Talk:Gender pay gap

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[edit] Society's expectations of men and women

Don't the consequences of society's expectations of men and women cut both ways? Men are more likely to seek jobs requiring STEM skills, but they also are more likely to commit crimes, join the military, and do other stuff that could get them incarcerated, deported, injured, killed, committed to mental hospitals, etc. These types of unfortunate events disrupt men's ability to earn what they otherwise would.

Culture probably plays a role in encouraging men to be the ones who disproportionately get involved in high-risk, low-return activities. But few would complain that this is a form of gender inequality caused by the matriarchy. They would blame the individual men for their decisions, regardless of how society's values and norms influenced their choices. Why, then, wouldn't individual women be blamed for failing to take STEM courses in school? Landmartian (talk) 14:18, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Because not getting a specific job isn't the same as committing a crime(or other serious personal failings of that sort). Believe it or not, there's plenty of movements to try to encourage men to get into disproportionately female professions, like nursing and teaching. That just doesn't attract ire like women in STEM movements do. Ikanreed (talk) 14:26, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
Why is that? Landmartian (talk) 07:02, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
But few would complain that this is a form of gender inequality caused by the matriarchy. Few indeed. You'd have to have a very distorted view of society to believe that. Doxys Midnight Runner (talk) 14:44, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
It's not all that much of a stretch, though, to think that maybe society cares less about the bloated prison population, or about the casualties of war, because those victims mostly consist of expendable men (and disproportionately black and Hispanic men, too, because of laws and recruitment practices specifically targeting them). The main cause of the high prison population is the drug war, which could be regarded as an outgrowth of Prohibition, which women's temperance unions helped enact. Even today, men (57%) are also somewhat more likely than women (48%) to support marijuana legalization. It makes sense that women would see less of an urgent need to support legalization, since only 15% of those arrested on pot charges are men, despite women's having monthly pot use rates (5,382 per 100,000) that aren't that much lower than men's (9,202 per 100,000). Criminal records for drug charges are harmful to men's careers, but of course no one takes that into account when considering whether men have equal opportunities for success in our society. Landmartian (talk) 06:54, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
Are you saying men are not capable enough to make their own decisions as a human being based on their gender? -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 14:57, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
I'm saying that men's failings are blamed on them as individuals, while women's failings are blamed on the patriarchy, etc. Landmartian (talk) 06:54, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
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