bea wrote:
how does it not have to do with rights?
Because you don't have a right to a certain wage. People always forget that employment is nothing more than a voluntary exchange for mutual benefit. An employer buys your labor because it benefits them, you sell your labor because it benefits you. A company hiring you to perform a service in an office is no different than you hiring someone to cut your hair.
Suppose two barbers open up shop on the same street at the same time, a man and a woman, and that they charge the same price. Suppose further that for whatever reason, most people choose to hire the man. Maybe they like him better, maybe they think he does a better job, maybe they are sexist. Maybe some other reason. The woman knows that she could get more customers by lowering her prices, but does she have a right to earn the same as the man? In other words, does she have the right to force customers to patronize her business, at a price dictated by her, against their wills? To me, such a proposition is absurd, and yet this is exactly what is proposed in the case of office jobs.
bea wrote:re bolded part 1 I don't under stand how this is a bogus statisic? the fact that women make less per hour than men do per hour for each job they do is WELL documented. If I'm missing studies that prove that wrong over the past 20 plus yeasrs PLEASE give me links. I'd LOVE to hear that women are getting a bit more in paychecks than men are for the same job.
The "women make 70% of men" statistic that is trotted out on cable news shows comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and is calculated by simply comparing the average age of ALL women who work to that of ALL men who work. You are making all kinds of unwarranted assumptions about the types of jobs these people have, the amount of experience, the amount of education, and myriad other factors that determine wages. You could do the same analysis by comparing the average wage of 18-year-olds to 40-year-olds, and conclude that there is widespread, institutionalized ageism. Of course, it is easy to see why that would be wrong.
Think about what you are alleging for a minute. If it were really possible to pay women 70% of what men make for doing the same job, then you are claiming that every company in America is willfully passing up vast savings on payroll by hiring so many men. You are claiming that every company in America cares more about being sexist than about making profits. You are claiming that every business that goes bankrupt because they couldn't meet payroll COULD have saved themselves by replacing their male employees with females at a fraction of the cost, but didn't because they just hate women that much. Do you really believe that?
bea wrote:re bold the second. I'm flat out not kosher with what you just said. It implies that every woman that says she is raped is not kosher. It also implies that every woman who's ever said she was raped was awarded every bit of court findings she should be awarded AND OR/MAY have been given those findings because SOLEY they were women. . When you and I BOTH know "she asked for it." is just as much a defense that men make that's bullshitty as anything a woman does.
It doesn't imply any of those things. In any case, I merely gave those examples to show that the caricature of men as unilateral oppressors of women is not fair, and that all people are at times the subject of injustice.