Sexism, atitudes, and the gender gap.

Posted on September 23, 2008

found a great article on a new survey on gender, sexism, attitudes, and the persistant gender gap in pay between men and women.    Very intersting stuff.  check this out:

Organizational psychologists Timothy Judge and Beth Livingston found that men who reported holding traditional views (that is, that women belong in the home, while men earn the money) earned on average $11,930 more annually for doing the same kind of work as men who held more egalitarian views. The reverse was true for women, to a much smaller degree. Female workers with more egalitarian views (that men and women should evenly divide the tasks at home and contribute equally to their shared finances) earned $1,052 more than women who did similar jobs but held more traditional views.

The effect was starkest, however, when researchers compared women’s salaries to those of men, while also taking into account their gender-role biases. Men with traditional attitudes not only earned more than other men with egalitarian attitudes, but their annual salary was $14,404 greater than women with traditional attitudes, and $13,352 greater than women with egalitarian attitudes. Put differently, men with traditional attitudes made 71% more than women with traditional attitudes, while egalitarian-minded men made just 7% more than their female counterparts.

Time Magazine, Sept 22, 2008.

This is groundbreaking because it suggests that the pay gap in gender has as much to do with social conditioning, what people are taught to expect, and how they view themselves as it does with overt societal gender bias.  In other words, people who teach their daughters to defer and not be assertive about their rights are actually harming their ability to earn a competitive salary over the course of their lives.

The section on why ‘traditionally’ minded men make more then egalitarian men was also really interesting to me.  The idea that men who view women as equals are actually rewarded with less pay for their work is perhaps not as shocking as it should be, but still a big deal.  It’s as if society says to them “oh, so you believe a woman is just as good as you?  we’ll just treat you like one then.”  However you explain it that’s some powerful negative reinforcement.    The researcher’s hypothesis that it might be at least partly the result of men who view themselves as the primary breadwinner being willing to take bigger risks and be more assertive when negotiating pay also reminded me of something I posted a while ago that also looked at risk and rewardds in relation to gender.  Interesting stuff.

So what do ya’ll think?  How should we interpret this information, how is it useful to folks looking to build towards gender equality?  and what in the world can we do we do about the fact that teaching men to view women as their equals seems to harm their earning potential?

‘Listen to your heart’

Posted on September 15, 2008

A great song by Paddyrasta, my favorite celtic reggae band.

Shared Space

Posted on September 14, 2008

Found this article on a German town that’s radically improved it’s flow of traffic and it’s safety by eliminating all it’s street signs and radically simplifying the rules of the road.  Check it out:

Because Bohmte’s main street is a state highway, the town cannot forbid truck traffic. Mayor Klaus Goedejohann knew that the heavy traffic spoilt the town’s atmosphere, but that it also provided the town’s livelihood. “How do we manage to meet the interest of all the traffic participants without excluding anybody?” he recalls thinking.

Then Mr. Goedejohann heard of a radical traffic-management philosophy called “shared space.” Pioneered by a Dutch engineer who thought towns were safer with fewer rules, it envisioned open surfaces on which motorists and pedestrians could “negotiate” with one another by eye contact, other signals, and a greater consideration for one another.

Segregating cars and pedestrians was wrong, argued Hans Monderman, whose death this winter rekindled people’s interest in his ideas. Portrayed as a dangerous maverick decades ago, Mr. Monderman put in place more than 100 shared-space schemes in the Netherlands. When the European Union launched a research project on shared space, Bohmte decided to try it, along with six other towns, including Ostend in Belgium and Ipswich in England.

…

Goedejohann, Bohmte’s mayor, is confident. His town averaged 50 accidents last year. Since the shared space concept was enacted, there haven’t been any, he says.

And other city governments are reacting. In Hamburg a new coalition of green and conservative politicians have pledged to design shared space streets in every neighborhood.

“My theory,” Monderman said last fall at a new urbanism summit in London, “was if you want to make people behave in a village, maybe you have to make it feel like a village.”

from “Are towns really safer without traffic lights?”

Pretty cool.