[quote author="trrenter" date=1236637442][quote author="tmare" date=1236575375][quote author="irvine123" date=1236553312][quote author="caycifish" date=1233327037]
3) For the women who are "stuck" and have no other options than the job and the sexist boss that they have, I'm glad that you have a law to back you up.
4) Taking time off from your career to raise a family is likely going to cause a hit to your career. Just as not paying attention to your family to focus on your career is likely going to cause a hit to your family. Am I really annoyed that men rarely have to think about the choice between the two? Yep, I sure am.
5) Don't expect to be treated as an equal if you don't act like one.</blockquote>
I think most important thing you said is "don't expect to be treated as an equal if you don't act like one"....how can one expected the same career promotion path and rate if one takes 6 months off in 4 years (two babies), and need to come to work late (need to drop off kids), or leave early ( pickup kids), or can't travel unless far advance notice is given?
At the firm I work, yes it is true more men are on the executive ranks, but then again, very few women are willing to travel constantly, and relocate often at company's request. For the ones willing to do that, they are promoted as fast as men.
This issue is more complicated then one president order can resolve.</blockquote>
Maybe if men were sharing equally in the responsibility for picking up and dropping off kids, women wouldn't need so much time off to do these things. Granted, a man can't have the babies, but all too often it is both the woman's responsibility to work and deal with the majority of the childcare that requires some time during the beginning or end of the day. For some reason, there is still an attitude that a man's job is more important than a woman's and it is assumed that she will make the sacrifices when it comes to career advancement. Before anyone jumps all over me for saying this, yes, I realize there are plenty of exceptions, but the way this last comment was worded somehow implies that it is an automatic assumption that a woman will be doing these things and not sharing them with her children's father.</blockquote>
Michelle Obama is a perfect example of how this isn't as black and white as it sounds. She earned more then her husband but has now put her career on "hold". I am sure at the end of his term Barak will earn more then his wife and doubt she will return to her previous line of work.
So here you have a woman that is willing to give up her career to support her husband. Assume another woman takes her place she obviously won't be paid as much as Michelle was with the economy the way it is.
Should Michelle's replacement be given the same Salary as Michelle?
The other thing that may not be represented is that most of the time hiring managers have a starting salary range. When I hire I usually start at the lower end of the range and if someone asks for more I can offer them a higher amount in that range without senior management approval. I find that more men then women negotiate a higher salary. If you then take that higher salary today and compound yearly raises the disparity becomes bigger.
Would someone be in violation if they offer a male a 50k starting salary and a woman a 50k starting salary and the male negotiates a 55k salary while the female was fine with the 50k?</blockquote>
I really don't know quite how to wrap my mind around this and what it means, but it's an interesting quote.
<A href="http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/15/magazines/fortune/greenspan_book.fortune/index.htm">http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/15/magazines/fortune/greenspan_book.fortune/index.htm</A>
(Fortune Magazine) -- If you want to know the mind of Alan Greenspan, you might start with this: Before he entered public life in the 1970s, all his top deputies at his flourishing economic consulting firm were women.
"It just made great business sense," he writes with the unexpectedly sunny wonkiness that pervades much of his memoir, "The Age of Turbulence."
"I valued men and women equally, and found that because other employers did not, good women economists were less expensive than men."
Now, a feminist, a socialist, or a churl might take issue with this sort of thinking. But Greenspan says there was an ancillary benefit to his self- interest: His hiring practices, he points out, "marginally raised the market value" of female economists
