5 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die
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MYTH 1: Women are half the world’s population, working two-thirds of the world’s working hours, receiving 10% of the world’s income, owning less than 1% of the world’s property.
FACTS: This injustice confection is routinely quoted by advocacy groups, the World Bank, Oxfam and the United Nations. It is sheer fabrication. More than 15 years ago, Sussex University experts on gender and development Sally Baden and Anne Marie Goetz, repudiated the claim: “The figure was made up by someone working at the UN because it seemed to her to represent the scale of gender-based inequality at the time.” But there is no evidence that it was ever accurate, and it certainly is not today.
Precise figures do not exist, but no serious economist believes women earn only 10% of the world’s income or own only 1% of property. As one critic noted in an excellent debunking in The Atlantic, “U.S. women alone earn 5.4 percent of world income today.” Moreover, in African countries, where women have made far less progress than their Western and Asian counterparts, Yale economist Cheryl Doss found female land ownership ranged from 11% in Senegal to 54% in Rwanda and Burundi. Doss warns that “using unsubstantiated statistics for advocacy is counterproductive.” Bad data not only undermine credibility, they obstruct progress by making it impossible to measure change.
MYTH 2: Between 100,000 and 300,000 girls are pressed into sexual slavery each year in the United States.
FACTS: This sensational claim is a favorite of politicians, celebrities and journalists. Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore turned it into a cause célèbre. Both conservatives and liberal reformers deploy it. Former President Jimmy Carter recently said that the sexual enslavement of girls in the U.S. today is worse than American slavery in the 19th century.
The source for the figure is a 2001 report on child sexual exploitation by University of Pennsylvania sociologists Richard Estes and Neil Alan ? . But their 100,000–300,000 estimate referred to children at risk for exploitation—not actual victims. When three reporters from the Village Voice questioned Estes on the number of children who are abducted and pressed into sexual slavery each year, he replied, “We’re talking about a few hundred people.” And this number is likely to include a lot of boys: According to a 2008 census of underage prostitutes in New York City, nearly half turned out to be male. A few hundred children is still a few hundred too many, but they will not be helped by thousand-fold inflation of their numbers.
MYTH 3: In the United States, 22%–35% of women who visit hospital emergency rooms do so because of domestic violence.
FACTS: This claim has appeared in countless fact sheets, books and articles—for example, in the leading textbook on family violence, Domestic Violence Law, and in the Penguin Atlas of Women in the World. The Penguin Atlas uses the emergency room figure to justify placing the U.S. on par with Uganda and Haiti for intimate violence.
What is the provenance? The Atlas provides no primary source, but the editor of Domestic Violence Law cites a 1997 Justice Department study, as well as a 2009 post on the Centers for Disease Control website. But the Justice Department and the CDC are not referring to the 40 million women who annually visit emergency rooms, but to women, numbering about 550,000 annually, who come to emergency rooms “for violence-related injuries.” Of these, approximately 37% were attacked by intimates. So, it’s not the case that 22%-35% of women who visit emergency rooms are there for domestic violence. The correct figure is less than half of 1%.
MYTH 4: One in five in college women will be sexually assaulted.
FACTS: This incendiary figure is everywhere in the media today. Journalists, senators and even President Obama cite it routinely. Can it be true that the American college campus is one of the most dangerous places on earth for women?
The one-in-five figure is based on the Campus Sexual Assault Study, commissioned by the National Institute of Justice and conducted from 2005 to 2007. Two prominent criminologists, Northeastern University’s James Alan Fox and Mount Holyoke College’s Richard Moran, have noted its weaknesses:
“The estimated 19% sexual assault rate among college women is based on a survey at two large four-year universities, which might not accurately reflect our nation’s colleges overall. In addition, the survey had a large non-response rate, with the clear possibility that those who had been victimized were more apt to have completed the questionnaire, resulting in an inflated prevalence figure.”
Fox and Moran also point out that the study used an overly broad definition of sexual assault. Respondents were counted as sexual assault victims if they had been subject to “attempted forced kissing” or engaged in intimate encounters while intoxicated.
Defenders of the one-in-five figure will reply that the finding has been replicated by other studies. But these studies suffer from some or all of the same flaws. Campus sexual assault is a serious problem and will not be solved by statistical hijinks.
MYTH 5: Women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns—for doing the same work.
FACTS: No matter how many times this wage gap claim is decisively refuted by economists, it always comes back. The bottom line: the 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure or hours worked per week. When such relevant factors are considered, the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.
Wage gap activists say women with identical backgrounds and jobs as men still earn less. But they always fail to take into account critical variables. Activist groups like the National Organization for Women have a fallback position: that women’s education and career choices are not truly free—they are driven by powerful sexist stereotypes. In this view, women’s tendency to retreat from the workplace to raise children or to enter fields like early childhood education and psychology, rather than better paying professions like petroleum engineering, is evidence of continued social coercion. Here is the problem: American women are among the best informed and most self-determining human beings in the world. To say that they are manipulated into their life choices by forces beyond their control is divorced from reality and demeaning, to boot.
Why do these reckless claims have so much appeal and staying power? For one thing, there is a lot of statistical illiteracy among journalists, feminist academics and political leaders. There is also an admirable human tendency to be protective of women—stories of female exploitation are readily believed, and vocal skeptics risk appearing indifferent to women’s suffering. Finally, armies of advocates depend on “killer stats” to galvanize their cause. But killer stats obliterate distinctions between more and less serious problems and send scarce resources in the wrong directions. They also promote bigotry. The idea that American men are annually enslaving more than 100,000 girls, sending millions of women to emergency rooms, sustaining a ? culture and cheating women out of their rightful salary creates rancor in true believers and disdain in those who would otherwise be sympathetic allies.
FACTS: This injustice confection is routinely quoted by advocacy groups, the World Bank, Oxfam and the United Nations. It is sheer fabrication. More than 15 years ago, Sussex University experts on gender and development Sally Baden and Anne Marie Goetz, repudiated the claim: “The figure was made up by someone working at the UN because it seemed to her to represent the scale of gender-based inequality at the time.” But there is no evidence that it was ever accurate, and it certainly is not today.
Precise figures do not exist, but no serious economist believes women earn only 10% of the world’s income or own only 1% of property. As one critic noted in an excellent debunking in The Atlantic, “U.S. women alone earn 5.4 percent of world income today.” Moreover, in African countries, where women have made far less progress than their Western and Asian counterparts, Yale economist Cheryl Doss found female land ownership ranged from 11% in Senegal to 54% in Rwanda and Burundi. Doss warns that “using unsubstantiated statistics for advocacy is counterproductive.” Bad data not only undermine credibility, they obstruct progress by making it impossible to measure change.
MYTH 2: Between 100,000 and 300,000 girls are pressed into sexual slavery each year in the United States.
FACTS: This sensational claim is a favorite of politicians, celebrities and journalists. Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore turned it into a cause célèbre. Both conservatives and liberal reformers deploy it. Former President Jimmy Carter recently said that the sexual enslavement of girls in the U.S. today is worse than American slavery in the 19th century.
The source for the figure is a 2001 report on child sexual exploitation by University of Pennsylvania sociologists Richard Estes and Neil Alan ? . But their 100,000–300,000 estimate referred to children at risk for exploitation—not actual victims. When three reporters from the Village Voice questioned Estes on the number of children who are abducted and pressed into sexual slavery each year, he replied, “We’re talking about a few hundred people.” And this number is likely to include a lot of boys: According to a 2008 census of underage prostitutes in New York City, nearly half turned out to be male. A few hundred children is still a few hundred too many, but they will not be helped by thousand-fold inflation of their numbers.
MYTH 3: In the United States, 22%–35% of women who visit hospital emergency rooms do so because of domestic violence.
FACTS: This claim has appeared in countless fact sheets, books and articles—for example, in the leading textbook on family violence, Domestic Violence Law, and in the Penguin Atlas of Women in the World. The Penguin Atlas uses the emergency room figure to justify placing the U.S. on par with Uganda and Haiti for intimate violence.
What is the provenance? The Atlas provides no primary source, but the editor of Domestic Violence Law cites a 1997 Justice Department study, as well as a 2009 post on the Centers for Disease Control website. But the Justice Department and the CDC are not referring to the 40 million women who annually visit emergency rooms, but to women, numbering about 550,000 annually, who come to emergency rooms “for violence-related injuries.” Of these, approximately 37% were attacked by intimates. So, it’s not the case that 22%-35% of women who visit emergency rooms are there for domestic violence. The correct figure is less than half of 1%.
MYTH 4: One in five in college women will be sexually assaulted.
FACTS: This incendiary figure is everywhere in the media today. Journalists, senators and even President Obama cite it routinely. Can it be true that the American college campus is one of the most dangerous places on earth for women?
The one-in-five figure is based on the Campus Sexual Assault Study, commissioned by the National Institute of Justice and conducted from 2005 to 2007. Two prominent criminologists, Northeastern University’s James Alan Fox and Mount Holyoke College’s Richard Moran, have noted its weaknesses:
“The estimated 19% sexual assault rate among college women is based on a survey at two large four-year universities, which might not accurately reflect our nation’s colleges overall. In addition, the survey had a large non-response rate, with the clear possibility that those who had been victimized were more apt to have completed the questionnaire, resulting in an inflated prevalence figure.”
Fox and Moran also point out that the study used an overly broad definition of sexual assault. Respondents were counted as sexual assault victims if they had been subject to “attempted forced kissing” or engaged in intimate encounters while intoxicated.
Defenders of the one-in-five figure will reply that the finding has been replicated by other studies. But these studies suffer from some or all of the same flaws. Campus sexual assault is a serious problem and will not be solved by statistical hijinks.
MYTH 5: Women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns—for doing the same work.
FACTS: No matter how many times this wage gap claim is decisively refuted by economists, it always comes back. The bottom line: the 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure or hours worked per week. When such relevant factors are considered, the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.
Wage gap activists say women with identical backgrounds and jobs as men still earn less. But they always fail to take into account critical variables. Activist groups like the National Organization for Women have a fallback position: that women’s education and career choices are not truly free—they are driven by powerful sexist stereotypes. In this view, women’s tendency to retreat from the workplace to raise children or to enter fields like early childhood education and psychology, rather than better paying professions like petroleum engineering, is evidence of continued social coercion. Here is the problem: American women are among the best informed and most self-determining human beings in the world. To say that they are manipulated into their life choices by forces beyond their control is divorced from reality and demeaning, to boot.
Why do these reckless claims have so much appeal and staying power? For one thing, there is a lot of statistical illiteracy among journalists, feminist academics and political leaders. There is also an admirable human tendency to be protective of women—stories of female exploitation are readily believed, and vocal skeptics risk appearing indifferent to women’s suffering. Finally, armies of advocates depend on “killer stats” to galvanize their cause. But killer stats obliterate distinctions between more and less serious problems and send scarce resources in the wrong directions. They also promote bigotry. The idea that American men are annually enslaving more than 100,000 girls, sending millions of women to emergency rooms, sustaining a ? culture and cheating women out of their rightful salary creates rancor in true believers and disdain in those who would otherwise be sympathetic allies.
Comments
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Feminism is one of the most horrible ideologies in the world.
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These hoes ain't loyal
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Stop giving them attention.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH_ZryBfCtU
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Number 5 was a good point. I've always said that if that pay inequality actually existed, that's real ? up, but I've also always questioned if it was true. That ? just doesn't make sense. I mean a lot of HR people across the country are women. They have a large part in deciding what offer is made. Why would women choose to pay women less for being women?
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Everybody got a role to play. Just because you not a man don't make you less important, just play your position.
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Black_Samson wrote: »Did a search for the article, nah bruh, the sites posting this look like they'll send money to George Zimmerman and a couple police unions in the rural south.
poor cops.. relying on donations n ? -
women are paid less in nearly every occupation... do the knowledge...
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Meta_Conscious wrote: »women are paid less in nearly every occupation... do the knowledge...
You got some sources that back that up. I'm not asking to call you out. I'm legitimately curious how well supported that claim is given how frequently it's made.
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bureau of labor statistics...
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.pdf -
women get paid more than men in porn.
just sayin -
The Lonious Monk wrote: »Meta_Conscious wrote: »women are paid less in nearly every occupation... do the knowledge...
You got some sources that back that up. I'm not asking to call you out. I'm legitimately curious how well supported that claim is given how frequently it's made.
Childless women under 30 earn more than their male counterparts do. Men overall earn more than women do but men overall work longer hours (this probably has to do with women being more likely to take time off to have and care for children). -
When u account for profession, experience, education, hours worked, etc there is still a wage gap in industries such as IT, Science, Finance, etc
Across the board, men hold more positions of leadership
Men dominate the political arena, which is obviously a problem
Sex trafficking and on campus sexual assault numbers are misleading as well... But considering there is no centralized nation database for these instances and not every case is reported its hard to come to any real conclusion besides sex trafficking and on campus assaults are big problems
It's one thing to say the numbers are misleading, but to say that we live in a society that encourages the respect of women and now gender inequality is a thing of the past is another thing
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Meta_Conscious wrote: »bureau of labor statistics...
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.pdf
Thanks. That ? is pretty messed up. Men make more even in areas where women are the stronger side of the work force such as teaching and nursing. That's pretty ridiculous. -
The Lonious Monk wrote: »Number 5 was a good point. I've always said that if that pay inequality actually existed, that's real ? up, but I've also always questioned if it was true. That ? just doesn't make sense. I mean a lot of HR people across the country are women. They have a large part in deciding what offer is made. Why would women choose to pay women less for being women?
lol
Why would a blk person discriminate against another blk person because they are blk?
Sounds crazy, but it happens
Same when we subconsciously internalize racism, a lot of women have internalized sexism
Growing up in a patriarchal society they've been conditioned to believe the sterotypes that women are weak, passive, manipulative, with no capacity for intellectual pursuits or leadership are true
That's why you hear so many women perpetuating double standards like calling each other "hoes" while they have no problem dating male hoes, they are clinging to what little power/social racking they believe they have
And you are overestimating the role women in HR have in these decisions and how many women actually are the decision makers who are in upper level management
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desertrain10 wrote: »The Lonious Monk wrote: »Number 5 was a good point. I've always said that if that pay inequality actually existed, that's real ? up, but I've also always questioned if it was true. That ? just doesn't make sense. I mean a lot of HR people across the country are women. They have a large part in deciding what offer is made. Why would women choose to pay women less for being women?
lol
Why would a blk person discriminate against another blk person because they are blk?
Sounds crazy, but it happens
Same when we subconsciously internalize racism, a lot of women have internalized sexism
Growing up in a patriarchal society they've been conditioned to believe the sterotypes that women are weak, passive, manipulative, with no capacity for intellectual pursuits or leadership are true
That's why you hear so many women perpetuating double standards like calling each other "hoes" while they have no problem dating male hoes, they are clinging to what little power/social racking they believe they have
And you are overestimating the role women in HR have in these decisions and how many women actually are the decision makers who are in upper level management
That's fair. Although, I'm not overestimating the role women in HR play. In this area, a lot of women have roles as the heads of those departments, which means they are literally the ones signing off on whether or not a given salary is according to guidelines. That doesn't matter in independent corporations as much, but in government and non profit type organizations there are pretty solid rules that decide who gets paid what and gender is not part of those rules. So the women in HR are in a perfect position to challenge those decisions if a bias exists. -
The user and all related content has been deleted.
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desertrain10 wrote: »The Lonious Monk wrote: »Number 5 was a good point. I've always said that if that pay inequality actually existed, that's real ? up, but I've also always questioned if it was true. That ? just doesn't make sense. I mean a lot of HR people across the country are women. They have a large part in deciding what offer is made. Why would women choose to pay women less for being women?
lol
Why would a blk person discriminate against another blk person because they are blk?
Sounds crazy, but it happens
Same when we subconsciously internalize racism, a lot of women have internalized sexism
Growing up in a patriarchal society they've been conditioned to believe the sterotypes that women are weak, passive, manipulative, with no capacity for intellectual pursuits or leadership are true
That's why you hear so many women perpetuating double standards like calling each other "hoes" while they have no problem dating male hoes, they are clinging to what little power/social racking they believe they have
And you are overestimating the role women in HR have in these decisions and how many women actually are the decision makers who are in upper level management
feminist always have to go to far you can't just make a reasonable point -
There was a time where feminism was a necessary movement and ideology.
That time has passed. -
When u account for profession, experience, education, hours worked, etc there is still a wage gap in industries such as IT, Science, Finance, etc
No, there isn't. Or at least there's no evidence for this.
Across the board, men hold more positions of leadershipMen dominate the political arena, which is obviously a problem
Women make up at least half of the voting population. If men dominate in the political arena it's because they're more likely to run for office or seek positions of power, not because men alone discriminate against women who seek positions of leadership (it's always possible that men and women discriminate against women seeking positions of power because I definitely believe that both men and women discriminate against men and women in other respects).it dont really affect my life like that..
It probably has, does or will at some point in your life. It enables cultural attitudes about gender that are contrary to your interests because the concept of impartiality and genuine egalitarianism is completely foreign to feminism.to say that we live in a society that encourages the respect of women and now gender inequality is a thing of the past is another thing
Cultural norms justify discriminating against both men and women in certain respects. Neither men or women are the 'true' or sole victims of sexism. Feminism is just such a shockingly irrational and hypocritical ideology, I don't even know how to put my mind around it sometimes. Even if MRAs tend to lean more toward true egalitarianism the justification for identifying as an MRA instead of an egalitarian is just as irrational as the justification for identifying as a feminist instead of an egalitarian.I mean they the same links thatll run some ? titled; "Black teen beats up white youth but you wont hear any outrage."
Why should black teens beating up white youth garner less outrage than white teens beating up black youth? Even if you want stretch and play with basic logic to the point where you deny black teens attacking white people for no other reason than their being white being genuine racism despite their having the power to do what would be considered genuine racism if whites did the exact same thing, why would white teens randomly attacking black people for no other reason than their being black be any worse? For that matter, why would attacking anyone for no other reason than their race, ethnicity, national origin or sexual orientation be worse than attacking someone for any other reason? I swear, even if I hated all white people with a passion I will never understand the concept that black people are incapable of racism and I myself used to claim this. Most white individuals have no more institutional power than the average black person does. Nothing is physically stopping me from burning a cross on someone's lawn, verbally and psychologically abusing them because they're white, physically attacking them etc. -
even if that website is ? so is feminism and even the devil can be right sometimes so keep that in mind
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