The wage gap between top paid CEOs and average workers in Canada

This article, which critical of the wages received by the highest paid CEOs in Canada, is reminiscent of a lecture by my intro to sociology prof that was part of what got me interested in the discipline to begin with.

The article states that

By about mid-afternoon Monday, the 100 best-paid chief executive officers in Canada will have already earned the equivalent of an average full-time salary in this country.

The gap between the executive suite and minimum-wage workers is even larger. The average CEO had earned a full year’s worth of minimum-wage work by about 3:15 p.m. on New Year’s Day.

In the lecture for my first year class, a brilliant professor (who occasionally reads this blog and has yet to distribute the final grades for our last class) began by asking the class of about 100 first year students how many of us expected to be earning more than $100,000 in 10 years. A large portion of the class, probably more than half, raised their hands. Keep in mind, many of them were sociology students, and the liberal arts are not exactly known for high salaries. He proceeded to show tables of statistics about the actual income of average workers with a bachelors degree in the social sciences, and I think the average income 10 years after graduation was something like $30,000, not even close to the 6 figures that most of them assumed they would be earning.

In this lecture, he also presented us with information on income inequality in Canada, and the most telling statistic for me was this same one. Sometime on the morning of January 2nd, Canada's top 100 CEOs have earned more than I am likely to earn with my degree in an entire year.

This was among the first steps in the process of me going from being a relatively leftist, but pro-capitalist, social work student to becoming a Marxist sociology student... which, I have to say this prof strongly discouraged for financial reasons. I was sitting in his office telling him that I felt as though I couldn't continue on with social work after having taken his class, but he said that because I was recently divorced and had 2 children, he was of the opinion that social work would lead to employment, whereas a BA in sociology would not. Another prof that stopped by his office while I was there said that a sociology degree would get me a job at the mall. They weren't the best recruiters, but when I decided that I could spend the additional 2 years working on a Masters Degree, they were both more than supportive of me switching programs.

Still, I guess this professor has earned the nickname Dr. Doom (which, despite his suspicions, I did not come up with, as much as I would like to take credit for it). However, I think a nickname like that would come with some pretty cool backgound music that follows every time he walks into a room holding a stack of graded papers (he is also known for being one of the toughest markers in the department).

Kids comments on gender and beauty

We were watching an old episode of So You Think You Can Dance on television, which is a show that I'm not sure whether or not I like my kids watching... I love dance, but here is the issue...

After 3 performances where women took off at least one layer of clothing, my son (5 years old) said "the girls can never keep their clothes on"

My daughter's (8 years old) response was "That's because they want to look good."

I changed channels immediately... we are going to have a discussion about gender and hegemonic beauty standards this morning, and I am going to find some dancing shows that are a bit more appropriate for them. Still, I feel as though I can talk to them about this stuff forever, but regardless of what I say to them, the media still gets through at least as strongly as I do.

dating while hairy, fourth edition...

This post was written about 3 weeks ago, and has been waiting for me to get around to uploading the picture from my camera. I will have to do an updated leg hair post in the very near future, as there have been some new developments since this was written.


This will be, by far, the most disturbing post yet for many people... I am actually going to include a picture of my legs... now with 6 months of hair growth!!!


I have had two recent experiences where these legs have led to problems... and the weirdest part is that the people had not even seen them! I was discussing gender performance with a very feminine lesbian that I met online. I'm not sure exactly how the discussion on shaving happened, but I remember it being something about her complaining about not liking to shave, but doing it anyway. She asked me if I ever planned to shave again, and I told her that I wasn't sure... I haven't thought much about it, but I wasn't entirely opposed to the idea. She had to go a few minutes later and hasn't come back online since (which I think means that she blocked me... I'm not offended or anything, we had only spoken a few times, but I think it's a bit funny).

When I did shave my legs often, they would often get little red bumps all over them, the skin would get rough and dry, and within a couple days they would have prickly stubble beginning to grow again. They didn't feel nice to touch without the help of shaving gel and several types of moisturizers. Now that I'm not shaving, the hair and skin are both incredibly soft and I find them way nicer to touch, and they feel better.

I knew that having hairy legs would not be a popular choice for many people, and I was expecting people to be a little uncomfortable with my decision not to shave (for now) at times, but I am surprised by how completely shocked some people have been.

As you can see from the picture, the hair isn't particularly coarse and isn't all that noticeable from a few feet away. Still, when a woman in my grad program saw the hair last week, she jumped back, hands flailing, and almost shrieked "what the hell is that?" She always has perfectly applied makeup and not a hair out of place, so I would imagine that body hair would be a complete no-no for her. I couldn't help laughing at the severity of her reaction, but still, it led me to question whether this was possibly more transgressive than I had originally thought.

Why I love my office!

Ok, the office itself isn't great... really tiny and usually too dirty to put your schoolbag on the floor, but the people are amazing.

A few days ago, I came in to find this sign on the door and I couldn't resist taking a picture to post it here... unfortunately, my cell phone camera leaves something to be desired.


If you cannot see the photo, it has a photo of Karl Marx in a Santa hat and says:

Happy Sociological Xmas (where X= your preferred deity or socially constructed rationale for gift giving)

He sees you when you profit! He knows when you exploit!
Candy for the masses. But for the capitalists, COAL.

Keeping with the holiday spirit, I wanted to use this opportunity to do an entirely non-critical post about how much I like the people I share the office with (ok, maybe I should write 'most of' somewhere in that sentence, but that is not the point).

Three women in particular I want to mention
J, with your never failing inappropriate sense of humor to help lower stress levels when there are impending due dates or stacks of papers to grade (or get distracted from by facebook posts that my mom did not approve of!).
M, with lots of advice about the program and life more generally, one of the wisest young people that I know... and jeggings!
And A, who I rarely get to see because I think she is nocturnal or something, but I feel like I have more in common with in certain ways than anyone I've met in the past few years...

I should also mention E, whose reaction to my leg hair amuses me to no end!

I have found that those of us who risk the germs from whichever random bug happens to be going around that week, discomfort from dust allergies, and wild temperature variations to get work done in that sometimes very crowded environment have grown quite close over the past few months, and I look forward to working with everyone again next semester!

And now I should be getting back to that stack of exams to grade...

Raising tuition fees... Again.

It has been brought to my attention that the university that I attend just raised tuition fees at a meeting last Friday (of course, organized during exams/christmas holidays so that we could not mobilize in any real form at the meeting). I was not there, but I heard that tuition would go up by 5% for returning students, 8% for new students and 16.2% for international students!

Here is the part that really gets me... I was just informed that they approved bonuses for some admin during that same meeting!

I'm glad that the money being taken from my family is going to make a few people that much richer.

Sexual Assault Crisis Centre closing

I just read that the city's only Sexual Assault Crisis Centre is now closed. Just a few months ago, the Women's Centre closed, and now this. I can't believe that the government can get away with this kind of attack on women's programs.

I have never personally accessed this service, likely because I didn't identify my own experiences as rape until years had passed, but I can only imagine how important these services must be to women in our community. I have accessed one of the programs that was suggested as an alternative and it took 3 weeks after registering to get an appointment, and another 3 months to access services, so hopefully that will not be the case for women who have been assaulted.

I'm going to find out if anyone is organizing a letter writing campaign or protests, because I don't think we should sit back and just let this happen or all of these services will be gone and it will be too late to do anything about it.

Dear radio commercial,

Can you please refrain from making any more jokes about women and their shoes? Yes, we get it... women on TV (and presumably, some women in real life) enjoy wearing cute shoes. But is it really necessary for the company selling snowmobiles to tell us to imagine how many pairs of shoes the $2800 in savings will buy us? Or for the shoe store ad that followed to tell us that high heels are a sign of class? Someone should have told that to Karl Marx... here he was doing a complex analysis of capitalism, when he really should have been looking at women's feet this whole time...

Rest assured that if I am going to spent thousands of dollars on any item, if I will be measuring the savings based on a sale price, it will be in dollars, not shoes... and this is coming from someone who owns about 20 pairs of shoes (which I think is a lot).

I am trying to imagine a similar commercial directed towards men... what would the savings be measured in... beer? I like beer more than I like shoes...