[Bix]

(04-19-2014 03:52 AM)dreambig Wrote:  

Dear Mr/Ms Troll,

Lower salaries on average can indicate any number of factors. Off the top of my head, girls tend to come from liberal arts backgrounds rather than scientific/maths-based ones. These graduates earn significantly less in Japan.

That said, all of my female colleagues are above 3 million. Even the new grads get more than that.

Better results do not necessarily indicate unfairness. The above is very similar to the disproven "70 cents on the dollar" bullshit that feminists spout in the west.

Wow. Did I really embarrass you that badly by showing you're wrong that you have to resort to calling me a troll? I didn't realize your ego was so fragile.

Here are some links (scroll 2/3 down the pages) that shows women's and men's salaries:

dentists: females make 1M yen less per year

http://nensyu-labo.com/sikaku_sikai.htm

system engineers: females make 1M yen less per year

http://nensyu-labo.com/syokugyou_se.htm

Comparing apples to apples, you can see that a large disparity still exists.

Yes, there can be many reasons other than discrimination that leads to women making less. But anyone who has ever actually KNOWN a few women here will easily see that men have a huge advantage career-wise. They have more opportunity for advancement and make more money when they do. Only an absolute fucking moron would summarily dismiss the idea while no evidence that supports his/her other 'theories' about the income disparity. Other factors exist, yes, but to say that women have the same opportunities as men is, well, fucking retarded. Geez, have you even ever been on a date with a girl in Japan? If you've had ANY interaction with real, live women, you would see that discrimination IS an issue that prevents women from having the same opportunities as men do.

Do women choose low-paying careers more often than men? Yes they do. Do they do that because they would rather be kindergarten teachers than doctors? Sure, many might. But when you DO have women becoming dentists and they are paid $10,000 US less than their male counterparts, you automatically throw that out of the equation? How much longer do you think it'll take to pay back a loan when a woman goes to med school for 8 years and then makes 10 grand less a year than her boyfriend? You're too obtuse to see that this is a disincentive?

You keep going back to you "colleagues" as your primary example for everything Japanese. Your colleagues are not representative of shit. Do you work for a Japanese company or a foreign one? Your colleagues are representative of YOUR company and your company only.

You sound like the stereotypical gaijin who comes here, sticks to his little group of other gaijin friends and bottom feeds in the bars where all the ugly, poorly-dressed gaijin-loving women are happy to make you their 15th foreigner boyfriend because you don't know enough Japanese to have a normal conversation with anyone that doesn't speak English.

If this doesn't describe you, then how the hell did you ever get beyond that level without learning a thing about the culture you live in???

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

Bix, just because you point out that a female dentist earns less than a male dentist on average doesn't mean anything. They are not clones. There a billion different factors that influence earning, and we're talking earnings inside the same field here. For example:

- What is their comparative seniority and work experience?
- How many hours per week do they work, and how many of those hours are overtime or during holidays?
- Do they have the same preferences as far as different forms of compensation?
- Are they equally willing to work in a remote and unattractive location?
- Do they perform their jobs in different ways?
- Do they achieve same levels of trust or reputation with clients, even if their work is of equal quality?
- Do they negotiate salaries in the same way?

Seeing a difference and screaming "IT HAS TO BE DISCRIMINATION" is pure intellectual laziness. No, Bix, you are the one claiming discrimination, so the onus is on you to provide evidence of it. It is not our job to provide you with proof that discrimination doesn't exist (even though I felt magnanimous and provided you with some of it) because we're not the ones claiming something to exist. You are.

Provide concrete evidence that the 1m difference is due to exactly discrimination and not possibly due do something else or shut up.

Sadly, given your inability to compose an argument in any form other than a meltdown, I doubt that we'll be getting such proof from you anytime soon.

[Bushido]

I've worked in several Japanese firms and none of them discriminated on salary for women. That said, it's a tough environment with a lot of overtime and drinking sessions which most girls aren't up to. There have been exceptions though but even those tended to quit eventually.

To say I don't know this country is funny shit. I've been involved with hiring within Nikkei corporates and these firms are more than keen to find female engineers. Japan is starting to suffer from the same PC propaganda as the West and positive discrimation is creeping in too. To throw around silly stereotypes and false parallels about salary data isn't convincing anyone around here. But please do continue Ms Troll.

A Women's Studies major trolling the forum. Wow, just wow.

[Samseau]

(04-19-2014 02:42 AM)Bix Wrote:  

(04-19-2014 12:40 AM)dreambig Wrote:  

[quote] (04-19-2014 12:11 AM)Bix Wrote:  

Sure, they have the legal framework for women to come back to work, but how motivated would YOU be when your salary is 180,000 yen a month? I've never dated a girl here that made more than 250,000 yen a month.

1. Only new grads fresh out of college are making 180,000/month base salary in Japan. Most live with their parents and so have zero costs. This is not even close to a representative salary for career women in Japan.

2. The Japanese are modest when they talk about their salary. If they say they are making 250,000/month they are generally only talking about the base. Add housing benefits, overtime pay, biannual bonuses, account allowances and that is more like 300,000-350,000/month as an absolute minimum. This is the opposite way to how Westerners talk. We tend to exaggerate to impress.

3. In Japan it is illegal to discriminate on compensation based on gender or nationality. If a girl is getting a shitty salary, my money is on her lacking the necessary skills for the business world in Japan.

4. While it's true that salaries tend to suck in Japan, they suck for guys too. Japanese women are generally intelligent enough to realize that the corporate world is unrewarding and quit to have a family. The real victims here are Japanese men, not women. Men don't get the option to drop out when they feel like it.

Wow. Are you seriously trying to argue that women have the same career opportunities available to them as men and that they make as much money??

You are limiting your views to "career women" in Japan. Are you neglecting how much harder it is for women to get these "career" jobs than men?

Here's a chart comparing men's and women's salaries across age ranges. In every single category, women make significantly less than men and the difference becomes huge after 30. Again, this graph is comparing male and female "salarymen" and does not acknowledge that these jobs just aren't as available to women in the first place. It shows that women never exceed an average of 3M yen a year, which, divided by 12 is less than 250,000 yen a month, in any age group.

平成24年（平成24年12月31日現在）のサラリーマンの年齢別年収データです。年齢は19歳以下から70歳以上で5歳間隔に男女別に分かれています。

Does this measure "single unmarried women"? Because it if doesn't, the chart is trash. Obviously women who become mothers are going to bring the averages down since they don't have an income.

Moreover, in Japan, the wife controls all of the husband's income, so really there is no need for women to work if she can get married.

[Collide]

(04-19-2014 05:21 AM)Bix Wrote:  

Comparing apples to apples, you can see that a large disparity still exists.

You can't simply compare a dentist to another dentist or a doctor to another doctor. You have to compare a cardiac surgeon who works 40 hours a week in the private sector to a cardiac surgeon who works 40 hours a week in the private sector.

You don't want to move the magnifying glass that close because you're afraid at what you'll see, that the wage gap closes. This is due to choices. Unmarried women without children make 117% more than unmarried men without children, would you be for closing the "disparity" there as well?

[Bix]

You can believe me and the experience I've had, or don't. I tried to contribute by giving my opinion about a country that I've lived in longer than anyone else on this board probably has. (That, in and of itself, says nothing about whether or not my opinion holds water, of course.) Take it, leave it, do whatever you want with it. I really don't care one way or another.

But for your sake, I hope you don't go repeating it to others that actually know anything about Japan. You will make yourself look like a retarded fool. If you're OK with that, then by all means.

[Bushido]

(04-19-2014 10:09 AM)Samseau Wrote:  

(04-19-2014 02:42 AM)Bix Wrote:  

(04-19-2014 12:40 AM)dreambig Wrote:  

[quote] (04-19-2014 12:11 AM)Bix Wrote:  

Sure, they have the legal framework for women to come back to work, but how motivated would YOU be when your salary is 180,000 yen a month? I've never dated a girl here that made more than 250,000 yen a month.

1. Only new grads fresh out of college are making 180,000/month base salary in Japan. Most live with their parents and so have zero costs. This is not even close to a representative salary for career women in Japan.

2. The Japanese are modest when they talk about their salary. If they say they are making 250,000/month they are generally only talking about the base. Add housing benefits, overtime pay, biannual bonuses, account allowances and that is more like 300,000-350,000/month as an absolute minimum. This is the opposite way to how Westerners talk. We tend to exaggerate to impress.

3. In Japan it is illegal to discriminate on compensation based on gender or nationality. If a girl is getting a shitty salary, my money is on her lacking the necessary skills for the business world in Japan.

4. While it's true that salaries tend to suck in Japan, they suck for guys too. Japanese women are generally intelligent enough to realize that the corporate world is unrewarding and quit to have a family. The real victims here are Japanese men, not women. Men don't get the option to drop out when they feel like it.

Wow. Are you seriously trying to argue that women have the same career opportunities available to them as men and that they make as much money??

You are limiting your views to "career women" in Japan. Are you neglecting how much harder it is for women to get these "career" jobs than men?

Here's a chart comparing men's and women's salaries across age ranges. In every single category, women make significantly less than men and the difference becomes huge after 30. Again, this graph is comparing male and female "salarymen" and does not acknowledge that these jobs just aren't as available to women in the first place. It shows that women never exceed an average of 3M yen a year, which, divided by 12 is less than 250,000 yen a month, in any age group.

平成24年（平成24年12月31日現在）のサラリーマンの年齢別年収データです。年齢は19歳以下から70歳以上で5歳間隔に男女別に分かれています。

Does this measure "single unmarried women"? Because it if doesn't, the chart is trash. Obviously women who become mothers are going to bring the averages down since they don't have an income.

Nope. It measures average salaries for all women in the sample between 19-70. Most married women with kids do part-time jobs or temporary work which helps explain these figures.

I doubt Bix has had any "experience" here beyond being ignored by men. The hate is obvious.

[Faust]

I'll throw in a second opinion here:

Working in Japan SUCKS if you're Japanese. You think you've got it bad in the states? They've got it worse. If you're white, you can sometimes get some decent deals, but your average Japanese guy is going to experience shit working conditions. This is the economy that gave rise to words like karoushi (Death from overwork.) I saw a newspaper article the other day about some poor bastard who would work up to 334 hours of overtime in a month. That's 120 hour weeks. Guy killed himself. That's an exceptional case, in an exceptionally nasty industry, but it should demonstrate the principle. And in most places, this sort of thing gets worse as you get promoted; the amount of unpaid overtime middle managers put in is legendary.

Women, not being idiots, want nothing to do with this shit. The only reason to put in regular 80 hour weeks and work past the last train unless you've got a family to support, and that's not an expectation for women. Much easier to live at home (You can live at home until you're married, and if you're in your 30s and still unmarried, you can still live there anyway), or get a nice easy koumuin job. Why kill yourself for cash you don't need?


Bix:

Your data is shit, and proves the opposite of the point you're trying to make. Not withstanding data quality and sampling bias, it shows a direct correlation between average length of employment (平均勤続年数) and salary (平均年収)

Reported salary: 702万 for men / 593万 for women. Men in the survey make 17% more than women. (702-593)/((702+593)/2)
Reported length of Employment: 5.1 years for men / 4.0 years for women. Men in the survey have been working 24% longer than women.

[Bix]

I don't care if anyone believes me. It's not going to affect my life on iota.

The disparity in income is clear and real. You cannot dispute that. What is the cause of it? There are doubtlessly many possible factors. Many women don't want to work past marriage. Women may or may not put in the same hours as men. Etc. Etc. Etc. And each of these probably have some merit.

What is mind-boggling is the extent to which all of you will twist your little brains to entertain a dozen reasons EXCEPT THE IDEA that there might be gender discrimination in the Japanese workplace.

Do you not see the irony here?

How many of you have even actually lived here for more than a couple of years? Anyone? No? On what authority can you say that my opinion is wrong? You can't. The only thing you've got is the closed-minded brainwashed view you cling to for dear life that, just because the feminists in the west are screaming banshees complaining about inequality often when it doesn't really exist, then it must be so that the women in Japan are doing the same. That is your entire basis for your beliefs. Nothing but wishful thinking.

You're all too busy shooting down my opinion because I didn't provide you with a doctoral dissertation to realize that not one shred of evidence has been provided in this thread to show that women DO have the same opportunities as men here. What proof do YOU have that women DO have the same opportunities for employment, advancement and salary that men do? I'm genuinely interested to know what you've got besides your desire to think so. Show me how smart you all are.

Btw, Faust, your logic is shit. If you think working somewhere 20% longer means they deserve 20% more, then you're saying that someone who's been at a company for two years to your one deserves double your salary. That's a ludicrous proposition.

[Parlay44]

I think losing the war and admitting defeat broke the men of that generation. Their culture is based on doing everything to absolute perfection. It must be ego shattering to live like that and have a foreign army take you down basically over night. The kids were probably raised solely by their mothers after that breeding subsequent generations of panty sniffing mama's boys. It's harsh.

[Faust]

Quote:

Post: #184RE: Japan doesn't bang
I don't care if anyone believes me. It's not going to affect my life on iota.

The disparity in income is clear and real. You cannot dispute that. What is the cause of it? There are doubtlessly many possible factors. Many women don't want to work past marriage. Women may or may not put in the same hours as men. Etc. Etc. Etc. And each of these probably have some merit.

What is mind-boggling is the extent to which all of you will twist your little brains to entertain a dozen reasons EXCEPT THE IDEA that there might be gender discrimination in the Japanese workplace.

Do you not see the irony here?

How many of you have even actually lived here for more than a couple of years? Anyone? No? On what authority can you say that my opinion is wrong? You can't. The only thing you've got is the closed-minded brainwashed view you cling to for dear life that, just because the feminists in the west are screaming banshees complaining about inequality often when it doesn't really exist, then it must be so that the women in Japan are doing the same. That is your entire basis for your beliefs. Nothing but wishful thinking.

You're all too busy shooting down my opinion because I didn't provide you with a doctoral dissertation to realize that not one shred of evidence has been provided in this thread to show that women DO have the same opportunities as men here. What proof do YOU have that women DO have the same opportunities for employment, advancement and salary that men do? I'm genuinely interested to know what you've got besides your desire to think so. Show me how smart you all are.

Btw, Faust, your logic is shit. If you think working somewhere 20% longer means they deserve 20% more, then you're saying that someone who's been at a company for two years to your one deserves double your salary. That's a ludicrous proposition.

Yes, we get it. You have magical Japan powers that give you magical insights. We're all terribly, terribly impressed, and let me be the first to say that I'm going to change my opinion on the country based on the unsupported claims of some guy on a message board.

Salary correlates with time spent working. It correlates with other things that the survey didn't measure, like who went to what school, which is a giant issue. Was that controlled for? Or are you going to tell me admission to top-level universities is
Then you've got the data quality issues like "Why do men and women work the exact same amount of hours a week?" "Are women more likely to work out in the countryside, where it's less hectic but the pay is worse?" This is the same shit as the "Women make 77 cents for every dollar men make!" claim that routinely gets beaten to death around here, and I'm amazed you think you can get away with it based off of a couple graphs.

If you want to have a discussion about gender discrimination in the Japanese workplace, I'm more than open to having it. My opinion of the Japanese workplace is in the gutter already, so convincing me that rampant gender discrimination is another one of its many, many problems shouldn't be a very hard job. But if you want to do that, you can't just come in here and scream, "I am the NIPPONIEST! Bow before my wisdom!" and expect that to persuade anyone. You know jack shit about me, and you know jack shit about anyone else here. I could be the goddamn emperor posting in my off hours for all you know. Find some sources to prove your case, better ones than the random graphs you linked above, and make an argument that doesn't rely on us believing that you have some secret Eastern knowledge denied to the rest of us. Don't worry about translating them, I can read them just fine, as can the other people in this conversation.

[The Father]

(04-19-2014 06:15 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

Bix, just because you point out that a female dentist earns less than a male dentist on average doesn't mean anything. They are not clones. There a billion different factors that influence earning, and we're talking earnings inside the same field here. For example:

- What is their comparative seniority and work experience?
- How many hours per week do they work, and how many of those hours are overtime or during holidays?
- Do they have the same preferences as far as different forms of compensation?
- Are they equally willing to work in a remote and unattractive location?
- Do they perform their jobs in different ways?
- Do they achieve same levels of trust or reputation with clients, even if their work is of equal quality?
- Do they negotiate salaries in the same way?

Seeing a difference and screaming "IT HAS TO BE DISCRIMINATION" is pure intellectual laziness. No, Bix, you are the one claiming discrimination, so the onus is on you to provide evidence of it. It is not our job to provide you with proof that discrimination doesn't exist (even though I felt magnanimous and provided you with some of it) because we're not the ones claiming something to exist. You are.

Provide concrete evidence that the 1m difference is due to exactly discrimination and not possibly due do something else or shut up.

Sadly, given your inability to compose an argument in any form other than a meltdown, I doubt that we'll be getting such proof from you anytime soon.

Exactly right. See Warren Farrell's "why men earn more". He notes 22 factors that discuss why even people in the same profession earn different amounts. You named some above.

Don't get me wrong - I know zilch about Japan. I'm only saying that you can't look at what men make and what women make and conclude it is the result of sexism. In the U.S., it is largely the result of CHOICES.

[The Father]

Great book. Nothing to do with Japan. But it does emphatically prove you can't simply say "Male doctors earn more than female doctors, so sexism!"

http://www.warrenfarrell.net/Summary/

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

The rabid way Bix (god have mercy on his banned soul) is arguing is quite similar to that of a hardcore Jehovah's Witness. They walk up to you and say "There is a god named Jehovah", and in their twisted logic, suddenly it's up to you to prove that god doesn't exist or you have to accept everything they say. Same with conspiracy theories about Orgon, dowsing, perpetual motion and so on, not to mention the Reptilian people of David Icke. Real debate, of course, doesn't work like that, but a bold (if nonsensical) approach still captures the attention of poorly informed or already agitated people.

Conclusion: feminism = religion.

For the record, from what I know of Japan I also believe there is some discrimination going on there as well. But it's just one factor in a sea of factors and certainly not a cause to fly in screaming about completely unrelated salary differences.

[Felix88]

If someone say women are discriminated against in Japan, I'd bet they've never been in Japan at all.

From what I've observed, some time life for young women in Japan is so easy that it's almost unreal.

[RawGod]

Young Japanese women are the apex of the human race, the most prized, coddled, aesthetic but functionally useless segment in creation. They are the world's empty calories. Pretty sure they like it that way.

And so do I!

[Faust]

Oh dear, Bix got banned? That seems... well, no, that seems fair actually. Dude was really retarded.

Quote:

For the record, from what I know of Japan I also believe there is some discrimination going on there as well. But it's just one factor in a sea of factors and certainly not a cause to fly in screaming about completely unrelated salary differences.

Anyway, there an additional argument relating to discrimination in the Japanese workplace that I will give for the sake of completeness, since Bix isn't here to give it to us.

There are places and departments where women are limited in how they can advance. For instance, my then-girlfriend, who worked at a Kansai-based credit card company in 2011, understood that there was no way she would be promoted out of her (mostly female) department because she was a woman. The reason for this is that promotions and training opportunities are a scarce good, and it was a very, very common practice for women to work for a few years at the company and then quit upon marriage to raise a child. Indeed, this was my girlfriend's intention at the time. If she got the promotion and training and then quit, the company would have wasted its money and time, and lost a valuable manager. (Like I wrote above, those poor middle-management bastards are workhorses beaten like you wouldn't believe, and they're the glue that keeps the place running.) I don't know if this was a codified practice or an unspoken rule, but it was there, and this was at a fairly well-known company.

Is it discrimination if you're acting rationally to an entire sex's revealed preferences? I'm sure feminists in the US would say yes, but it seems to me like simple sanity. Japan is not in good shape right now, as I think we can all agree. It's got huge, intractable problems looming in the long-term (It's losing its tech edge, its neighbors despise it, and in 50 years it's going to consist of nothing but old people in nursing homes being serviced by robots.) And it's getting whupped in the short term, too. Feminism, of the "I can be anything I want, and men will have to do whatever it takes to accommodate me," is simply a luxury the nation can't afford.

Quote:

If someone say women are discriminated against in Japan, I'd bet they've never been in Japan at all.
From what I've observed, some time life for young women in Japan is so easy that it's almost unreal.

Agreed. The idea that women in Japan are chained to their stoves, squatting out babies while barefoot is so insane it implies a willful blindness to reality. It's also incredibly bigoted and racist, in a "those weird yellow-skins aren't as culturally advanced as we are," way.

[The Father]

(04-20-2014 04:09 AM)RawGod Wrote:  

Young Japanese women are the apex of the human race, the most prized, coddled, aesthetic but functionally useless segment in creation. They are the world's empty calories.

More so than American women? If so, I must resolve to never visit Japan!

[Bushido]

^^ That was a great and balanced post. I have never denied that women are treated differently but you only need to look at what's going on in Japan to get the why and how. As I wrote above, my current company has had several female managers (3 in the last 2 years I think) who quit to have kids or to go travel, leaving us in the shit. (Edit: I should note that managers quitting is a huge deal in Japan)

Currently the management is all male again and girls around me sometimes complain that "This company doesn't like promoting women." I just give then a smile and a "sou desu ne" but inside I wonder how short their memories are. Women complaining about unfairness is nothing new I suppose.

[VillaD_Rock]

There is this guy called Stefhen Bryan who got laid tons in Japan. He even wrote a book (black passenger yellow cap) . When I read the posts here he has to be a liar, right? According to him, due to the herbivore men phenomen in Japan, its very easy for Western men to have sex with japanese women, which he experienced there.

[Faust]

Is there anyone here who says that white guys, especially taller ones, have difficulty getting laid in Japan?
I haven't read this thread all the way through, but I seem to remember was that some people were saying that there are chicks who simply aren't interested in American men. A substantial number of them, actually. It's probably the case that this is true for the very top tier of women, though I've never tried to do anything at that level, so I don't know. But there are a lot who ARE, simply because you're exotic, tall, and if you're over there as anything but an English teacher you probably have a decent amount of money.

[Sargon of Akkad]

(05-02-2014 01:14 PM)VillaD_Rock Wrote:  

There is this guy called Stefhen Bryan who got laid tons in Japan. He even wrote a book (black passenger yellow cap) . When I read the posts here he has to be a liar, right? According to him, due to the herbivore men phenomen in Japan, its very easy for Western men to have sex with japanese women, which he experienced there.

(05-02-2014 06:21 PM)Faust Wrote:  

Is there anyone here who says that white guys, especially taller ones, have difficulty getting laid in Japan?
I haven't read this thread all the way through, but I seem to remember was that some people were saying that there are chicks who simply aren't interested in American men. A substantial number of them, actually. It's probably the case that this is true for the very top tier of women, though I've never tried to do anything at that level, so I don't know. But there are a lot who ARE, simply because you're exotic, tall, and if you're over there as anything but an English teacher you probably have a decent amount of money.

I wrote a long thread called "Bang Osaka". Read through it. Go through Skotch's "Bang Japan" thread.

Summary: The days of it being easy to get laid in Japan simply because you're white and tall are long dead.

[LEMONed IScream]

Long dead, but as everything in Japan it is a trend. Trends come and go, maybe it will be fashionable again.

Fortunately for me I am white and short

In all seriousness though, my experience with JP girls is reduced to some online chats with a few friends, plus tourists I encounter now and then here in Portugal.

The expectations I had were killed a bit, they are...vapid, uninteresting, in other words, if I did not find asian girls attractive I wouldn't look at them twice...

[not-a-pua]

Update:
Around 1 Million Men(!) have locked themselves in their bedrooms.

[Phoenix]

^ Nothing to see here. There is no problem. The system is perfect. Questions disturb the peace. Just keep nodding your head and everything will just work out OK.