Feminist study finds women are more privileged, still warns about sexism
A feminist study reported by the Daily Caller last week found that women are more privileged in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, but nevertheless warns that women face “systemic barriers.”
The study’s three researchers include two female academics, Shulamit Khan and Wendy Williams, who begin the research paper by claiming to be “victims” of “egregious examples of gender bias” and “cruelty.” They, along with Cornell University psychology professor Stephen J. Ceci, reviewed studies on gender bias produced between 2000 and 2020 and found that women were more privileged across the board.
When it comes to tenure-track jobs, for example, women received significantly more of the prestigious positions than men. Although women make up only 11% of applicants, they receive 32% of first tenure-track job offers on average. They also receive grant funding, journal acceptances, and recommendation letters on par with men.
Women are three to fifteen times more likely than men to be inducted into the National Academies of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In some fields, like biology, their starting salaries are higher. The study’s authors are forced to acknowledge that gender pay gaps in STEM fields are mostly because men produce more than women. Men, for example, publish more academic papers than women.
The study’s authors concluded that accusations of bias against women in STEM fields are untrue, but hurried to point out that this “does not deny the possibility that broader, systemic barriers against women in the academy exist and/or that significant bias existed before 2000.”
“[I]t is important to note that implicit biases related to gendered expectations and stereotypes could nevertheless still lead to gendered outcomes, even in the absence of explicit bias,” the authors claimed.
The UK gender pay gap
Other analyses suggest women are also being favored in other areas. A UK report in March published by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), found that young females 16-24 on average earn £26,500 ($34,136) per year, which is £2,200 ($2,834) more than their male counterparts. The CSJ called it a “crisis for young men” that is linked to the decline in male-dominated industries like manufacturing, agriculture and construction. The number of men in manufacturing jobs has plummeted by 1.3 million since 1997, a 40% drop that the CSJ connects to the feminist assault on masculinity. Over 40% of adults believe society does not value masculine traits, according to GBNews.
In the UK, female full-time employees earn on average $7,771 less than men per year. According to government data, however, women also choose different careers. Women hold 77% of jobs in the health and social work sector, for example, where the median salary is £34,273 ($44,137). Men, however, tend to gravitate toward jobs in manufacturing, which offer a median salary of £37,071, as well as other higher-paying jobs.
Iceland’s gender pay gap
In October 2023, thousands of women in Iceland—including female Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdóttir—went on strike to protest “unequal pay.” The Gold Report revealed that while Icelandic women earned 21% less than men in 2022, they also worked less than men. According to Statistics Iceland, women on average worked a total of 32.6 hours per week while men worked at least seven hours more. Estimates from Statista show that between 2010 and 2021 men actually worked eight hours more than women per week — meaning that women worked 23.5% less but made only 21% less in pay.
According to a 2024 report from Payscale, however, there is a gender pay gap. After controlling for all factors, such as hours worked, experience, education, industry, occupation, and other factors, Payscale found that women earn one cent less per dollar.
