Monday was Human Rights Day. While the definition of that seems to be ever-broadening, from contraception to healthcare, recent statistics c
By: Nicole Russell
Published: Dec 11, 2018
Monday was Human Rights Day. While the definition of that seems to be ever-broadening, from contraception to healthcare, recent statistics cycling through the news again seem to provide a salient point about gender differences, the so-called âwage gapâ and even human rights.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that, in 2015, men dominated the 20 most dangerous occupations in the United States. Logging is the most dangerous job in the U.S., followed by fishing. Mining is the 20th most dangerous profession. More men than women occupied these jobs by anywhere from 85.4 to 99.9 percent.
Still, very few feminists, or anyone really, make a stink about the gender gap in casualties on the job. Perhaps because men earn so much doing it? Or they donât deserve recognition because the patriarchy discovered logging and itâs getting what it deserved? Whatever the reason, itâs rarely mentioned, certainly not by feminists. I didnât see âsafety at workâ anywhere in the #HumanRightsDay memes or tweets â but I did see calls for healthcare, contraception, and awareness of global warming as human rights.
Jordan Peterson, Americaâs favorite Canadian psychologist and gender rabble-rouser, wrote about this recently on his blog. He said studies, and his anecdotal research (heâs traveled to Scandinavia several times this last year), show that all this work to make men and women more equal has actually had the opposite effect. âSocieties become more gender-equal in their social and political policies, men and women become more different in certain aspects, rather than more similar,â he wrote. However, when it comes to work and safety at work, men really do fill roles that are not only dangerous, but essential for a functioning, safe society.
More interestingly, Peterson argues that men choose these hazardous occupational roles because of their innate wiring, not in spite of it. In other words, women, and some men, can wreak havoc all they want about how men and women are equal, but real life proves differently.
There are other sex differences, as well, but they arenât as large, excepting that of the aforementioned interest: men are comparatively more interested in things and women in people. This is the largest psychological difference between men and women yet identified. And these differences drive occupational choice, particularly at the extremes.
In a study Pew Research Center did in 2017, but published in the summer of 2018, and which I canât believe didnât go viral, they asked 4,573 Americans what they valued in each gender and described those values with 1,500 different words. The results were fascinating in that they were unsurprising. In other words, even during this third â or fourth? â wave of feminism, women still used words like âstrong,â âprovider,â and âhonestâ to identify positive traits in men. Men still used words like âbeautiful,â âkind,â and âcompassionateâ to describe positive traits in women. Americans in general used words like âpowerfulâ in a positive way to describe men, but when it describes women, itâs seen as negative. Beautiful as an adjective was nearly almost always used to describe women; provider was almost always used to describe men.
Itâs clear how innate wiring in men and women, along with societyâs view of the differences between men and women, despite feminismâs efforts, combine to encourage or support the fact that men occupy the top 20 most hazardous jobs at a rate of nearly 100 percent. This also may help people realize why some of those occupations are quite lucrative. Yet this irony (a lack of safety for men perhaps, but a bounty of free birth control for women) doesnât seem to matter to feminists.
Let me clarify: Men donât want it to matter either â they certainly donât want women clamoring for their safety on the job. But statistics show gender differences and choices caused by those differences influence the market as well as any kind of pay gap.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examinerâs Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
