2011 Gender Gap Report

I don't know. What we learned in sociology is that women work more on average, but they were counting domestic work (i.e. unpaid housekeeping in their own homes, child raising, etc.) in that, which somewhat skews it for the purposes of economic analysis.

In the US, at least, the legal system typically favors women for custody and such over men. Unfortunately, as there are probably just as many single mothers incapable of raising kids who get them anyway as there are single fathers who are incapable of raising kids.

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Erock: I would like to think the father has been supporting the child since it was born, so this wouldn't (hopefully) be a marked sudden increase in what he's been paying for... unless we're talking about a newborn.

And yes, I would support a system where the parent better suited to take care of the child is decided on a dispassionate basis.

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Erock, relative to the single parent, I don't see how that matters. Having a child means one has extra expenses, yes, but the parent who doesn't have custody is still able to make more, regardless of the hours actually put in.

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That's right, but it becomes only more complicated when you look into this, making it more easy to claim "but women WANT it like that". Whether women really want to work part-time or have no other choice due to work place hostility is an open question. [edit]
I'm all for putting research in this field and checking of something can be done about it. Unfortunately I don't see much interest in a closer analyses. There's too much "women don't earn enough, let's set quotas" for my taste, instead of tackling the actual reasons. :/
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The problem that I see is, that the unadjusted differences are normally posted because they are more impressive, and the tendency follows to use that figures as the adjusted value.

On a side note, I'm a little unhappy with the way they created the statistic of the Gender Gap report, though I have to give credit that they were honest about it. The major one is that they use a one-sided scale, i.e. a gender gap in the opposite direction doesn't get a penalty. That means if women would hypthetically earn twice as much as men, it would still net the country a "1" in the gender equality score.

edited 3rd Nov '11 3:55:29 PM by Uchuujinsan

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Erock, what is the argument being made? If the person is divorced and not in custody of the child, they have to pay child support. If the marriage is intact, then they would be spending money on the child themselves. Nobody is working any extra hours. Is your contention that should you get a divorce then you also absolve yourself of any obligations to children you might have had? That doesn't make any sense.

The only argument here is custody rights to the better parent and that's it.

EDIT:

@ Uchuujinsan

Well some of the scores were above 1, making it look like that's how they wanted it but I suppose that is simply how division works. I did personally point out where men were deficient. I was merely using the report's numbers, I didn't much bother with their conclusions (much like how the media report that got me to it only focused on political participation rate by women).

It can be understandable to use a flat wage average if you believe that women should be equally represented in all ways (and that men should be equally distributed for housework). It makes more sense now than it did before since the number of physically-related jobs is much lower than the physically-capable absolute number in both genders.

edited 3rd Nov '11 3:57:19 PM by breadloaf

That was one of the reasons I had in mind - if you think that a priori an unequal wage distribution is bad, you don't have to care about the reasons WHY it is that way.

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

I don't mean to troll, but my friend recently sent me a comic that is relevant to this discussion. Linky◊

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Well, let's not get into the weirdo treatment of women in the US military. It's quite a bit different from all other western and even communist countries (ie. sexist).

That comic really fails to consider that 1. Not all countries have a draft; and 2. No-one actually forces you to pay for dates, drinks etc. You don't have to if you don't want to.

But from the way it ends it's pretty much intentionally a troll comic, so yeah.

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I've never understood this "but men have to pay for everything on a date" thing, as that's not something that I've seen IRL. There's nothing wrong with taking turns paying for stuff or splitting the bill. None of my girlfriends

ever demanded that or even hinted at the notion that I should automatically pay for things because I don't have ovaries.

A friend of mine once complained that dating is costing him a fortune, and I really didn't know what so say, as according to my experience and my discussions with friends, it seems that to end up paying every time you'd have to actively look for a girl who automatically expects you to do so, because that's not a trait that a majority of Finnish chicks seem to share.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

I've always been a proponent of the "whoever has the best ability to pay at the time does the paying" attitude. If both people are equally able to pay, you split the bill.

(Though that goes for once you're already dating. Whoever does the asking for the first date should be willing to pay, if only because "I really, really like you. Will you go out on a date with me? Oh, and will you pay for it, too?" sounds really... odd, at best.)

edited 5th Nov '11 10:11:16 AM by Jeysie

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That hottip makes me want to turn your avatar into an image macro meme:

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Anyhow, once again, sexism cuts both ways. It's just that sexism against men tends to be deeply ingrained, institutionalized, and part of what is considered the "normal social order," while, with the feminist movement, sexism against women is seen as vaguely taboo and politically incorrect.

Part of the issue with having a feminist movement is that any attempt to focus on sexism against men is labeled as misogynist. Though, we have a topic for that. Feminism should just be egalitarianism and be a movement for both genders, blah blah blah.

Anyhow, I'm not really sure what we can do to close the gap through legislation anymore. It's naturally closing over time via education, but...

edited 5th Nov '11 10:16:10 AM by USAF713

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Oh please, spending maybe $30 a month on trying to bribe women into sleeping with you does not equalize things for women.

And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?

Only assholes do that. Some people don't date just for that.

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And people who have a healthy dating life tend not to subscribe to vestiges of chivalry to the point where it seriously puts a dent in their wallet.

And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?

When we discuss the wage gap, we ought to remember also the amount of working hours that men and women work in average. Another valid point is how the wealth is redistributed through taxation. In the first world countries a considerable amount of wealth is redistributed from high-earning men to low-earning women. For example, men as a whole pay 68% more tax compared to women in Finland, 55% more than women in Sweden. Now I am not arguing that such a system is fundamentally wrong or flawed, I'd just like to point out an another angle in this debate.

And no it is not mandatory for men to pay for drinks or for dates in the West anymore since feminism has made chivalry obsolete. That's a very poor argument.

Well, insofar as I last knew, the share of poor people in the US is increasingly female, as time goes on. This may have something to do with the rise in number of single parents. I couldn't say, but I would be inclined to say that yes, it is connected.

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You;d think it did, but it hasn't. Not completely anyway.

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