Male Privilege

[Major Nikon]

236. No, I don't

Obviously gender discrimination exists and it should be dealt with. For about the last 10 years, I have been volunteering for a part time position in my company's civil rights branch of our human resources division. We do things like process EEOC complaints and investigate civil rights violations. So I see all sorts of civil rights issues that happen in the workplace, including gender discrimination, and I'll be the first to tell you that it does exist and it's quite common. However, there are certain feminists who believe the opposite, which is that there are no valid sociological reasons for unequal gender outcomes. For instance, the gender pay gap for women is around 77%. So the big question is how much of that gap is due to discrimination? Well, it's pretty hard to measure that because those who discriminate don't usually identify themselves, and those who are being discriminated against may never know. Sociologists who perform objective studies on this issue look at the sociological reasons why there is a gender pay gap and determine the amount of the gap that is attributable to those reasons. Anything left is designated as unexplained and most likely a big portion of that is due to discrimination. The numbers they come up with that I've seen range from about 10% to as low as about 2%. Then when you consider that women are far more likely than men to choose jobs that have better benefits in lieu of better pay, the unexplained portion of the gap becomes even smaller once total compensation is considered. Certain feminists, and by no means all of them, take the extreme position that because the "patriarchy" oppresses women, all of the gender pay gap is due to gender bias and there are can be no valid sociological reasons for it. Going even farther, some feminists (some right here on DU) consider any suggestion to the contrary is "hate speech", even if you are just referencing peer reviewed or government studies on the issue. I find that behavior not only more than just a bit disgusting, but counterproductive to achieving greater gender equality.