Men vs Women Pay Pap

[Stand_watie]

I've been an operator in a water plant (currently, for ~7 years now), and was a control-room operator at a nuclear power plant (that's reactor-operator type, though I hadn't taken the class to get my NRC license when I left, after 8 years). There was one-count-her-ONE operator at North Anna, that whole time (she started a little while after me and should have gotten her NRC license, if she's still there. Older woman, must be pushing 60 by now); there are NONE at Griffith.

They don't (generally) seem to want to get into that culture, nor the rotating-shift-work-12-hour-shifts. Not that I blame them on the latter - working on a way out of that myself.

My chemical plant has had ONE female operator in 75 years of operation.

[LadySmith]

As for women can't drive, I know the statistics that women are on average safer drivers than men... it's those OLD PEOPLE who can't drive.

You, sir, are a baaad man.   

[Tallpine]

Then this should make you feel better.

One of the people I had the privilege of getting to know at my last job was Pamela Strong. Grew up in a household where she was around such figures as Fermi and Seaborg, and referred to Einstein and Von Braun as "Uncle Albert" and "Uncle Werner." Biochemist by trade, holds patents for several drugs to include part of the current HIV cocktail, developed the RAM skin on the B2 bomber and then until recently was the head engineer for composite materials used in the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. And she speaks with a German accent.

Beat that with a stick.

That's getting off to a good start.  She might really accomplish something, someday 

[makattak]

You, sir, are a baaad man.   

I'm glad someone appreciates that. No one else took the bait! 

[Angel Eyes]

My chemical plant has had ONE female operator in 75 years of operation.

Proof that they are smarter?

[Perd Hapley]

OK, first things first. My two posts in this thread where directed at the tone of several post made, not the OP.

I'm not naming names, but yes, they were some sexist posts. Generalizing all woman based on your rather limited experances is sexist, and implying that woman cannot think in a rational manner is sexist.
Don't expect me to pull my punches with you guys, just because I'm willing to throw punches at sexism rampant amoung the females in this country.

As too the OP. I've been skeptical of the whole pay gap theroy for a long while. Not because it doesn't happen or never happened, but because it fails to take into account a lot of factors that are biological, as well as just plain old commen sense.

First off, woman have babies. Someone has too procreate the earth, and since I don't see you guys stepping up on that whole thing, we have a division right there.
The process to have a child automatically is going to cut into a womans ability to work and make money. Caregiving duties are going to cut into another chunk of time (and, too be fair, in this modern world, this is also going to cut some hours for fathers as well)

Secondly, I think a lot more woman of my generation may be saying "screw it. I'm not pulling the stupid crap my mother did."
Because, it is insane to think you can have a fast paced, high flying career, be a wife AND actually spend some time with ones spawn.
Some woman can pull it off. They are probably as few and far between as those really great male IT specilists.

I think a lot of the outrage over this perceved pay gap is part of the whole ideal of my mothers generation and subsiquent generations of woman that you can have your cake and eat it too. They refuse to acknowledge that, yes, there are only 24 hours in a day, indeed, pregency is PHYSICALLY a strain and raising a child, holding a job and having a life are all time commitments.
Everyone (male, female, hermaphrodite, EVERYONE) has to make choices about how to spend their time and what things they want and what they have to put aside as an "if only I had the time."

And since a lot of women want kids, a lot of woman are going to end up in less time demanding feilds, making less money and all that jazz. It's not sexism. It's freaking time management. Unfortunatly, some woman (and "elightened modern" men) fail to understand that making babies isn't a highly paid feild of employment (actually, I belive it's working for a loss) and they want to bitch about it.

There really was once a time when woman did make less money for the same exact job as a man. I honestly don't think it happens anymore. That's a battle that's been fought and won. So have a lot of the other examples of sexism in the workforce. Now we have the insistance that womans lib is still this huge issue because someone just doesn't know how to let go, move on and accept that the majority of the battle is won.

Woah, now. We got this little filly all worked up! Got a feisty one here, fellas!


 

[erictank]

Proof that they are smarter?

I could go with that - certainly some of the mistakes and other choices I made over the years that led me to where I am now could best be described as "stupid"...

[Stand_watie]

Proof that they are smarter?

Proof (IMHO) that those with the drive to overcome the obvious physical disadvantages are in higher demand for more rewarding jobs and respond accordingly.

[zxcvbob]

That's because, for the most part, women's brains are wired differently then men.  

Women talk in "Spider Webs".  Jumping from one mostly unrelated point to the next, to the next. Their conversations resemble spider webs and most men just stand there and have no idea where they are going as the topics are constantly jumping and changing.   They will start off on one thing, and then go off on 20+ tangents before finally circling back to the original topic.

Men are Linear.  We talk "A", then "B", then "C", which is why "D".   That we can follow.

IT requires Linear Thinking.    

No, it really doesn't.  Not everything has to be Von Neumann architecture.  

I work in software development and maintenance with mostly men and a few women.  The women are just as good as the men, they just think differently.  Here's my theory:  Men have significantly larger brains than women but they only work in one hemisphere at a time.  So men can single-task better than women can; men can operate in the left-brain or the right-brain just fine, but only one at a time.  

Women have a *lot* more connections between their left and right hemispheres (corpus collusum).  So they multitask better, and can work in both hemispheres at the same time; their brains are smaller but more efficient.  IT ALL EVENS OUT.  Neither sex is really smarter than the other.  The real problem is can 2 engineers of the opposite sex communicate with each other.  The burden falls on the women because engineering is a male-dominated field.

[Perd Hapley]

I work in software development and maintenance with mostly men and a few women.  The women are just as good as the men, they just think differently.  Here's my theory:  Men have significantly larger brains than women but they only work in one hemisphere at a time.  So men can single-task better than women can; men can operate in the left-brain or the right-brain just fine, but only one at a time.  

[Tallpine]

I work in software development and maintenance with mostly men and a few women.  The women are just as good as the men

Which isn't saying much considering some of the men that I've worked with