Beware of the girl ghetto at work

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Why are almost all the bloggers in the Life at Work section at BNET women? I’m worried, because it’s never good for one’s career to be in a room full of women unless you’re a model or a stripper. Because where there are women there are lower salaries.

This is not a case of discrimination. I mean, it’s not that men get paid more for the same work that women do. It’s that women choose to do different work. I interviewed Al Lee, the quantitative analysis genius who combs through salaries at PayScale, and among the fascinating things he told me was that women and men get paid similar amounts for similar work but that women pick lower-paying fields, and lower paying paths.

So, for instance, neurosurgeons are men and family practice doctors are women. And social workers are women and psychiatrists are men. Al says that the best thing women can do to increase their earning power is “to choose fields dominated by men right out of college.”

I have actually been given this advice often in my career. For example, mentors told me to stay in line for management positions where I would be responsible for profit and loss for the company (product manager, for example) rather than go into support roles where I help people become stars in profit and loss but get no direct credit myself (human resources, for example).

So I went into tech. All men. And I started doing venture-backed startups. All men. And when I have been in departments that were all women, I either quit or switched to another department. Really. I am not stupid.

But all that careful work throughout my career and now I’m writing with all women. I am sure this is not good.

I went over the BNET to investigate the situation and I stumbled on Kimberly Weisul’s piece titled,Why Mentoring Helps Men More than Women. I clicked, mostly because I am always worried about not having the right mentors.

It turns out, I probably don’t have the right mentors, because women connect with people lower on the food chain than men do. I panic. I need to connect with business writers who are not writing work life stuff. No. Wait. I need to connect with Eric Schurenberg, who is editor-in-chief of BNET. I need to go out to lunch with him and make him love me, and then he’ll think of me first when he creates the power-writer’s group that lives on the home page of BNET and pops up in everyone’s browser with the urgency of a subscribe-now button on a porn site.

The thing is that Kimberly concludes in her post that women are getting ripped off. It kills me. I don’t want to be writing next to women who believe that women are getting a raw deal and then complain about it. I don’t buy it.

As I said, there is not a salary gap between women and men. There is a competition gap between women and men. Women choose collaborative, feel-good jobs, like writing in the how-can-we-all-get-along-better section of BNET and men choose the competitive, dog-eat-dog jobs like managing all the feel-good writers on BNET. That link is to Paul Sloan. My editor.

Will he even let me run this piece? I don’t know. You know what? I can’t stop writing about him. I have a little crush on him even though he won’t answer his phone when I call and he always returns my calls at 6pm central when he knows I won’t pick up the phone because I’m having dinner with my family.

Women: It is very bad to write stuff about dinner with family if you are trying to get ahead. Do not do this. People assume that if you have kids you will do less work. This may or may not be true – I mean, doing less work. But what is true is that you should not talk about family at work if you want to be in the all-boys departments.

However it is okay to talk about crushes at work because it is more of a single person thing to do. I mean, everyone has crushes, but only single people talk about it. So I think it makes me have a better chance of getting out of the girl ghetto at BNET if I tell you that Paul is a little shorter than I am, and not as good-looking as I am, but still, he is fun and cute.

64 replies
  1. Amanda
    Amanda says:

    It would be a lot more interesting to read your blog, if you would write about what types of work women (supposedly freely!) “choose,” as if this weren’t determined by where they are WELCOME. As in – it’s not enough to tell women to quit being crybabies. If you actually give a shit about equality (and hey, maybe you don’t!) then it involves calling men out on their discriminatory bullshit, too.

    • Aleksandra
      Aleksandra says:

      Amanda,

      I was put in the same situation by a FEMALE manager who chose my male colleague over me when the business slowed down because (you guessed it right), he “had a family to support.” Sure, and I rely on supernatural forces to support mine.

  2. Jen
    Jen says:

    While overall I agree the trending of pay, I have been in situations in which I was paid less than a man, to do more work, and the man’s work was given to me because he was incompetent. I called the company on it and my pay was raised. How long would they have tried to get away with it?

    I’m just afraid that people automatically believe the choice or work is the ONLY reason women are paid less. I work in a more male-dominant field and this happened to me: Same work (actually more work) done by woman vs man in same exact job = different pay. I can’t be the only one who has experienced this.

    My husband has also been told in interviews, when being offered a job, that the pay starts at X, but they were going to start him slightly higher, because he “had a family to support”.

    It really does happen.

    • Lisa
      Lisa says:

      I’ve been in the same situation. A male co-worker was paid well more than I for the same type of work. His work also did not represent the same level of quality. The Creative Director often had to make changes to his work, and have others in the department do his work over, but the CEO did not want to remove the employee (as he was supporting a family). Eventually this company went out of business.

      • KateNonymous
        KateNonymous says:

        Same here. I worked in a department where men of equal rank and less seniority were paid more. Of course, we weren’t supposed to know this, because our compensation was “confidential.” Which I hate, because it benefits the organization and hurts the worker.

    • Sol Proprietor
      Sol Proprietor says:

      The “breadwinner” assumption is so pervasive that it’s hardly ever spoken of. It hurts women; it hurts unmarried people; and it hurts gay people. So ingrained is the assumption that gay people live only for themselves (and the stereotype that gay men are wealthy party animals) that even gay people with kids seem to be more vulnerable to low pay, low status, and layoffs than their straight counterparts.

      How to challenge something that isn’t spoken of? I don’t know. All we can do is choose employers (when the choice is available) who seem less likely to think that way. And hope that, in the aggregate, those people will do well thanks to our talent, and set new standards for the workplace.

    • Casual Surfer
      Casual Surfer says:

      I agree. When I found out how much my (male) coworkers were making I made my case for a raise (and got it). Even so, I’m handling larger accounts & larger business deals, and am still paid below the average for my department. I’m not the lowest paid person any longer, but there are men who were hired in at higher pay grades even though they have less experience.

      One thing I’ve started doing is NOT helping them unless they ask for it. My rationale is this, “Upper management gave you more money than you deserve, but I don’t have to follow suit and offer assistance you haven’t earned.” The upside is that they often ask our boss how to do something & he’ll suggest they come ask me.

      This means that they have to admit that they don’t know how to do something, and my boss has to admit that I do. Then, they have to come ask me for help. It’s a much better situation than if I volunteer to help them without the boss knowing. After all, I have my own work to do.

  3. Nicole Ranger
    Nicole Ranger says:

    The fact is that women are systematically underpaid in relation to their male counterparts for positions of equal responsibility and skill level when large cohorts are compared. Yes you will always be able to find examples where this is not the case or where an individual woman has been successful in advocating for “fair compensation” but there are real risks for women who do so, especially in academia where the requirements for advancement are not completely transparent and perception and politics weigh heavily in promotion decisions.

  4. Mo
    Mo says:

    What you are missing from all of these “women choose to be discriminated against” is that the men who don’t want to work with women set up the requirements of the job and the working environment to be hostile to women. They work ridiculously long hours, scream, yell and behave badly and then pretend that these are all necessary to get the job done. When a woman comes along who can get more work than they do without staying until midnight every day, they call her a slacker and get rid of her. When a woman comes along who can do the long hours and take the abuse, they starve her of resources until she quits.

    And then, surprise, surprise, when new women come along looking to be hired, HR doesn’t want to give them the job “because women can’t cut it here.” And female former neurosurgeons tell college students, “whatever you do don’t become a neurosurgeon, go into family practice instead.”

    I appreciate your insight on lots of things, but in this area, you are just being a turd polisher. There are men who hate you because you are a woman. Some of them are pretending to be your friend. Get over it.

    • MichaelG
      MichaelG says:

      In my experience, managers tend to be a bit clueless about how much work it takes to do a job, and even about who is doing a quality job.

      You see the effect you are talking about between men too. A good programmer who has hardly any bugs and gets the job done is sometimes seen as working less hard than the bad programmer who sweats out every little job and stays late.

      It’s bad managers that are the problem — they just use this crude measure of “time put in = valuable worker” because they don’t know the job.

      • Lisa
        Lisa says:

        There’s also an a$$ in seat mentality with some management. I’ve worked with a few who don’t care how efficient you are at your work – they want to see you in the chair for as many hours as possible. As long as you look like you’re doing something, they don’t have to evaluate your performance. This just rewards employees who like to sit at the computer (not necessarily getting the work done well) and creates an environment with little work/life balance.

  5. fd
    fd says:

    “I mean, it's not that men get paid more for the same work that men do. It's that women choose to do different work…he told me was that women and men get paid similar amounts for similar work but that women pick lower-paying fields, and lower paying paths.”

    What would be more useful as a statement would be that women pick different fields and paths, which are also lower paid. The really interesting thing to question and examine is why neurosurgery is valued over and above family practice. Why are ‘high-risk’ roles better paid than ‘nurturing’ roles? Can it really be true that one is definitely of higher value to the company/society than the other? And who is deciding this? And if it really is true that neurosurgery is more valuable its probably true that it would be valuable to neurosurgery to have the inputs from men and women, so what are they doing in that field to make sure that can happen?

    • Aleksandra
      Aleksandra says:

      It’s your logic that contributes to women being underappreciated at work. “Sure, I’ll take the lower pay for the same or better work so that I can be with my kids some more.” Nothing wrong with wanting that, but as a busy mother,you probably can also have a great career if you are willing to fight for the equality.

  6. Geli
    Geli says:

    Well, the last time I checked it was women who get pregnant and have children. Any woman out there with kids on her hands, will opt for an easier family practice than being a neurosurgeon. It’s just simple logic that women choose a profession where it allows them to have children as well – and more importantly: spend time with her children! I gladly forgo the extra $$$$ in order to be with my children. They’re only a short period in my life, why would I trade off the little hours I have with them, for lousy currency? So I can buy an extra doughnut at the retirement home? Hardly!!

    • anon
      anon says:

      And, as usual, the sperm donors (a.k.a. fathers) are let off the hook for their parental responsibilities. Why is this responsibility ALWAYS left on the shoulders of women? Women need to stop choosing deadbeat monkeys to father their children, and men need to fucking man up and be the fathers that men once were. This society is going right down the shitter.

  7. AlliG
    AlliG says:

    So, if you’ve been consciously working your whole life to stay away from the “girl ghetto” and you somehow still ended up there, isn’t it plausible that there are systemic factors that funnel women into those roles, regardless of their drive/intelligence/etc?

    Another thing you never address when you discuss this topic is: who set the monetary value on these roles in the first place?

    • Penelope Trunk
      Penelope Trunk says:

      That’s interesting about the monetary values. In France, where women are refusing to have kids, the government pays women a lot more money to have kids. And in Japan, where women have stopped wanting to have kids, the government rewards them for having kids. So I think the issue is that so many women want to have kids and stay home with them in the US that the pay does not have to be high to make them do that.

      Whereas I think very few people would want to give up their whole personal life in order to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company, so the job pays a lot.

      Penelope

      • Lourdes
        Lourdes says:

        In summary – supply and demand. Those are the forces that determine the ‘price’ (not necessarily value) of everything. Remember the water and diamond paradox. Which one you need the most, and which one people are willing to shell more $?

      • AlliG
        AlliG says:

        I’m not sure that covers it in all instances. The “supply and demand” explanation always strikes me as a convenient crutch. And because our educations typically would have us believe that “supply and demand” is as certain as gravity, it’s also usually a conversation ender. But because we don’t live/work/govern in a test tube, there are always other incentives and disincentives that manipulate results that have nothing to do with supply and demand.

      • Emma
        Emma says:

        French women are refusing to have kids? France has one of the highest fecundity rate among developped countries, possibly due to affordable childcare.

        • Francie
          Francie says:

          No, that would be due to the burgeoning, largely Muslim, immigration system. French women have the lowest childbirth rate in the world (2 children on average), despite the fact that they have the best family leave and support program anywhere. Most people having a lot of children in France are newly arrived female immigrants who never enter the job market.

      • Dana
        Dana says:

        The idea that anyone has to ‘give up their whole personal life in order to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company’ is a fallacy. I’ve worked with and for many CEO’s and the majority of them come and go as they please and are rarely in the office after 4pm. The job pays a lot because corporations choose to put a higher price tag on their so called ‘work’. Of course during the recent meltdown it was the CEO’s that drove the companies into the ground and got paid like kings to do so. The gongs are ringing ear shatteringly loud for a new corporate structure. Apparently everyone is deaf.

  8. Sabrina
    Sabrina says:

    Damn. I read a post like this and just know instinctively this is right. It is easier, for lack of a better phrase, to network down or on the same level than to reach up, get uncomfortable and force yourself to make connections with different, more senior groups. For me, its just intimidating.

    So I read this and started making coffee and lunch meetings with senior level colleagues I KNOW like me but I’m yet to develop a deep connection with because of my (hopefully past?) wimp tendencies.

    I had to take some action. I too hate whiners.

  9. MS
    MS says:

    This reminds me of advice my father once gave me: If you see a lot of black people in a job, its not a job you want

    • KSY
      KSY says:

      @ MS, your father sounds very ignorant with that sweeping statement. I’m sure he’s been to EVERY place where Black folks populate the job and decided HE didn’t want the job. I hope you didn’t listen to that advice.

      Edited to direct at MS.

      • S. Miller
        S. Miller says:

        It is not clear if MS is supporting what his/her father said with this statement or trying to get Penelope to look again at the statements that she made.

        Like several people have pointed out here, I can’t think of reasons why we value certain things that are classified “women’s work” as less. Like in education, why are lower levels of education that are probably MORE important to have valued less than college education?

  10. KSY
    KSY says:

    @ MS, your father sounds very ignorant with that sweeping statement. I’m sure he’s been to EVERY place where Black folks populate the job and decided HE didn’t want the job. I hope you didn’t listen to that advice.

  11. Mairzy
    Mairzy says:

    I have been working nonstop (no baby breaks) since 1976 in two highly male-dominated industries, banking and IT. Apparently, having a penis allows you to write better code and/or prepare income statements faster. I have done enough moving around that I am now paid what I think I deserve. Here are my two strategies:
    1. NEVER wear any wedding-like jewelry to a job interview. If they don’t know whether you’re single, they can’t decide to pay you less “because you already have a second [presumably bigger] income”.
    2. Never be intimidated. The best job I ever had was from 1985-1993 when I owned my own company. It will probably never happen again, but I had the experience and I loved it. I currently work in an environment where the AVP title is HUGE to the AVPs. I was an AVP at a bank 32 years ago. I’m not impressed by AVPs today – or by pretty much anyone else. Except the Dalai Lama. He rocks.

  12. Chris Yeh
    Chris Yeh says:

    Early in my career, I started off in traditional marketing, which was definitely a collaborative, feel-good job. I got to spend money, and all the agencies I worked with treated me like a king. But eventually I realized that your level of power and compensation depends on whether you’re the payer or the payee.

    Being the payer feels good. Being the payee means biting, clawing, and scratching for everything you can get. But being the payee pays a lot better!

  13. thandi mazibuko
    thandi mazibuko says:

    I think you’re bats**t crazy. How do you get away with the stuff you write? I agree with what you said, I worked in an all female recruitment agency we were paid peanuts compared to our workload. Women get paid less regardless of enviroment.

  14. nancy
    nancy says:

    Of course women should choose fields dominated by men, but it doesn’t mean that they will succeed in those fields in the same numbers as (white) men do. Women don’t get to be neurosurgeons because of the culture in the medical profession, just like they don’t get to be partners in law firms (in the same numbers as men) or CEOs in the corporate world.

    It’s simply not true that men and women get paid the same for the same work. There is a huge lawsuit against Walmart on just this issue. Research going back to the 1970s makes this painfully clear.

  15. Shawn
    Shawn says:

    I’m sorry, but all the women complaining about how they don’t get paid as much as a man…could you clue me into how your interviews go??

    All the white collar job interviews I have been on, the prospective employer asked me what compensation I was expecting. Hello! It’s a negotiation…if you don’t like their counter offer don’t take the job??!!

    You take a job/salary for what you value yourself at, not what someone wants to pay you. If you are going to throw a high number out there, you better be able to back it up hopefully with some specialized past experience/personal reference, or at least with some witty banter or confident aggressive maneuver.

    We all mess that up many times because we rationalize that we “like the company” or “I am in debt up to my eyeballs and need the money quick so I can’t screw this interview by high balling it” etc, etc, but eventually you figure it out. I know several women who make more than me because they had the confidence, tenacity and boldness in the interview.

    If you are sitting there saying “they make me do twice the work” for less pay…then you sound like someone who waits for others to tell you what to do instead of taking the lead. If you work in an environment where this is not possible, then stand up for yourself, move on, or don’t complain.

    The hardest thing for me to admit was that “I” was the reason I was unhappy in a job. Sh*tty bosses, unreasonable hours, unreasonable workload, yada, yada, are just hurdles that can either be managed with assertiveness or an exit strategy.

    It doesn’t sell career self help books, but FEAR is the main reason you sit and dwell in misery. Been there, done that. No one ever wants to here that, it’s a tough pill to swallow.

  16. Michelle
    Michelle says:

    This issue always makes me wonder why any woman would want to work in a field dominated by misogynistic bullies.

  17. christina
    christina says:

    Is it because of your Asberger’s? Even if you’re Christy Turlington, you don’t say that you’re better-looking than someone else. I agree with your post about except it falls apart at the end in a pitying way.

  18. anon
    anon says:

    What about the woman who does not want or cannot have children? Why do employers automatically assume that if you are a woman you are or will become a baby factory? Not all women become mothers! And we are not any less “womanly” because of that!

    • Penelope Trunk
      Penelope Trunk says:

      This is an interesting question. It’s an odds game, really. It’s not that employers are making a judgment on whether women SHOULD have kids. Employers make a judgment on whether women are likely to have kids.

      This is why, I think, employers are wary of hiring a woman who is 32 and engaged to an investment banker. The odds of her quitting her job to stay home with kids are high. Even if it’s not fair, it seems reasonable and logical.

      Penelope

  19. anon
    anon says:

    Women are their own worst enemies. Whenever a sharp, talented woman enters the work scene all the other women gang up on her with teeth bared and tear her down just as fast as they can. It’s an adult version of Mean Girls and I’ve seen it happen in every place I’ve ever worked.

  20. teddybear12
    teddybear12 says:

    I am in a collaborative, feel-good jobs,which is accidentally being a science professor at a research university. It is a feel-good job for me, and science and engineering have become highly collaborative, I write a lot, I communicate a lot, and I do hard core science. So, apparently I choose a women’s job. Why are so many men then around me? After all the field is 90% men. And why do female science professor still make less on average at nearly every US institution (with the exception of – drum roll- MIT), EVEN if they are single? I think your theory is wrong.

  21. Denys Yeo
    Denys Yeo says:

    Men need to take responsibility for having engineered a career based environment, over a long period of time, that discriminates against women. We should not be arguing – is the work place discriminatory or not – it is – let’s just get on and fix it.

  22. Woody
    Woody says:

    Hey girlies, (said that to get you riled up to take some action)

    Lets get off the high horse and get real. We choose who we work for and I have worked for men and I’ve worked for women if they pay me near market value then I’ve got no problem.If they suck at being a boss and it effects me personally, I tell them what my expectations are – if they choose to take no action, I tell their boss. A very simple plan. I keep my skills up to date and stay in demand.

    I’ve done this 5-6 times in my career and out of them 4 were responsive to getting my boss straightened out and I stayed there longer. I’m in the tech field and I am self taught and stay on the cutting edge so that I can select my new employers. I’m pretty well into the world of 1099 work at home world(my wife commutes 20 minutes)and receive offers weekly. I’m very “findable” on social media and take an hour each day to build social currency.

    Both my wife and I subscribe to the ideas of being straight forward with those we work with and for. We don’t “come home” from our jobs and do the crybaby thing because we value our time together and life isn’t all about work. I want to enjoy my life… if life isn’t going my (or my wife’s) we look at the ways to make the changes necessary to take it on our terms.

    We are victims if we allow ourselves to be victims.
    I am not an indentured servant. I am not a victim and don’t intend to be.

    I work where I’m treated right by my own estimation. If I’m getting screwed over I tell my boss and if it isn’t corrected in a reasonable amount of time; I tell their boss and if still ignored … I’m gone! Ain’t no anchor tied to my butt or yours.

    So who is the Brazen Careerist? Penelope you are losing your Brazen!

    It really ain’t a male or female thing it is a YOU thing and whining doesn’t make it change. Make the change!

  23. Renee
    Renee says:

    holy crap I think I am in it right now. Now how to figure out how to get out! That could be your next column!

  24. Renee
    Renee says:

    I started an unofficial ban on bringing in baked goods and homemade treats after an older male family friend told me that when women bring baked items to work, they reminnd the men of their mother. This is no way to knock the socks off your boss. Also there was a short lived knitting club in my office, but thankfully that has dissolved.

  25. Lance
    Lance says:

    HAHAHAHAHA! Holy shit this is awesome, Penelope you are totally insane. How do I get INTO the girl ghetto? Maybe BNET could use a contrarian Gemini sex and relationships blogger to really blow up the Life At Work section.

  26. Liza
    Liza says:

    Penelope,

    This was obviously more of a rant than an actual blog posting that provided any critical information. When you state that you don’t work where women work you are basically dissing all women. Please note: I work where there are 4 women and I get paid shit (recent job change), they don’t pay for anything other than crappy office supplies that no one uses (not even coffee). So stop feeding people with this bullshit. A company that cares about its employees and pays them well isn’t just a ‘male’ company (example: my last job, which left because of severe boredom and a bitch of a boss – which also lead me to your blog).

    Your men vs. women crap is getting tireless. Besides, what would you know? You show up to meetings and KNIT to avoid being bored!!! How does that play into the advice of this post exactly??

    And FYI- Waxing is great, getting it lasered away is even better. If you want details, email me.

  27. Ellis
    Ellis says:

    When I read the line about the “unofficial ban on baked goods,” I thought I better do a little steering of the conversation. I’m a Midwesterner and in the midst of reading an education book written for instructors of home economics in 1902. I’m learning that these teachers were serious hard-asses, concerned not only with health, but also social justice. You need to know how to make your own things, they argue, because otherwise, a child working in a factory will have to make it for you. Damn, they’re on it, I thought. Yes, the book goes on, but aren’t these home skills kind of lowly? Shouldn’t intelligent, educated women be concerned with more important things like literature and philosophy? (Yes, the worth of home economics was questioned a hundred years ago.) Hell no, they say. What you do with your body is just as important as what you do with your mind, and in fact, these things are connected. If we don’t care for the physical details in life, we begin to lose our mind. (okay, that’s a stretch of a paraphrase, but…) As cooking and housework eventually became less time consuming, such skills were considered less valuable and even laughable to working women of the 80s, like my mother. She totally makes fun of the older ladies who bring food to work, whereas I think it’s pretty awesome that the “feminine” effect on the workplace is to make it more comfortable, familial, and subsequently stronger. Anyway, here I am, part of the microwave dinner generation, looking backwards. I moved away from my small town to find a successful career in the big city. When I got there, I found that all of the wealthy career folk were spending their weekends focusing on everything I had just moved away from- gardening, pets, baking, chickens, knitting, and playgroups! How satisfying is the top if it just makes everyone yearn for the basics?

  28. Leslie
    Leslie says:

    The advice about not bringing baked goods to work is irrelevant if you work for a boss who is a gourmand. We use to have potlucks for every occasion imaginable and those of us who were gourmet cooks seemed to do better with office politics.

  29. Dale
    Dale says:

    Environment is everything. I’ve only ever worked for female bosses, the most successful of them (financially) were the ones who acted the most like men. The ones I loved working for the most, were the ones who acted the most like women. Both were equally equipped for managerial roles. Just my experience

  30. Bitch
    Bitch says:

    Great Article. I like that you didn’t get into the ‘blame the guys’ game, and focused instead on how our attitudes and the way we approach things can often stand in the way of our goals. It is a bit cliche, but oftentimes we ARE our own worst enemies. I think very often these days it is more a matter of people holding themselves down than ‘The Man’ holding them down.

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  32. Sara Bliss
    Sara Bliss says:

    “There is not a salary gap between women and men. There is a competition gap between women and men. Women choose collaborative, feel-good jobs, like writing in the how-can-we-all-get-along-better section of BNET and men choose the competitive, dog-eat-dog jobs like managing…”

    Women choose these career roles because they have been groomed to do so since birth. Putting females at fault instead of society’s expectatio

  33. Sara Bliss
    Sara Bliss says:

    ….-ns perpetuates the problem. Both sexes, who make up society and form gender expectations, should be blamed. What usually happens, however, is that the oppressed group are told that they have to change, and that they are the oneas at fault for not conforming to the norms of the dominant group. We all should be asking ourselves instead, “how did we conclude that stereotypically female careers would be less valuable to society?” (less pay= lower value job)
    On a positive note, I just discovered this blog last week and I love the writing style.

  34. Sara Bliss
    Sara Bliss says:

    I keep getting my posts cut off bc I am typing on my phone,
    But what im getting at is this: why are competitive jobs valued in this society more than collaborative jobs?

  35. LilyChicago
    LilyChicago says:

    UGH…I’m beginning to wonder due to all of these random posts on women if PT even likes herself as a woman at all…no offense, really, but she’s married to a guy that has dumped her a million times (and is now in counseling with him), already divorced once, had a horribly abusive childhood due to her father, and has a crush on her boss that won’t even bother to pick up her phone calls—maybe her view on gender issues is just bound to be off, but I continue…

    No wage gap? We just get paid lower on a regular basis because we choose lower paid, feel-good work? Really? I’ve read some of your other post listed. Women are scared to ask for more pay? And if we aren’t? If we are high powered partners in a business firm somewhere and still realize they we get the short end of the stick?

    I do agree that if we are not getting the pay we deserve and we’ve asked for it then we should just find a company that is—-but that does not mean that there is not a very discriminatory wage gap…

  36. Tyler
    Tyler says:

    Well you also have an article where you say money don’t buy happiness, don’t work just for the money. I want to clarify all barriers to women doing jobs that are male dominated should be broken down. That being said women more often seek out degrees in the humanities and of course education than men. I read that African American women in particular often pick degrees in the social sciences. It makes sense that women African Americans and African American women would in the broadly general sense be more aware and concerned about the plight of society the state of children and the future generations than just making shiny new machines and more money. Its not ridiculous to suggest a tendency to be more nurturing and relational/human focused is part of the the Feminine personality. Feminine and nurturing doesn’t have to be weak and shouldn’t be badly paid but its not gonna make mega millions, and maybe thats ok. I’m a guy whose more on the humanities side myself and I don’t believe anyone “deserves” to be rich anyway so that’s my two cents

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