h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Okay, but then why the implication that burger flipping vs. brain surgery is the same comparison as "women's work" vs. "men's work"?

I'm not disagreeing, Mr D...but I think we have to look a bit wider at the *economic* roots of institutionalised sexism, and how these shape our society as a whole.

Nowadays its over-simplistic to say that we're set up so that men are the breadwinners and women their helpmeets (and, in fact, this never was the case) - but much of that basic assumption does still come in to play. This has profound effects on the labour market so that, for example, women even if they are in full-time employment trend to have lesser 'contractorised' Ts&Cs.

Incidentally, we observe that those countries with greater pay equality tend to be those with good systems state-subsidised childcare etc. etc. (Which is extremely cost effective in the long run, of course: it's growing baby production units for industry)










Oh...and as an aside to SoRB. I'm afraid I don't have time for an economics course right now. Perhaps if I give you a list of the economics books on my shelves, you can suggest which ones I should re-read? Some of them, iirc, explain that a pure supply and demand model is often over-simplistic.

"why the implication that burger flipping vs. brain surgery is the same comparison as "women's work" vs. "men's work"?"

Well, again I pose the question "what do you mean by women's work?".

But anticipating the answer: I assume by "women's work" you mean poorly paid, relatively low skilled jobs, perhaps done part time. Jobs for which there is a ready supply of people prepared to do them for little money. The parallel to burger flipping is clear, I would have thought.

"Men's work" is another term you've brought up, not me, but assuming again: skilled, difficult work for which there are a limited number of qualified people, and hence better wages. There aren't many brain surgeons about, so they get paid better than burger flippers.

Personally I wouldn't consider burger flipping women's work or brain surgery men's work by the normal stereotypes.

None of which really gets us any closer to answering the question of why there are any men in the workforce *IF* women are 20% and just as good at the job - which is what we're repeatedly told is the case.

Ntm: Perhaps, with your vaunted encyclopedic knowledge of economics, you can perhaps explain - over-simplistically if you like - why a company in a competitive environment would voluntarily weigh itself down by using a particular resource when another, perfectly equivalent in all respects but 20% cheaper, is available?

I try not to mean anything by "women's work" and "men's work", I just use them as shorthand for stereotypical sexist views of gender roles. If possible I prefer not to use the terms at all. But yes, working within the aforementioned short hand, those are the typical definitions of the two terms.

(as an aside, I learned several years ago not to point out that there's really no such thing as "men's work" when you live in a mostly female shared house, they've all 'synchronised', and they want you to take the rubbish out.)

>>And feminists might like to try to explain the observation that despite men being, they tell us, 20% more expensive than women FOR EXACTLY THE SAME WORK, companies persist in wasting their money employing men.

And >>What do you mean by women's work?

Well here we're getting towards the nub. Humans aren't solely economic animals. We - men and women - require women to limit their productive capacity for various periods of time for the purposes of childbearing and childrearing (yes, some men are more involved than others in the latter). This affects women's - but not men's - place in the labour market.

Now one view of this would be that, fair enough, women are losing out on experience and making themselves into less valuable employees. This seems foolish. What we are possibly doing is holding some talented women down and over-valuing less innately talented men simply on the basis of longer periods of continued employment.

A sensible remedy for this might be to value the 'women's work' of childrearing and for those who are not directly involved in it to subsidise it. The civilised nations do this - they recognise that it makes long term societal and economic sense.

*Paid* childcare is an interesting topic. It's extremely poorly paid. But can anyone think of a more valuable and safety critical job? It's an area where the supply and demand equation completely falls down: working parents simply don't have the disposable income to pay a high market rate and so - as it often does - the supply/demand graph asymptotes. (Economics 101 )

>>Ntm: Perhaps, with your vaunted encyclopedic knowledge of economics,

I vaunted no such knowledge. I'm a demi-semi-educated layperson. But that's a start! And to be fair - you were being snide and I didn't think there was a need for it.

OK...the labour market is striated in various ways, which each layer having different types of Ts&Cs, employment patterns, gender mixes, etc. There is no one labour market.

If we look at some of the post-industrial areas where a small amount of new enterprises have grown up, offering part-time, hourly-paid, flexible work, we find that indeed women's employment is higher than men's. Your simple supply-and-demand graph *does* work.

Elsewhere, this type of employment is only part of a wider mix which includes longer-term, salaried employment. Women are less available for this type, for reasons explained in a previous post.










Incidentally...Martin Jacques wrote a fair amount about this sort of stuff back in the '80s

"We - men and women - require women to limit their productive capacity for various periods of time"

We do not REQUIRE them to do so. Most of them choose to do so.

"This affects women's - but not men's - place in the labour market."

Ok...

"women are losing out on experience and making themselves into less valuable employees. This seems foolish"

Well, there's more to it than that. Women are further making themselves voluntarily absent from the workplace for months or years, and on their return not placing their employment as their highest priority any more (if they ever did...). It's not just a question of their experience, there's also their availability and commitment.

"A sensible remedy for this might be to value the "women's work" of childrearing and for those who are not directly involved in it to subsidise it."

I already do subsidise it. My taxes fund child benefits, paediatricians, maternity leave and a dozen other things that benefit only breeders.

"*Paid* childcare is an interesting topic. It's extremely poorly paid."

As well it should be for a job many people choose to do for free.

"But can anyone think of a more valuable and safety critical job?"

How long have you got? Paramedic. Firefighter. Or to be a bit parochial to my profession - operator on a hazardous chemical plant. All of these jobs require someone to develop unusual skills over years, maintain and improve them, and employ them in stressful situations with the real possibility that screwing up will cost someone their life directly.

Whereas, assuming someone working in childcare doesn't actually physically drop a baby or feed it something poisonous, they can literally go to sleep on the job for hours at a time without incident. And as for "valuable" - it's as valuable as someone's prepared to make it.

"It's an area where the supply and demand equation completely falls down: working parents simply don't have the disposable income to pay a high market rate"

Most working parents simply don't have the disposable income to pay a high market rate for private education, two-week skiing holidays in Klosters and a pony, either. But that doesn't mean the price of those things falls to meet their requirements. It means they don't get them, and they have to make alternative arrangements. Supply and demand working in perfect tandem, I'd say.

There's a demand for childcare, and a ready supply, ergo, the price is low. If supply dried up, the price would rise, and the only people who could afford it would be the private education crowd. Normal working parents would have to either get the grandparents involved, give up some other luxury to afford the costs, or have one of them give up work to take care of Junior. Or even - whisper it - not have kids they can't afford to keep.

But why would supply dry up? Childcare is *easy*. People even enjoy it, for goodness sake. Many people do it for free. Why is it surprising that its price is low?

" longer-term, salaried employment. Women are less available for this"

But hang on - isn't the feminists' WHOLE POINT that women should be equal?

I'm shocked, shocked at your implication that because women are "less available" for work on high salaries that they should not expect high salaries...

"Childcare is *easy*."

You laugh... and yet it seems that practically anyone can do it. It's objectively, demonstrably not as hard as, say, driving a car. People die, every day, trying to do that and failing. On that basis, simply driving a car should be a better paid job than looking after a child... no?

No, it probably isn't, but we evolved to raise kids. Nobody evolved to be able to drive a car. And kids still die every day because of people failing at childcare... not because of third world disease, but here in the first world because of ignorance, or neglect, or just not being able to deal with it emotionally. If someone can't hack driving a car society forgives them, if someone can't hack raising a child they're made out to be horrible people whether or not that is actually the case.

Oh, SorB...you do go off on one so. You're more interested in scoring trivial, irrelevant pedantic points such as...

>>We do not REQUIRE them to do so. Most of them choose to do so.

(So?)

...than in seeing the wider picture.

You're restricting your discussion to the accountancy side of economics. OK, with the logic of an accountant we can see that if women (ahem) choose to procreate then they and their families deserve all they get.

**But you haven't yet done what various people politely suggested you should do a while back and look into some elementary grade Feminism.** If you had, you'd realise that equal pay is far from the be all and end all of Feminism. It's an important component, yes, but not the whole story.

One of the more revolutionary aspects of Feminism, which perhaps stretches the mind a little beyond accountancy, is the modest proposal that women (and, indeed, men) do not exist solely to provide paid labour. That we should perhaps consider that Women's Things, including childbearing, childrearing, etc, are ultimately more important than, say, designing plants to manufacture chocolate or teflon or whatever and that the latter should exist to support the former rather than vice versa.

This is a subtle yet profound shift in thinking. If followed through, it suggests that Women's Work is to be valued. It suggests that rather then women being penalised for their absence from the industrial workplace, society as a whole might benefit if we spread the load. It's my own contention that we'd all benefit - including those of us with dicks. More equal, more supportive societies tend to be happier, don't they?


OK - so it's never gonna happen, admittedly.

"never gonna happen"

Damn... you beat me to it.

"restricting your discussion to the accountancy side of economics"

Thing is - that's what our society does.

"women (and, indeed, men) do not exist solely to provide paid labour"

Careful now. Heresy like that would have got you burned not so long ago...

The question of whether people make economically rational choices about whether to have children, and how many is a genuinely interesting one.

We can certainly observe that, worldwide, number of children is inversely proportional to income. In the developed world, people need to have lots of children as a pension plan - and they need lots of spares. As wealth increases, number of children decreases, so that the high-GDP countries are now reliant on immigration for economic growth (and pensions).

But I doubt it's an entirely rational decision, family by family. The move from large to small families is gradual as income and child mortality improve - large families are traditional: people enjoy life in them. At the wealthy end - what is it that's being traded off? Presumably children vs disposable income...in which case why does *anyone* suffer the inconvenience and iPad-shortage of having a family?

Given contraceptive technology, but I doubt it's entirely an economic one. That explains why people still have children even if they don't have the perfect car and perfect house and struggle to make end meet, etc. etc. My guess is that, on an evolutionary scale, the genes for procreation came before those for economic decision making.

And - is it just me - or would it be a *horrible* world if we expected people to look upon reproductive decisions as a profit/loss account?

>>"restricting your discussion to the accountancy side of economics"

>>Thing is - that's what our society does.



nnnn...only very stupid societies, though. Accountancy doesn't take the long view. I'm not just talking pinko lefty stuff here (...Oh...OK...I am...) - I'm advancing the argument that the freer and more equal a society is, the more it is economically sustainable. And happier.

I have to say, I appreciate Twig's logic here. On the one hand we have a theory (some flavour of microeconomics, presumably) that has, in every empirical test, been proven to be wrong. On the other hand, we have an empirically observed fact that women with equal experience doing the same job are paid less than men. Rather than consider the data a rather elegant refutation of a faulty theory, we should say that the a priori truth of the theory shows that the data must be wrong! Indeed, Twig must have had some training in economics.

NtM, it's worth noting that pay for women with equal experience for the same work is lower than men even if you control for the risk to employers that they will go off and have babies, so there's more to it than just that. That's not to undermine your argument at all though, just to point out that you shouldn't concede too much here.

And, indeed, we see what Nobel prize-winning economists have termed 'friction' at play here. Nowadays it is no longer the case that, for example, professional women were automatically expected to retire upon marriage...but it's not that long ago that such things were the norm. Institutionally sexist attitudes persist.

Although SoRB would like to shock us by implying that women are less valuable than men.

"an empirically observed fact that women with equal experience doing the same job are paid less than men"

I'm questioning whether that's the fact that's being observed. Individuals within a company can certainly be sexist, but a company as an entity cannot afford to be, because IF the above "fact" is true, the very first company that stops being sexist will annihilate its competition.

We're all, depressingly, increasingly familiar with the pitiless pursuit of profits and the ruthlessness with which costs are cut. It's not a "theory", it's a life-changing reality for millions. If there is truly an economic resource available that could perfectly well replace men at a 20% saving - why has that not already been exploited to the full, rendering most men redundant?

Especially when the overwhelming majority of HR departments are staffed by women? These days women should have it sewn up.

Indeed, I was on the site of a large multi-national company pushing equality etc which all the departments had to try to do...and then it was pointed out that out of the approx 10members of HR staff on site about 10 of them were women and hence lo-and-behold the get a male member of staff...no idea how long he lasted...