Weird socially accepted idea...

Student Lounge College Life
41

<p>Jason, I just don't understand how you've become so hypersensitive to women's issues. What's the deal? </p>

<p>There is sooo much more said regarding race and sexuality with the political correctness thing. Shoot, even religion is a much more frequent topic of discussion.</p>

<p>Also, regarding some of your past posts, when posing the question of which sex has it harder I'm sure the majority of people will say that they believe their sex does. Why? Because that's what they know. I know all about the things I have to deal with that guys don't...but I probably only really know half of the things that really affect guys in their everyday lives. Same thing for the reversed statement, I'm sure.</p>

42

<p>This argument and ones like it are dumb as hell. I am going to explain why women get paid less, and it doesn't have jack to do with whether you've got a dick or a ****.</p>

<p>Anybody with half a damn brain cell knows the economy governs itself 99.9% of the time in search for balance...well guess what? business looks for that same equilibrium. When business sees that an employee is putting in more hours and thus being more productive (and don't even think about that moronic "women are more efficient" crap), business pays that person more in an effort to motivate him/her to keep up the work because the more that employee works, the more money he makes the company. If the person does really good work then it gets promoted, again, as a reward for productivity (or whatever a field's equivalent to "productivity" is). </p>

<p>What business doesn't do (and why it survives by the way)? Sit around looking for reasons to pay X employee more money than X employee worked for (you know, because X just had that terrible time...boohoo). This is a capitalistic economy, and businesses aren't out there to cater to every employee X's excuse for not being able to work as much as employee Y. Business doesn't care about its employees any more than it has to to keep them productive. Businesses are out there to make PROFIT. You don't work as much. You don't get paid as much. That's that. It doesn't matter what the hell you have downstairs.</p>

<p>Women complain about this like its "just those dirty chauvinists" (I love hearing people use that word because they just sound stupid...spewing thoughtless rhetoric) trying to keep them barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen while stomping their free womanhood. Men don't control squat. There isn't some damn giant set of testicals overseeing American big business; Greed (whether you like it or not) is what drives companies...trying to reduce expenditures and maximize profit through every link in the chain. It is simply a law of business that those who are more productive are motivated (paid) to keep up that productivity because it generates more wealth for business. In the arena of office work men just happen to work more and that's why they get "motivated" (paid) more; there's no massive conspiracy to keep women down and the logic that there is is entirely circular. If men ruled business and didn't want women in it, then women WOULDN'T be in it. But since we know that women are out in the work force, we can then conclude that men are NOT in control of it. If men are not in control of it and women are not in control of it...........THEN NOBODY'S IN CONTROL OF IT. It balances itself WITHOUT BIAS. If one is PAID less in business then its because one EARNED less. Get over it.</p>

43

<p>That is an idiotic hypothetical. It's like saying (hypothetically) "if there is gold at the end of every rainbow then why DON'T we go and look for it?" and expecting a legitimate, realworld answer to combat it. With your hypothetical you have invented this perfect fairy-tale argument for your cause, except the problem is it isn't realistic. The fact is there isn't gold at the end of every rainbow and women don't work more efficiently in the workplace than do men.</p>

<p>
[QUOTE]

?Still, your example misses what I was getting at - not equal opportunity, but equality in pay for same <em>caliber</em> of work?</p>

<p>?even if a woman at an office works less hours than a man in the same office, if she gets just as much done as the man - AND in less hours - I'd pay her more; she's more productive?</p>

<p>?if the same amount of work gets done, shouldn't that be rewarded?

[/QUOTE]
</p>

44

<p>Actually...efficiency isn't such a horrible argument. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/management/leadership_training/do_women_make_better_managers.mspx%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/management/leadership_training/do_women_make_better_managers.mspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>This is just one article, I know, but it's something to sort of back up the idea that jadex has.</p>

<p>::edit::</p>

<p>...please pay close attention to the 'sort of' part of this post before jumping on how the article is about management styles and not specifically productivity.</p>

45

<p>"Turns out, girls can do it better."</p>

<p>That's the sort of unbiased conclusion I would like to see at the end of any proofless feminist-authored article.</p>

<p>And she is a self-proclaimed feminist...look her up</p>

46

<p>Oh my god! She's a self-proclaimed feminist? How DARE she think women and men should have legal and social equality.</p>

<p>I've heard the argument that women are more efficient than men and I believe it had something to do with the fact that many women are trying to get things done because they want to get home since it's still common for working women to have families. Women may or may not be inherently more efficient, it's mostly social factors that make it this way. Perhaps it's the fact that women start out having to prove themselves, it also probably has something to do with the fact that many of them have families.</p>

47

<p>There's quite a lot of evidence that women are a) better at multitasking than men and b) less likely likely to toot their own horn, being under the impression that their merit will be recognized. </p>

<p>As anyone who has had a professional job knows, raises and promotions come at least as much from networking/playing politics as they do from merit. And if the organization is run by an old boys club, then the young old boys are the ones who are going up the ladder, even when they're less qualified than the women.</p>

48

<p>Yes. I think we can all agree that the "old boys' club" is on its way out.</p>

49

<p>
[quote]
With your hypothetical you have invented this perfect fairy-tale argument for your cause, except the problem is it isn't realistic. The fact is there isn't gold at the end of every rainbow and women don't work more efficiently in the workplace than do men.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>magicmonkey, obviously you <em>can't</em> read closely - and there's no use combating what a person can't see. I did NOT say that it is a fact that <em>all</em> women work more efficently than men; what I DID say was that IF a woman works just as OR more efficently than a man (which <em>does</em> happen in cases) - if she is just as productive and gets just as many things done and contributes just as much {in less work-hours} as a man, all things equal - why should she be paid less (unless the job is a set hourly rate), or not be considered for a raise? </p>

<p>What is an "idiotic hypothetical"? Hypotheses are only guesses as to expected conclusions based on observations and past knowledge - hypotheses in and of themselves are <em>neither</em> right nor wrong. That particular point that I have made is neither idiotic nor entirely unreasonable. </p>

<p>I am not being idealistic - from the way you have jumped to (wrong) conclusions, you assume I don't live in the "real world". I'm human, and I do live on this planet. But just because something is the way it is doesn't make it right or reasonable.</p>

50

<p>I didn't mean for this to turn into yet another debate about the wage gap. I was only using an example. </p>

<p>I don't think women are perpetually ****ed off, but I think society tries to make sure they never are...and that, in my opinion, gives women a lot of leeway to complain and fuss about everything, no matter how minor it may be, that bothers them. </p>

<p>It might sound like I'm full of crap here, and maybe I am. What I'm trying to say is hard to pinpoint. But I know that we tolerate a lot from women that we wouldn't dream of tolerating from men. There is so much that is accepted female behavior than what is accepted male behavior.</p>

51

<p>Who/what is "society"</p>

<p>What do we tolerate "from women"?</p>

<p>Stop the vagueness!</p>

52

<p>"gives women a lot of leeway to complain and fuss about everything, no matter how minor it may be, that bothers them."</p>

<p>Uh, maybe because women have a lot more legitimate things to compain about? If you were paid 77 cents for every dollar a man made, you would be ****ed off too. This is for doing the SAME JOB with the SAME AMOUNT OF HOURS. So same amount of productivity, but less pay, and you say women shouldn't complain about it?</p>

<p>There's other things women cain legitimately complain about as well but that one is the most important (to me).</p>

53

<p>"Who/what is 'society'"</p>

<p>Ugh, please stop with these questions. This isn't some college comp. class. He's talking about what he reads in the news, what he experiences everyday - people. </p>

<p>Good topic. One has to love the battle of the sexes...</p>

54

<p>There are some general differences in the way females handle issues compared to males...I can agree with that. Just as an outsider looking in, women tend to be far more catty and prone to hold grudges while guys usually duke it out and get over it or just push that person out of their life to eliminate the annoyance.</p>

<p>But...in private, I really don't think guys complain much less than girls.</p>

55

<p>"But...in private, I really don't think guys complain much less than girls."</p>

<p>I agree completely. Most of my friends are guys and I'll tell you one thing, they complain just as much if not more than girls. They're also just as catty and two faced as girls.</p>

56

<p>Here's an article on the NY Times dealing with women and computer science field. What I don't get is why people feel the need for there to be a status quo for everything. Not everything has to be spread out evenly between people of different backgrounds, genders, beliefs, etc.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17comp.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=education&pagewanted=print%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17comp.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=education&pagewanted=print&lt;/a>

[quote]

April 17, 2007
Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold
By CORNELIA DEAN</p>

<p>CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — For decades, undergraduate women have been moving in ever greater numbers into science and engineering departments at American universities. Yet even as they approach or exceed enrollment parity in mathematics, biology and other fields, there is one area in which their presence relative to men is static or even shrinking: computer science.</p>

<p>Women received about 38 percent of the computer science bachelor’s degrees awarded in the United States in 1985, the peak year, but in 2003, the figure was only about 28 percent, according to the National Science Foundation.</p>

<p>At universities that also offer graduate degrees in computer science, only 17 percent of the field’s bachelor’s degrees in the 2003-4 academic year went to women, according to the Taulbee Survey, conducted annually by an organization for computer science research.</p>

<p>Since then, many in the field say, the situation has worsened. They say computing is the only realm of science or technology in which women are consistently giving ground. They also worry that the number of women is dropping in graduate programs and in industry.</p>

<p>They are concerned about this trend, they say, not just because they want to see young women share the field’s challenges and rewards, but also because they regard the relative absence of women as a troubling indicator for American computer science generally — and for the economic competitiveness that depends on it.</p>

<p>“Women are the canaries in the coal mine,” Lenore Blum, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, told an audience at Harvard University in March, in a talk on this “crisis” in computer science. Factors driving women away will eventually drive men away as well, she and others say.</p>

<p>These experts play down the two explanations most often offered for flagging enrollment: the dot-com bust and the movement of high-tech jobs offshore.</p>

<p>“People think there are no jobs, but that is not true,” said Jan Cuny, a computer scientist at the University of Oregon who directs a National Science Foundation program to broaden participation in computer science. “There are more people involved in computer science now than at the height of the dot-com boom.”</p>

<p>And there is widespread misunderstanding about jobs moving abroad, said Ed Lazowska, a computer scientist at the University of Washington. Companies may establish installations overseas to meet local licensing requirements or in hopes of influencing regulations, he said, “but the truth is when companies offshore they are more or less doing it for access to talent.”</p>

<p>“Cheap labor is not high on the list,” Dr. Lazowska said. “It is access to talent.”</p>

<p>According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, demand for computer scientists in the United States will only increase in coming years, Dr. Cuny said. “If you look at the demographics of the country, if we are not going to get our new professionals from women and minorities and persons with disabilities, we are not going to have enough.”</p>

<p>The big problems, these and other experts say, are prevailing images of what computer science is and who can do it.</p>

<p>“The nerd factor is huge,” Dr. Cuny said. According to a 2005 report by the National Center for Women and Information Technology, an academic-industry collaborative formed to address the issue, when high school girls think of computer scientists they think of geeks, pocket protectors, isolated cubicles and a lifetime of staring into a screen writing computer code.</p>

<p>This image discourages members of both sexes, but the problem seems to be more prevalent among women. “They think of it as programming,” Dr. Cuny said. “They don’t think of it as revolutionizing the way we are going to do medicine or create synthetic molecules or study our impact on the climate of the earth.”</p>

<p>Like others in the field, Dr. Cuny speaks almost lyrically about the intellectual challenge of applying the study of cognition and the tools of computation to medicine, ecology, law, chemistry — virtually any kind of human endeavor.</p>

<p>“The use of computers in modern life is totally ubiquitous,” said Barbara G. Ryder, a professor of computer science at Rutgers University. “So there are niches all over for people who understand what the technology can do and also for people who want to advance the technology.</p>

<p>“But students don’t see that,” Dr. Ryder said. “And it seems to be happening more with the women than with the men.”</p>

<p>The Advanced Placement high school course in computer science may be part of the problem, according to Dr. Cuny. “The AP computer course is a disaster,” she said. “It teaches Java programming, which is very appealing to a lot of people, but not to others. It doesn’t teach what you can do with computers.”</p>

<p>She and others think the course needs to be redesigned.</p>

<p>But Dr. Lazowska said the criticism was somewhat unfair, given that introductory college computer courses, which the AP course is designed to replace, typically emphasize programming as well.</p>

<p>At one time, said Barbara Grosz, a computer scientist and dean of sciences at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard, students entered college with little idea of what computer science involved, “so they would try it and find out how much fun and how interesting it was, women included.”</p>

<p>Now, though, she said in an e-mail message, “they get the wrong idea in high school and we never see them to correct the misperception.”</p>

<p>Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs Dr. Blum and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon instituted to draw more women into computer science. At one time, she said, admission to the program depended on high overall achievement and programming experience. The criteria now, she said, are high overall achievement and broad interests, diverse perspectives and whether applicants seem to have potential to be future leaders.</p>

<p>“In this more balanced environment, the men and women were more alike than different,” she said. “Some women are hackers and some men are hackers, and some women love applications and some men love applications.”</p>

<p>With the changes at Carnegie Mellon, women now make up almost 40 percent of computer science enrollees, up from 8 percent, Dr. Blum said.</p>

<p>There has been backlash, she said, including “calls from outraged parents saying, ‘My son has three patents, how come he did not get into Carnegie Mellon?’ ”</p>

<p>Others accuse her and her colleagues of lowering standards. “Well, we would not have success if we did,” she said.</p>

<p>Dr. Lazowska and Dr. Blum, with colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Google, are working on materials that high school teachers can use to tell students about the challenges and opportunities of computer science. They are developing them for teachers of math, science and English because, as Dr. Lazowska put it, “many young women have opted out of the field before they even get to computer science” in high school.</p>

<p>He and his colleagues at the University of Washington (which never had a programming requirement, he said) have produced a Web page for prospective students with an explicit goal of breaking stereotypes about computer science and demonstrating that computer scientists “work in a broad range of interesting fields” — everything from designing prosthetics to devising new ways to fight forest fires.</p>

<p>The people on the page’s “day in the life” feature are Erin, Kiera, Crystal, Tessa and Siobhan — all women. “That was deliberate,” he said, adding that women will make up 23 percent of the prospective computer science majors next year.</p>

<p>Other efforts are under way elsewhere. At Brown University, for example, an organization called Women in Computer Science @Brown runs the Artemis Project, which brings ninth-grade girls from schools in Providence, R.I., to the university campus for five weeks each summer. Its goal is to help the girls learn both concrete computer skills and abstract computer science concepts “in a positive and encouraging environment.”</p>

<p>Dr. Ryder of Rutgers, with colleagues at other universities, has a grant from the science foundation to develop Web materials and give workshops for teachers on different ways to teach computer science. “There is a place for different kinds of learning,” she said.</p>

<p>There are some who argue that it does not matter if computer science, as a discipline, withers a bit. They say fields that rely on computer science — which is to say, virtually all fields — will develop their own expertise in-house, so to speak, as scientists and engineers accumulate the skills they need, almost ad hoc, as they do their research.</p>

<p>But that is not the way for computer science as a whole to advance, Dr. Blum told her Harvard audience.</p>

<p>Though there needs to be “synergy between theory and application domains,” Dr. Blum said, computer science needs “talent at the core looking for innovation at the core.”</p>

<p>Others worry that the field cannot grow to its potential if it lacks women’s perspective. “Does it matter that women’s outlook is missing? I think it does,” Dr. Cuny said. “Technology is pervasive in society, and its impact is only going to increase. Shouldn’t everyone have a voice in shaping the technology?”</p>

<p>For her part, Dr. Ryder said that after working for decades as computer scientists, she and other women in the field were sad not to see more young women joining them. “We’re senior now, and we don’t see who is coming along,” Dr. Ryder said. “For me, this is a professional and a personal frustration.”

[/quote]
</p>

57

<p><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18262058/?GT1=9246%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18262058/?GT1=9246&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]

Pay gap begins 1 year after college
Study finds women make only 80 percent of salaries of male peers
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:01 a.m. ET April 23, 2007</p>

<p>NEW YORK - Women make only 80 percent of the salaries their male peers do one year after college; after 10 years in the work force, the gap between their pay widens further, according to a study released Monday.</p>

<p>The study, by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, found that 10 years after college, women earn only 69 percent of what men earn.</p>

<p>Even after controlling for hours, occupation, parenthood, and other factors known to affect earnings, the study found that one-quarter of the pay gap remains unexplained. The group said that portion of the gap is “likely due to sex discrimination.”</p>

<p>“Over time, the unexplained portion of the pay gap grows,” the group said in a news release.</p>

<p>Catherine Hill, the organization’s director of research, said: “Part of the wage difference is a result of people’s choices, another part is employer’s assumptions of what people’s choices will be. ... Employers assume that young women are going to leave the work force when they have children, and, therefore, don’t promote them.”</p>

<p>The organization found that women’s scholastic performance was not reflected in their compensation. Women have slightly higher grade point averages than men in every major, including science and math. But women who attend highly selective colleges earn the same as men who attend minimally selective colleges, according to the study.</p>

<p>“The pay gap is not going to disappear just through educational achievements,” Hill said.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[/quote]
</p>

58

<p>Wow...</p>

<p>and there's still people like Jason claiming that men get the short end of the stick.</p>

59

<p>I'm all for gender equality (and racial equality, and equality on the basis of sexual orientation, disability, etc etc). However, equality should be just that, EQUALITY, not reverse discrimination. That is, unfortunately, what the real problem with the current "politically correct" system is and what I think the OP was trying to allude to. What I mean is, in our current system, it's OK to punish men for a particularly transgression, but punishing women for a particular transgression is shied away from for fear of being labeled sexist. Now, true sexism is a terrible and ugly thing and should be done away with. However, and I'm sorry, but if a transgression is a transgression, then it is a transgression no matter who commits it, whether that person has no <strong><em>, one *</em></strong><em>, or 40 *</em>*es and halos on each one. I submit that our current "equality" is not true equality but a system of double standards. To illustrate my point using an example from my personal experience (names have been slightly altered to protect the moronic):</p>

<p>Let's say we have a hypothetical fraternity that we'll call Z Pitchfork. Now, 5 years ago Z Pitchfork got in trouble because an individual wrote an article in a satirical, in-house (it was not intended to be nor was it in fact circulated publicly) newsletter demeaning a particular woman. Now this was certainly a very bad and inexcusable thing to do. It wasn't particularly funny, it was very disrespectful to the woman in question, and it can be considered a form of sexual harassment. Certainly some sort of punishment would have been absolutely, 100% justified. However, the punishment meted out by the dean of residential life did not fit the crime. The punishment was permanent de-recognition - the house must close, no member would be allowed to live there, and the fraternity would never receive an opportunity to attempt to return to campus. Now, as you can imagine the brothers of Z Pitchfork didn't particular appreciate this. They appealed the decision, which, in a highly democratic manner, was heard by the same dean who issued it in the first place (the appeal was rejected). The brothers of Z Pitchfork decided to basically ignore the decision and continue running and living in the house, throwing parties (no longer bound by the rules of the college, by the way, as it was no longer a part of the college), and recruiting new members. To make a long story short, in 2006, the aforementioned dean, pressured by a large amount of angry (and very conservative) alumni whom I must admit I don't particularly like either, threw in the towel and agreed to re-recognize Z Pitchfork. Now, the original infraction occured in 2001 - meaning that the youngest members of the fraternity were in the Class of '04. Now, in the fall of 2006, the OLDEST members of the fraternity were the Class of '07. Everybody who had been involved in the original incident was long gone from the house. Nevertheless, the dean insisted on a two year dark period to flush out all the current members of the house. Basically, the house would be closed, shut down, "dark" until fall of 2009 - coincidentally, the year after the youngest members of the house, the '09s, will have graduated.</p>

<p>Now, in the fall of 2006 something else happened. A particular sorority was involved in an unpleasant incident. We'll call this sorority Kappa Kappa G. No, wait, that's too obvious - how about K K Gamma. Anyway, this sorority held a pledge event at a bowling alley where they served a bit too much alcohol, and several sisters and pledges ended up in the hospital getting their stomachs pumped. A couple of interesting things to keep in mind. This hypothetical college at which all of this happened has a "no-alcohol-at-pledge-events" policy. Furthermore, being a national sorority, K K Gamma is supposed to be completely dry. Furthermore, this apparently violated state hazing laws. Furthermore, K K Gamma was already on probation for previous alcohol violations. The same dean who ruled on Z Pitchfork presided over K K Gamma's hearing. You would expect someone who ruled as harshly as he did about what was essentially a bad joke to really drop the hammer on a social organization that violated numerous alcohol and hazing policies. The dean's decision was to give K K Gamma MORE PROBATION. That's right - the punishment for an on-probation Greek house that isn't supposed to have alcohol or throw parties is that they get put on probation, can't have alcohol, or throw parties. This is the punishment for alcohol violations at a school which has spent the better part of the past decade trying to live down its Animal House rep and prove to the world and prospective applicants that it is all about eliminating excessive alcohol consumption from the campus. Brilliant!</p>

<p>Now as you may have guessed this was unfortunately not just a hypothetical situation. I was legitimately curious as to why the aforementioned dean came down so hard on Z Pitchfork and relatively lightly for what I personally would consider a worse violation (feel free to disagree with me). The responses I got were basically, "Dude, it's a sorority. The college is already in trouble because there are less sororities on campus than fraternities. There's no way they could give them a serious punishment."</p>

<p>Conclusion: The perpetrators of both incidents were equally dumb. In both cases they did extremely stupid and extremely harmful things. So why the discrepancy in punishment? It seems that the only reason is that in the first case it was a group of guys and in the second case it was a group of girls. The college, of course, isn't interested in upholding TRUE equality or an objective standard that applies to everyone, whether they are a guy or a girl, white, black, turquoise or green with orange polka dots, from Arizona or Jupiter. The only things they seem to be interested in upholding is their PR and their bottom line. Now as I said at the beginning, I am 100% behind equal rights, equal treatment for everyone. I am a religious minority (and was born a different religious minority) and also originally an immigrant to this country, so I probably know a little something about this and am not just talking out of my ass. I personally think that the greatest right you can give someone is to treat them the same as you would if they were in the "majority," without somehow "separating" them because they are different in some way. Equal treatment is not the same as special treatment, and I'm sorry if you think otherwise. So you tell me, is this equality or a farce?</p>

60

<p>Hmm...</p>

<p>apparently we are all in kindergarten and the word for the male reproductive organ is censored (but "ass" isn't).</p>