Re: Biden Worried About Equal Pay for Women

On Wed, 29 May 2024 14:55:41 -0700
BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

In article <20240529174223.00002810@example.com>,
 Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
 

On Wed, 29 May 2024 20:12:28 +0000
BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
 

Old Joe-- or at least whoever is actually writing the tweets
under his account-- has been extremely worried lately about equal
pay for women in sports, pointing out that Caitlin Clark, the #1
draftee in the WNBA is only making $77,000/year while her #1 male
NBA counterpart, Victor Wembanyama, makes $12.1 million/year.
 
https://ibb.co/9Wy7jk2
 
While that conveniently ignores that Clark also signed a $28
million endorsement deal with Nike, it's weird that Biden and all
the other folks who get het up over this sort of thing never have
a problem with it when it goes in reverse, like, for example, the
top male and female fashion models:
 
https://ibb.co/tZ3Xmmj
 
Equal pay for equal work?
 

You've reminded me of something that irked me several years back.
When feminism first started taking hold in corporate Canada, the
initial demand was for equal pay for equal work. On this basis, the
women who worked as switchboard operators demanded to be paid the
same as the linesmen who repaired broken wires. Observers quite
reasonably scoffed at the idea that sitting in an office (probably
air-conditioned and certainly heated) making telephone calls all
day was "equal" to the work the linesmen were doing working
outdoors in all kinds of weather conditions, often in blistering
heat or miserable cold or drenching rain. 

 
They should have granted them the equal pay, then required all of
them to be cross-trained in each other's jobs and work half the year
at each job. So if the women wanted the money, they'd have to spend
six months in the heat and bitter cold climbing power poles and
rigging lines.
 
Betcha they wouldn't have agreed to that.
 

It would have been interesting to see how they responded to that
proposal! Obviously, they would not have been happy but I'd be curious
to know how they framed their objections. Would they have a thoughtful
reasoned argument for why they should still get equal pay WITHOUT
having to do outdoor work? Somehow, I doubt it....

Then the mantra became "equal pay for work of equal value": the
women simply declared that their work had equal value to what the
men were doing so they still deserved the same pay. I guess no one
wanted to dispute the value of the work so the mantra stayed
unchanged from that point on, as far as I know. I find it
interesting that switchboard operators have gone the way of the
dodo but linesmen have not; their jobs were not as easy to
automate/computerize as what the switchboard operators did. 

--
Rhino