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by Tumescent on 10:18 PM August 26th, 2005 EST (#1)
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Earlier this week, my job took me inside a metal foundry. I don't know if anyone of you have toured a metal castings and foundry plant but it is a horrible place to work. Dark, hot, dirty, and noisy. It was like walking through a little piece of Hell. The smell was horrible and my throat hurt from whatever I was breathing as I walked through. Even though I had difficulty seeing because my eyes burned from the heat and dirt, I made sure to avoid getting near the boiling pots of molten metal nearby. Something I noticed was that there were no women working in the plant-- not one-- zero. I'm sure the job pays more than the average factory job. I figured that a person would only do this job if they had to-- if they had few choices. Women seem to have all the choices when it comes to the work place. They typically have the choice to work part time or full time, they can take months off at a time to have a baby, then come back to work if they choose, or not. It seemed to me that the men working in this plant had few choices. I would bet they were all married and supported a family. They sacrificed their safety and probably their sanity to work here in order to provide more to their family. That is one reason why the so called wage gap is so much crap. These men get paid more for doing a dangerous and unappealing job that no women would touch, and then we hear about the wage gap. The men that do this job deserve to be paid more.
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by Tumescent on 11:56 AM August 27th, 2005 EST (#3)
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I'm not suggesting these men be paid more than they already are and I'm not suggesting there be any hiring quotas. What I am saying is that the laws of supply and demand require that those who do the more dangerous jobs will be paid more than the same type of job that isn't as dangerous. As you state, the wages these people earn are higher because it has to be to keep them working there. What I was saying was that women generally don't want to do these jobs, so this is one reason women on average don't get paid as much as men and this is just one reason why the wage gap is a myth. What to do about it? We need to keep pointing out the facts such as those highlighted by the original poster. Only 7% of workplace deaths were women. Obviously, men do the more dangerous jobs. If women wanted to close the wage gap, they would quit the clerical position filing invoices and apply for the job out in the foundry. That would begin to close the wage gap-- but women don't want to do that. They only want to point out they are paid less on average.
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by Raymond Cuttill on 08:49 PM August 27th, 2005 EST (#7)
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Hopefully we will eventually get the message across that it's women’s choices that get them the lower pay. Then they might actually look at what they are doing. The other choice they have, that men don't have, is to either get a baby or a man. With the baby they get welfare. With the man they can get anything from dinner on up to marriage/divorce. This is a fallback position, that men don't have, if women can't make it in their chosen career. About the only way out of that is to make child support/alimony not automatic (e.g. say have daycare while she goes out to work and no alimony or similar).
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by johnnyp on 09:41 PM August 27th, 2005 EST (#8)
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Could you imagine what a firestorm would happen if the statistics were reversed?
Workplace deaths
Women 93%
Men 7%
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by Gregory on 10:01 PM August 27th, 2005 EST (#9)
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"Could you imagine what a firestorm would happen if the statistics were reversed?" (re workplace deaths)
Or American military deaths and injuries in Iraq.
Or suicides... or homicide victims, etc.
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by SacredNaCl on 03:49 AM August 28th, 2005 EST (#10)
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Depends on the type of foundry you were in. If you were in one making aluminum I would hope that you would see every worker wearing a respirator and that they furnished you with one. Aluminum manufacture uses some very nasty fluoride compounds that cause extremely high rates of emphysema, fluorosis, and other problems in their workers. Copper is nearly as bad as aluminum. Steel is a little bit better, but not much.
For a very short period of time I worked as a machinist, and one of the materials we were cutting for a military contractor later turned out to cause all kinds of respiratory problems for the workers. No one there said a peep about it. I'm certainly not unhappy I found a different line of work very quickly.
Freedom Is Merely Privilege Extended Unless Enjoyed By One & All.
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by Anonymous User on 12:55 PM August 27th, 2005 EST (#4)
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Because the media toe the feminist line more assiduously than a trapeze artist walking a line across the Grand Canyon.
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by Anonymous User on 01:23 PM August 27th, 2005 EST (#5)
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What can you expect, It is CNN, after all.
Since when do they get anything factually correct? especially gender issues.
Thundercloud.
"Hoka hey!"
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by Anonymous User on 05:16 PM August 27th, 2005 EST (#6)
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is a dangerous place.
Hotspur
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by johnnyp on 09:22 AM August 28th, 2005 EST (#11)
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Workplace deaths:
Men 93%
Women 7%
Suicide:
Male 85%
Female 15%
Military deaths since women's lib:
Men 97.5%
Women 2.5%
Prostate cancer research money 14%
Breast cancer research mony 86%
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera
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by johnnyp on 09:29 AM August 28th, 2005 EST (#12)
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I sent a comment to CNN and Fox about the workplace deaths story asking why the fact that 93% of workplace deaths are men, and this never gets pointed out.
If the news folks get a bunch of complaints/comments they might start reporting the truth.
(wishful thinking?)
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by Uberganger on 07:52 AM August 31st, 2005 EST (#13)
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On a related topic, there was a newspaper article a few weeks ago about the number of civilians who have died in the war with Iraq. It said that roughly 1 million had died, and that nearly a fifth of them were women and children. In other words, there were more than four dead men for every dead woman and child, but that wasn't considered a high enough ratio to give men a mention.
On a slightly less related topic, there was another article the following week about the long hours work culture here in the UK. It said that 'people' in the UK are working the longest hours of anyone in Europe, with the average working week being 48 hours, and increasing numbers of 'people' working 60 and even 70 hours a week. It didn't mention that the 48 hours is for men, and that as the number of hours worked increases, so does the proportion of those workers who are men. The article was illustrated by a picture of someone sat at a desk piled high with documents. The person sat at the desk was a woman.
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[an error occurred while processing this directive]
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johnnyp writes "I am curious - how come the news media regularly fails to point out the disparity between men and women when reporting workplace fatalities, but never fail to report that women make less than men? Furthermore, when the income disparity is reported the media almost always fails to mention that there is no income disparity when you factor in work experience and education within job type."