I’ve read this post a few times DKL. As near as I can tell, you’re proposing that your friend is either sexist or confused by the baggage of sexism for disagreeing with you and wondering how she got that way. Let’s ignore for a moment the assumption that some kind of sexism is the most likely reason for your disagreement and consider the rest.

You point out with the income data that women (and married women in particular) tend to make less money than men. This certainly sounds like sexism. You ask if your friend’s attitudes may result from her being the victim of sexism. Are you suggesting that if your friend made more cash at work that she would be more likely to regret the hours she spent parenting when she could have been padding her bank account? Perhaps that she would even have chosen to stay single if the financial rewards were high enough?

Sorry. I guess I’m struggling again to understand your meaning.

I think the fact that we even have to have a battle of the sexes is unfair, or at least sad.

Here, here, Beijing.

This is what I meant. Cooperation of the sexes and mutual respect, tolerance, and admiration make everyone successful. I know there are some that will say that the wife is losing in the scenario. I find it tragic that it HAS to be seen that way. We need eachother.

“My guess is that married men feel uniquely motivated to provide for their families.”

This is certainly an explanation that makes men look good.

But I don’t think my husband has spent 30 minutes in his life worrying abut providing for his family. He did say once that if his dream job didn’t work out, he would get a job as a carpenter, but other than that, he didn’t worry about it. During our struggling years once when I complained it wasn’t enough, he chided me that the relief society president on his mission lived in a shack with a dirt floor. He did not take a second job or even express any sympathy. And then he went on with his dreams, which ultimately did provide enough. He doesn’t even know how much money he makes.

I think Bejing’s explanation fits much better. At least in many cases, married men CAN focus more on work because they don’t have to worry about laundry, shopping, cooking, bill-paying, etc. if their wife takes care of that.

Not to mention that many men also have wives like my sister and I, who actively help their husbands advance in their careers. When my sister’s husband was a corporate VP, I don’t think they would have considered a single man or any woman for that job, because they wanted a wife to act as a social hostess, etc.

“Single men do not, which is why their gender counter-parts earn more than them.”

Single men also have to do their own laundry, shopping, cooking, bill-paying, etc. which detracts from their ability to focus on their career.

Naiasmith and Beijing, you’re account that married men earn more because they are facilitated more in their employment by wives is an explanation that makes women look good, but it doesn’t fit the facts. Specifically, the facilitation that wives provide to their husbands does not outweigh the additional responsibilities entailed by having children. Single men have fewer time commitments than married men, so should be able to devote more time to work. But they earn less than single women, who also have to do their own laundry, shopping, cooking, bill-paying, etc. The necessity of having a hostess-wife as an executive is a real, if technically illegal, limiting factor. That said, it’s difficult for me to believe that such jobs alone can account for the income disparity we see between men and women.

Another important factor is age. The average age of men in the workforce is higher than that of women, because the high end of the age bracket is more heavily weighted with men. Age correlates more closely to income than sex.

If one is looking to explain the disparity of income using some notion of discrimination, the most plausible is that women are discriminated against because a series of laws passed by “women’s rights” with the aim of giving women special employment rights has had the effect of making them less desirable employees. Whether or not one believes that these special rights are a bad idea, it’s economically inevitable that the net effect is to make the recipients of those rights less attractive employees.

Naiasmith, regarding the instance of your husband, I’m not positing some simplistic, direct greed impulse fueled by fear of starving children. Far be it from me to impute motives to your husband, but I might suggest that your husband did aim to support his family, even if he didn’t aim to do it in style. And I’d guess that kind of behavior that correlates closely with creating job security is often also correlated with promotions.

herodotus, you may be right that mine is a ham-fisted reading of her statement. I think that the Jonathan Green statement that you site is right on.

That’s very interesting, annegb. That is very different form my experience in the technology industry, where I’ve regularly seen women with fewer qualifications and less work experience get employment offers for higher salaries, because many supervisors feel obligated to have a decent representation of women and men among their software engineers.

I think that it’s odd that the software employment market in the US is dominated by white and asian American men and 1st generation immigrant men from the Middle East and the Far East. There are disproportionately fewer blacks, hispanics, and women of any nationality.

In particular, the cluster of technology business markets that now surrounds the internet (e.g., web site design, open-source software support, application service providers) is one that was created from whole cloth in the early/mid-nineties and grew to a huge market in a mere decade. They are all dominated my men, in the US, it’s specifically dominated white and asian Americans and Middle Eastern and Far Eastern men.

How are we to explain this rush toward opportunity almost exclusively by men?

I think what she was saying is that women have far better things to think about on their deathbeds than money (as well they should). After all, money is fairly trivial in the scheme of things. Just my opinion DKL…

Amy, I think you are very smart. Federal retirement is based on your highest years of income, so you wouldn’t have any permanent harm from cutting back for some years. And you would keep your grade so that if you want to shift to full-time later it won’t be so hard.

I have been a part-time professional for years, and both my employers and I find it works very well. I am much more productive because during my four hours I don’t do any personal phone calls, etc. I have time to do that in the afternoon at home.

I feel that I have the best of all worlds by having enough time for family and still making a contribution professionally.

Hi, Amy. I’m Amy’s newest fan. Great comment.

I don’t think it just a matter of priorities. I believe that men feel a very strong pressure to provide. It’s not just the predominance of messages like those in the in 1 Timothy 5:8 (“But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel,” though the greek word here for “provide,” pronoeo, is not limited in meaning to monetary provisions.) I know some very successful men with great families who regularly experience anxiety about providing for their family — enough to convince me that it’s not at all unusual. At the same time, I realize that not all men feel this, and it may well be the case that many who do feel it don’t talk to their wives about it.

It never really occurred to me that women might not feel this way very often until my friend brought it up. Hence this post. The bottom line is this, skl and Amy and Ardis: I don’t think that earning money, as an activity, it’s so easily dismissed as trivial.

Ditto what skl said, tragic. My parents didn’t have money until I was in college. I didn’t know my father well when I was young do to outside things, but I am did get to know him when I was in high school. My mother worked, but I never felt a lack of love from either of them.

I may not have had the coolest clothes, but I was loved. That is what mattered. They have left a legacy of love for my and my child(ren). What better inheritance in there?