Do you think patience/focus are universally in demand? That works great if you own a clothing factory in China and have a large work-force of women. Probably not sufficient or as important if you're in sales and need to convince your customers to buy something, or managing a project needing to juggle several different facets of work, or etc. I think it's hilarious that you're probably the type to talk about how women are just as good as men and how societal pressures hold them down, yet you characterize an entire gender as being comprised of inferior workers. Not that I deny inherent biological differences between men and women, of course.
I don't think men are inherently inferior workers. This is where you and most people here, it seems, misunderstand me.
I think that the modern corporate environment tends to go easier on men, to put it plainly--and so men don't feel the need to prove themselves as much as women do. It has nothing to do with inherent abilities; and when it comes to office work, I don't really think biology can explain whether men or women are "better."
I do think that women are feeling increasingly comfortable in corporate environments, but that we're still dealing with the leftovers of corporate dynamics from the 1980s.
Where? You might have found a different result than me.
This was one:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-confidence-gap/359815/
As I said, with no information on statistical significance supplied, and using a proxy for work. If the 95% confidence interval for those time frames is between 50 seconds and 4 minutes, that 20% difference between men and women is minor.
I don't think it's minor when you expand a ten-minute increment into an eight-hour workday--accounting for scale, of course. I kind of figured that's the point of the study, no?
Sounds controversial to me. Are you saying that most women consciously think about their class struggle and identity when at work, to the extent that it becomes a primary motivator? Pretty sure most people, male or female, tend to dick off and chat about sports or Game of Thrones.
I don't think that's true, and I'm also not convinced by what seems to be a pretty baseless assumption. My own experiences in office work spaces (which is minimal) tells me otherwise; my wife's experience (which is far more extensive) also tells me otherwise. I realize this is anecdotal evidence, but it strikes me as more convincing than what appears to be pure assumption on your part.
Well, both sides do to an extent, I'll admit. Carter ramped up Department of Agriculture funding more than any other president since him (not surprising considering his background), but most of the "pork barrel" spending that brings money to rural states is lobbied by the farming industry through their local, largely Republican, representatives. That is the kind of spending that benefits blue-collar white workers the most. Lately Democrats have turned the DoA's focus more away from the rural states and more towards urban planning and white-collar administration in the form of food stamps, health guidelines/regulations, etc.
That's fair too, I was just commenting that agriculture is often a part of the democratic platform, even if it's not what many of their voters focus on. It gets buried, and then right-wing voters never realize the extent to which democratic focus on agriculture and infrastructure is still present.
While I agree that democrats don't focus on agriculture, Obama definitely wasn't dismissive of it.
So for the third time now, what solutions to Democrats or non-Trump Republicans promise? Most economic growth of the last few decades has been concentrated in the cities. The promise of infrastructure spending and manufacturing subsidies naturally has strong appeal to poorer working whites.
Tax reform, although I admit this is ambiguous on the democrats' part. As it stands, the republican tax plan under Trump does next to nothing for farmers or the working poor. Democrats know they want to "close the corporate loopholes" (which is shady language, since they're not really loopholes--it's just the current tax code); but they need to come up with a more coherent plan of approach. And if you listen to liberal media podcasts and such, this is at the forefront of a lot of discussions.
And again, the tax reform that republicans want really does nothing for the poor.
I think it is presumptuous of you to automatically jump to a scenario on which a more qualified woman gets denied over a less qualified man for a job. What I am talking about is that the threat of losing an employee for a couple months for some types of employers (specifically small business) is the equivalent of training an employee that does not work out. It is a real risk, regardless of how much you want to extol the work ethic of women.
I was just making a situational comparison--and I wasn't calling you presumptuous.
It actually makes more sense for a business to spend circa three months training an employee who, after having a baby, returns to work and continues to contribute meaningfully to the company, rather than train someone who doesn't work out.
Cop-out response. You are basically discriminating against these people as a whole, claiming they are too stupid to know what is good for them so therefore their opinions and concerns dont matter. There are ignorants in every voting block, but to just lambaste the entire rural lower-class as unintelligible is rather disingenuous.
You're right, there are ignorant people in every voting block. Also, I specifically said I don't think lower-class voters are unintelligent.
A large enough component to apparently vote in Donald Trump. What I was trying to say is now that identity politics have started going out of control, your average down-trodden poor white American now feels the need to fight for his rights. Of course white people are annoyed when they keep seeing minorities get advantages and handouts one after another year after year, while they are still struggling. There is only so much sympathy to be had for other races when giving them opportunity stymies your own.
People should want to scoff at getting handouts if they are able to work to support themselves. The logic follows as more handouts = more taxes for those of us who are working. If more people would do their best to find work and support themselves, then taxes should go down. While this view is a tad short-sighted, it is still an aspect of taxation, and taking care of yourself financially should be the #1 goal of anybody who isnt financially affluent already.
I think a major part of this demands a shift in perspective. You say what people "should want" to do; this is a prescriptive attitude, and it's entirely moralistic. It's just as rational to suggest that if people are able to work to support themselves, then they "should want" to offer some of those earnings to help others who aren't able to support themselves (which might mean funding programs to help those people find work).
There's no difference in rationality between these positions. They're both moralistic. I'm not saying that people
shouldn't want to be self-sufficient, but I also think we can just as easily say that people
should want to be altruistic (not inviting a debate about altruism here, I just mean altruistic as being okay with sacrificing some personal monies for structural purposes).
lmao, of course they arent. White working class people are struggling to think of themselves and their family. Do you think working-class blacks are thinking about poor white's welfare? Only when you can care for yourself and your family will you truly be able to care about others.
Again, I realize the difficulty here, and I don't think it has to do with intelligence. This is why we enact structural policies--so people don't have to struggle with balancing collective concerns with personal concerns. There's a way to frame the discussion so that it's not about the government taking from individuals, but about the government relieving the public of having to concern themselves with structural problems.
As a final note, I also realize that current debates over identity politics complicate this issue by making white people feel as though they need to be constantly concerned with minority difficulties. I do think the way democrats have framed the public debate is detrimental.
I imagine what rms was referring to (as was I) was your "more rational" evaluation.
All I said was that women are often rational in their decision-making, despite pretensions to the contrary (i.e. that women are irrational, a notion that haunted workplace culture for decades). I was simply disagreeing with that prior assumption, not suggesting that women are inherently more rational than men.
I did say that women can be more rational than men in many cases; but I also think that men can be more rational than women! It had nothing to do with claiming some inherently superior rationality in women.
It's corporation-centric thinking imo.
Almost nothing the progressive left offer as a "solution" to "inequality" in the workplace can be applied to any small-to-medium sized business without negatively impacting said businesses.
My family owns a small business, and they already treat their female employees this way--i.e. not penalizing them for starting or continuing a family. Because they know what is to be gained from working to secure an employee's loyalty.
