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From: welsch@houxu.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Equal Pay for Women
Message-ID: <206@houxu.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 25-Sep-83 09:05:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: houxu.206
Posted: Sun Sep 25 09:05:07 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Sep-83 00:24:04 EDT
Organization: Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 62

The entire September 1982 issue of the Scientific American is
devoted to "The Mechanization of Work."   It contains an
excellent article by Joan Wallach Scott called "The Mechanization
of Women's Work."   The article is filled with charts and
figures developed from data collected from the U.S. Department
of labor.  [Those of you with the statistics lie obsession,
should see my foot note].

There are two facts which are clear from the data.  The first
is that:

	The occupations  dominated  by women are for
	the  most  part unskilled and  poorly  paid.
	Those dominated by men are a mixture of well
	paid skilled jobs and blue collar jobs.

The second fact is that:

	Women's earnings  are less than those of men
	in  the  same  occupation  in  almost  every
	field. ... The  differential  exists in both
	skilled and unskilled occupations; it exists
	in  occupations   dominated  men  and  those
	dominated by women.

The article is excellent and must reading for anyone interested
in the inequities that persist today.  The final paragraph
especially worth thinking about.

	Those who insist  that only a revaluation of
	women's status can lead to greater  economic
	equity and the integration of women into all
	sectors  of  the labor  market  address  the
	problem  directly.   Until  the  social  and
	cultural conception of the value of  women's
	work  has  been   changed there  can  be  no
	revolutionary   transformation   of  women's
	status as workers. The mechanization of work
	affects those who work and society at  large
	only through the social context in which the
	machinery    is    employed.    For    women
	mechanization  has   confirmed  rather  than
	altered their economic and social valuation.
	In spite of  the  political  and  industrial
	revolution    of   recent   centuries    the 
	revolution for women is yet to come.


					Larry Welsch
					houxu!welsch


P.S. A note on "statistics can lie." My first reaction is a
tongue in cheek "gee no kidding, it never occurred to me."  More
seriously, I think we all know statistics can lie.  Statistics
are just masses of numerical data.  How to look at the data,
interpret it and evaluate it is an art.  If you believe the
interpretation I am ascribing to the statistics is wrong then
you must either gather new data or reinterpret the statistics I
am using.  The tired cliche "statistics can lie" is a cop out
used when one is not interested in looking for the truth.