Statistics

Two Female Academics Blame Prayer For Women Not Being Men

Two academic women are sure the last barrier to the fall of the patriarchy—and installation of the matriarchy?—is prayer. They said so directly in their peer-reviewed paper “The Hidden Cost of Prayer: Religiosity and the Gender Wage Gap“, in The Academy of Management Journal.

I neglected to memorize the authoresses names, so I will call them “Mary” and “Sue”, or “Mary Sue” jointly.

Now it has to be remembered that when you hear calls for “equality” or “equity”, what is really meant is desire for superiority.

For instance, now some time ago, there were once pleas for equality in college admissions for women. They got that, and now outnumber men. There are no more calls for equality now that superiority has been reached. Except in those majors where men still predominate.

It doesn’t matter how many times it is demonstrated women make the same or more as men, when ability and experience are accounted for. That women don’t make more means “equity” has not been reached.

Women activists never complain, for instance, of quota hires for women (such as at universities). And you never hear activists cry for true parity in places where women can’t compete with men, like in sports or the military.

And you also never hear activists saying women should not be paid (and accrue vacation and “experience” time) when the take loads of time off, such as to have babies.

Never mind all that, and skip the implication of atheism and gross materialism of the title, and let’s take the paper as she is, and see how evil prayer is, verified by wee p-values.

We have to wade through eighteen pages of the re-discovery that men aren’t women, and women aren’t men, and that religion has nothing to do with money, and all the lamentations that follow from these horrible realizations, before they get to the point.

Mary Sue does not like religion: “Religiosity espouses that men and women differ in their innate social functions, as ordained by god [sic] himself (emphasizing that god is male in nearly all religions)”.

On the other hand, if you were looking for good reasons to convert to Christianity, this: “Christianity is irremediably sexist…it legitimizes male domination and violence toward women” (ellipsis original), quoting some Japanese source.

You will recall the epidemiologist fallacy, the inbred marriage between the ecological fallacy and p-values. The ecological fallacy is where X is said to cause Y, but where X is never mentioned; instead a proxy is, and everybody forgets it. P-values are used to fallaciously infer cause.

This paper contains a particularly silly version of the fallacy, common enough in grievance studies, and indeed in academic sociology as a whole.

Here, for instance, are details on their first “study”, which was to examine “the effect of religiosity on the gender wage gap for countries around the world.” To do this they gathered some “measures.” The scare quotes emphasize these are not measures, but numbers called measures.

First, “Gender wage gap. Estimated earned income for men and women, regardless of the number of hours worked… we computed 1 minus women’s income as a percentage of men’s income for each country, so higher scores indicate a larger wage gap.”

Second, “Religiosity“. Gallup surveyed a handful of folks in different countries, asking “Is religion important in your daily life?” scoring it 0-1. Mary Sue used the average country number.

Those were the main “measures”, but others were also used to make the regressions seem more science-like. For instance, “Social domain differentiation…Four indicators were used as proxies for the preeminence of the domestic domain for women”. Ah, proxies. In other words, a direct admission the measures were non-measures. There were also dull things like GDP.

All was crammed into a regression. Results: “religiosity positively related to the gender wage gap (b = 8.47, s.e. = 1.99; p < .001)”.

Sigh. This is worse than the epidemiologist fallacy: this is the double-epidemiologist fallacy. Because not only do they say X (religiosity) causes Y (wage gap), and they didn’t measure X on any person, they also didn’t measure Y on anybody, either.

Instead, crude country-level averages of wages and “is religion important to you?” questions are swapped in. Think how accurate a one-number summary of “religiosity” is for the States. Or one of “wage gap”. It won’t capture any “large scale” behavior. It will just be ridiculous. One won’t predict the other. Or cause the other, which is the implication here.

Mary Sue’s conclusion: “religiosity is not uniformly a benevolent force”. This is surely true. The woke religion is the opposite of benevolent.

Speaking on that wokeness, Mary Sue, here taking the role of unknowing priestesses, say: “In recent decades, societies, organizations, and individuals alike have progressed toward the view that men and women can contribute equally.”

Because men and women are not the same, they cannot “contribute equally”. They can each do what the other cannot, which since this maximizes Diversity, should be reason to cheer.

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Categories: Statistics

22 replies »

  1. “And you never hear activists cry for true parity in places where women can’t compete with men, like in sports or the military.”

    Our esteemed host hasn’t been paying attention to the military news. The Association of the U.S. Army (the officer’s club) has declared war on America and Western civilization. They want us all to D.I.E. It’s their #2 priority, right after more money.

    https://www.ausa.org/news/associations-joining-forces-strengthen-army

  2. You’d think they’d at least ask “do you pray?” versus “is religion important in your daily life?”

  3. I guess if making the same wage as men were the most important thing in my life, anything that didn’t result in my getting a paycheck identical to everyone else’s would, by (my) definition, be actively preventing me from getting it. So… for these people, nothing but just giving everyone at a job the same per week (regardless of hours or time off) will satisfy. Therefore I pay no attention to them. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about “The Academy of Management Journal.”

  4. I can’t even read this. You gave two STUPID STUPID EVIL WORTHLESS XX CREATURES time on your blog. What does that make you??? Satan’s idiot?

  5. Sheri,

    Don’t be absurd. Addressing why dumb comments and bad ideas are dumb and bad doesn’t mean you’re working for Satan. It takes an insulting lack of critical thinking to even suggest that.

  6. “I neglected to memorize the authoresses names, so I will call them “Mary” and “Sue”, or “Mary Sue” jointly.”

    Wry, and dry. That line made me laugh out loud.
    Thanks.

    JWM

  7. ”Two Female Academics…” I knew you was gonna pop that pair a’ fat-target, blue-haired balloons, Sarge, but it was a bit like shooting moonbats in a barrel. Not that that isn’t fun, and it is a Friday, but we’ve seen you shoot, gut, and skin bigger game. You might have upbraided the owners — father or husband — of those two gals for allowing their female property to become a public nuisance, and those negligent owners aught to be fined, and if the women’s owners cannot be located then the wayward babes should become wards of the state, and made to sit quietly in a corner knitting mittens… you know, that sort of thing.

  8. This study’s author is a civilian in the new People’s Army. Her mission is to get The People’s minds right, by way of radical feminism that makes men and women adversaries and antagonists, instead of partners.

    If men and women are adversaries, then women must become *stronger* and try to defeat men on every battlefield of life; ie, higher wages and so forth; this requires the Benevolent State to step in as provider and enforcer.

    By the same token, men must defeat women in their sports, and invade women’s spaces in public restrooms and prisons, and be permitted to pass as female gender in all arenas, simply by “identifying” as such. This too, requires The State, to proclaim and enforce the dogma of “Gender Fluidity”.

    In order to build up, they must first break down, so why not start with the idea of “biological gender” itself, hopefully at the pre-kindergarten level.

    This careful nurturing of adversarial “gender warfare”, along with race and class warfare, hopefully leads to forced collectivism, which they call “Inclusiveness”.

    McChuck, your posted article from “The Association of the U.S. Army” (clearly a lobbying group) tells us they’ve “joined three other military nonprofit groups in producing a 2021 legislative strategy aimed at strengthening the Regular Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve.”

    Here are some demands from these lobbyists, in their own tortuous language, edited for length:

    “…..Second, the Army’s “people first” initiative requires money, authorization and support to build cohesive teams that display diversity, equity and inclusion. This means taking better care of people….across all components. It also requires identifying and eliminating institutional practices that inadvertently disadvantage soldiers and civilians, and stomping out prejudicial behavior, sexual assault and harassment. 

    Third, full funding is required for Army modernization priorities across the three components. This includes funding the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Account, which ensures the components have needed equipment to accomplish their unique mission requirements. Reserve components also need to receive equipment at the same time as the Regular Army and have their training and readiness requirements fully funded.”

    So we see here, the National Guard will become “full funded” (must be nice, and why not, since it’s all make-believe money anyway, digitally printed for your pleasure) People’s Army, which displays diversity, equity and inclusion.

    Their primary mission? “…stomping out prejudicial behavior, sexual assault and harassment.”

    We can finally feel safe now, knowing that our National Guard will consist of equally-paid Karens, some of them battle-tested on our city streets as Antifa and BLM (Inc.), “stomping out prejudicial behavior”, while bearing the latest in military-grade weapons.

    We are being trolled by Satan, who’s having a huge surge before his last gasps, so of course his sock-puppets don’t want us to pray. Happy Easter Friday before Divine Mercy Sunday! Jesus, we trust in You!

  9. Sheri:

    I couldn’t read it either
    My head hurt
    I don’t blame Briggs, it was the brick

  10. The wokerati decry (gender, race, physical, cognitive) differences, yet champion diversity, while demanding equal outcomes that require unequal, nee discriminatory, treatment (bonus, penalty) of others. It’s self-contradiction born of lust for the power to dictate others.

  11. Prayer has numerous benefits for both men and women. It reduces stress and the production of cortisols and cytokines. It improves sleep, reduces depression and anxiety, lowers blood pressure, and relieves stress-related symptoms like irritable bowel syndrome, and fibromyalgia. It can reduce chronic pain. Praying can increase mindfulness, improve memory, and helps in the battle against addictions and compulsions like eating disorders.

    Prayer also makes you kinder, more loving, more forgiving of yourself and others. Prayer is inspirational, gives strength of spirit, reduces worry, and builds confidence.

    Prayer brings one closer to God, and helps in the acceptance of God’s Word, strengthens ethics and morality, improves social and familial ties, and can add a sense of well-being, comfort, and joy to life. Prayer is food for the soul.

    The anti-religious, anti-prayer folks are missing out on one of the key aspects of life. They are starving their own essences. They are like ghosts or zombies, the walking dead, here but not partaking in the splendor of existence. It is a tragic waste, a pitiable condition. Let us pray for Mary Sue, that they too might be saved. For there are some things much more important than money.

  12. re: “We are being trolled by Satan, who’s having a huge surge before his last gasps, so of course his sock-puppets don’t want us to pray. ” by Ann

    The above brings this quote to mind (found some yr or two back):

    “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization as the Church has done so often in human history.”

    — Cardinal Francis George

  13. So apparently reverting to the antiquated two “gender” paradigm in academia will only get you boiled in oil if the context is not right.

  14. Actually, given the methods, the findings are both reasonable and predictable. The discussion is bad, and basically a political polemic, but the actual results are exactly what one would expect. Their measure for the wage gap was “Estimated earned income for men and women, regardless of the number of hours worked, was taken from the Human Development Report (2014). ”

    So, in societies and subcultures that respect more traditional gender roles, one would expect women to work less and do less demanding work with respect to time and degree of involvement — because more women will focus effort and personal resources on their families. In my profession, for instance, it is common for women to take on part-time work, and occasionally for two women to share one full-time position. Similarly, women are less likely to do the 60-hour work week and the 16 hour workday — because they take more responsibility for the home. That was certainly the case in my family, where my wife retired early in order to take care of home matters. And that happened with my in-laws as well. When my nephews and nieces were born, the women in the family stepped down their involvement at work to devote more time to the kids. At least with conservative Christianity, that *is* the traditional gender role distinction, and it’s no surprise that studies show it.

    The thing is that this generalized distinction does not imply, for instance, that a man and a woman who both work at the same job with the same seniority and spend the same amount of resources and time at work will end up with disparate incomes. But it does mean that it is more likely that the woman will put her career second. Why would that would surprise a theologically conservative Christian (for instance).

  15. billo: It’s not surprising at all. What’s surprising is that these “academics” seem to think it’s prayer, itself, that makes women “be paid less.” Not that women who pray because they WANT to choose work or hours that pay less. How people get published for such nonsense is beyond me.

  16. Further to the .ausa. article posted above by McChuck and commented upon evisceratingly by Ann Cherry: The language chosen for this report has the distinct aura of a Response to RFP (Request For Proposal). In other words, it is formatted to show how an applicant for Federal Funding intends to fulfill specific detailed requirements underlying that Project, is otherwise generally qualified as a funding recipient, and is fully aware of all relevant statutes or other potential Civil Rights issues which currently pertain. In essence – a standard form PRAYER for government money.

  17. Memorandum to Billie Jean King:

    When women play best of five sets at Wimbledon, they will deserve equal prize money.

    Until then, “Nope.”

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