It's Women's Choices for Jobs Not Employer Discrimination that Affects her Pay

Gender Bias and Income Disparity: A Myth?
Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell argues that economic differences between working men and women are not generally due to employer discrimination, as is widely alleged. In this video he discusses his new book Economic Facts and Fallacies in which Sowell exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues.

He argues since 1969, the variable of women who have never married or are tenured single female faculty, has contributed to disparities in pay between men. He argues women have chosen professions which allow them to have the leaway to take parental leave. He says being a computer analyst doesn't work. No one would let you off for parental leave for 5 years to have babies. This is absurd. So it's not discrimination about those of the human race who bear children. It's not the context that those positions discriminate about a woman's need for leave even if she is highly qualified for the position. It's that women choose to be librarians instead. Hmm. Ask Sarah Palin about that one.






Former Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers begs to differ with Sowell's line of thinking. In this clip she argues that if Barack Obama had the same resume and had been a female candidate, in the past, she would have been mocked out of the race. When I first heard this kind of criticism, perhaps it was what Geraldine Ferraro poorly attempted to argue, I didn't buy it. But Myers sells me on it because she's making an argument for the notion, which I have always argued, that race trumps gender and in the case of the Democratic nomination, Obama's masculinity actually trumped Hilary's gender. I like the way Myers makes the point much better than Ferraro. Ultimately, not being a white male is a deficit to constantly overcome for the rest of the population in the case of politics and practically all public sphere domains. Even the public library.

Gender Gap in Education and Employment

I'm back posting on issues of gender and intimacy in all aspects of relationships between men and women. Romance is an important one and there are so many ways we can practice SUCCESS with the OPPOSITE SEX(TM) and GET RELATED not DATED(TM).

This post is about the gender gap relative to education and employment particularly among black men and women. I was wondering what to write about today. I've been on the rollercoaster relative to romantic relationships. Met a marvelous man who just disappeared after two remarkable dates without a word. Why we do this to one another is something I've been looking at since I did it with a little more finesse earlier this year to a wonderful brother. Gonna clean that up with him. I owe him a call. But it still seems this mission I have about bridging the gap between the sexes, races and generations still calls me into action no matter what.

So to the topic for the day: education and employment. Check out this 2 min video:



There is a gender disparity in economic achievement in all races but it is especially striking among black men and women, they say in the NBC report from 2007. Black women control 62% of 850 billion dollars in spending power in the Black community. Here are some other data about gender disparity around education and employment from a blog on race, gender and sociology <http://www.rachelstavern.com/?p=35>.









I wonder if the Black Macho and the Myth of the Black Superwoman that my colleague Professor Michelle Wallace wrote about back in 1979 is still plaguing the conversations between black men and women that live at the level of how this disparity shows up.

The disparity between black women and men (and thereby black children even the bi-racial or multi-racial ones) lives in the outcomes of our behaviors not so much in what we say to each other. But how our interactions show up in the world of comparisons. Who are black women being in the world and who are black men being in the world? We are definitely seeing that the separation is growing between us on so many levels.

INQUIRY: What do you all think that's about? I'd love to hear both men's and women's thoughts on the matter.

Reference:
Block quote above from: "Beyond Black Macho: An Interview with Michele Wallace" by Karen Boorstein

Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Winter, 1984), pp. 163-167.