Glenn Grothman, man of enlightenment (not!)

Republican State Sen. Glenn Grothman, while justifying his push to repeal equal pay laws for women in Wisconsin: “money is more important for men.”

Sen. Grothman also explained that whatever gaps exist between the wages earned by men versus those earned by women must surely stem from the decision by women to prioritize raising children over their careers.

I can’t help but wonder what qualifies Glenn Grothman to speak with any authority on any issue relating to women, families, or child rearing, given the fact that he’s an unmarried man who has no children.

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26 thoughts on “Glenn Grothman, man of enlightenment (not!)

  1. I have asked the following question before but got no response: If a pay gap exists, why doesn’t an opportunistic man or woman open a business in a male dominated field, perhaps construction, then hire only women at the lower wage rate, underbid their male dominated competitors, kick butt and get rich?

    1. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that you phrased it in the form of a loaded question.

      Just sayin’…

    2. Denis: > “If a pay gap exists…” — It’s documented.

      This leaves the rest of your argument looking like “If the sky is reallllly blue…” (why don’t yellow flowers look green, etc.)

      Opportunistic businesses take the opportunity to short employees’ pay and benefits for not only gender but any other reason they can come up with, precisely to keep that money and “get rich” as you put it — which is why such businesses pushed to end enforcement of the equal-pay law in the first place, and also are hostile to unions since allying increases employees’ power.

  2. You’ll either have to use your psychic powers or ask them. Or start same business yourself.

  3. Grothman’s an unmarried man without children AND living with mom, yet. I guess it was her interest in raising little Glenn that he’s questioning.

  4. Nice dodge MM. The wage gap, if it were to exist, would present a huge opportunity for someone to do as I suggested. Yet somehow, nobody ever jumps at the economic incentives there for the taking. That suggests one of two things, either that the pay gap is minimal at best or that nobody has figured out that you can make more money by hiring only women. I am guessing the former. And that nobody is ever willing to offer a reasoned explanation for the absence of latter is evidence that I am right.

    1. Could be that the evidence is in plain sight, right under your nose and that you simply have not bothered to notice it or simply choose to ignore it.

      Apparent evidence, at least in my adult life, I’ll cite five likely examples, female bank tellers and female insurance sales associates and female nurses and female retail sales associates, female laborers in elder care (take you favorite retail outlet pick in that instance).

      Admittedly, I have relied on the “gap,” reports of others more expert in the fields of research and statistics, but I would think that finance, insurance, health care, retail and geriatric services wage scale exploration would exhibit greater profitability to investors because of lower paid female staff, predominantly in the less-skilled areas that demand the predominant bulk of the labor needed to make any of those industries function.

      Reasoned enough explaination?

      1. Not at all nonquixote. The jobs you have listed tend to draw more women than men. So what. The industries you have noted are paying a market rate for the services needed. Should they pay more than that for some reason?

        1. Yes they should be paying more for a majority of them because they are no-longer living wage jobs, being that there is a higher percentage of working women in these lower tier jobs, who are the sole bread-winners for themselves and their families than was the case 40-50 years ago.

          1. nonquixote, I own a small business and I don’t pay what I suspect you would think is a living wage, despite the fact that my employees are all still alive. How much should I pay them? And what if my business doesn’t generate enough revenue for me to pay them to your satisfaction? Should you have some right to intervene with the mutually agreeable arrangements I have made with my employees?

            1. As you are getting way off topic with your question here, and again changing the topic, you go ahead and play with yourself if you must.

        2. Your dog hasn’t crapped yet, today, so nothing else to write about? Inquiring minds want to know. 🙂 Yes I even bit and even visited your blog once.

            1. Conservative thinks? Oxymoronical phrasing perchance? No thanks, I’ll continue to attempt to find fact rather than trust unsupportable beliefs.

  5. Denis, are you denying a wage gap? Despite the evidence? Perhaps the real question here is about your intelligence.

    1. I should expand on the subject SR. Certainly there are pay gaps. The NBA, for example, pays white players less than the black ones on average. Pay gaps may exist for entirely legitimate reasons having nothing to do with discrimination. In that case there would be no need to involve the government in such matters. The protests from the left are not merely about pay gaps but rather their conclusion that the gaps are necessarily proof of gender discrimination. The proof is lacking. And again, if gender discrimination were rampant, lots of money could be made by hiring only women and competing against companies that pay relatively more for labor.

      1. Five of the biggest world-wide industries employing some of the largest percentages of women mentioned by me above and you press forward on the rarefied, fantasy elite jobs, male jobs to boot, in professional sports, to try to plaster together a justification for your point while ignoring a “reasonable,” explanation and throwing in RACE in lieu of gender to muddle the discussion even more. Sorry to be bursting your bubble.

        No misogyny here, move right along, people. Pay gaps, sure let’s talk pay gaps between professional athletes and the rest of us, what’s next, popular movie stars or entertainers and the rest of us, hedge fund manipulators and the rest of us?

        1. nonquixote, you have been noting that women are attracted to certain fields and that some of them don’t pay particularly well. That is quite different from proving that there are pay gaps within those fields, moreover, if there are gender pay gaps in those fields, you have not even attempted to prove that gender bias is the cause. So basically you have been changing the subject.

          1. Hate to keep giving you talking point ideas by even responding, but I’ll chance it. At 9:10 AM I was pointing out YOUR attempt at CHANGING THE SUBJECT with your male professional athlete’s wages tale with the race card thrown in. Obviously nothing to do with a GENDER gap in wages, unless of course you had compared male professional sports to female professional sports, which you did not do nor apparently even think of. (Damn, I gave you another idea, there).

            Absolutely nowhere, have I been noting that women are necessarily “attracted,” to certain lower paid fields of endeavor. Does gender discrimination against availability for various types of work, (traditionally “men’s” work), or the term, ‘glass ceiling,” ever come to your mind? Nonexistent in a conservative belief system? Do you ever even fathom other economic factors like women getting paid nothing for household and child rearing services, which is even lower than wages paid, at for profit daycare.

            A mighty, but unsubstantiated, theoretical, cosmic leap to state I claiming women are “attracted,” to lower paying jobs. Kindly refrain from projecting conservative beliefs onto me and erroneously making out that such a false premise came from me, when failing to even begin envisioning important contributing factors to the entire scope of wage discrimination gap, to begin with.

            1. I brought up the NBA racial pay disparity to demonstrate that there can be pay disparities that occur without discrimination of one kind or another, so it is relevant because there could be gender pay disparities that occur without discrimination. For example, women could be attracted in greater numbers to jobs that don’t pay as well. And regarding your sensitivity on that last point, I did not mean to imply that you agree with me. So sorry. But alas, some people might just want to be bank tellers for whatever reason while others may want to go to school more and become investment bankers, and these free choices may correlate with gender from time to time. But it doesn’t prove gender discrimination.

              1. Ignore my reference to glass ceilings, and ignore my reference to women being largely disallowed in traditionally male dominated jobs (yes I could have stated that point better, above) and rave on with your erroneous and incomplete assessment of why women take the jobs they often do. Whipping that dead horse still ain’t getting you anywhere.

  6. I just grabbed the first handy thing I found, which was on an old Althouse:

    Title VII prohibits sex discrimination in employment unless the employer can establish what’s called a BFOQ or “Bona Fide Occupational Qualification.” The EEOC Guidelines do allow intentional sex discrimination in hiring an actor or actress where the sex-specific roles are necessary for the “purpose of authenticity or genuineness,” see 29 C.F.R. § 1604.2(a)(2).

    So, Denis, I guess that answers your question about why women don’t hire only women for jobs that can be done by males……now, if you want to open a strip club you could hire only women or men if it was a male strip club. Except for the bartenders, managers, maintenance, etc. Hmm, maybe that’s why the law specifically refers to gender in acting roles?

  7. Nemo,

    I do appreciate it, if you did take the time to follow that entire narrative exchange. That point addressed a particular commenter and what I perceive as a limited conceptual understanding of numerous contributing factors to a multifaceted discussion. Thanks for your question. No, it does not.

  8. Well, if there is no gender gap in pay scales…there would be no harm in leaving the law intact.

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