Male-female wage gap, managers

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Jun 5 17:28:18 PDT 2002


Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:


>Thus a prospective employee may perceive herself as "less qualified"
>(according to social stereotypes) and scale her job expectations
>accordingly (e.g. by applying for positions for which she thinks she
>has a greater chance of success). How would you call that behavior
>- "self discrimination?" Sounds too damn close to "false
>consciousness."

Sounds like someone who's internalized disparaging notions of women's competence. You seem to treat all these choices and preferences as if they weren't externally shaped by a patriarchal order.


>In essence, the problem is much more complex than con or lib tropes
>have it. My main beef is that such tropes are used to excuse all
>kinds of undesirable behavior - a black man or a woman did not get
>a job - must be the discrimination; a white man did not get a job -
>it must be "reverse discrimination" - AA that gave "his" job to some
>"unqualified" minority or a woman.

But the discrim studies are mostly of people who have jobs who get screwed on their wages, not disgruntled rejects.

Doug



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