Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site h-sc1.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!bellcore!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!think!harvard!h-sc1!desjardins From: desjardins@h-sc1.UUCP (marie desjardins) Newsgroups: net.women,net.politics,net.social Subject: Re: Discrimination against women and statistics Message-ID: <405@h-sc1.UUCP> Date: Fri, 28-Jun-85 14:10:54 EDT Article-I.D.: h-sc1.405 Posted: Fri Jun 28 14:10:54 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 1-Jul-85 07:42:24 EDT References: <482@ttidcc.UUCP> <8203@ucbvax.ARPA>, <8204@ucbvax.ARPA> <581@mtung.UUCP> Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center Lines: 18 Xref: watmath net.women:6174 net.politics:9668 net.social:761 For a Women's Studies course I took last semester, we read Michael Gold's "Dialogue on Comparable Worth." The book is in the form of a debate between an advocate and critic of comparable worth (the arguments are very interesting, and although I don't think comparable worth is practical as a way to determine salaries, I think that job evaluation may be a useful tool for examining fairness of current salary scales). What really bothered me is that the critic used the same argument I use here -- that women choose to work in low- paying jobs. Why? Well, a main reason is that these jobs have higher mobility. Mobility matters because your husband (working, naturally, in a high-paying job) may have to relocate and you need to follow him. So why shouldn't the man follow his wife? Well, because he has a higher-paying job, naturally. This is the kind of circular reasoning that really makes me angry (in the past semester, I've become much more militant about feminism just from seeing discrimination justified on the basis of discrimination like this). marie