Guns, money, and education

[nontacitare]

The Utah legislature, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that the rights of university students to carry guns is inviolable. U of Utah tried to make a compromise in which students could not have a gun in dorms or faculty offices. The Supreme court said the university could set aside a few gun-free dorms, but said the university could not

Comments

[wishesofastar]

In regard to professor salaries: I just read an article about the wage gap, and how most of it can be explained by factors other than discrimination. You say female profs are making $6,000 less; is that across all disciplines? That means that they would be comparing comparative lit prof's salaries with engineering. Do you know the gender breakdown in all the fields? If there are more women choosing to get degrees in fields that typically pay less, that could explain that gap. As to there being no full female professors: yikes!

[nontacitare]

is that across all disciplines?Yes; one chart just shows rank and gender and salary per college or university; another chart shows salary differences between the disciplines (in the US), but not divided by gender or university. Foreign language ranks lowest; English is middle of the pack; engineering is up there; law and business are highest

[wishesofastar]

I agree that gender does play a role, I just don't think that active discrimination is as large a part of it as some articles seem to suggest. When someone says, "We think she'll work for this, but we'll pay this guy more", that is active discrimination and needs to be stopped. I think having a set rate for each department would help in this.

I agree that it is a mystery why the female-dominated fields are paid less; the best I can offer is rampant speculation. Are the higher-paid fields more important, or do we see them that way because they are higher paid?

Women continue to lag behind men in math and the hard sciences; I think we need to look at the reasons for this and see what we can do about it. Personally, I never even considered going into a math-related field; somewhere in my mind, I always thought it would be "too hard", even though I didn't do badly in math. Eh, I've rambled long enough. Time for a nap, I think.

[nontacitare]

Are the higher-paid fields more important, or do we see them that way because they are higher paid?

I would very much argue the latter. Disciplines and qualities associated with the feminine tend to be devalued. Back in the days of the Soviet Union, the majority of doctors were women. In the US at the time, the highly paid medical profession was dominated by men. In the USSR, however, medicine was one of the lower paying professions.

In terms of seeing male-associations as more important than female-associations, consider these sentences. "She's a powerful woman - very girly." "He's very manly - what a wimp." Do these sentences seem nonsensical? Why?