geetee1972 - MemberIt's also interesting to note that not one of these socially dominant men in positions of power are single; they're all married or have long terms partners. That's interesting don't you think?
That's right, blame the women...
That's right, blame the women...
No that's not what I meant, not remotely and I think you know that.
I meant its interesting that despite who they really were there was still a woman who wanted to be with them. And I am not suggesting that these women knew they were 'monsters' and chose to be with them anyway. But you have to try and understand the pathology between the behaviour of these men and their personality type; those two things are not unrelated or indeed uncorrelated, quite the opposite. Highly dominant alpha men in positions of power are more likely to be abusers than those that aren't.
Sop if we know this and if we can to some degree guess that this might be going on (which we can because no one has expressed surprise about the behaviour of Weinstein et al) why then are women still attracted to them; why do women chose to be with men like that?
This is not about blame. It's about asking the important questions so that we can learn more about the issue and then try to solve it.
At the very least, we can start to redefine how we ascribe power and success in society because ALL the data shows us that in order to be successful, you have to fit a fairly narrow profile of personality type. More men than women fit that profile, which is why more men than women occupy positions of power, but it's not exclusively so. Thatcher is your archetypal example; a woman who behaved 'more like a man', or at least more like a high alpha male.
That's our problem right there - society rewards that type of person and punishes the rest.
At the very least, we can start to redefine how we ascribe power and success in society because ALL the data shows us that in order to be successful, you have to fit a fairly narrow profile of personality type. More men than women fit that profile, which is why more men than women occupy positions of power, but it's not exclusively so. Thatcher is your archetypal example; a woman who behaved 'more like a man', or at least more like a high alpha male.
Bollocks.
What data? (references please)
How is "successful" defined?
What is this profile of personality type?
Sorry buddy what exactly are you disputing?
Sorry buddy what exactly are you disputing?
The bit that I quoted.
The bit that I quoted.
OK but there are several elements in that. Which of the following:
- that successful high achievers (as defined by career attainment) tend to have a fairly common personality type/profile
- that that profile frequently tends to display traits we might otherwise associate with psycopathy or sociopathy (those two things shouldn't be conflated though they frequently are).
- that more men than women demonstrate these traits
- that women who also demonstrate these traits are likely to be as successful as men who also do
Yep, all of that. It's all bollocks.
Yep, all of that. It's all bollocks.
Oh ok well if you say so.
What's your qualification in this field that makes you so sure?
What's your qualification in this field that makes you so sure?
What's yours?
I'm still waiting for ALL the data you have on the subject.
This all depends on how one defines 'success'
A Mercedes on finance?
Happy family life?
Minimal responsibility?
Power over others?
Respect?
Money?
Why aren’t more women taking higher paid jobs later in their career; is that about discrimination and if so why does it only happen at the age of 40 and not before; is it about choice
Two thoughts on that:
Firstly it could be that the gender gap in pay is closing, but it is being addressed most actively for younger women, so women over 40 in established careers aren't seeing much change.
Secondly, I'm 49 and have fairly well paid job, but throughout my career the salaries across individuals doing the same job at the same level have been deliberately obscure. The pay bands are unclear and no one will say what they earn, so it's hard to say whether I'm affected by a gender pay gap. I do know that I've always been at the lower end of the market rate and I'm rubbish at salary negotiation. It shouldn't be about who is bullish enough to demand higher pay.
This all depends on how one defines 'success'
Even on the very narrow parameters that I think we're talking about here, it's still bollocks.
What's yours?
Well since you ask I have an MBA with Distinction from Manchester Business School with a specialisation in Organisational Psychology and have worked in the field of Industrial Organisational Psychology for 15 years. As part of my job I review a lot of research and white papers on the subject of leadership and management.
There are way too many topics in my original list for me to start breaking it down into individual papers. If you would like to be more specific I could probably help you with some initial reading.
This all depends on how one defines 'success'
I could not agree with you more. For me, success is defined by being a great father, husband and person and I feel that this is what we should be judging people by.
The problem is we don't as a society tend to do that. We tend to equate 'success' with career success.
Let me put it like this. If we can all agree that actuall how much you earn has no bearing on any kind of status or success, why would the existing of any kind of gender pay gap be a problem?
The mistake you're making here, Geetee, is that, whilst some sociopaths tend to do well in business, most people who are successful in business are no more a sociopath than anybody else. I think it's more of a structural problem. The higher up a system a person climbs, the more impactful their decisions tend to be on the people below them, while their exposure to those people lessens. This naturally leads to the person in the position of power behaving in a less empathetic way towards those below them, it's the only way a lot of people can deal with the decisions they have to make.
Let me put it another way. Autistic people tend to be good at IT, but you don't have to be Autistic to have a successful career in IT. You do probably have to be a man, though...
Firstly it could be that the gender gap in pay is closing, but it is being addressed most actively for younger women, so women over 40 in established careers aren't seeing much change.
So you mean that redressing the imbalance has only been happening at the start of a career rather than correcting mid-career and has therefore only been happening for about the last 20 years? Yes, that would seem plausible; that would then mean that the gap in the over 40s is the hangover of past inequality.
You could test that hypothesis by looking back further over the ONS data. You should see the 12-20% gap moving back in time as well if that were true.
The pay bands are unclear and no one will say what they earn, so it's hard to say whether I'm affected by a gender pay gap. I do know that I've always been at the lower end of the market rate and I'm rubbish at salary negotiation. It shouldn't be about who is bullish enough to demand higher pay.
This is so true - that no one talks about pay. It's interesting that this part of our culture and I suspect that it is because the way our economy tends to work means that almost by default you will have big differences in what people earn. By this I am referring to the notion that Anglo Saxon economies rely in part on a highly fluid workforce to be successful. Companies compete for talent in order to gain advantage and that means poaching people for which you will have to pay a premium (it's something like 15-20%) on their current salary.
One thing that is certain is that you only ever get one chance to negotiate your salary and that's when you join. After that, your chances are slim to zero unless you have a very powerful bargaining chip, i.e. you've just resigned to go to another job and your emplopyer wants to keep you.
Your comment that pay should not be about negotiating ability is really interesting. On the one hand, you have to ask what other mechanism you would use in our economic structure (i.e. where companies rely on being able to poach talent); on the other, yes I agree entirely that this is at least part of why the pay gap exists in those over 40s. Testosterone makes you more aggressive and more likely to take risks, which is a big part of what negotiation is about (taking calculated risks that your hand is stronger than your oponents).
But the problem is also compounded by the frequency of job changing. By the time a man gets to 45, he will likely have changed jobs five times (average is every three years for men). By the time a woman gets to 45, that figure is only three times. If each time you move you get the chance to negotiate a 15% pay rise, then up to a point over 25 years the person who has moved more will earn more.
GrahamS - MemberThe idea of a world where everyone is kept at arms length and innocent acts like touching someone's arm as reassurance, being alone with a woman in public, or shaking hands are regarded as inappropriate, is a very sad one.
It's Islamification by the back door I tells ye!!!
Brexit?
The mistake you're making here, Geetee, is that, whilst sociopaths tend to do well in business, most people who are successful in business are no more a sociopath than anybody else.
Fair point and one I accept. There IS some evidence to suggest that sociopathic/psycopathic traits are more over represented at senior levels of business, but an over representation isn't the same thing as saying all leaders are like this.
This naturally leads to the person in the position of power behaving in a lees empathetic way towards those below them, it's the only way a lot of people can deal with the decisions they have to make.
This is so very true; this has been associated with the trait of 'low agreeableness' and has been used by some to explain why more men that women occupy these position, i.e. because men [i]tend [/i]to score lower on agreeableness than women and therefore have an easier time being, well to put it blunty, '****s' 😀
Just wandering briefly back on track again, it irritates the tits off me when someone touches my arm in a supportive fashion. **** off, you dimwit, I don't need consolation because you changed the lunch rota, just bring me a sodding biscuit.
"It's Islamification by the back door I tells ye!!!"
Just don't be talking about the back door when you're giving her a shoulder massage ,just saying .
because men tend to score lower on agreeableness than women and therefore have an easier time being, well to put it blunty, '****'
And why do you think men tend to score lower on agreeableness? Genetics? Or a society that nurtures these traits in males from birth while telling females to be "nice" and "agreeable"?
The same society that allowed men to go on abusing and harassing women because "that's what men do" while effectively expecting women to just put up with it so as not to seem disagreeable. Because women can't be disagreeable, can they...
perhaps that society is starting to really change. Maybe during this change there's going to be some problems for men to confront about ourselves. Maybe that's going to involve putting ourselves in the shoes of women, who may see the things we do in a very different light to the way we intend them. Hopefully we can find a way of getting on that everyone feels comfortable with, possibly some of us will be left feeling a bit put out. Tough shit.
"Fancy a tandem?"
"I'd stoke'r"
Pervert.
And why do you think men tend to score lower on agreeableness? Genetics? Or a society that nurtures these traits in males from birth while telling females to be "nice" and "agreeable"?
Well that's the million dollar question isn't it; that's the ball game. I don't know the answer and I'm not sure anyone does but you're right to ask it.
If it's a genetic predisposition then it's wrong to try and re-engineer this norm (but crucially that is not the same thing as sanctioning abussive behaviour, I'm NOT saying that).
If it's societal then it's not wrong.
I don't know of any conclusive study that tells is whether these differences are nurture or nature but I have read that the differences are most marked in societies and cultures that have made the greatest progress towards gender equality, for exampel in the Scandinavian countries.
The hypothesis to explain this is that when you are less likely to be penalised for inherently male or female personality traits (i.e. agreeableness and 'neuroticism' or whatever you want to call the scale that reflects the degree to which a person is predisposed to worry about things) then those are more outwardly expressed.
I know other scientists have argued that the lack of physiological differences in brain structure mean there can be no difference in men and women's personality types outside of nuture, but then that argument falls down when you consider the obvious other differences that still arise between men and women despite this lack of difference in brain structure (i.e. the physical differences).
If it's a genetic predisposition then it's wrong to try and re-engineer this norm (but crucially that is not the same thing as sanctioning abussive behaviour, I'm NOT saying that).
So we shouldn't re-engineer out a genetic tendancy towards murder and canibalism, we should just punish it. I disagree, civilised society depends on humans restraining their natural instints.
I was in Burgos (Atapuerca) recently where there are human remains going back about a million years, we really don't want to live the eway we are genetically programmed to. People shake babies that scream, they have to be taught not to for the good of society.
It's the same with sexism, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual discrimination: it is harmful to society and people have to be taught or "re-engineered" (I'm not sure what you mean by "re-engineered", it's an odd choice of words) not too. Have you learned anything from this thread GT? Have you read our links? Or do you still think there is no statistically significant difference in pay between men and women? Do you accept that your own experiences of being subjugated by women are not the norme and that the norme is women being the victims?
So we shouldn't re-engineer out a genetic tendancy towards murder and canibalism, we should just punish it. I disagree, civilised society depends on humans restraining their natural instints.
You're right, that means discouraging society from rewarding sociopaths and allowing them to pass on their genetics. Unfortunately, society does reward men with the dark triad features - and the fact that we reward these men also seems to be hardwired into into the humans that reward them(both male and female) and select sexual partners, I guess the fact that we reward them could be down to "nurture" - but my gut instinct is that we'll find a set of genetic traits that govern attraction to these types of people.
And you can't re-engineer genetic disposition unless you're willing to go down the route of eugenics. Otherwise we'd have been done with murder by now.
Have you read our links? Or do you still think there is no statistically significant difference in pay between men and women?
I've read them and a lot of other material as well. Here is what I believe to be true based on the ONS data:
- when you compare the earnings of all men with all women in full time employment and based on age, up to the age of 40 there is no statistically significant difference in what they earn. There is some variance but it is as likely to be sample error as anything else and it's not even consistently in favour of men.
- above 40, the gap really starts to widen so tht by the age of 50, it's up to 20%.
- irrespective of this, if you compare men and women, at all ages in the exact same role (not equal role, but the SAME role), then the difference in earnings is 1.6%, again, not statistically significant enough to draw any conclusions and certainly not enough to worry about.
- I don;t know why the gap emerges beyond the age of 40 but it is likely a combination of factors including self selection (women taking a voluntary step back to achieve better work life balance having had children), coercion (women feeling they need to do this, men feeling they need to continue working), bias/discrimination (employers regarding women with children as being of higher risk and therefore not promoting them into positions of senior management).
All of these issues are important to consider and important to try and fix.
That's what I belivee. Anything else I regard as propoganda. If you don't agree with me that's OK.
So you cherry pick one paper GT, I can cherry pick another:
Ed - regarding this paper.
First it's based on data from the US. My data is based on the UK. I'm not saying that doesn't make it valid or important, but for clarity, I only confine my arguments to the UK. I accept it may well be very different in other countries.
Second, that data only looks at all physicians, it doesn't look at physicians by age. The ONS data still shows a 20% gap by age 60 so we know there is something going on, it's just that for some reason it doesn't start to happen until we get to our 40s. That pattern could be replicated in the US medical world.
Third, the difference isn't necessarily attributable to discrimination, but it might be. Aggressive negotiation approaches might account for some of the variance (or it might not, we simply don't know).
Fourth, it's one group of employees in one specific field, so trying to draw any kind of conclusion about the rest of the population is pointless. All you can say with certainty is that in the US there is s 20% difference in pay between all; male and female physicians.
So people are both ageist and sexist, and more ageist to women. both are bad and the two together worse.
Gertee suggests as much.... did you read what he wrote?
bias/discrimination (employers regarding women with children as being of higher risk and therefore not promoting them into positions of senior management).
I did read and sumarised.
Sexual discrimination on jobs starts in the home. It's another form of sexual harassment. Males prioritise their own career over that of their spouse, putting on time limits and making the woman responsible for dealing with illness, schooling, taxiing etc. that means women are assumed to be less availble than men, even if the roles are reversed as they are in my own family.
You only have to read the relationship threads on here to get a feel for the expectations some males have of their partners.
Considering Geetees use of the term "coercion", he probably agrees with you.
Unless you are agreeing with Geetee? Or trying to make a point?
You only have to read the relationship threads on here to get a feel for the expectations some males have of their partners.
I think you can say that that happens at least some of the time, but you cannot possible know to what extent that happens or if it is a material variable in explaining what happens to women's earnings after the age of 40.
Ironically, in our household, I'm the one taking the backseat in career development in order to enable my wife's career to progress (which is why I have so much time to enter into discussion here). I haven't changed jobs in six years and have turned down four key career development opportunities because they would have meant I had to be office based, which would then make the household routine impossible (I do the majority of the work in the mornings and evenings with our kids).
Even more ironically, while I've done this, my wife has still chosen to go part time (75%) so that she can enjoy a better work life balance. She works three weeks in four.
Sexual discrimination on jobs starts in the home.
It might start in some homes but that has never happened to me
So people are both ageist and sexist, and more ageist to women. both are bad and the two together worse.
Ed what's more likely, that firms which have otherwise treaed their employees entirely equally suddenly start to behave in a grossly discriminatory way (leaving themselves open to serious legal threats) when they hire women over 40 or that women over 40 are making very different decisions about their career and empployment arrangements after they've had children?
or that women over 40 are making very different decisions about their career and empployment arrangements after they've had children?
Or (as discussed earlier) that we are experiencing a hang-over from earlier salary discrimination. I'd had both my children and resumed my career well before the age of 40 but started my career being naive about salaries. I thought everyone would be paid the same for doing the same job at the same level, but since found out that most of my colleagues negotiated fiercely for starting salaries and pay rises, even threatening to leave.
Why wouldn't men be affected in the same way, GT? I quit a managerial post when Madame was pregnant and closed down a business so only she was left working when junior reached an age where both of us working got complicated.
Are you sure, Vicky? A lot of us on STW have a secret garden around our couple. I make references to "Madame" and sometimes quote her but avoid posting any detail on the dynamic of the couple. Within our couple there are three dynamics: 1/ the public one 2/ the way we treat each other on the surface 3/ the underlying dynamic; rarely if ever stated even between us but there, something that defines our couple. A mix of instinct, hormones, feelings, socialisation... . Things are rarely as simple as they seem or are stated. "Never" is emphatic, I've felt pressure and I'm sure Madame has, where we are is the solution we've found, that has worked so far and long may that continue.
Edukator, I'm pretty sure I haven't experienced discrimination at home with regards to my career. In my marriage (and in a previous long term relationship) I am (was) the higher earner. The discrimination hasn't been in the opposite direction either, as I didn't progress my career at the expense of my husband's.
Well as this is a public forum I'll stop there even if I could write pages on this.
Why wouldn't men be affected in the same way, GT?
Buddy I don't know but honestly think that is the key question we should be asking because that's the key to unlocking the last remaining issues of inequality that exist.
I suspect that it is a combination of the following factors in no particular order:
- personality differences between men and women that mean they make different life choices
- societeal pressures that do the same, coercing women to be care gives and men to be in work and where the penalties to both for contravening this are punative
- continuing discrimination towards men with regard to parental leave that disuades men from taking the lead in the first instance
- continuing discrimination towards fathers seen where fathers are seen as secondary in society
- continuing discrimination towards women in senior positions particularly in the STEM industries
There's a lot to fix and really it only starts to get fixed when you diagnose the problem correctly. Some people have been articulating the problem correctly but the received wisdom that lots of people would like us to believe is just plain wrong, completely and utterly wrong.
So who drove most on yur last holiday journey, Junkyard? You or your female companion (I seem to remember you having one, apologises if this doesn't apply). Most couples are insured to drive each others' cars. Here any driver can drive any insured car with the owners permission.Back when I lived in the UK I don't remember any wife, girlfriend or female colleague ever driving unless the male was too drunk, ill or exhausted to steer.
My missus ferries me around, well, at least up to the Austrian border coz I got a driving ban. 😆
Every picture of you and your good lady on a tandem has you up front. Who fixed the last puncture?
I fix her punctures. She gives me blow Jobs*. Seems like a fair deal and once reason not to go tubeless**.
* not necessarily at the same time as I'm plugging her hole. 😉
** she rides tubeless 😥
Don't touch people who don't want to be touched, even if you want to touch them.
Cheap quotation of TNS lyrics aside, just ask.
But how do you know they don't want to be touched unless you try touching them ..
Ask you say ..so something like :
"You look upset ..would it help if I touched your arm to show that I'm sympathetic ..or would that open up another can of worms whereby you might get the impression that Im some sort of sexual deviant and further lead to a complaint of harassment from yourself against me"...
Kind of loses its spontaneity..
I just had a lovely moment with three female colelagues. They'd bought me a small cake to celebrate my birthday and wish me all the best. I was very touched as I've been here six years and it's the first time anyone's even said happy birthday let alone bought me a cake.
After I expressed how lovely the gesture was, each of the three in turn offered me a hug.
Life is better sometimes and sometimes it isn't so. It would be a sad day indeed when any genuine and spontenous offer of human warmth and contact was deemed defacto inappropriate and those that ignorantly trot this trope out, as if life is that facile and sterile are probably the ones most in need of a hug.
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geetee1972 - MemberAfter I expressed how lovely the gesture was, each of the three in turn offered me a hug.
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After I expressed how lovely the gesture was, each of the three in turn offered me a hug.
Reported, to be honest I would fire anyone on the spot for this behaviour.
There is no room in the workplace for such sickening expressions of sentimentality.
