Another Way to Blame Women for Getting Paid Less

This afternoon, Crommunist tweeted me a link to this post about a Reddit contributor begging women to negotiate salaries:

In general, the women I have negotiated with will say 45k is not enough and they need more, but not give a number. I will then usually give a nominal bump to 48k or 50k. Company policy wont let me bump more than 5k over the initial offer unless they specifically request more. On the other hand, men more frequently will come back with a number along the lines of 65k to 75k, and I will be forced to negotiate down from there. After this phase, almost all women will take the offer or move on to somewhere else, not knowing they could have gotten more if they asked.

At the end, most of the women I hire make between 45k and 50k, whereas the men make between 60k and 70k. Even more crazy, they ask for raises far less often, so the disparity only grows.

I don’t know if this is at all helpful, I feel most of it is common sense, but I see it all the time. How can I help?

What follows is a set of bullet points telling women what they “need” to do to get fair pay. The blogger who posted this also posted several comments agreeing and offering more advice. All lovely and useful and practical.

And bullshit.

Continue reading “Another Way to Blame Women for Getting Paid Less”

Another Way to Blame Women for Getting Paid Less
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Readings in IQ and Intelligence

Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan linked to my piece on the Canadian polygamy ruling. Unfortunately, around that, he’s spent the last three days how difficult the world is for those researchers who study race-based IQ differences and how we need to look into this more. He knows this because the people who agree that there is something there say the political climate is stifling.

Now, as I’ve noted before, there are plenty of people who study this link, plenty of people who talk about it in various forms of media, and plenty of people who cry politics when factors other than genetics are pointed to as major factors in IQ test differences. All it really takes to know this is to pay attention to both sides of this debate.

The problem is that this can be difficult to do. The racially based IQ story is simple and plugs into our just-world biases. The actual picture involves dealing with complex data and statistical analyses. In order to give an overview of the general data on IQ and heritability, I put together this bibliography a couple of years ago. Continue reading “Readings in IQ and Intelligence”

Readings in IQ and Intelligence

Today in Church In-Fighting

To start, we have an archbishop who says he was sexually abused when younger. Despite the (alleged but highly plausible) abuse, he kept his faith and remained part of the church. The church repaid that faith by declining to investigate the abuse until pressured. The good archbishop now appears to be placing his faith in the police instead.

Continue reading “Today in Church In-Fighting”

Today in Church In-Fighting

About That Evo Psych Polygamy Stuff

Last night’s post on the Canadian polygamy ruling included a quote from an “expert” witness in evolutionary psychology, Joseph Heinrich. I didn’t break it down at the time, largely because I was dealing with a migraine and every sound in the room was a major distraction. Let me fix that now. Here is the quote again, now with commentary.

First, like other animals, human males and females have different mating strategies rooted in the nature of primate sexual reproduction.

This is an incredibly ugly sentence. Beyond its infelicities, however, it’s also a muddled mess of an idea. Continue reading “About That Evo Psych Polygamy Stuff”

About That Evo Psych Polygamy Stuff

Minneapolis FtB Meetup

As long as we have Jason in town for another week, and Greg is mostly between the holiday obligations that come of marrying into a very social family, it’s time to take advantage of having a bunch of us in the same place at once.

So this Friday (December 2) at 5:30, we’ll be at Bar Abilene in Uptown, along with Ben and Jodi and, if we’re really lucky, Amanda and the hyper-cool Huxley. Join us for dinner or a little later for drinks. I recommend the cherry margarita and the guacamole prepared fresh at the table, but everything is good.

It is a Friday evening, so please let us know if you’ll be there. We’d hate to run out of seats. Leave a comment or drop one of us a line to let us know when you plan to show up.

Parking on the street requires the willingness to walk a few blocks or an undependable degree of serendipity, but there is a lot behind the restaurant on Fremont that’s fairly reasonable.

I hope to see you Friday!

Minneapolis FtB Meetup

Canadian Judge Mucks Up Polygamy Ruling

Last week, a much-awaited ruling was handed down in British Columbia. Nobody’s very happy with it, although the people the judge was trying to upset don’t seem to be.

The issue at stake was Canada’s law outlawing polygamy. A sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was challenging the law on religious grounds. Also challenging the law were polyamory-activism groups seeking legal recognition of their unions. On the other side, defending the law, were those trying to protect young people from the harm done by the FLDS and “traditional” marriage defenders.

The sides were a mishmash, and the ruling followed suit. Continue reading “Canadian Judge Mucks Up Polygamy Ruling”

Canadian Judge Mucks Up Polygamy Ruling

The Next Thing I Know, I’m Going Down

JT posted his talk on skepticism and mental illness, and he asked us to tell our own stories as well. I’ve been considering doing so as I’ve seen him and Greta Christina talk about this, but this is the first time he’s asked. So here goes.

I’m suicidal. Not just at the moment, mind you, though we’ll see how things go by the end of the post.

Continue reading “The Next Thing I Know, I’m Going Down”

The Next Thing I Know, I’m Going Down