Re: Love-Hounds Digest #7.313

[jeffy@lewhoosh.umd.edu (Jeffrey C. Burka)]

Boris sez:

>What's funny, is that Laurie seems to get her data messed up. I heard
>that its about up to 70 cents per buck that a man makes.

You're right--the earnings gap is currently at around 70%--but here's a 
partial list of female:male earning ratios:

year	cents a woman makes to a man's dollar
1955	64
1960	61
1965	60
1970	59
1975	59
1980	60
1983	64

As you can see, it fluctuates quite a bit and can't be counted on to 
continually rise; in 1955, women were earning in the same ratio as they
were almost 30 years later.  The ratio may well have fallen back down to
63 cents when she did her research for "Beautiful Red Dress," which must
have been in '88 ("It'll be the year 3 thousand 6 hundred eighty-eight before
we make a buck...")
 
>But regardless,
>those stats may be misleading since: 1) more men work than women,
>2) women on average have jobs that inherently pay less; it may have
>little to do with unequal pay for jobs, but of course, I know that
>unequal pay exists. It's just that it probably isn't as bad as she
>says.

You're missing the entire point.

It doesn't matter whether women earn less money through unequal pay for the
same jobs that men do or whether they tend toward jobs that pay less, or 
whether women tend to have less education, leading to lower paying jobs.

What it all boils down to is that women are discriminated against, oppressed.
Things *are* as bad as she says.  

"Well they say women shouldn't be the president, 'cause they go crazy from time
to time.  Well push my button, baby...."

Jeff
-- 
|Jeffrey C. Burka                | "At night they're seen                 |
|                                |  Laughing, loving, 	                  |
|jeffy@lewhoosh.umd.edu          |  They know the way to be happy" --KaTe |