[smush]

Wow, parent comment and this one summing up what often turn into X000 comment flame wars that dang has to bag up and send out to the flag truck, now that is a feat of summarization.

> Overwhelmingly the feminist position that's pushed to the fore is "any lack of equal representation of females in a roles that're desirable is down to patriarchal actions and unrelated to any natural differences between the sexes; which differences are an illusion".

How do we as a society address this point? Whether one argues that the above statement has merit (me) or not, many people on both sides (and probably me in many cases) have such emotional investment in their points that attempting to soberly look at where society is and where society should be on the spectrum between 'the above statement is categorically true globally in 100% of cases' and 'the above statement is categorically false globally in 100% of cases' can feel to me like trying to do laproscopic open-heart brain surgery.

[dhshahsndeisjwn]

I'd have more sympathy for critiques of feminism (and similar policies designed to help minorities) if even basic indices of equality like pay for equal work were fixed, and there wasn't clear evidence of discrimination on grounds of gender in interviewing, police treatment etc.

[pbhjpbhj]

In the UK equal pay for equal work is a legal requirement, and many women have successfully sued for it.

"Equal pay" statistics here purposefully ignore choice of occupation. Also the equal pay stats show (or did last year, they're put out monthly) that even ignoring occupational variations women under 30 got almost the same pay as men, and indeed that men lag behind women in wages for part-time work. I strongly suspect of you discount upper management that you'd find wages very equal -- in which case it's primarily an issue of wealth gap, so not really about sexual disparities in the general population but about sexual disparities in the C-suite (still an issue if there are artificial barriers there based on sex) but it might be busy as hard to break in for someone of the wrong class as anything else.

Which might make harping on "equal pay" (which we have) move focus away from the primary factor of income disparity.

[kbutler]

If you account for education, experience, and hours worked, equal pay for equal work is already here (or the pay gap is reversed for asian women).

Education and experience bring it to 98% parity overall, with asian women getting to 102% parity. https://www.payscale.com/data/gender-pay-gap

"job market forces and gender preferences in relation to marital status and parenthood could explain almost all of the pay gap. Most of the gap is not the result of gender discrimination" https://towardsdatascience.com/is-the-difference-in-work-hou...

"Because men tend to work more hours than women, especially if they are married, and even more if they are married parents, this could explain a large portion of the pay gap."

"As years pass, men accumulate more practice and training than women. The job market pays more if the worker has more experience. In other words, the gap widens as men acquire more experience than women."

[aklemm]

Why do men choose to and why are they allowed to do all those things differently? The reason is gender roles, that’s part of the equal pay discussion. Probably the biggest part, in fact.

The “multi-variable” is no answer at all. Each of those variables is part of the discussion.

Seems like everybody has a comical view of the pay gap: a big fat cigar chomping man conspiring with his cronies to set low wages for women. It’s far more broad than that, so please get serious about those variables before trying to blow the whole thing off.

Starting point: how do we better make care work less gendered and pay appropriately?

[manfredo]

> Why do men choose to and why are they allowed to do all those things differently? The reason is gender roles, that’s part of the equal pay discussion. Probably the biggest part, in fact.

The data says otherwise. Countries that are more egalitarian and have more equal gender roles (e.g. men doing more childcare and housework) actually see lower rates of women in fields like tech as compared to places like the Middle East and Indonesia with very strict gender roles.

This also plays out internally within countries. The United States had larger rates of women in tech during the 70s and early 80s, which saw stricter gender roles as compared to today. These rates of women in tech dropped during the 90s and 2000s during which time fields like law and medicine saw substantial growth in women's representation.

Making work less gendered and making pay non-discriminatory are two different discussions. The solution to the latter is straightforward: stop discriminating.

[kbutler]

People (not just men) choose differently because they have different preferences and they are free to follow those preferences.

Saying the wage gap is because of "gender roles" is no answer at all - it suggests you should target the pay scale.

Multi-variable analysis is an attempt to piece out the answer. If the wage gap is $10, and the multi-variable analysis shows it is $2 education, $3 experience, and $5 career choice, then you can investigate why those factors differ, including possible effects of gender roles, without the specter of "gender discrimination in pay".

> Starting point: how do we better make care work less gendered and pay appropriately?

As with everything, either reduce the supply or increase the demand. As long as there is a sufficient supply of people willing and able to provide the service for a low price, the price will be low.

Remember that "price" is not a direct measure of "value". Air, water, and the first 1000 calories per day are incredibly valuable, but they are very inexpensive because there is excess supply.

For what it's worth, limiting supply and providing government subsidies is a great way to make things cost more - health care and the university education are prime examples. Note that these should be viewed as cautionary examples, not recommendations.

[mc32]

I wonder if any candidate for the democratic nomination would ever date to bring this view up for discussion.

My feeling is even bringing it up for discussion could be an automatic DQ, sadly.

I’m for pay equality, we all benefit, but I’m also for finding out what’s what.

[mcv]

Exactly. While it's entirely possible and likely that some nature is involved, far too often that's taken as an excuse to actively exclude or discourage women in certain jobs, and that does make it patriarchal action holding women back. IF we can get rid of that and allow people to freely choose without getting judged by their gender (or ethnicity for that matter) on the way, and then it turns out people have different preferences, and that's totally fine. But we're not there yet.

[smush]

In your opinion, is that viewpoint shared by a plurality or majority of what we can loosely define as the feminist crowd and adherents?

Admittedly, I don't have a big world-shattering new point to add or logical argument to segue to based on the results of the question, I'm just curious.

[pelliphant]

I'm from sweden, and I would say that the answer is "yes" over here.

When actually talking to people that is, but if I instead looked at social media, tabloids and tv-talkshows, I would only find extremes.