The Grand Illusion
Late last month, Trump supporters were again chanting “Lock her up!” at a political rally, even though Hillary isn’t on the ballot anywhere. Republican campaign ads target House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. In Utah, the lone black woman Republican Congresswoman, as an incumbent, is fighting a tooth and nail battle against her Democratic challenger in a district that usually gives Republicans 65-70% of the vote. Might it just be because she’s black and a woman? Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have nearly identical political stands, but Bernie polls twenty points higher than Elizabeth.
Just what is it about Americans that prejudices them against women, whether in politics, the professions, or business?
Oh… the vast majority of people claim they’re not anti-women, but when it counts, as in salaries, votes, and getting jobs, the numbers say that a significant majority of Americans prefer men in the executive suite, in the professions, and in politics. Even when men and women hold the same job with the same experience levels, the majority of women get paid less.
On average, women still only make about 70% of what men make, and in some states it’s worse. Where I live, in Utah, although the percentage of married women who work is higher than the national average, women have lower average wages than women in any other state, and what’s more, last year their wages dropped an average of $1,000 from the previous year.
Studies have also shown that when companies receive identical resumes, except for the name, the resume with the woman’s name always gets less consideration.
And when women become the majority of individuals in a field, all of a sudden, the pay raises for everyone in that field slow down.
Now, one of the so-called rebuttals to these numbers is the claim that we’re better at not putting women down, that our medical schools don’t actually lower the test scores of women the way all the Japanese med schools were discovered to do, but then several years ago, in a fact since conveniently forgotten, several Ivy league schools were discovered to have been admitting men with lesser qualifications than women who were rejected, in order to have “gender-balanced” classes. I don’t recall anyone doing that for young women years ago when fewer women went to college.
I’ve noticed that there’s also a growing movement to help young men in school because they seem to be having more trouble with their studies. Maybe, if they don’t want to study, they should be the homemakers.
Just face it… too many men don’t like competition from women, and even some women don’t like competition from other women.
But most people still cling to the delusion that they’re not prejudiced against women, no matter what the facts and the votes show.
I had previously voted for a woman in the Florida gubernatorial race and she lost to a man of dubious (to me) qualifications, though he is fondly known locally as Skeletor.
We just had a gubernatorial primary here in Florida and the Democratic favorite was Gwen Graham. I voted for her, she had all the qualifications, is a centrist and would have appealed to moderate voters of both parties. She lost to a candidate who managed to capture the extremist Democratic base (and who will now be going up against a Trump backed lackey). I also voted for Hillary and encountered many women who seemed hesitant to vote for her because they didn’t seem comfortable with a female presidential candidate. In short, I believe you are entirely correct and it is a shame.
If Condoleeza Rice had run for office, I’d have voted for her. Or for that matter Jeane Kirkpatrick, once she became a Republican. And if only Thatcher had been an American… 🙂
But no leftists, ever. No bonus points for them pandering to women or minorities, since they’re particularly egregious (ab)users of their divide-and-conquer base anyway; after all, it’s leftists trained generations of poor minorities to favor the unproductive and minimally rewarding skill set of gaming the system. But some among unfavored groups understand that they need to offer more value in the marketplace (and quite a bit of patience) to break the glass ceiling; that until it would take someone too stupid for self-interest to ignore their value, they’ve just got to keep at it, and keep the complaining and activism down to strictly matters of survival, and not a whine-fest because they don’t yet get everything someone more “privileged” gets. Only that will convince all that can be convinced; and those that can’t, won’t live forever.
Fair? No. But fairness can no more be compelled than any other virtue, and the placement of it in many minds as not only _a_ virtue, but the supreme virtue somehow worth compelling others for, gets really annoying after awhile.
Thus speaketh privilege from its high, high throne.
Even presuming that to be true (and I have my doubts! I’ve been hungry too for a time, due to my own taking too much for granted about the ease of changing jobs when a Democrat (Carter) had ruined the economy, I just didn’t stay hungry for more than about a year), it’s crazy to suppose that anyone will simply agree that pie should be re-sliced so they get less. You want more pie for the non-privileged, teach ’em how to participate in baking more pie; it’s NOT a static pool of goodies, such that some don’t have privilege simply because others do. Unless YOU personally rather than the government are helping people, you have no business complaining that there are people out there who need help.
Now, being mere middle class, there’s only so much I can do to defend my little piece of “privilege”. But the folks further up the ladder, you’ll NEVER be able to squeeze $$ out of them, because they can afford an army of accountants and lobbyists, and if necessary, afford to move somewhere that favored them more.
Serious attempts to take privilege away from the privileged, will simply make it more difficult for those at the bottom to access a little privilege for themselves. Don’t forget bread lines in the former USSR; nobody was supposed to be privileged there (except everywhere, the folks in charge are somehow), but it didn’t help put food on the table.
In some fields you can escape the problem, as with the blind auditions that good orchestras use now. Can’t really see that working in politics, though.
In the Scandinavian countries for quite some time they have actually already had an environment in which the workplace and education are egalitarian and the result was that men and women were choosing quite a few of the careers that are stereo-typically associated with their sex.
When it comes to politics however, I feel like having women as leaders in Western countries is a fairly young phenomenon, in that we don’t have many examples- and that many recent examples of female leaders have not been a positive argument for their case.
People are prejudiced against people. Humans have a history, and we without a point of reference we can’t very well describe phenomenon we witness. Sometimes our background knowledge is helpful, sometimes it hinders. But we need it to have any opinion at all.
2 Comments:
1. Pay equity:
Until humans figure out how to equitably assign money and time for parenting, willingness to sacrifice family time for work/ money/ advantages, and pregnancy-related issues, pay equity isn’t going to be figured out. Collectively, men don’t work as much in the home and women don’t work as much in the workplace. Social mores and values do not yet assign equality to women working in traditional male roles. Neither does it go the other way: when I was a stay-at-home dad, none of the moms nearby wanted to help me out by watching my kids for a morning a week so I could run errands, even though I offered to reciprocate. The clear implication was that I would be inadequate to the job. Anecdotal evidence, to be true, but present nonetheless.
2. Political power:
53% of the voters in the US elections of 2012 were women. That number is estimated at almost 56% in the 2016 election.
Clearly, women have political muscle to flex if they wish it…. and if they can agree on how to do so. But there is more to voting than male/female. There is educational level, socioeconomic status, local situations, and finally “I don’t like that person.”
Just like for men.
@ Wine Guy
1. Your suggestion might work but I would consider going closer to the job itself: pay the “Job Description” and not some arbitrary facet liked or disliked by the manager of employer.
2. “Just like men”: too true. Oh well, what do you expect they are both Homo sapiens. My wife keeps on insisting that the world would be different if women are in control .. not if “The Empress of Eternity” is any sort of guide.
I agree: things would be different if women were in charge…. but not necessarily better.