Of course, people who work harder/smarter
should get paid more (
and they do). But when you stare at the statistics, the numbers still show that in 2017 , there is a 24% pay inequality based off of gender and gender alone. There can be two options: Women on average are not as talented (not working as hard or as smart as men or consistently have less education) that warrants a 24% delta. OR, there is still an inequity.
In other words, the rulemakers are internally biased and are behaving so that on average, there is a disparity.
See
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffka...ith-the-biggest-gender-pay-gaps/#20c33ff451d4 .
"Healthcare and social assistance had the fourth highest gap, even though women held 80% of the jobs in this industry, illustrating that even female-dominated sectors can have a gender pay gap." No one is suggesting that every women is automatically going to make 24% less than their male counterpart. But when you plug-and-chug the numbers, to me at least, it shows that a systemic problem exists. Yes. I am selfishly upset at those statistics. Because I don't want my wife or daughter to make thousands less per year (or hundreds of thousands less over their lifetime) because they are female. Cut, paste, and repeat for certain ethnicities.
As a white male, people are occasionally comfortable to speaking candidly about women and other ethnicities. Derogatory remarks to various degrees are alive and well in America and at a much higher percentage than people would
ever want to admit. Setting that aside, biases/perceptions are not exclusive to white males. Women may round-up men (as an example) unbenounced to them because of the stereotype and programmed perception alone. Black police have a bias against black suspects too (or more)
as supported by the statistics http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/26/black-suspects-more-likely-to-be-shot-by-black-cop/ . As a society, it's been programmed into all of us. You cannot shake the inequality in a generation or two. I think it is impossible.
The bottom line is if a perception is perpetuated long enough, it can become self fulfilling. Erasing that internal perceptions (no matter how hard a person tries) isn't easy and it will take generation
s to combat. I will admit I'm the farthest for perfect. I have biases. All too often succumb to pre-programmed stereotypes. But as a society, we have come a long way fairly fast and there is a long way to go. But nothing will be fixed if people refuse to recognize their perceptions create inequalities. It's embedded in all of us.
Back to the topic at hand. Along comes an advertisement that markets to underrepresented groups and is also used to gain overall visibility. Why is this USAFA advertising a bad thing again?