Caramel Baloney

ryking:

From this evening’s NBC Nightly News: For the first time women outnumber men in both the workplace (as men have been hit disproportionately hard by lay-offs) and at the nation’s universities as students. The wage gap between men and women is at an all-time low; women now make a record eighty-three cents for every dollar a man makes. White females have seen wages go up 32% in the last three decades, African-American females have seen wages rise 23% in the same period, and Hispanic women have seen wages go up 18%. For white men, wages have only increased 3% during the last thirty years, African-American men have seen no wage increases in the same period, and Hispanic males have seen wages decrease by 6% in the same thirty-year period.

What I’m trying to say here: Anyone bleating about male privilege can shove that notion up their ignorant, sexist ass.

Too frequently, the words “privilege” and “derailing” are thrown out to avoid addressing valid points and questions (though certainly not all points are valid). However, I’m unclear what that issue has to do with the first paragraph. The post is tagged “privilege myth”, so if the point is that male privilege is nonexistent because men and women are equal, then it seems important to point out that 83=/=100. If the point is that there is no benefit to being male, because women’s wages are rising while men’s wages are stagnating, then again it’s important to point out that men still make more money than women, even in an economy that has hit men harder.

This post, about women now earning more doctoral degrees than men, is also tagged with “privilege myth”. Both the increases in wages and educational attainment are great improvements for women. Does this mean that there’s no longer an advantage to being male? Why are more women than men going for graduate degrees? Perhaps women need to work much harder, including getting more advanced degrees, in order to earn the same as men. The most recent data from the US Census shows that the median income for men earning graduate or professional degrees is $79,276, while median income for women with the same level of education is $52,301. That’s about 66 cents on the dollar. And this is among wage earners, so no women quitting their careers to take care of a household. For women, this is somewhere between the median incomes of men with associate’s degrees and bachelor’s degrees.

The table also shows the distribution of wages for full time workers, with a well known higher proportion of men than women in the upper ranges. And it might still be fair to assume that most working women are also taking care of chores and any children. Seems ignorant to suggest that there isn’t still an advantage to being male in the US.

Source: ryking