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From: sophie@mnetor.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Re: egg/chicken chicken/egg chigg/eckin
Message-ID: <1240@mnetor.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Jul-85 15:35:16 EDT
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Posted: Tue Jul  9 15:35:16 1985
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Here we go again, now from Jim Robinson:

> I do not see how direct discrimination and suppression results in this
> wage gap. The way I see it women have the same choices that exist for
> for men, e.g. finish high school, get a university degree in medicine,
> engineering, or whatever. That a significant percentage of women tend
> to gravitate towards traditionally female careers (e.g. nursing) is
> *not* because someone is denying them access to the type of training
> or education that will result in high paying jobs. I suspect it is
> due to the fact that only recently have women either wanted or had
> to have well paying jobs (previously  women were expected to marry
> and, for the most part, be supported by their husbands). Since
> this is a relatively new phenomenon it will take some time before 
> a new steady state is reached in which women make up 50% of
> all engineering, medicine, plumbing, etc classes and hence 50% of
> those professions, resulting in the average woman making 100% of what
> the average male makes.
> 
> J.B. Robinson

Sure, women have the same choices NOW that boys had, but they didn't
not too long ago.  Don't any of you people have mothers?  do you talk
to them?  try it one day, they might tell you about the "choices"
they had in school.

ok, ok, now we do have the same choices.  I had all those choices.
I didn't choose a traditionally "female" career.  There were lots
of counter-pressure on the way, and I was one of the lucky ones:
I was in a girls school.  Peer pressure was the most insidious
discouragement and still is.  Most important decisions in people's
lives are not made for logical reasons, but for emotional ones.

Where do you get your history from?  do you think that the pre-our-time
times consisted of a big suburbia?  the middle class suburban family is
a fairly recent phenomenon.  Well into the middle of the 20th century
only the upper and upper-middle class could afford the luxury of stay
at home wives.  "lower-class" women have always worked outside of their
homes, either on farms, in the family business, and in industries after
the industrial revolution.  The wages were usually pitiful if any, but
they sure worked outside of the home a well as inside.

-- 
Sophie Quigley
{allegra|decvax|ihnp4|linus|watmath}!utzoo!mnetor!sophie