2011 Gender Gap Report

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GenderGap_Report_2011.pdf

For your viewing pleasure, I present to you this year's gender gap report. It has data for individual countries.

As a highlight...

• Gender wage gap in Canada, Women at 75% of men
• Gender wage gap in USA, women at 66% of men
• Gender wage gap in Sweden, women at 75% of men
• Political positions in Parliament in Canada, Women at 21% of men
• Political positions in Congress in USA, Women at 20% of men
• Political positions in Parliament in Sweden, Women at 82% of men

edited 2nd Nov '11 9:57:24 PM by breadloaf

And?

Oh, and the US doesn't really call it Parliament. Sorry for the nitpick.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Does that mean more or less women are hired?

Frankly, I think it balances out. Women are more favored for semi-skilled labor.

I'm a skeptical squirrel

Oh whoops, my bad, that was a typo. I'll go edit that. I was just copying and pasting my sentence.

And well from what I can see we need to work on several things:

• Close the wage gap between men and women
• Get more women into managerial positions
• Get more men into tertiary education
• Get more women to consider non-professional/technical work
• Get more women into politics

edited 2nd Nov '11 9:57:44 PM by breadloaf

All of those would certainly be nice if they happened.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Why do individual women need to be pressured to make choices that will make statistics exactly equal, rather than the choices they prefer?

(Suddenly, liberal Rotties! Ones of them!)

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard

If the outcome isn't equal then I question the methods of education we are using and the incentives we have presented as being unequal.

Frankly, this one does not see why gender gap is so important. For this one, whether there is an even number of men and women in various types of employment is irrelevant. Basically, it does not bother this one much whether there is an even number of female and male CE Os. What matters for this one is that even ability and effort are required of both genders to to so.

Not saying that we have an ideal situation with that, of course. Glass ceiling is way too common. Merely saying that for this one it is not entirely correct approach to the problem

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

Well you can always just ignore everything but the wage gap problem then.

The idea that women are working lower-paying jobs because they want lower-paying jobs seems to me as suspicious as the idea that lower-class people don't want to become middle-class because they don't want to pay more taxes.

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

I don't think that this issue will ever really go away until the day we embrace artificial wombs as our primary means of reproduction. Companies simply do not want to pay money while women are on maternity leave, and will use all sorts of loopholes to avoid having to front the cash. I realize that there are still lingering issues with sexism, but more and more this seems to be one of the biggest causes of the wealth gap, especially as all of the CE Os born during the Mad Men era die off and or retire and take their annoying notions of a woman's proper place being in the kitchen with them.

Maternity leaves issue could easily solved by Sweden ways, forcing father to take paternity leave.

Ahaha, my country's gone down the rank over the years. Another incentive to leave, I suppose.

@Feotahakari: A small but significant fraction of women choose to work part-time.

That might account for part of the wage gap: That's why you have the average woman earning 75-85% of what the average man earns even in equal countries like Scandinavia.

However, the wage gap in the US is too significant to attribute it to women's own choices: There is discrimination, mostly in the form of denying raises and promotions to female employee that are given to male employees instead.

edited 3rd Nov '11 8:30:38 AM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

Female employees, if I remember my sociology textbook correctly, tend to be looked at as less reliable than male employees, as a male employee can't get pregnant and is less likely to have kids to devote his time to.

The wealth gap can also, as Savage noted, be attributed to a lack of female raises and promotion, although "women are more likely to have part-time jobs" sounds plausible to me, given how society conditions them and the aforementioned likelihood to have kids to take care of...

USAF713 on his phone or iPod.

Well, a male employee is as likely to have kids (last time I checked, it also took a dude to make one), but he's somewhat less likely to actively take care of them.

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

Also: women tend to work less hours then men do. Men are found working overtime more often as well.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

That's the important thing, Savage: whether they're the primary caregivers.

I dunno about overtime, Erock.

USAF713 on his phone or iPod.

When those focusing on the wage gap are more willing to talk about gender differences, I'll be more inclined to listen. If we are looking at wage gaps in terms of averages, we may as well look at psychological gender differences in terms of averages. You can't have it both ways.

Unfortunately it seems that talking about averages in terms of wages is "calling out discrimination" and to suggest even so much as taking averages in terms of mentality into account as even a component is "sexist," as if that somehow refuted it on its own merits, as if the truth were never sexist. Mainstream feminism strikes me as too plagued by selective reasoning these days for me to take it seriously anymore.

edited 3rd Nov '11 6:31:11 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

Axe to grind much? I don't see how the above argument relates unless you're trying to say that women are much less psychologically capable of handling high-paying jobs, which is laughable.

There are a few factors I can think of that would help to explain minor disparities (the stereotypically masculine aggressiveness of the financial sector, and the preference for women to take benefits over raw bonuses, for instance), but none of them adequately explain the vast differences seen here. At a bare minimum, there's no excuse for the US to be so far behind both Canada and Sweden.

edited 3rd Nov '11 6:56:08 AM by Karkadinn

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

We didn't do as well as I would've hoped, but at least we're almost where we should be...

Oh, and here's a table of the report in Wikipedia.

edited 3rd Nov '11 7:55:44 AM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

@Hidden Faced Matt: I hope you realize that most of the research into psychological differences between men and women is either 1) complete bunk or 2) reveals a difference that is either tiny or rather artificial and usually both.

This is not true for research into the wage gap; there is no social idea floating around that says "thou shalt exaggerate the inequalities between men and women" like there is a social idea floating around that says "thou shalt claim that men and women are fundamentally different".

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

I think part of it is that there's many jobs that only women apply for, for whatever reason, and those jobs pay less because they're less skilled.

I don't think I've ever seen a male secretary/receptionist where I am, for instance. And the data entry job I used to work had an almost entirely female workforce. Heck, even the two non-factory warehouse jobs I had were still mostly female despite them having more of a physical component.

And there's other more employer-based factors, such as employers preferring to hire female cashiers.

edited 3rd Nov '11 9:08:16 AM by Jeysie

Apparently I am adorable, but my GF is my #1 Groupie. (Avatar by Dreki-K)

@Philippe:

It's interesting how authoritarian people get when it comes to making statistics more equal.

Until the capitalist mode of production, women always did work that let them keep nursing children with them. Most employers don't want infants around, and they certainly don't want to have to give two years paid leave.

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard

I would disagree. Confirmation bias, anyone?

If you want to claim that women are treated worse in the current society, you sure would like to be able to give an impressive example if possible. Just as people who like the status quo have an incentive to support it with studies that explain social differences with inherent differences. The whole "scientific" discourse is mainly emotionally based, not based on actual truth seeking. In all the research, I found merely one study that really followed scientific principles. And that one wasn't about the wage gap.

Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/