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Aug. 26, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
16:00
Gender Pay Gap Conspiracy Theorists #WomensEqualityDay
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Oh, right, okay, yes, don't panic.
I know you can see me.
It's not the end of the world.
You might want to maybe minimize the window or something as you listen to this video, because we will be talking to Steve Shives, wage gap conspiracy theorist.
Now, you can see me because I'm going to GG in Birmingham meetup on Saturday, and I thought, well, to make sure that everyone knows what I look like and fresh in their minds, and I bought a new camera and I was testing it out.
And I why the fuck not?
Let's see what Steve has to say for himself.
Hey, here are five stupid things I've noticed about the wage gap.
Hi, Steve.
It exists in nearly every line of work.
So it's probably a patriarchal conspiracy, isn't it, Steve?
It's probably something to do with men keeping down women.
The wage gap between men and women is real.
That's a good start.
It's a thing that exists.
But the question really is, why does it exist, isn't it, Steve?
And though its size varies from job to job, it's present in all but a relative few occupations.
More than that, it exists in male-dominated, female-dominated, and gender-balanced fields.
In business, in education, in computers, in sales, in healthcare, in the arts, in virtually any line of work you can think of.
Women are paid less than men.
No.
They earn less than men.
To be paid less than men because they're women would be illegal.
Look at the Paycheck Fairness Act.
You would think that would solve the problem.
But the problem isn't being caused by discrimination.
There's nothing to fix, Steve.
The only thing to fix is to make women choose different careers and work harder and longer in them.
Do you want to do that, Steve?
Do you want to make women do things against their own will?
The most commonly cited statistic here in the US is that women make 78% as much as men in terms of annual median earnings.
Steve, you don't seem to know what that means.
That means the woman in the middle, the middle-earning woman out of all the women in the United States, compared to the middle-earning man out of all the men in the United States, is earning slightly less.
There are going to be many, many reasons for this, but you're acting as if you're talking about two people in the same job sat side by side and the woman is earning less.
She's not, Steve.
That would be illegal.
But the wage gap is not as simple as that.
If it's not simple, do you really think you're the man to tackle it?
It's worse for older women.
The wage gap is actually quite a bit smaller for young women.
Women under the age of 35 earn about 90% of what men earn, which still isn't ideal, but is a lot better than 78%.
You say like it's not ideal, but I want to know in what way you think it's not ideal.
I mean, good for men.
Good for them going into careers that pay better than their four mothers.
But the older women get, the more that wage gap grows.
Because they're in more traditionally female jobs, Steve.
The wage gap also grows the more educated women become.
Even though there are now more women than men enrolling in college, a woman with a bachelor's degree can expect to earn just 71% of what a man with a bachelor's degree earns.
Surely you don't think all degrees pay equally when you get out into the real world.
Surely not even you are so stupid to think that someone with a, say, gender studies degree is going to earn like someone with an engineering degree.
Not even you.
Are that dumb, Steve?
Surely.
And women with graduate degrees earn 69% of what men with graduate degrees earn.
What kind of degree, Steve?
That one surprised me.
Of course it did, because you're a fucking idiot.
When I read it for the first time.
You don't look like the kind of man who can read.
But not all the data about the wage gap is so unexpected.
Some of it seems depressingly familiar.
No, it's inevitable, Steve.
It's absolutely inevitable that if a woman works in a job that pays less for less time, then she's going to earn less money than a man in a more high-paying job who works for more hours.
And this is the explanation for everything about the gender wage gap, Steve.
But you're going to think, you're going to go on as if some sort of giant motherfucking patriarchal conspiracy.
It's worse for women of colour.
The disparities between the earnings of women of color and white men are simultaneously shocking and the sorts of things to which many of us have grown dismally accustomed.
Black women earn 64% of what white men earn.
At least you used the word earn that.
At least you got that right.
Yes, they earn that.
Yeah, I agree that they should have every opportunity to go to university, get the degrees they want, get the jobs they want, and join white women in the 78% category.
Because that's where they're going to fucking end up, Steve.
We know this because this is a worldwide phenomenon, as I'm sure you will go on to point out in a minute.
Hispanic women have it even worse.
They earn just 54% of what white men earn.
And those statistics and all of the statistics I've referred to so far in this video refer to the wage gap as it exists in the United States, by the way.
But the wage gap is no respecter of political boundaries.
Told you.
It exists worldwide.
When the World Economic Forum released its report last year on the global gender gap, it found just one country, Denmark, where women earn more than men on average.
Shouldn't you do something about that?
Shouldn't there be some sort of campaign in Denmark?
Now that we don't have gender equality, women are superior in Denmark.
They're earning more money in Denmark, Steve.
There needs to be something done, don't you think?
Or is it when women earn more than men, that's just fine?
It found no country where women earn the same as men for doing the same job.
Why would they?
Why would they find that?
If women don't do as much overtime as men, and they don't, if women take more time off than men, and they do, why would they earn as much as men?
Why?
You explain to me why you think the numbers should end up equal.
And I just, I can't imagine what's going through your mind.
I can't imagine what kind of terrible conspiracy, worldwide patriarchal conspiracy against women you think there is, Steve.
And you know what's weird is that you're not part of it.
It's weird that you haven't been invited to the patriarchal meetings.
Check your fucking junk mail folder, moron.
The US finished in the middle of the pack, 65th out of 142 countries.
Among the countries that finished ahead of us were Canada, the UK, and Burundi, which actually had the smallest wage gap.
Among the countries that finished behind us in the survey were China, Italy, and Israel.
And those latter two have women earning less than 50% of what men earn.
At least you're using the right words now.
Earned.
You've probably noticed by this point that this is one of the videos in this series where I'm all serious and earnest.
And I know that a lot of you prefer the funny ones.
You're never funny.
And hell, I like the funny ones better too.
Ever.
To be honest.
But I could only think of one joke regarding the wage gap.
Is it the person interpreting the statistics?
And it's not very funny either.
No, he's not.
Even so, it is the biggest joke that I know of about the wage gap.
It's the fact that its existence is still denied by some.
You can't simply say that it exists and therefore something needs to be done.
The wage gap is a fact.
I don't know how to say it any clearer than that.
Well done.
But that's not what we're here to debate, you monkey.
If you doubt that claim, the major sources I've used to write this video are linked in the description box.
Check them out.
Why don't you check out the reason for these things?
Why don't you care about that?
Or better yet, do your own research.
I think I may have done that, actually, Steve.
I may have done that before I started recording this.
You'll find, as I did, that the wage gap exists for virtually all women all around the world.
Though it varies in size, it exists for women of all ages, of all races, in virtually all occupations.
It exists for married women and single women.
It exists for women without children and women with children.
Steve, you must think that every woman on earth is being oppressed by men.
You must think that every man on earth...
You know what, Steve?
I dread to think what you think the world really looks like.
You know, you must have this terrible, terrible picture of what the world is like.
No wonder you're a feminist, man.
No wonder you're a feminist.
If I didn't know what the world was like and I thought it was what you think it's like, I'd probably be a feminist too, man.
I'd probably be like, shit.
Every man on earth in a company is paying women less just because of their gender.
In spite of the law, which I assume isn't being enforced because it's mostly men who are enforcing the laws as judges and policemen and whatnot.
And so, I mean, you are acting like this is a giant patriarchal conspiracy.
Like, it is all men on earth getting together saying, well, why don't we just pay women less?
Why don't we just do that?
And, yeah, yeah, I mean, we've got these laws, but if we're just like, what are they going to do?
Well, they're not going to rise up, are they?
We're way stronger than they are.
They're not going to do anything.
We've got it made.
We can just take on the money.
Even though, I mean, it would be more effective if we actually employed women, given that we're going to pay them less, because then we reduce costs on our employees.
But we hate women so much, we're not going to do that.
I suppose we could argue about what causes it.
Why would we argue about what causes it?
What would be the point in that, Steve?
We know it's sexism.
We know it's a giant sexist conspiracy against women by men that you're not a part of because you forget to check your junk mail, Steve.
You know, you could have been in this, but you're not.
You're the one man.
No, not the one man.
Sorry.
You are part of the small group of men on earth who are male feminists who realize that women actually are being given a really hard time.
You're the tiny group of empathetic guys.
Every other guy on earth is a misogynist.
All of them.
They hate women, Steve.
That's what you must fucking think, you maniac.
How much of it is directly attributable to sex discrimination versus other factors?
Just other factors.
But the thing we cannot do is deny it.
And the thing we must not do is ignore it.
What do you fucking suggest, Steve?
Are you suggesting we put women down the mines?
We get some whips and whip them.
And so they're like, I'm going to go home early on Friday.
And they're like, no, you're not.
You knew Bob over there is putting in a few extra hours because he wants to get his kids something nice for Christmas.
That means you're staying here for as many hours as Bob works because you need to make sure you earn as much as him.
Even though you don't really need the money, you don't really want to be here.
The hardest part is only picking five.
The hardest part is dealing with male feminists, Steve.
You're fucking mental.
I can't imagine why you think this is happening.
And I can't imagine what you think the solution is.
This is the consequence of a free society you maniac.
Right, listen, I have an article from the BBC.
It's entitled, Women Managers in Wales Work an Hour for Free.
Because they're idiots.
The person who wrote this is a moron.
It might well have been you, Steve.
I don't know that you don't write articles for the BBC.
In it, they go around and they say, oh, in the UK, it's 22%.
It's not 23%.
No, no, it's the same, in fact.
But it's 22%.
This is based on an annual salary survey of more than 72,000 professionals across the UK.
In Wales, the gap is 15%, which isn't that much, but they have a list of reasons why.
Why does the pay gap exist?
In summary, men hold 64% of all of the available full-time jobs in Wales, while women hold 80% of the part-time jobs.
90% of men work full-time, while just 10% work in part-time roles.
Are you seeing why this might be yet?
Women entering typically female occupations find at least 40% of work on offer is part-time.
Senior management and skilled trades are male-dominated, you know, the high-paying jobs.
75% of all women in professional jobs work in education and health.
You know, jobs that aren't productive and so don't pay very well.
90% of chief executives of major organisations in Wales are men.
The top earning position in the company.
That's why they're earning more money.
These are the reasons for the wage gap, Steve.
It's not discrimination, which is why you didn't want to talk about discrimination.
You don't want to even talk about the reasons in the slightest.
Because you know that the reasons are normal and natural and sensible and should result in women on average earning less.
The problem is that you're looking at the end results and ascribing some kind of intent to the system as if it shouldn't be this way.
And I'm telling you, Steve, it absolutely should be this way.
This is exactly how it should be, which is why nobody in Denmark is complaining that women are earning more than men.
Because they're choosing to.
They're working for it and they deserve it.
And it's the same in Western countries the other way around.
Well, Denmark is a Western country, but it's Denmark.
There is no wage gap conspiracy.
Would you listen to yourself?
Why do you think this is the case?
You don't even care why this is the case.
Women's earnings are a direct result of women's choices.
It's a free society.
You have abandoned the desire to find out why the wage gap is as it is.
You have now just come to the assumption that, you know, I don't even care what the reason is.
I'm looking at the end result and deciding that it should be different.
But without looking at the reasons for why the end result is as it is, you're never going to fucking understand it.
And I'm not just saying that because you're a moron.
I'm saying that because people who don't look at the fucking reasons for things happening don't know why these things happen, Steve.
And you're one of them.
You literally went, don't worry about it.
For some reason.
But hey, what can you do, Steve?
You know, you've got an ideological agenda to push and it doesn't matter why things happen.
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