Interesting odds and ends that have shown up in my inbox this week:
"Men with egalitarian attitudes about the role of women in society earn
significantly less on average than men who hold more traditional views
about women’s place in the world, according to a study being reported
today.
Rick Moran writes about the changes in the blogosphere.
The New York Times has a great new blog, Lesson Plans, which features the stories of teachers. I’m loving the posts by a special education teacher in NYC. Read this and this.
Everybody is talking about this video.
Apt. 11d 
The APA website has the original research paper on men, attitudes and earning available for download.
It was raised as a possibility – and I’m inclined to agree – that men with egalitarian attitudes tend to be in lower-paid professions (just like women). Anecdotes =/= data, of course, but in my experience, there *are* more egalitarian men in professions like teaching and public service and nonprofits where, of course, they earn less money.
As far as I’m concerned, I’d rather that any husband of mine earn a bit less and be supportive of me and my own career. Not to mention that “hur-hur-hur OPRAH hur-hur-hur TEH LADEEZ LOVE TO SHOP hur-hur-hur CATS” crap that some traditional men love to sneer at gets old, fast.
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But the study controls for profession choice. I’m not at all surprised; I’d be surprised if there were any other result. It’s not because egalitarian men are perceived as more effete, its because they are less competitive in the profession because they value that success less relative to the other things in their life (“if I take this promotion it will mean I have to work more hours and have less time at home”; “if I take this one we’ll have to move, dislocating my wife and kids, and making them and my home life miserable for a year or two, and its not worth it”; etc).
Interesting that there wasn’t a category of “women with attitudes to their own career that men with traditional attitudes have to theirs”.
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Post a link?
I’m wondering how they controlled for the demands of the employer — that is, a more traditional gender division frees the male worker to work more. Did the control for hours worked? Hey, I should read the article.
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Next study: They test egalitarian and traditional men for testosterone levels.
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That’s an interesting thought, BJ – I have heard that a wife (or equivalent) at home to handle all the domestic work really does make it easier on the partner devoted to work. Wasn’t it Gloria Steinem who said, “What I want is a wife?”
I also wonder if the “old boy network” is a factor. Many men in the upper echelons of power have traditional attitudes and prefer to promote men like themselves. Perhaps they also think of egalitarian men as effete (or, OMG, the horror, gay!)
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The data point that always sticks in my mind is a factoid (? or fact) that says that when men have a baby, their working hours go up. It’s the “ideal worker” stuff. A company that hires a man with a stay-at-home spouse has more than one employee working for them. The man, and the support staff. That was recognized explicitly in the old days, when there were faculty wive’s clubs, and corporations expected the wife to entertain.
But, I don’t know if they tried to control for that aspect (i.e. that a worker with a staff at home is more than one worker) in some way.
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“That was recognized explicitly in the old days, when there were faculty wive’s clubs, and corporations expected the wife to entertain.”
My husband’s college still has something of the sort. The group is over one hundred years old, it is open to both faculty wives and female faculty, and it sponsors 17 different interest groups, as well as various good works. I was just at their opening tea this afternoon (just in and out to sign up for stuff), and I think every college should have one.
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Actually, the next study should cover testosterone levels in traditional and egalitarian women as well.
I wonder how much the parenting thing comes into this? They don’t say they track for parenting status, but in my experience it’s not the “egalitarian attitude” that impacts your work trajectory but rather any insistence on work-life balance. And that’s much more likely to occur when kids are in the picture, for either moms or dads.
I would also be very interested to see this income broken down by per-hour. In my experience many highly-paid professionals don’t actually make all that much more per hour than their plebeian counterparts — they are just putting in monster hours.
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I vaguely remember seeing an article that said that marriage and family (or maybe just family) lowers male testosterone levels.
For women, you might also want to look at oxytocin.
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Also, just an aside to say the article could just as easily be entitled “Men Who Earn Less Have Significantly More Egalitarian Attitudes Towards Women”. We don’t know what’s cause and what’s effect here. Unless I misunderstood?
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Here’s what’s going on the egalitarian wage disparity.
Men who make a lot of money work jobs that take a lot of time. They need to have their wives do more at home and work less. They work with a whole office of other guys that have similar situations. They, therefore, think that the world works that way. They also need to justify their situations.
Men who have taken jobs that will accommodate a wife who works, make less money. Flexible jobs pay less.
So, it’s the job situation that shapes attitudes.
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Laura, don’t you think lots of people work jobs that take lots of time? Only a subset of those jobs pay really well. I just don’t see that we know for sure which is cause and which is effect here.
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