The economic cost of not being a white male

[dead0man]

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode-277-veterans-and-pot-the-case-for-a-robot-president-dolphin-soldiers-and-more-1.3495805/the-other-tax-societal-privilege-and-the-cost-of-being-different-1.3495838

Neuroscientist and big data specialist Vivienne Ming speaks to Laura Lynch about the social 'tax' that comes with being different — in other words, not a straight white male.

By her estimate, women in the U.S. tech industry face a lifetime opportunity cost of up to $300,000, while being a gay man in the U.K. can cost up to $54,000.

Ming — who is herself transgender —  spent three years meticulously calculating the financial opportunity costs of social difference by gathering data from 100 different websites and coding 55,000 variables based on salary, occupation and other factors.

Do you or her have any data on the rate of straight white males dying on the job vs non straight white men?  Because for men as a whole it's 11-20 TIMES more than women.  I would guess white dudes and black dudes probably die about the same, but straight men are more likely than non-straights (I'd be willing to entertain arguments the other way).  Yeah, if I'm 15 times more likely to die doing something, I'd like to get paid a little more for it.

[dead0man]

Do you work in one of those riskier jobs?  Because otherwise you have no reason to expect to get paid a little more.

Not the riskiest, but yes, I work around high voltage electricity semi-regularly.  There have been two times working where I was very close to having a bad, potentially fatal accident....that I know about.  It is an all male shop, we've never had a female apply....but it's a unique field.

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I'm sure it happens, but even if it never did, men would still be much more apt to be fishers, garbage collectors, cops, truck drivers, road workers, etc, etc.  Why?  Because men and women are different.

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There still is a wage gap, but it's likely very small once everything is factored in.  It certainly isn't 77% of what a man makes.

This article at the HuffPost is informative.

[dead0man]

The broader point though, and this is especially with technology today is that the need for brute physical strength for many of those jobs you mentioned is diminishing greatly.

Indeed.

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sure

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I don't know if there is, is there?  The point of bringing up the dangerous, high paying paying jobs is that men are WAY over represented in them.  They don't do those jobs because they want to, most people would much rather sit in a cubicle than collect garbage.  They do those jobs because they are willing to, and only then because the pay is good enough to mask over the sh**ttyness of the gig.  Women are, in general, don't want to climb on top the St.Louis Arch to change the light bulbs.  Hell, men, in general, don't want to do that either.  Thankfully there are a few people willing to drive that 50 ton rig from Bakersfield to Detroit 7 times a month for $76k/year or we wouldn't have strawberries in March.  I don't care if it's a lady or a dude that's driving it, and I'm sure the shipping companies don't either, but for whatever reason, most of the people at trucker school are dudes and that goes a long to way to explaining the gap.

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I agree with the first bit, and have no argument for the second part.


and FTR, in case it wasn't clear, I think everybody, regardless of what naughty bits they posses, should get paid the same for the same work and that isn't the case right now.  We should work to fix that.

[dead0man]

"I don't care if it's a lady or a dude that's driving it, and I'm sure the shipping companies don't either, but for whatever reason, most of the people at trucker school are dudes."

If you listen to the women who want to be or are truck drivers or construction workers or miners they'll tell you the most difficult part of the job is the sexist behavior of their male counterparts.

For whatever reason, some men seem to be intimidated by working with women.

The attitude of men was well covered in the movie 'North Country', a fictionalized movie based on a true story.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395972/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_25

That movie is based on a court case and story from 30 years ago, but anecdotally things are changing slowly.

Yeah, it's unfortunate that that kind of crap still goes on.  I work for the military, it's not as bad as it was, but it's still a very male dominated culture and sexism is still alive and I'm sure it's much worse in the lower class, rougher, dirtier jobs.

and again, I'm with you on your overall point.  There is still a gap, and we should be closing it the best we can.  What can we do? (that doesn't involve voting for Hillary )

I like Charlize Theron as much as the next guy, but anecdotal evidence about one company and a movie does not make a strong argument.

I was hoping/assuming that was the case too, so I went looking a bit, found realwomentrucking.com pretty quick.  Went to the lady truck driver FAQ, saw mostly what I expected, truck driving schools are scams, you get to see the country!, it's hard work, blah blah, then this

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unfunking acceptable

[dead0man]

That's weird, Memphis told me that women have an easier time getting high-paid jobs.

Depends on the gig and how important quotas are there.