Conference turris::womannotes-v2

    I'll tackle just one aspect of your complex subject, the wage disparity
    between technical jobs vs interpersonal/service jobs, because it is
    something I think I understand on at least some level.
    
     It is relatively easy to valuate a technical job with respect to its
    contribution to a money making enterprise. It may only take a few
    engineers to design a product which can take in millions of dollars.
    Thus, the amount of compensation they can receive is dependent to a
    large degree on how much of the product is bought by consumers,
    coinsumers which are to a very large degree insulated from the
    technical people whose jobs they are indirectly funding.
    
     In an interpersonal/service/whatever job, there is much closer to a
    one to one correspondence between the worker and those paying for the
    service. Thus, the compensation for the interpersonal worker is more
    directly related to the ability of a small number of customers to pay.
    So while interpersonal jobs are extremely valuable, their ability to
    generate income is limited by their very nature.
    
     The Doctah

Why?

Simple.

Because people want houses, buildings and bridges for themselves, and are 
willing to pay for them.

They are not willing to pay for the happiness of the country as a whole,
because such things don't effect them on a personal level.

The people who need the help of social workers/counselors/advocates etc.
are the ones with the least ability to pay for it.

If $10,000 will build 1 house, then $100,000 will build ten houses.  If
only $10,000 is available, then it can be invested satisfactorily in one
house.  But if it takes $1,000,000 to improve society by x amount, it isn't
true that $10,000 will improve society .001x amount, more like .0000001x
amount.  So people see that if they have a limited amount of money to
spend, it is more economical to pay for a house.  Everyone says "my money
won't do any good unless everybody else gives more" so they don't give.
Round and round.

D!, cynical today, who always wanted to be a psychologist, but didn't want a 
    life of poverty, and today regrets the decision

    
    I find it interesting to note some data about rats.
    TYPE A rats are very good at finding their way out of mazes.
    TYPE B rats tend to be more social.
    
    and people :
    TYPE A people are very good at finding their way around town, and are
    sometimes social.
    TYPE B people are good at being social and are sometimes good at finding
    their way around.
    
    It has been found that finding your way out of places involves keeping
    a picture in your head of where you are.  It seems there is a
    correspondence between spacial ability, (or finding your way around),
    and mathematical ability, or any ability that is easily seen.
    
    Social ability corresponds with ability with the untangible.
    
    It seems that the tangible is valued more than the intangible.
    Or is it that TYPE A people's abilities are valued more than TYPE B
    people's abilities?
    
    By the way, TYPE A animals are males which evolutionarily have had to
    fight each other to win females.  Then they had to find the females.
    The TYPE B animals, females often grouped together for protection.
    (Take seals for instance.  The females hang around far away from the
    males while the males fight for dominance.  Then the winning male seal,
    with the runner-up not far behind, finds the females and, with any
    luck, impregnates them.)
    
    NOTE : I am NOT saying that women are not good at math.  I am a woman
    engineer.  I am good at math. I am mearly saying that if you took a
    poll of the human or animal population you would find that the males
    have greated spacial ability and the females better social ability.
    I am also NOT addressing the subject of unequal pay for equal work. 
    I am merely stating that it is an interesting correlation that the more
    generally, financially rewarded work is also generally, historically
    more suited to males than females.
    
    

    Value = money, and the long-term financial benefits of solving the
    social problems you mention have seldom been measured in any mode
    except a negative one:
    
     o  How much money it COSTS to maintain a school system or a public
        health system
    
     o  How much money it COSTS to maintain an effective crime prevention
        network
    
    To my knowledge, no one has come up with an effective way of measuring
    how much money a good public nurturing or public safety program
    SAVES.  
    
    I grew up in a town with a well-regarded school system, but after
    I left, one school bond issue after another was voted down.  Now 
    the children in my home town are paying the price.  George Bush
    certainly had his finger on the national pulse when he kept asking
    everybody to read his lips.
    
    I've worked with the retarded, and I've worked with the emotionally
    disturbed, and about the only people who demonstrated humanitarian
    concern for these groups were:
    
     o  My coworkers
     o  Relatives (in some cases -- in others, the retarded or disturbed
        person was effectively forgotten by their family)
     o  Concerned college students who volunteered their time
    
    When my 6-year younger brother graduated from college, his starting
    salary at a computer firm was over three times what my starting
    salary was at the center for emotionally disturbed children where
    I worked.  I loved my kids, but love didn't generate the money to live
    in a decent apartment or own a car that wasn't a gas-guzzling junkheap.
    
    While it's relatively simple to sell hardware or software, it's
    very difficult to "sell" a healed child back to a society that expects
    them to mess up again.  Or, for that matter, an effective (but
    expensive) system to prevent the child from messing up in the first
    place.  Maybe if it were possible to demonstrate mathematically how a 
    substantial investment now can reap substantial benefits down the road?
        
    I've read plenty about what it costs to keep a "failure" off the
    streets, but little about what a "success" saves us.  Success is too
    often measured in terms of what Donald Trump makes, or who wins the 
    Superbowl.
    
    However, I think there's kind of a silver lining to this "cost"
    thing.  Just as the threat of global war is dwindling mainly because
    of its MONETARY cost (the human cost never managed to lessen the
    threat), the taxpayers are finally beginning to recognize the MONETARY
    cost of programs that fail to nurture or educate.
    
    Why do I believe this could be a trend in the '90s?  
    
    At 39, my best friend is about to finish a master's in teaching, and he
    just MIGHT make more as a high school history teacher than he was
    able to as a landscaper.  I certainly hope so, because he's student
    teaching in our old high school.  With my home town connections,
    I've heard that the kids love him, and I know he loves the kids.
    He's just the kind of role model they need.
    
    If money is what forces society to finally square up and really
    face its human problems, so be it.  
    
    Now if we could just get ADVERTISING to kick into this interpersonal
    skills thing -- (with something besides "Say no to drugs").
    
    Justin

>    TYPE A people are very good at finding their way around town, and are
>    sometimes social.
>    TYPE B people are good at being social and are sometimes good at finding
>    their way around.

How unfortunate.  I have neither skill.  I was tested at an early age
as "retarded" in spacial ability.  (Yes, IQ in that area < 90)  Socially
I am (historically) a flop.  

Uh-oh.

D!, type C=very good at...uh...something, something imporant, yeah, that's 
    right, something very important, so important it's classified, yeah

    While the "value" of something you can sell is fairly obvious, the
    value of people skills is not so easy to see. Women experience this
    all the time, when moving into the work force from having been home
    with the kids, for example. School teachers moving into the business
    world experience it also. If you've been working with people, you might
    as well have been in a cave.
    
    However, the value of working with people is now becoming more and more
    obvious. The last few days of violence in Boston are only the
    beginning. If we don't start valuing our teachers, our day-care
    workers, our parents (as in company child-care , etc.), our
    law-enforcement officials....we are going to be in real trouble. 
    
    We have begun to value pieces of silicon (fer crise sake) more than we
    value the upbringing of our kids. Or help for the homeless. Or support
    for the under-employed. Or....Or.....Or...
    
    *growl*
    
    --DE
    

    
    re D!
    
    I was merely restating some of what I learned in an evolution class a
    couple of years ago.  I was not saying that the skill-set of human
    beings has two elements : spacial ability and social ability.  I don't
    think anyone would say that.  I would guess that being an engineer,
    you're probably good at math, so the IQ test giver probably messed up. 
    (as is common in alot of those tests.)
    
    Actually, I tested quite well on the IQ test, I like math but I can't,
    for the life of me, find my way out of Filene's.  (I think they're
    designed that way.)  On the other hand, I am very good at the useless
    skill of inverting pictures in my head.  (That's part of the IQ test.) 
    Perhaps spacial ability involves various talents, some of which are
    usually associated with mathematical ability.
    
    Rachael
    

It seems like our economic system is basically built on return on
capitol investement.  This is measured in short-term quarterly
profits.  As long as everything is measured against these goals, I
think that's where the $$$ and much of the energy we have will go. 
Personally, I think that this will have to change if we want to leave
a place where our children seven generations down the line will and
can live in.  Fortunately, there are people who have goals other than
(or in addition to) making money.

It's unfortunate that we can't tap all this energy that goes into
profit making and widen the scope (or replace) to include how the
enterprize is leaving the earth, how the enterprize is affecting the
lives of its workers and customers.  Imagine what a wonderful world it
could be!

Lately, I've really tuned into the use of the word continued economic
growth.  You hear people (especially US politicians and economists
using it all the time).  It seem to be a unquestiobale tenet. And 
there are attempts to try and continue this growth in the least
harmful way possible.  I see a fundamental conflict between
unsustainable growth and our treatment of the earth and its people. So
I beleive this question of growth really needs to be looked at and
examined.  We have this model of PROGRESS says that the old ways were
bad and we are marching ever forward with development and technology.
More condos, more malls!   I see progress in some areas but great
steps backward in many other areas (such as quality of life and I mean
real quality of life and not the number of toys Middle Americans can
placate their fundamental unhappiness with).

Lately, we have seen attempts to include some of these goals as
secondary goals to short-term profits (witness the Repulican party's
increasing concern for the environment).  While I applaud these
efforts, I can't help wondering if the priorities are all wrong and
these need to be changed.  How to go about that task is a very good
question and a question that each of us has to answer for
himself/herself.

It's certainly nice to be comfortable and have enough food for
yourself and your family (if you have one).  When it goes further to
grasping for wealth for security and amusement, I wonder what it
really costs us personally to our hearts, our spririt, our life?

It's my belief that deep inside we all have a job to do on this earth
and that in our hearts of hearts we know what it is.  And I think that
when this true job is blocked, we go through a lot of pain and
suffering one way or the other (unfortunately it seems to take a
while to give up the self-images, ideas, fantasies, and desires we
have accumulated to realize our true job in life).  And I don't
literally mean a job (although that could be a big part of it) and I'm
not suggested I know what it is for other people.

I've mentioned before that I do some volunteer work at Children's
Hospital in Boston.  Last week, I was feeling kind of low energy and I
went in and the night started out tough.  I tried to comfort a two
year old that just had some tubes stuck in her body changed and she
was very unhappy, shaking, and crying and calling for her mother.
And it wasn't all at clear she wanted to deal with yet another person.
None of my usual tricks were working but finally she found at least a
little relief holding my COOSH balls and watching me put then on the
top of my head.  And I held a young baby for quite a while who had a
bag coming from her bowels.  Stuff like that can get to you sometimes.

Anyways, I was up walking about another ward and I saw a young girl in
a 4 person room looking kind of sad so I went in and asked her if she
wanted some company.  I could barely her as I asked her her name and I
thought maybe she wanted to be alone.  It was hard for me not to
notice her black eye and just see her as herself.

But I got out some bubbles and we blew bubbles for quite a while and
we had a great time (maybe too great, her nurse came in and "yelled"
at her for jumping up and down on her bed (she was hitting the call
button as she jumped up and down). I had just bought a "magic wand"
that I carry around in my bag of tricks.  She got the idea that when I
was juggling for her, we would wave the wand and I would gain and lose
my ability to juggle.  So she really got a kick out of that and I
played along throwing and dropping the balls in amusing and silly ways
when she took away my juggling powers.  We had everyone in the ward
laughing and smiling at this.  ;-) She also turned me into a prince
and her nurse into a princess at one point!  ;-)

Anyways, I'm not sure exactly why I am related this story.  Needless
to say I left that hosptial feeling very wonderful and I thank my
young friend with the magic wand very much for working her loving,
smiling, and laughing magic on me.

I find it harder at work sometimes to get the feeling that my actions
are in line with my true job in life and right livelihood although I
think every moment [no matter what the situation is] is a wonderful
oppurtunity is a perfect time to realize our true job in life and the
children in the hospital show me that over and over again every week.
Certainly my work with juggling and with children and that is very
attractive to me and I intend to pursue it and see where it leads me.
Unfortunately, it is not so easy to make a live as a juggler and even
harder to make a living as a volunteer!  ;-)

So, in a very long-winded way, , I also wish the so-called helping
professions were more highly valued!

have a wonderful weekend everyone,
john

    It seems to me that if we had free daycare (government or business
    sponsored) from infancy for everyone, a generation of children would 
    get off to a good start, and that it would have a tremendous impact 
    on society 20 years down the road.  Of course this is assuming that 
    the people who need assistance raising their children  would put them 
    in daycare.  When I saw a program on daycare in China, it did seem a 
    little bit like they were brainwashing the children, but they were 
    teaching them to be happy and useful members of society.  Which would 
    save money on prisons, mental and physical health care, welfare,etc..  
    	Linda

    
    as with the era, it seems to me that, rather than trying to explain
    it away, we have to accept what seems obvious: namely, that we, as
    a society, do not value people.
    

    We are getting better at it, JWhite.  Sadly enough, we are not good
    enough.  It is unfortunate that mankind (I'm not one for genderless
    pronouns, mankind includes with all equivocally, women) can do such
    wonders with technology, and leave sociology so far behind.  :(
    
    Someday, tho.  Someday.  Wish it were now.  Wish it had been then.
    
    ---kim

    re:a few back,
    
    Regarding free daycare for everyone. Where woud society draw the line
    between the RIGHT to daycare and the RESPONSIBILITY to send your kids
    to daycare? 
    
    re: even further back,
    This "math phobia" in girls is a social phenominon, not a natural occurance.
    
    re: teachers
    There is a note in here about our educational system that deals with
    teachers and their pay and more.
    
    Kate Donovan

    
    Good topic.
    
    I read an article recently that touched on this.
    
    The hypothesis was that "caring, relationship-orientated work" is
    WOMENS work, and therefore largely devlued in both status and pay.
    
    "Feminine" traits are caring, nuturing, unquantifiable,
    people-orientated traits, right?
    "Masculine" traits are measurable, goal-orientated and "hard"
    skills.....easier to measure and therefore to put a salary against.
    
    Apparently women gravitate towards the "caring professions", with
    a far higher proportion of women in these crucial society-forming
    jobs......with great caring, dedicating, empathy, and low pay.
                                           
    This argument reminds me of the debates that split the faculties
    when I was at college. The "scientists" argued that as Art subjects
    had no right or wrong answers they couldn't be measured accurately
    (measurement was subjective) and therefore Arts degrees were worthless.
    We Artists found science with it's black-and-white rules boring
    and restrictive. 
    
    Maybe there's a link here somewhere.....
    
    'gail
    
    

    I didn't really tie my reply in with the basenote.  I have a friend
    who works for DSS and does home visits for at-risk (for abuse)
    children.  She is _so_ good with kids, and with people in general,
    at making them feel good about themselves, honoring their feelings,
    coping.  Alot of the children she sees are growing up with seemingly
    insurmountable problems.  I think sometimes what this woman could
    do if she were in charge of a daycare or afterschool program where
    she could interact with these kids on a regular basis, instead of
    seeing them 1 hour every other week or every third week and doing
    crisis intervention.
    	Linda

    I've always had the feeling that the more people who think,
    "I could do that.", or, rather "ANYONE can do that." of a particular
    job, the lower the payment for doing that job.
    
    As theories go, it breaks down pretty fast, but it's a start.
    
    						Ann B.

    Wow!  Can I relate to this note!  The one skill and ability I've
    always had an abundance of is interpersonal communication.  Speaking,
    both public and in one-on-one situations, or writing anything is
    like breathing to me--a natural function that flows.  In fact, I
    believe that my primary purpose on earth is to communicate and teach
    others to do the same.  The glitch appears to be the lack of value
    placed on such talents.  An example of this...last week a woman
    I did not know began talking to me using my name.  As I was trying
    to decide if I'd met her somewhere, she bubbled over about how she
    was one of my biggest fans.  Immediately I realized she must have
    been in one of my Change Your Mind, Change Your Life seminars that
    I recorded for The Phoenix Center--a clearing house for battered
    women and displaced homemakers, or one I participated in for the
    LDS Church Employment Service.  I did this as a service with no
    charge to either group as long as they did not attempt to charge
    for showing it.  From what I've heard, more than 600+ women at one
    center and several hundred more at the other center have seen this
    video and felt better about their possibilities in life.  It is
    a wonderful feeling, but it doesn't pay the rent or buy food because
    it is a skill that is valued "in kind" rather than in dollars, but
    how much I wish that wasn't the case.  If I could earn enough to
    support my family and be able to help people this way every day,
    I'd do it in a minute.  
    
    People skills are beginning to be valued, but they've got a long
    way to go.  In the meantime, I'm trying to expand my sense of
    accomplishment by doing volunteer work on my own time and finding
    "riches" in other ways.
    
    Barb

    Maybe we need to create a new job classification:
    
    			Interpersonal Engineering
    
    
    An interpersonal engineer:
    o  analyzes another person's cognitive/emotional/life stresses, 
    o  identifies the basic stress factors,
    o  comes up with a plan to assist the person in isolating and easing 
       the basic stress factors,
    o  implements the plan to build mutual feelings of confidence,
       happiness, and self-worth.
    ...all at split-second speed during a conversation.
    
    Funny how much more "acceptable" and "believable" it sounds as a skill
    when it's worded in tech talk...and how wrong and cold!
    
    Pam