What’s your most controversial opinion? **Read OP** **Mod Note in Post #3372**

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123521313#Comment_123521313

Being incomplete doesn't make it incorrect.

Oh here, you mansplained stats to me, now youre trying to mansplain English to me. I'm sure you're capable of everything except understanding where you went wrong.

Cordell

Using mansplaining or sticking your fingers in your ears and going lalalala it's about the same thing, both done when presented with facts you don't like.

And indeed I can keep going. Same explanation, pardon me, mansplaination, applies to why we have women chess tournaments, why women are underrepresented in the top of scientific achievements like Nobel prizes, and even why the wage gap is there for a good reason.

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522045#Comment_123522045

Uh-huh. And you still haven't figured (or even shown any curiosity) about where you went wrong.

Not my job to explain it.

Hotblack Desiato

It's not the 1950s any more, lads.

Hotblack Desiato

Women under-represented in a field they weren't allowed to enter for a long time, and are still to an extent discouraged from doing so, well that's a surprise 🙄

Greyfox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522045#Comment_123522045

We have women chess tournaments simply to get more women playing chess. One of the reasons theirs a pay gap is discrimination but of course discrimination can be hard to prove.

New Scottman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522807#Comment_123522807

any job I worked in has different salary scales for different roles. But male / female is not mentioned in the role title.

i.e. Senior Analyst is a role in my company. We don't have two separate roles titled Senior Analyst - Male and Senior Analyst - Female. Your pay is determined by your place on the role's scale, not by your sex.

Greyfox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522885#Comment_123522885

Yes, I'm aware of that

walshb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123523070#Comment_123523070

but did you not imply that males seem to be paid more for doing the exact same job? This is not true, or legal in law… pay differences for identical roles have 0 to do with gender.

kowloonkev

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522523#Comment_123522523

It's not even the 1990's.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522807#Comment_123522807

Right, and the fact that there's zero women in top 100 doesn't have anything to do with it.

What's not hard to prove is that men are more determined, more competitive, and why not, smarter. Not by a large margin, but by enough to make it necessary to be held back in the name of equality.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123523335#Comment_123523335

Yes, it's the 2020s, when we finally stop lying to ourselves.

kowloonkev

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123523443#Comment_123523443

If we didn't lie to ourselves we'd never get through the day

Greyfox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123523140#Comment_123523140

It's more the fact that some companies would rather hire a male ceo because they think males are more suiting to this type of role even though lots of female managers are great at their job

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123522885#Comment_123522885

Whoooooosh

Ash.J.Williams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123328678#Comment_123328678

Katherine ryan seems to be uk comic royalty and is as funny as the situation in gaza

Greyfox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123523439#Comment_123523439

It might be a factor but the main reason the top 100 chess players are men is because women only make up a small % of chess players, theirs no proof that the male brain is better at chess. Outside of chess can you prove that men are more determined or smarter?

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123523439#Comment_123523439

Right, so that's what's been holding you back all of these years 🙄

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123524251#Comment_123524251

Results speak for themselves in pretty much all fields where smart people are successful.

bodhrandude

I always liked a bit of hard rock and some metal stuff, but have always found Metallica cringeworthy, can never take them seriously, at least Judas Priest had a bit of humour and would send themselves up a bit.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123524249#Comment_123524249

Totally…But she’s ‘quirky’ though. And some of the the younger demographic seemingly these days buys into that quirky trend more than actual pure talent like being funny .

Ash.J.Williams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123524856#Comment_123524856

And let's not kid ourselves the ENTIRE point of comedy is being funny 😀😀

Ash.J.Williams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123524810#Comment_123524810

Albums 1 to 5 are masterpieces, 1 is raw and ground breaking but 2 to 5 are flawless.

The rest is business

spacetweek

Although I accept that there may be a pay gap in certain industries, no way do I believe that it exists in the service economy such as IT or business or finance. These are the reasons.
It’s often said that then get higher salaries because they play hardball during negotiations, but nowadays your salary is usually negotiated for you by your recruiter who is often female, and even if they aren’t they’re incentivised to play hardball for any client male or female because they get a cut of your salary as a finders fee.

Most people that work in HR are women and they would be the first to notice different salaries for the same work. Most companies review salaries companywide annually so this should get smoothed out pretty quickly if there were men making more money than women.
I do see a lack of women at the C-level, however. This is probably to do with entrenched ideas about what an C-level executive should look like, so women get frozen out. However, if a woman was hired for one of these roles, she would make the same as a man, so this is not a pay gap, it is a lack of gender representation.

Women are far more likely to take unpaid parental leave and career breaks in order to raise their families. These breaks result in women making cumulatively less money over their lifetimes than men. When they were in gainful employment they would’ve made the same as a man, however, so this is not a pay gap, it is a lifetime earnings gap.

In the non service economy, though, I’d say it’s rife. If you’re stacking boxes in a warehouse, men can carry more stuff so they’re more productive and so get paid more - or maybe women just can’t progress in the organisation. Some careers such as construction don’t have many women in them in the first place because they are boys clubs with the lads laughing at their farts (if my in-laws are anything to go by!) Again this is lack of representation, not a pay gap.

One eyed Jack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123525367#Comment_123525367

In the non service economy, though, I’d say it’s rife. If you’re stacking boxes in a warehouse, men can carry more stuff so they’re more productive and so get paid more - or maybe just can’t progress in the organisation. Some careers such as construction don’t have many women in them in the first place because they are boys clubs with the lads laughing at their farts (if my in-laws are anything to go by!) Again this is lack of representation, not a pay gap.

Not just in your post but there’s a fair bit of cherry-picking to suit one’s own beliefs going on in a few posts; it was odd for example to see Cordell make the point about variability and deviation at the median says nothing about the average random individual but says everything about those at the extremes… and then a few posts later make the point that men are more determined, more competitive and smarter than women. There are all sorts of interesting stats around gender employment gaps and gender unemployment gaps that have all sorts of explanations, but coming out with the blanket statement that men are more determined, competitive and smarter than women, isn’t borne out by data.

Your example of stacking boxes in a warehouse was interesting, followed up by the justification that men can carry more stuff, ergo they’re more productive which explains why they’re paid more, was interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which there was a case last year in the WRC where the employer was found liable for unlawful discrimination on the ground of gender:

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/galway-firm-ordered-to-pay-e7500-to-female-worker-who-was-told-vacant-role-was-only-for-men-1605705.html

The pay gap (as well as the earnings gap which you’re referring to) exists in services economy as much as it does in non-services economy, it simply depends on which industry sector is under review or being used as an example in order to demonstrate where it’s more obvious than another industry sector. Construction is indeed an industry dominated by men, but it also pays men laughing at their own farts a lot better than women working in social care who are tasked with wiping said old men’s arses. I know which role I’d consider is far more valuable to society than the other, but it isn’t compensated accordingly which is why there is a lack of men interested in it - because as far as society has progressed, men still see themselves as the breadwinner and women’s role is as the bearer, rearer and carer of those who are incapable of taking care of themselves (now I think of it, that cohort would include a lot of men who find their own farts hilarious, regardless of the industry in which they’re employed).

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123525551#Comment_123525551

it was odd for example to see Cordell make the point about variability and deviation at the median says nothing about the average random individual but says everything about those at the extremes… and then a few posts later make the point that men are more determined, more competitive and smarter than women

No, it was not odd at all. Let me mansplain it again: the human characteristics that are measurable are usually normally distributed, and that's true with a lot of natural things from people IQ to the tomato size in your garden.

Now, let's take height so no one gets offended. The median women height is 161.3 cm. The median men height is 171 cm. That's about 6.2%. Not a lot, but enough to be statistically relevant.

What does this say about 2 random persons, one man and one woman? Not much, the odds to pick a taller woman and s shorter man are almost the same as the opposite.

But what does this say about the 100 tallest people on the world? They are almost guaranteed to be all men.

And this is how we explain a lot of uncomfortable truths, from why most CEOs are men to why some parts of the world are so different from others. Small deviation at the mean produce extreme deviations at the extremes.

One eyed Jack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123525634#Comment_123525634

No, it was not odd at all. Let me mansplain it again…

No need, I understood what you were saying the first time, and the second time; it’s an explanation for what you consider ‘an uncomfortable truth’. That’s not what I’d call it, nor would I suggest it’s in any way a controversial opinion. I do accept however that it may well be your most controversial opinion, which is as I understand it, the point of the thread.

EDIT: Either prescience or confirmation bias, or indeed a bit of both, but I just picked up the Sunday Independent newspaper there and David Quinn gives his thoughts on women’s place In Irish society, a narrative largely informed, or inspired by, his own individual perspective, of course:

https://archive.ph/R10nh

spacetweek

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123525551#Comment_123525551

Regarding the case in that article. It's normal for heavy lifting roles to be advertised as such and you would have to pass a physical fitness test to be given the role. If they wanted a man they could just used the test to eliminate her from consideration.

One eyed Jack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123526554#Comment_123526554

I'm not going to be unfair to you and ask how would any physical fitness test have eliminated her from consideration and not one of the other two men, because your suggestion is based upon the same reasoning that was used to deprive the woman of the opportunity in the first place; namely - assumptions based on gender. There was nothing wrong in how the role was advertised, it was the selection process where a case amounting to unlawful discrimination arose. That was precisely why when you used the example of working in a warehouse and your assumption that men can carry more, are more productive and are paid more, I thought "ehhh… about that…" 🤔

I get that the point of your post was to lay out your reasons as to why you believe the gender pay gap doesn't exist in the service industries such as IT, finance or business, and then started off with "it's often said…" (by whom?), and I didn't bother to take any issue with it cos it's just crazy stuff, but that one example you used, I could at least give a real-world example to demonstrate that while the wage gap is indeed rife in manufacturing industry, or the non-services sector, it doesn't justify assuming working backwards that men are paid more because they are necessarily more productive than women. It's not just an earnings gap either, nor is it so much the lack of gender representation, but if you're aware of those things and still trying to explain them away, then I'd love to hear how you might explain away the motherhood penalty and the fatherhood bonus, what I call 'the parent gap' in employment, in a way that doesn't include assumptions made about employees on the basis of gender.

Your 'reasons' though, are what fuels this type of numbnuts behaviour -

https://www.thejournal.ie/government-compensation-job-3685823-Nov2017/

I shouldn’t be asking you this, but…

Clearly, he DID know it was inappropriate, he just imagined he'd get away with it.

maik3n

So moving swiftly on to much lighter fare ……

I only recently saw the infamous Wednesday dance

https://youtu.be/NakTu_VZxJ0?si=7bsu7sgaxIQh-Cog

and I'm afraid my immediate reaction was….. Meh!