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How best to deal with gender pay gap? I say we use prevailing wage.

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Moderate71

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What is the best course of action to deal with the gender bias in our society where professions dominated by men are considered more valuable than those dominated by women? For example, an elementary school teacher with a Masters degree in Education is not paid the same as those in male dominated professions, such as Mechanical Engineering. I say the government should enforce prevailing wage based on educational attainment and time in service to remove the discrimination.

Employers should have a set salary based on your educational attainment and your time in service. Your employer can not pay you more or less, regardless of gender ratio in your field.

There should not be scattered unions. All workers in the country should be in one union together and your field should be irrelevant. I am not talking about Communism. I am not talking about everybody getting paid the same. You would be paid based on your skills. If you have a High School diploma and 3 years of work experience, you get paid a certain amount per hour. If you have a 4 year degree and 6 years of experience, you get paid more.
 
Moderate71 said:
What is the best course of action to deal with the gender bias in our society where professions dominated by men are considered more valuable than those dominated by women? For example, an elementary school teacher with a Masters degree in Education is not paid the same as those in male dominated professions, such as Mechanical Engineering. I say the government should enforce prevailing wage based on educational attainment and time in service to remove the discrimination.
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First step is to keep the government the frig out of it. Turning this into yet another political football guarantees a huge bureaucratic and ineffective solution.

Moderate71 said:
Employers should have a set salary based on your educational attainment and your time in service. Your employer can not pay you more or less, regardless of gender ratio in your field.
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Employers generally set wages based on the value the perceive you bring to the business.

Moderate71 said:
There should not be scattered unions. All workers in the country should be in one union together and your field should be irrelevant. I am not talking about Communism. I am not talking about everybody getting paid the same. You would be paid based on your skills. If you have a High School diploma and 3 years of work experience, you get paid a certain amount per hour. If you have a 4 year degree and 6 years of experience, you get paid more.
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My question is: If employers routinely get away will paying women less, why do they hire any men at all?
 
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Moderate71 said:
What is the best course of action to deal with the gender bias in our society where professions dominated by men are considered more valuable than those dominated by women? For example, an elementary school teacher with a Masters degree in Education is not paid the same as those in male dominated professions, such as Mechanical Engineering. I say the government should enforce prevailing wage based on educational attainment and time in service to remove the discrimination.

Employers should have a set salary based on your educational attainment and your time in service. Your employer can not pay you more or less, regardless of gender ratio in your field.

There should not be scattered unions. All workers in the country should be in one union together and your field should be irrelevant. I am not talking about Communism. I am not talking about everybody getting paid the same. You would be paid based on your skills. If you have a High School diploma and 3 years of work experience, you get paid a certain amount per hour. If you have a 4 year degree and 6 years of experience, you get paid more.
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If you have a masters degree and you are teaching elementary, you wasted time and money on acquiring that degree. You only need a bachelors to be an elementary school teacher.
 
Moderate71 said:
What is the best course of action to deal with the gender bias in our society where professions dominated by men are considered more valuable than those dominated by women? For example, an elementary school teacher with a Masters degree in Education is not paid the same as those in male dominated professions, such as Mechanical Engineering. I say the government should enforce prevailing wage based on educational attainment and time in service to remove the discrimination.

Employers should have a set salary based on your educational attainment and your time in service. Your employer can not pay you more or less, regardless of gender ratio in your field.

There should not be scattered unions. All workers in the country should be in one union together and your field should be irrelevant. I am not talking about Communism. I am not talking about everybody getting paid the same. You would be paid based on your skills. If you have a High School diploma and 3 years of work experience, you get paid a certain amount per hour. If you have a 4 year degree and 6 years of experience, you get paid more.
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Is there a "gender pay gap" with the ONLY FACTOR being gender?

On closer investigation, that is not , typically, the case.

I remember a female hiway crew worker, ( when I lived in Florida, I believe) upset that a man who had worked for the same company a year less than her was making a lot more $$. Further investigation revealed that she held the "Slow" and "Stop" sign at construction sites, and he was a BRIDGE PAINTER; not exactly "equal work", by any stretch of the imagination.

Also, PRODUCTIVITY is usually more of a factor than tenure, in the private sector. Who PRODUCES the most, EARNS the most....usually.


Do you have examples contrary to this template? If so, please share them.
 
Moderate71 said:
What is the best course of action to deal with the gender bias in our society where professions dominated by men are considered more valuable than those dominated by women? For example, an elementary school teacher with a Masters degree in Education is not paid the same as those in male dominated professions, such as Mechanical Engineering. I say the government should enforce prevailing wage based on educational attainment and time in service to remove the discrimination.

Employers should have a set salary based on your educational attainment and your time in service. Your employer can not pay you more or less, regardless of gender ratio in your field.

There should not be scattered unions. All workers in the country should be in one union together and your field should be irrelevant. I am not talking about Communism. I am not talking about everybody getting paid the same. You would be paid based on your skills. If you have a High School diploma and 3 years of work experience, you get paid a certain amount per hour. If you have a 4 year degree and 6 years of experience, you get paid more.
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You can not possibly offer a solution without first knowing why the pay gap exists in the first place.

.
 
Grim17 said:
You can not possibly offer a solution without first knowing why the pay gap exists in the first place.

.
Click to expand...

The crux of my post, as well....
 
Grim17 said:
You can not possibly offer a solution without first knowing why the pay gap exists in the first place.

.
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The gap exists because employers value men more. I personally know a couple where the wife has a Masters in Education and Gender Studies. She teaches kindergarten. Her husband has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and works as a Software Engineer. He makes way more money than she does despite her having two Masters degrees to his one Bachelor's Degree.

How about this? My Gender Studies professor's ex-husband was a Surgeon and she told us the following. Even though she has a Phd like him, because she wanted to help people and became a public servant in a field dominated by women she makes nowhere near what he makes because he's not a public servant and he works in a male dominated field.
 
Moderate71 said:
The gap exists because employers value men more. I personally know a couple where the wife has a Masters in Education and Gender Studies. She teaches kindergarten. Her husband has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and works as a Software Engineer. He makes way more money than she does despite her having two Masters degrees to his one Bachelor's Degree.

How about this? My Gender Studies professor's ex-husband was a Surgeon and she told us the following. Even though she has a Phd like him, because she wanted to help people and became a public servant in a field dominated by women she makes nowhere near what he makes because he's not a public servant and he works in a male dominated field.
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Is being a kindergarten teacher the only job she cab get with her Masters Degrees or has she chosen to get those degrees and then willing turned to teaching kindergarten ?
 
Nap said:
If you have a masters degree and you are teaching elementary, you wasted time and money on acquiring that degree. You only need a bachelors to be an elementary school teacher.
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Perhaps, if elementary school teacher is your end goal. Usually elementary school teachers who went to the trouble of getting a graduate degree are trying to work their way up the educator’s ladder from teacher to vice-principal and then principal.
 
Moderate71 said:
The gap exists because employers value men more. I personally know a couple where the wife has a Masters in Education and Gender Studies. She teaches kindergarten. Her husband has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and works as a Software Engineer. He makes way more money than she does despite her having two Masters degrees to his one Bachelor's Degree.

How about this? My Gender Studies professor's ex-husband was a Surgeon and she told us the following. Even though she has a Phd like him, because she wanted to help people and became a public servant in a field dominated by women she makes nowhere near what he makes because he's not a public servant and he works in a male dominated field.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm so you think that a male with a masters in education teaching elementary school.. would make more than a female neurosurgeon? I beg to differ.

the gender gap exists for a variety of reasons.

1. Women have not for decades valued pay.. as much as men have. Women value things like time off.. flexibility of schedule, etc more than the bottom dollar. That may be changing in the last decade. as women become more and more primary wage earners.. but it will take a lot of time before pay becomes equal.

2. the pay gap exists because women often take time off from their careers.. to have children, and this hurts their overall earnings.. in comparison to men that don;t

3.
 
Umm.

Don't Buy Into The Gender Pay Gap Myth - Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/.../dont-buy-into-the-gender-pay-gap-myth/
Apr 12, 2016 - But the White House and others who promote the myth are manipulating statistics in a way to convince women that they are the victims of ...

"Pay Gap" Myth Ignores Women's Intentional Job Choices | The ...
[url]https://www.heritage.org/jobs.../pay-gap-myth-ignores-womens-intentional-job-choice...[/URL]
Apr 9, 2018 - For starters, the data cited in the gender pay gap looks only at the median earnings of full-time wage and salaried workers. It doesn't ...

Gender Pay Gap Myths: Clearing up Equal Pay Day misconceptions ...
fortune.com › MPW › pay gap
Apr 10, 2018 - April 10th is Equal Pay Day, but there are still plenty of myths out there about the gender pay gap. Here's the real story.

[h=3]There really is no 'gender wage gap.' There's a 'gender earnings gap ...[/h]
[url]www.aei.org/.../there-really-is-no-gender-wage-gap-there-is-a-gender-earnings-gap-b...
[/URL]
Jul 31, 2017 - The gender pay gap does not exist because men and women are ..... or Obama or Hillary to perpetuate the myth that “women make 77 cents ...
​

There's about as much published that it's real.

I'll only add the thought that 'Are we certain it's real and all the pertinent and impacting factors are being properly taken into account?'
 
jaeger19 said:
Hmmmm so you think that a male with a masters in education teaching elementary school.. would make more than a female neurosurgeon? I beg to differ.

the gender gap exists for a variety of reasons.

1. Women have not for decades valued pay.. as much as men have. Women value things like time off.. flexibility of schedule, etc more than the bottom dollar. That may be changing in the last decade. as women become more and more primary wage earners.. but it will take a lot of time before pay becomes equal.

2. the pay gap exists because women often take time off from their careers.. to have children, and this hurts their overall earnings.. in comparison to men that don;t

3.
Click to expand...

We pay certain professions more because they are male dominated. For example, most Gender Studies professors are women, so we are inclined to value them less on account of both their gender and the fact that they want to help people and serve the public. Surgeons are mostly male and in the private industry motivated primarily by greed. We look at their gender and decide to pay the surgeon more even though they are both doctors with the same level of education.
 
Moderate71 said:
We pay certain professions more because they are male dominated. For example, most Gender Studies professors are women, so we are inclined to value them less on account of both their gender and the fact that they want to help people and serve the public. Surgeons are mostly male and in the private industry motivated primarily by greed. We look at their gender and decide to pay the surgeon more even though they are both doctors with the same level of education.
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Ummm so what you just said is that Gender Studies professors make less money because very few people take "gender studies" up as a profession and there is less demand for gender studies.. regardless of taught by a man or a woman..

and meanwhile.. a surgeon.. that is male OR female.. will. make a heck of a lot more money.. because being able to save your life after you get in a car wreck.. is in a lot more demand.. than being able to have a learned discussion on gender.

Your example has nothing to do with gender.. it has to with demand. And there is greater demand for surgeons.. than there is for professors of gender studies.

Have you ever been in a room where people were screaming to get help from a phd in gender studies?
 
Moderate71 said:
What is the best course of action to deal with the gender bias in our society where professions dominated by men are considered more valuable than those dominated by women? For example, an elementary school teacher with a Masters degree in Education is not paid the same as those in male dominated professions, such as Mechanical Engineering. I say the government should enforce prevailing wage based on educational attainment and time in service to remove the discrimination.

Employers should have a set salary based on your educational attainment and your time in service. Your employer can not pay you more or less, regardless of gender ratio in your field.

There should not be scattered unions. All workers in the country should be in one union together and your field should be irrelevant. I am not talking about Communism. I am not talking about everybody getting paid the same. You would be paid based on your skills. If you have a High School diploma and 3 years of work experience, you get paid a certain amount per hour. If you have a 4 year degree and 6 years of experience, you get paid more.
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35-40 years ago, some feminist scholars (Blumrosen is the name I recall best) came up with a theory called Comparable worth. It was designed to "remedy" "problems" these women saw when a truck driver was making more than a secretary even though in the subjective views of the advocates-each position was the same "comparable worth" to society. A discussion of the concept can be learned here

https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/cgi...&httpsredir=1&article=1456&context=facultypub

other scholars-such as Michael Evan Gold of the world famous School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell, have examined it as well. I read this book shortly after it came out-it was the definitive discussion back then

https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Dialogue_on_Comparable_Worth.html?id=_Xsiz1gj09IC
ultimately the concept fails because it requires a subjective choice of "worth" which rejects the far more objective standard of the market.
 
jaeger19 said:
Ummm so what you just said is that Gender Studies professors make less money because very few people take "gender studies" up as a profession and there is less demand for gender studies.. regardless of taught by a man or a woman..

and meanwhile.. a surgeon.. that is male OR female.. will. make a heck of a lot more money.. because being able to save your life after you get in a car wreck.. is in a lot more demand.. than being able to have a learned discussion on gender.

Your example has nothing to do with gender.. it has to with demand. And there is greater demand for surgeons.. than there is for professors of gender studies.
Click to expand...

No, people look and say "A female trying to help people as a public servant in a "woman field" even though she has a Phd, let's pay her this much." "Look someone in a "man field" driven by greed, let's pay him this much."
 
Moderate71 said:
No, people look and say "A female trying to help people as a public servant in a "woman field" even though she has a Phd, let's pay her this much." "Look someone in a "man field" driven by greed, let's pay him this much."
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your argument is ignorant. the market sets pay based on the cost for obtaining the specific type of labor. The reason why a major league baseball pitcher with a 1.00 ERA makes more than an WNBA player is that the market values an all star baseball player more. same with brain surgeons over professors of feminist studies.
 
Moderate71 said:
No, people look and say "A female trying to help people as a public servant in a "woman field" even though she has a Phd, let's pay her this much." "Look someone in a "man field" driven by greed, let's pay him this much."
Click to expand...

Why do you keep saying "driven by greed" when equating primarily male held fields?
It's not a necessary reason to nit pick, but it does seem to bug me.

I'll also get on the actual subject of the thread now, with a small bit of exposition.
I work as a psychologist, I specialize in trauma rehabilitation for adults, which covers in my line of work 17yrs old and up. I can tend to the needs of younger patients, but that requires a specific court, or parental order.

There are five other doctors in this building who do the same work, three being female and two being male. I want you to postulate which doctors are paid more.
 
How best to deal with gender pay gap?
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Firstly, by recognizing that it doesn't exist. Secondly by realizing that even if it did exist, you have no authority to meddle in the trade of two consenting people.
 
Oborosen said:
Why do you keep saying "driven by greed" when equating primarily male held fields?
It's not a necessary reason to nit pick, but it does seem to bug me.

I'll also get on the actual subject of the thread now, with a small bit of exposition.
I work as a psychologist, I specialize in trauma rehabilitation for adults, which covers in my line of work 17yrs old and up. I can tend to the needs of younger patients, but that requires a specific court, or parental order.

There are five other doctors in this building who do the same work, three being female and two being male. I want you to postulate which doctors are paid more.
Click to expand...

Public servants help people. People in the private industry are driven by greed. Teachers in public schools are public servants, whereas someone who tutors people's kids as a private service is not a public servant. It's where you practice as well as how much you get paid. Someone providing Obamacare insurance is a public servant. Someone selling heath insurance in the private practice isn't a public servant and is motivated by greed.
 
Moderate71 said:
Public servants help people. People in the private industry are driven by greed. Teachers in public schools are public servants, whereas someone who tutors people's kids as a private service is not a public servant. It's where you practice as well as how much you get paid. Someone providing Obamacare insurance is a public servant. Someone selling heath insurance in the private practice isn't a public servant and is motivated by greed.
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Greed is not the marker for going into the private sector, many do it because it allows them to set their own hours, to set their own benefits and even keep their own insurance. The pay is merely one of the many benefits you can get if you can manage extending into the private sector and that is not at all what you said prior to this. Every time you mentioned being driven by greed, you placed it right with male workforces and never once associated it with the female workforce.

You also forgot to answer my postulation.
Who, in my description, is paid more?
 
Moderate71 said:
The gap exists because employers value men more. I personally know a couple where the wife has a Masters in Education and Gender Studies. She teaches kindergarten. Her husband has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and works as a Software Engineer. He makes way more money than she does despite her having two Masters degrees to his one Bachelor's Degree.

How about this? My Gender Studies professor's ex-husband was a Surgeon and she told us the following. Even though she has a Phd like him, because she wanted to help people and became a public servant in a field dominated by women she makes nowhere near what he makes because he's not a public servant and he works in a male dominated field.
Click to expand...

If your solution is to pay people according to the degrees they have, who is going to do that paying? Where is that money going to come from.

It doesn't seem to matter to you what job the person has, just that they have a certain degree.

Please tell us where the money will come from and how much should a person get paid that did not go to college?
 
Moderate71 said:
No, people look and say "A female trying to help people as a public servant in a "woman field" even though she has a Phd, let's pay her this much." "Look someone in a "man field" driven by greed, let's pay him this much."
Click to expand...

People are going to pay someone as little as possible regardless of industry or sex. If women were accepting lower salaries while keeping the same productivity then every man would be out of a job. You can't argue that the system is based on greed while also claiming they are simply going to be more generous to a certain sex. It simply doesn't make any logical sense. The value is set by the market, it isn't some arbitrary number people throw out based on the sex of the person employed, your entire premise is simply ridiculous.
 
Oborosen said:
Greed is not the marker for going into the private sector, many do it because it allows them to set their own hours, to set their own benefits and even keep their own insurance. The pay is merely one of the many benefits you can get if you can manage extending into the private sector and that is not at all what you said prior to this. Every time you mentioned being driven by greed, you placed it right with male workforces and never once associated it with the female workforce.

You also forgot to answer my postulation.
Who, in my description, is paid more?
Click to expand...

Within the same profession has nothing to do with my statement that all professions should be paid based entirely on their educational credentials and time in service. It is about paying a kindergarten teacher with Masters degrees in Education and Gender Studies the same as a Mechanical Engineer with Masters Degrees in Physics and Engineering. We look at the profession's gender ratio and assign the profession's pay based on that right now. It is a proven fact someone with an Art History degree typically winds up making less than someone with a Computer Science degree regardless of gender. Put it this way, we see a Phd in Ethnic Studies as somehow less than a Phd in Astrophysics because of our prejudicial bias and, in the case of women, internalized patriarchy. This, not the gender pay ratio WITHIN the field, except the pay ratio from field to field can only be explained by gender.
 
Mason66 said:
If your solution is to pay people according to the degrees they have, who is going to do that paying? Where is that money going to come from.

It doesn't seem to matter to you what job the person has, just that they have a certain degree.

Please tell us where the money will come from and how much should a person get paid that did not go to college?
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I'm guessing he wasted his time and money on a gender studies degree and thinks he should be given a job with a surgeon's salary....
 
Moderate71 said:
Public servants help people. People in the private industry are driven by greed. Teachers in public schools are public servants, whereas someone who tutors people's kids as a private service is not a public servant. It's where you practice as well as how much you get paid. Someone providing Obamacare insurance is a public servant. Someone selling heath insurance in the private practice isn't a public servant and is motivated by greed.
Click to expand...

After this post, you are going to have to tell us what you do for a living so we can all decide where you are coming from.
 
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