Why Do People Still Believe the Myth of the Gender Wage Gap?

@ArishMell Secks is not the determining factor when two people with the same job title get paid at different rates.

As one example I worked at a shop that had a union contract with a two tier pay schedule for skilled job classifications and there was a huge pay difference between hires with under a certain number of yrs and those with more at that factory.

It didn't matter if you had a 30 year history working in your area of skill the pay rate is based on job tenure over a decade.

What that meant for me that there were actually men and women at that employer that had less time working in my job area than me getting more pay per hour. Some were females as well and some of them I found to be far less able to carry out the heavy lifting that males with equal time in my field, with the same time in the vocation are capable to carry out.

Not one of them was strong enough to alone, position a 20hp compressor motor after replacing a coupler. None could carry 2 40lb buckets of the various solutions used in machinery repair. I never observed one of them rebuilding, much less, reinserting a trash conveyor chain set. Or..carefully insert a newly needed 14000$ 6'x3" ballscrew into a pair of precision thrusters into a Cincinatti Maxim. Much less most men without scratching its perfectly polished ends. None I know, including most young boys was willing to risk dermatitis and plunge their arm into an unskimmed swarfy coolant sump and retrieve an errant rag from a pump intake. So that hundreds of dollars a minute in production time wouldn't go down the drain with 90 gallons of very expensive coolant concentrate.

Obviously I found a different non union open contract shop. There I was able to negotiate a more appropriate pay rate than at the union shop. Even though it was still less than the union shop, it was at least closer to what a job in my skill and will level and my vastly superior experience ought to have fetched.

Don't tell me women are equal to men or that I'm equal to them. I can't even change a diaper properly or fold laundry correctly after hundreds of attempts. Just ask my microelectronic board troubleshooting ex I taught solder desolder methods, component id, color codes and layout reading to.

Most of what armchair experts know about work is bs because they have employment but work isn't something they do. Yet they blab on endlessly about it from their ivory tower starched white shiney shoe shows.

Show me the underpaid woman brick layer, oil well rigger, asphalt roofer, shingle hoister, pavement prep crew shoveler or any of dozens of truly physically demanding jobs that pay well where a female seriously does her share of the work. And doesn't get a right fair wage.

All this argument is the stuff of stupidity authored by people that don't think much and work too little to keep their big mouths shut.

45yrs of sweat is my proof. What's yours?

@SteelHands The problem is not inequality over different skills or physical ability. I've never heard of anyone expecting females to lift and carry massive loads about. They have brains though and are certainly capable of operating heavy plant and driving lorries, buses and trains; work that demands more mental agility and limb co-ordination than muscle.

(Modern trains are probably easier to drive than cars, but the drivers need to know a heck a lot more than just which lever to move when.)

The difficulty is when men and women are doing the same work to the same level but paid differently. It's that that leads to disputes; not whether a woman can handle a huge lead-screw or lug building-materials about.


My last thirty or so years of working life were with a major, ex-government organisation where there was some sort of equivalence between technical, administrative and support grades to even the salaries for everyone as fairly as possible. I don't know how they calculated it all, but it worked very well and labour relations were very good.

In previous years I worked for a small sub-contract electronics company that had about as many women as men assembling pcbs (this was before surface-mounting) and wiring looms, and though I don't know for sure, I think we were on more or less equal pay.


Mind you, it's possible we have much stricter employee-protection laws here than in the USA, and I worked for a firm that did have to be squeaky-clean legally, or it would not have gained work even if no action in law was taken. That's not just on equality but also health-&-safety and environmental protection: around the time I retired the company was working towards gaining ISO1400x accreditation for the latter. I was not directly involved in that but I did occasionally prepare risk-assessments.

(Though when they replaced all the discharge-tube type flourescent ceiling-lamps with l.e.d. versions, I had the unexciting task of dismantling all the old units: batteries in one crate, tubes in another, electronics in a third, the empty cases in a big scrap-metal skip!)


Regarding lifting and carrying, we (men and women) were given informal training on how to do that safely, including the instruction to obtain help or handling-equipment as and when necessary. Bravado is neither necessary nor wanted! They told us injuries due to bad manual-handling are not only very painful and take a long time to heal so might put you off on sick-leave for some time, they are also among the most common of industrial injuries generally.

@ArishMell just for entertainment here consider this.

A typical CNC farm with a pair of extra maximum capacity horizontal mills, a few automated 35hp lathes, some 15s and 25s, four precision cooled grinders, a lets say four VMCs and a like number of automated robotic fed VLMs.

Now add the cranes, the big demag frames, a couple dozen auto welders, coolant mixers, parts washers, filter mists, powermists on at least half the equipment, five electric and two lp trucks, several condos for a variety of cmm, design test, tool and die, setup and proving duties for a plant that fabs its own stuff on a pair of 10by lasering tables with big ac units, 15 manual and robotic assist welding stations, a powder coat line, assembly lines with jibs, a j line with an assortment of hydro benches and a test room, three big rest rooms, two cafeterias, a two story office wing, a 30k gal RO and water treatment facility, a compliment of contact electricians on staff, and three 2 ton compressor and moisture drop units. Automated access systems with catwalks and swype card access throughout with 7 clock in districts with all the necessary Machinery Id and safety signage with no ac, suspended ball mirrors and traffic control at every intersection.

One hire has been in many facilities and worked on all these machines including operations, stores, close quarter and fire training, heavy equipment operation, computer tech, HVAC, in all, 12 of the 17 skilled specialties across 20 years. Another one with 25 yrs one skill, low to zero familiarity of much but only knows her way to her feed the machine job and the cafeteria.

Then someone like me. 25 years in those trades, strong healthy as a bull and has a life circumstance alteration. Suppose the wife gets shifted to another city. A divorce forces the sell off of a semi retirement in real estate after a quarter century in these plants build up of my skills. A maintenance fledgling business interruption loses enough promptness to have customers switch to a competitor. Whatever.

That female can find a job in 12 seconds. I, on the other hand won't ever re-enter any of the well paid low effort brain heavy specialties in that line of work such as operator level 5 or above.

Plus I get the added wage reduction of low seniority employees at any union job. So I go to smaller, non union jobs and negotiate for a better wage. My female counterparts feel offended because I'm paid twice what they make, but if they were actually skilled half as much as me they could easily get hired in the big union shops and make twice what I am for doing half what I am now.

That's the reality. I could train a female if she had 18 inch biceps and a pair of 14" forearms attached to a muscular 42 inch non breasted chest, but then, that wouldn't actually be a woman outside the weirdo juiced up powerlifter circuits would it? And it does take good math ability. And some metalurgics and welding burn, shrapnel extracting, msds margin of safety and ppe exception awareness and danger circumvention use experience. In other words, willingness to accept the highest risks associated in my field of work.

When a fire breaks out, I'm there cutting power and helping prevent its spread and or smothering the flames. When a machine malfunctions and becomes dangerous to operate and the repair is even more dangerous because of the three ton turret, pallet, or fixture needs to get removed, I'm there. When a 300 kilogram motor needs to come out of a narrow box, get moved six feet left over a slippery trough a foot above the floor, so it can be hooked by a lift chain its my feet and fingers at risk. Never a female.

So again. Why does a woman the same physical height as me think she's worth the same wage?

Oh yeah. I forgot. Though she's never been inside a locked out work center, handled a live wire, taken a coolant bath, swung from a harness 25 feet above the work floor, had splattered shoes destroyed by molten welding falls and had to buy another 100$ pair, she knows how. Especially how to pull the handles on that forklift with the chains dangling off the forks, hide in the clean air spaces while my face collects soot, go order parts from the numbers I look up in the fadal catalog bring me the wrong maintenance manual, and throw away mostly clean small size gloves every Friday.

What a joke. Yeah but us men aren't important anymore. I have a sneaking suspicion they're beginning to find out otherwise since I got too old to work now.

Yeah you go girl. Lol

@SteelHands It's not a matter of physical ability. No-one denies that men are usually stronger than women. No-one expects women to be able to spend all day lifting big loads no-one should have to do anyway. It's not always avoidable, but the default should be use mechanical-handling aids wherever and whenever possible.

Though it's notable that there are now, female firefighters, and female crew members, officers even, on warships.

What you describe seems a pretty horrific place to have worked in, though; with poor health and safety control; and that applies to male as well as female employees.

Mathematical ability? Some of my superiors were mathematicians as their work, and happened to be women! At one point the CEO (I hate those pretentious 'Chief xxxxx Officer' titles for directors!) was a Chartered Engineer, so must have been highly skilled at maths, but also happened to be a woman. I don't know if her field was electrical or mechanical engineering, though.

It's nothing to do with individual trades, or individual skill, or heavy labouring in ghastly, very unsafe conditions.

It is purely a matter of equality between men and women doing the same or equivalently-skilled work whatever that work is.

@ArishMell Who is the female Steven Jobs? Bill Gates? Oh forgot. No woman got control of HP Pepsi or Ebay... right?

Oh wait. They did and HP sunk like the titanic. Pepsi slid from the global titan number one to what is it now number three nationwide? Anyone seen bud light lately?

You know there's hundreds more. I could point at General Motors but don't want to get too entangled with a supposedly "inarguable" collective corporate self flagellation.

It's their right to wreck a hundred years of stellar success to be nice guys if they want. I'm no senators son.

I do not wonder why it's now that suddenly the big boys became so wise that they realized women should be given the driver's seat. After all Joan of Arc started to prove how gritty and capable and "better" than men women can be. Right?

Still. I do wonder who the women counterparts of Ghengis Kahn, Ferdinand Magellan, heck, even a George Washington or John Kennedy got lost in all that manly chauvinist oppression and senseless abandonment of their feminine sides went.

Heck if we'd only known Ww2 could have been led by Elizabeth and Ellenore instead of Montgomery and Patton.

Molly could have set up Detroit instead of Henry. And maybe LHR would have had a change of heart and been home changing diapers if we had only elected Marylyn Monroe instead of JFK.

About my various jobs. I've been in the presence of 80 tons of molten brass. I've seen 100 tons of steel dangle from a cable 150 feet above the ground surrounded by my co workers. I've been inside places that have turned a human into a splatter that saved a hundred more because of an unforeseen act of nature like a coin toss.

You actually seem well intended. The problem? You know what they say about that. The well paved road of good intentions leads to hell. I'll take good judgement and conscientious decision making, and calculated risks over those good intentions rather than safety procedures over blind risk every time.

There's places women don't belong. There's places men deserve a kick in the ass for loitering in. I know the difference is all. Most men eventually discover that.

It's not like some won't get screwed royally learning we're starting to see it in literal spades. An entire Congress that skimms out a few billion a year from our capitalist system with insider arrogance.

I've had enough of the argument.

I'm not perfectly right. I know this. But I'm a heck of a lot nearer to reality with this. There's no argument left with me to be made.

They can be good doctors, lawyers, and even executives.

But they'll NEVER be great top of the heap leaders. That's what God made men for.

@SteelHands
I wonder if our main difference lies in our different countries' social attitudes, as well as different systems of law.

If women are never leaders, in many cultures that is because men block them.

Of course the two sexes have physical differences meaning each is better than the other at certain things, but that does not excuse artificial inequality across the board.

I am male, and I respect women but more to the point, don't like anyone,male or female, being treated unfairly.

You never know, maybe one day even the USA will have a female President, of either Party - after all, many other countries have had women presidents or prime-ministers! Even Pakistan did, until she was murdered.

@ArishMell Never know. There's lots of people who want to see this country ruined.

It's not as if your own wouldn't like to see ours knocked down a peg Margeret Thatcher style like yours was.

@SteelHands I was NOT commenting on how well or not your country might be run if some future President happens to be female.

And I'd leave it to you to exalt or drag her down.

@ArishMell Do not presume to open a beef with me regarding the WORLD'S various heads of states or..

Those halls of power to which any female would find herself fighting if that country elects a woman to deal inside said halls of power.

Plain as I can make it buddy. Time to put that simple idealist nonsensical fairness nonsense to rest.