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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.social,net.women,net.flame
Subject: Re: Discrimination and Affirmative Action
Message-ID: <226@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Jun-85 17:41:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.226
Posted: Tue Jun 11 17:41:06 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Jun-85 10:24:22 EDT
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Organization: Kontron Electronics, Irvine, CA
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> From postnews Fri Jun  7 10:54:21 1985
> > 
> > A study just released by a group at Stanford shows that women in technical
> > fields make less than men, and hold fewer management positions, by *more*
> > than the natinal average.  In other words, discrimination in the high-tech
> > world is worse.  My own observations seem to yield the same conclusions
> > about minority races, with the possible exception of Asians, whose
> > culture predisposes them to work inordinately harder than us honkies.
> > 
> 
>  Sometimes I get just sick enough of this crap to respond and this is one
>  of those times!  
> 
>  1). Concerning the Stanford study;  Who knows what it was based upon?
>      Statistic (studies et all) can be made to show anything you want them
>      to show if you take the "right" sample and choose to leave off 
>      relevant facts.  Does anyone take into account past training of women,
>      men or minorities.  Does anyone take into account inborn traits or
>      skills?  
> 
>  2). Women in technical fields make less than men.  What is Stanford basing
>      this bit of bullshit on?  Are they comparing analysts with analysts with
>      the same background the same years experience, the same ratings (note
>      ratings are something I describe as others observations of your goals
>      and abilities).  Or is good 'ol stats comparing women and minorities 
>      who are associates to senior engineers.  All they say are technical
>      fields.
> 

I have seen the claim made that if you compare men and women in the same
job upto the point where the women have children, that there is no
difference in pay.  Certainly, what I saw while I was hunting heads seemed
to match up with reality.  Those women who had not yet had children had
pay that sufficiently similar to men doing the same jobs, that I couldn't
see any obvious large discrepancy.  (Although a small one was possible.)

A fair number of professional women, at least until recently, took anywhere
from a few months to a few years off to raise their kids, and then re-entered
the field.  Not surprisingly, this put them behind men of comparable age
in total years of experience.  More important, the time away from work had
put them at a disadvantage compared to men with the same number of years
of experience, because the men had been working continuously while the
women were raising their kids.

While I have no basis in statistics or personal experience for my next
assertion, I suspect it is reasonable:  Career women tend to do a 
disproportionate share of the housework and child-rearing.  Would it
be surprising to anyone if this affected their performance on the job?
(Those 2:00 AM baby feedings will do that to you.)

>  Michael K. Pula
>  AT&T Technologies

Will all the statistics mongers please take a little time to study the
issues before they get carried away with "proving" discrimination by
comparing apples and oranges?