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From: mms1646@acf4.UUCP (Michael M. Sykora)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Discrimination against women and statistics
Message-ID: <1340215@acf4.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Jun-85 15:42:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: acf4.1340215
Posted: Thu Jun 20 15:42:00 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Jun-85 02:21:38 EDT
References: <8204@ucbvax.ARPA>
Organization: New York University
Lines: 67

>/* tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) /  5:28 pm  Jun 17, 1985 */

>Jennifer Roback may be an economist at Yale (still), but her views are
>well-known to be far from the mainstream.  She is the house libertarian
>there (just as there is usually a house Marxist, and a house Straussian in
>the polisci department, etc.).

Well, you've really shattered her argument with that one.

I guess if one's views are far the mainstream then we shouldn't listen to them.
Of course, following this reasoning we shouldn't have listened to Galileo, ...

>> "Actually, many of the factors that contribute to the earnings gap are the
>> result of personal choices made by women themselves, not decisions thrust
>> on them by bosses.  The most important example is marriage."

>Men make the same choice of marriage, and it doesn't contribute to their
>earnings gap.  Isn't that a difference we can call discriminatory, if
>our goal is to make married partners share equally in the burdens of life?

I believe the contention here is that marriage has typically entailed the
woman staying home and taking care of children.  Even if the woman went
back to the workplace after only a few years of rearing her children, the
absence typically costs her a great deal in potential salary increases
(or in salary loss), since she has not had experience business during this
absence (her skills may have atrophied or become obsolete).

> "These differences between married women and single women (and between
> married women and men, for that matter) contribute dramatically to
> reducing the earnings of married women.  Thus we find, in a comparison of
> the earnings of never-married women and those of never-married men, that
> the women's earnings in 1980 were 89 percent of men's.  This figure has
> been essentially unchanged since the 1960 census.  So if one is looking
> for a "culprit" for the earnings gap, it is far more plausible to pin the
> blame on *marital status* than on *gender*."
> 

>The differences are between married women and single women, but is the
>cause of those differences the choices women make or the job market that
>chooses predicated on those choices?  Well, depends on your politics.

The cause depends on your politics????

>If
>you believe that married and single people should be treated equally by
>the job market, then you would blame the job market.  If you don't, then
>maybe you will blame the choices and those women who made the wrong choice,
>marriage.

You might not blame anything.  You might attempt to find out why the situation
is as it is, without prejudice as regards the cause of it.

>The question of plausibility has to do with social and moral
>goals, not with statistics.

I see, feasibility depends on one's goals?  RIGHT!!

>Which is why rougher indications like the differential impact of marriage
>on men vs. women's incomes take on so much more importance.  Those
>indications are much more solid than the "just as easily" speculations
>with absolutely no empirical support that Ms. Roback refers to.

How are these "much more solid?"

>Tony Wuersch

						Mike Sykora