreds of millions a year bring the male average way up but that does nothing for the bottom 90+% of men who on average are actually making less than the average woman.

> This is just another example of my argument: it's a problem if there is a bad outcome for men. It's not a problem if there is a bad outcome for women, it's "choice."

The argument is that there should be consistency. If it's a problem in one case then it should be a problem in every case. We have laws against employer sex discrimination and a slew of programs to try to help women advance their careers. The wage gap is smaller now than it was 20 years ago, and smaller 20 years ago than it was 40 years ago. What analogous thing is actually being done to keep men out of prison? What progress has been made there?

You're also apparently claiming that going to prison is a choice in the same way that choosing a profession is. There is theoretically a choice whether to commit a crime or not, but in the Three Felonies a Day sense there isn't, and committing a crime is demonstrably not a prerequisite to going to prison anyway.

[KirinDave]

> But then the numbers are completely different. If you look at something like gender balance at the 20th or 30th percentile income level for full time employees, there are more men at those below-median income levels than women. Then men are underrepresented around the middle, but women are highly underrepresented at the top.

This is an excellent deflection, and it's also a relatively recent phenomenon. A surge in health care worker requirements which involve a lot of traditionally gendered roles has caused this outcome.

If you control for that, this effect is substantially less pronounced.

> The people making millions or hundreds of millions a year bring the male average way up but that does nothing for the bottom 90+% of men who on average are actually making less than the average woman.

And once again, we get to a phrasing of the problem that implies that it's a problem when men are at a disadvantage but inevitable when a woman is at a disadvantage.

> The argument is that there should be consistency. If it's a problem in one case then it should be a problem in every case. We have laws against employer sex discrimination and a slew of programs to try to help women advance their careers. The wage gap is smaller now than it was 20 years ago, and smaller 20 years ago than it was 40 years ago.

And these laws are largely toothless because of forced arbitration and Non-disparage agreements. The month California nullified these, a flood of class action lawsuits against major employers opened up. New York is considering such a law as well. I wonder if other states will have the courage to actually let the law come into play>

> What analogous thing is actually being done to keep men out of prison? What progress has been made there?

This is a common MRA talking point I encounter. I absolutely agree with you that incarceration rates are absurd and dehumanizing. It's a travesty of justice and in many cases a systemic attack on citizen's rights. This does not have any bearing on our current conversation, and we as a society _MUST_ be able to pursue more than one social justice issue at a time.

> You're also apparently claiming that going to prison is a choice in the same way that choosing a profession is.

No, you did that. I claimed it was the same as doing poorly in primary school. To be clear: I think that argument is as absurd as suggesting that it's strictly women's choices that disadvantage them.

[AnthonyMouse]

> This is an excellent deflection, and it's also a relatively recent phenomenon. A surge in health care worker requirements which involve a lot of traditionally gendered roles has caused this outcome.

But that's the essence of the disparity. If you controlled for gendered roles, there would be no significant gender wage gap in any direction.

> And once again, we get to a phrasing of the problem that implies that it's a problem when men are at a disadvantage but inevitable when a woman is at a disadvantage.

Once again, the problem is the lack of consistency. If it's a problem that there are more men at the 99th percentile than women then it's a problem that there are more women at the 70th percentile than men. Either they're both problems or neither of them are.

> And these laws are largely toothless because of forced arbitration and Non-disparage agreements.

Something has been causing the wage gap to decline over time.

> The month California nullified these, a flood of class action lawsuits against major employers opened up. New York is considering such a law as well. I wonder if other states will have the courage to actually let the law come into play>

Arbitration agreements became popular when plaintiffs attorneys realized that defending against an unmeritorious lawsuit costs millions of dollars in legal expenses and companies would pay thousands of dollars to avoid paying millions of dollars. Arbitration agreements were a flawed attempt to defend against that practice. Eliminating them eliminates their flaws while reintroducing the problem they were adopted to solve to begin with, so what's your alternative solution for that?

> This is a common MRA talking point I encounter. I absolutely agree with you that incarceration rates are absurd and dehumanizing. It's a travesty of justice and in many cases a systemic attack on citizen's rights. This does not have any bearing on our current conversation, and we as a society _MUST_ be able to pursue more than one social justice issue at a time.

It does have bearing on our current conversation because it's the same issue. If gender imbalances are a problem that needs to be solved then they are a problem across the board regardless of which gender they favor in a particular context and they should be addressed in a consistent way. It is disingenuous to say that we should address imbalances that disfavor women today and imbalances that disfavor men at some indeterminate future date that in practice never comes. Neither or both, not one without the other.

> No, you did that. I claimed it was the same as doing poorly in primary school.

Which is essentially the same thing, when the argument for why boys are doing poorly in primary school is that they're being disciplined too often and disproportionately.

> To be clear: I think that argument is as absurd as suggesting that it's strictly women's choices that disadvantage them.

They are meant to be equally absurd. The point is that there is no universal gender adjustment that always applies in the same direction and with the same magnitude. You can't just average everything together into a scalar value and expect it to be meaningful or usefully inform policy.

If you have 17 male prison inmates, 80 male truck drivers, 100 female medical professionals and 3 male billionaires, just averaging their incomes by gender provides a very distorted picture of what is actually going on.

[classicsnoot]

I feel as if you are making an apples to oranges comparison (but I don't perceive any ill will so I am responding in good faith and with no intention to politick) in terms of gender pay gap and decreasing male inclusion in higher education.

I am glad you used the more accurate numbers of 7-10% in terms of male/female pay. From my perspective, the innate differences between the sexes explains this gap quite well: men are motivated from a very young age, in addition to their general biological proclivity towards competition, to seek approval through public acts to gain status; women are motivated from a very young age, in addition to their general biological proclivity towards hording value, to seek influence through private acts to gain status. There are plenty of specific examples that run contrary to my assertion, but in general, men seem adapted to the corporate system which would lead one to expect them to dominate therein. Regardless of classical dominance hierarchy, there is massive combined interest actively working to inject as many females as possible into high paying, white collar jobs.

In terms of higher education, the decrease in male participation is a significant problem because male participation in higher education was tenuous at best even before female inclusion began. Though higher education was indeed a "boys club," it was a very small club. Just because it was "all" male does not extend it into being "all male." The moment the gates opened for females, they took over the majority in public universities within a decade. They continue to dominate in education to this day. Metaphor is a dangerous game, but I think one should worry more about bad students getting worse than good students getting more attention.

In my opinion you make a very salient point about the difference in the reaction of people to the two problems. I see them as similar because both endeavours (more females in corporate && more males in education) are fighting both a biological tendency as well as cultural norms, no simple task in a world of consensus, and I don't have to elaborate and how very far away from that we are.