In a 2017 study titled Do Women Ask?, researchers were surprised to find that women actually do ask for raises as often as men — we’re just more likely to be turned down. Conducted by faculty at the Cass Business School, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Warwick and using data collected from over 4,600 Australian workers, the study was expected to confirm long-established theories around women’s reluctance to negotiate. Instead, the analysis showed that men’s and women’s propensity to negotiate is roughly the same.
These findings pose a significant challenge to the commonly accepted wisdom on this topic, as well as the findings of other well-known studies, specifically that of economics professor Linda Babcock. In 2003, Babcock co-authored an era-defining book called Women Don’t Ask (the general thrust of which is pretty obvious from its title). Her book and the studies underpinning it have been cited ever since as evidence of women’s reticence to ask for more in the workplace. (It’s worth noting that Babcock herself didn’t suggest that women’s supposed reluctance to negotiate stems from innate “feminine” qualities, as others have done. Rather, she believed it was a learned trait inculcated by various external social forces.)
Unlike other studies that have been carried out in this area, the Do Women Ask? researchers had more detailed data that revealed a crucial fact: Women are far more likely than men to work in jobs where salary negotiation isn’t necessarily possible, such as low-skilled hourly wage jobs or part-time roles. Previous studies that reached the “women don’t ask” conclusion often failed to account for certain types of jobs (and industries) being dominated by one gender, focusing instead on the overall number of men or women who’d reported salary negotiations, which — given the number of women who work jobs with “non-negotiable” salaries — skewed their findings.
The Do Women Ask? study, on the other hand, found that when comparing men and women who do similar jobs (and jobs where there are genuine opportunities for salary negotiation), women actually ask for raises at the same rates as men. Other recent studies reinforce those findings, including two separate studies by leading consultancy firm McKinsey, the most recent of which surveyed 64,000 North American workers to find that women actually negotiate for pay raises at a slightly higher rate of 31 percent to men’s 29 percent.
Now for the bad news: Both McKinsey’s research and the Do Women Ask?study found that while men and women ask for pay raises at broadly similar rates, women are more likely to be refused or suffer blowback for daring to broach the topic.
Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?
Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.
Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.
Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?
ALSO you should consider browsing Virtual Pet List and seeing if there are any pet sites you might be interested in playing. There is a whole genre of browser games right under your nose
Getting off of twitter and onto neocities has really healed me and I am so glad to see it is healing other people too ;u; let's retreat into the self-made digital woods and away from corporate bs pls, I am so tired
…also re: the entire discussion of “is it moral to enjoy fictional societies that are less than 100% democratic and egalitarian, and characters who are Not Trying Hard Enough to make them so?”
I’d like to point out that sometimes the fantasy isn’t “this kind of society can be good actually”. Sometimes it’s “this kind of society can change gradually, over time, into something more just and equitable, without having to have the bloody revolution that you guys think the main characters ought to be starting instead of following the actual plot. Because, you know, revolutions? Messy and violent and often hard on the minorities and on anyone who doesn’t fall completely in line with the new order, and often on the people who DO.”
Seriously, it bothers me how often the people who complain about “stop romanticizing unjust power systems!” are EXTREMELY willing to romanticize revolutions.
And sometimes, the fantasy is about people managing to have a life in a fucked up world.
Hell, at my book club yesterday, we were talking about how sometimes escapism is getting lost in a fictional world that’s screwed up in a different way than the one you’re stuck in in reality.
Yes! Which ties into a years-old comment from a smart person on Dreamwidth that I happened to reread yesterday, about how dystopias can be comforting because they often put the bad shit right out in the open. Your life may be shit but at least you’re not being forced to go along with some collective pretense that it ISN’T.
Don't worry, someone on Reddit has downloaded them all and will upload them to the Internet Archive later
The uploader apparently has a lot more of these, and is taking requests for more in the comments, so if anyone has anyone they want to see shoot 'em a line
I can’t begin to express the difference it makes just that I’m able to wear exclusively t-shirts, baggy shorts, and flip-flops. And the thing is, right. What you notice is that I’m wearing something slightly odd for the weather. What you don’t notice is that I’m not curled up with my hands clamped over my ears because socks make the clinking plates in the restaurant too loud.
Also, as an adult, I can organize how I run the more difficult parts of coping with my disorder for myself. I can pick out writing instruments and paper for myself, keeping a bullet journal, instead of using a school-provided planner that's formatted for an allistic person and a cheap wooden pencil that smudges when I touch it and fouls my hands and needs sharpening and breaks.
I don't have to pick clothes to wear for the day that someone else bought me that have to adhere to a set of rules I never agreed to.
I get to choose my haircuts and how often they're done.
I can say no to things and not elaborate why.
I have autonomy and freedom your 8-year-old autistic nephew does not.
The Swedish warship Vasa. It sank in 1628 less than a mile into its maiden voyage and was recovered from the sea floor after 333 years almost completely intact. Now housed at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, is the world's best preserved 17th century ship
...But Gustavus Adolphus is STILL demanding changes. So the shipwright scales up the measurements to try and make things work. Which might have worked, except the ship was being worked on by Swedes, Finns, Danes, Sami people.
Communication is hard enough, but also it turns out that there are two different types of rulers being used by the workers. One is in Swedish feet and one is in Amsterdam feet. Amsterdam feet were only eleven inches long...
The Swedish warship Vasa. It sank in 1628 less than a mile into its maiden voyage and was recovered from the sea floor after 333 years almost completely intact. Now housed at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, is the world's best preserved 17th century ship
Kinda funny that the best example of its kind is the one that sucked as bad as it possibly could.
Oh, it was *ridiculously* bad. That initial post says “from the sea floor,” but that implies it made it out to sea.
So Gustavus Adolphus is king when Sweden is fighting wars all over the place. They need more ships, so he commissions four of them, two big and two small. The Vasa was supposed to be one of the smaller ones. Emphasis on “supposed to be.” Because Gustavus Adolphus keeps ordering changes. Like, add twelve more feet to the keel! Pile on the carvings! Add another gun deck for the hell of it! It got even worse when Sweden lost ten ships in a huge storm, so now they needed the Vasa *yesterday*. But Gustavus Adolphus is STILL demanding changes. So the shipwright scales up the measurements to try and make things work. Which might have worked, except the ship was being worked on by Swedes, Finns, Danes, Sami people. Communication is hard enough, but also it turns out that there are two different types of rulers being used by the workers. One is in Swedish feet and one is in Amsterdam feet. Amsterdam feet were only eleven inches long. (There’s a joke there I’m too tired to make.)
Anyway, because of that, the port side is heavier.
Okay, so you have to imagine the Vasa, with its hastily-scaled-up measurements, its *seven hundred* decorative carvings, its sixty-fucking-four bronze cannons. It’s a goddamn mess, AND its center of gravity is way off. Except that’s not something you could measure with instruments at the time. What you’d do is, you’d put it in the water, then have a bunch of guys run back and forth from port to starboard a bunch of times to test if it’ll tip over.
The guys who did this test could only do it three times before the Vasa was like, “I think I’m gonna hurl,” and almost tipped over right then and there.
Everybody there is like, “… uh-oh.” The admiral conducting the test just sighs and goes, “If only the king were here,” because Gustavus Adolphus wasn’t, and maybe if he had been he would have seen they fucked up and decided to pull the plug. Oh, and those bronze cannons? They weighed down the ship so much that the lowest row of gun portals was almost at the waterline.
But. Sweden needed the Vasa. It needed it to go to war. At that time, it was the most expensive thing Sweden ever spent money on.
SO. It’s August 10th, 1628. It’s the port in Stockholm. There’s music, there’s festivities, everybody’s showed up to see the Vasa off. A few ships tug the Vasa out to the current, let her loose, she drops four of her sails, and off she goes.
For about thirteen hundred meters.
Then, a light breeze blows. When I say light, I mean light. But that was all it took. The Vasa flops to port, water flows into the gun portals, and down it goes, still in the fucking harbor with its masts sticking out of the water.
So when that original post says “recovered from the sea floor,” it means brought up from the *actual harbor*. Like, within sight of the docks.
Oh, oh! But cool story about all this. Remember those sixty-four bronze cannons? Yeah, Sweden kind of needed those back, so about three decades later in 1658, the Swedes go down and retrieve almost all of them with a diving bell. Which is kind of badass.
Gentle reminder that very little fandom labor is automated, because I think people forget that a lot.
That blog with a tagging system you love? A person curates those tags by hand.
That rec blog with a great organization scheme and pretty graphics? Someone designed and implemented that organization scheme and made those graphics.
That network that posts a cool variety of stuff? People track down all that variety and queue it by hand, and other people made all the individual pieces.
That post with umpteen links to helpful resources, and information about them? Someone gathered those links, researched the sources, wrote up the information about them.
That graphic about fandom statistics? Someone compiled those statistics, analyzed them, organized them, figured out a useful way to convey the information to others, and made the post.
That event that you think looks neat? Someone wrote the rules, created the blogs and Discords, designed the graphics, did their best to promo the event so it'd succeed.
None of this was done automatically. None of it just appears whole out of the internet ether.
I think everyone realizes that fic writing and fanart creation are work, and at least some folks have got it through their heads that gif creation and graphics and moodboards take effort, and meta is usually respected for the effort that goes into it, at least as far as I've seen, but I feel like a lot of people don't really get how much labor goes into curation, too.
If people are creating resources, curating content, organizing the creations of others, gathering information, and doing other fandom activities that aren't necessarily the direct action of creation, they're doing a lot of fandom labor, and it's often largely unrecognized.
Celebrate fan work!
To folks doing this kind of labor: I see you, and I thank you. You are the backbones of our fandoms and I love you.
When I was “I want him” about a male character im not saying I wanna fuck him. I want him like a spoiled little girl wants a pony, I want to him so I can put him on my shelf for safekeeping, I want him like a good hearty stew on a winter’s evening, I want to put him in a jar and shake it.
