Re: Going wildly OT (Re: This year's salary survey-same old same old.. HERE WE GO!)

Subject: Re: Going wildly OT (Re: This year's salary survey-same old same old.. HERE WE GO!)
From: oudeis <oudeis -at- tampabay -dot- rr -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 14:57:53 -0500


At 05:17 PM 11/25/2004, Gene Kim-Eng wrote:

Well, it's hardly that extreme a choice (superstardom vs mediocrity). You
might just have to settle for "above average," or something like that.

I wish those surveys that track women's incomes vs men's would break
their database down between those of either gender who are single vs
married, parents vs childless, etc., and maybe quiz them about how many
hours they put in on the job in a typical week. Just comparing gender is
next to useless.

They do that already. In a BusinessWeek report, women who had same tenure, same skills, same levels of job commitment, etc. were paid less than men. This is, of course, changing. But not quickly enough. For a reason it's not changing quickly enough, see below.

As for married vs single, there was widely-discussed piece of research by some economists who asked about men's salaries in the professions (lawyer, doctor, etc.). Men who had wives who stayed home to take care of the children made more money than men who had wives who worked. In the fiefdoms that are the professions, this makes perfect sense: people tend to surround themselves with and reward people like themselves. Men can also devote far more time to their careers if someone else is available to pick up the dry cleaning, schedule their appointments, etc.

Now, of course, times are changing. In the mid-80s, we found that women did an entire 30 days (24x7) more housework a year than their husbands. Today, researchers find that, if they have children, women only do about twice the housework. Researchers have wondered why men haven't picked up half the burden. What they've discovered is that, in the war over housework, men are conceding by agreeing to pay for someone else to do the work. That is, more of the budget is being spent on meals out, housekeepers, convenience foods, laundry services, etc.

I'm very aware that exceptions to the trend exist. The exceptions don't nullify the fact of very real trends that come from systematic research. The trend is that men do only slightly more actual work than they used to and still don't do anywhere near the same amount as their wives. And, *yes*, they include *all* the work such as mesquite grilling, oil changes, lawn mowing, shoveling the driveway. By the same token, when researchers include such things as "kin work," women's share of the housework goes up. Kin work is thinks like shopping for the 2nd cousin's wedding gift, writing holiday greeting cards, counseling the brother through his divorce, providing your grown daughter with a shoulder to cry on when she loses her job, etc.

As for men who ratchet back their careers for families, Kathleen Gerson in _No Man's Land_ finds that men in her study become "involved parents" when they hit career deadends, roadblocks (such as extended or multiple lay offs), or finally realized they never become VP. I found the same thing in my work, although my research hadn't originally set out to ask about gender roles in the family.

Yes, yes. Things are changing. Alas, I grew up in the 70s and early 80s. It is nearly 2005. Somehow, when I was 12, I was imaging equal pay, equal work, and equal housework. I think my 12 year old male playmates were dreaming of the world Chris Matthews described on Hardball the other night: Thanksgiving was the best holiday because men only had to sit around and eat. *blink* (I welcome an offlist gripe session about what exactly men think they must do the other holidays that makes it even-steven? *grin* Reminds me of a researcher who got to know a couple really well. For months, there was a war over the housework. The wife, who actually had a better, higher paid, higher status job, told the researcher that they'd finally resolved their differences and divided up the housework. She did the upstairs, he did the downstairs. They lived in a ranch house. *big grin*

A few years ago, I think I was listening to a Canadian radio broadcast of an interview with some researchers who'd discovered that the closer men got to doing their fair share of the housework, the more satisfying their sexual relationships with their wives. *blink* My partner and I were doing the dinner dishes and busted out laughing over the fact that the economists were so tickled about that finding. Uhm, d'oh?

</rant>

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References:
RE: Going wildly OT (Re: This year's salary survey-same old same old.. HERE WE GO!): From: Wright, Lynne
Re: Going wildly OT (Re: This year's salary survey-same old same old.. HERE WE GO!): From: Gene Kim-Eng

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