Letters to the Editor
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Oh no!
Single mothers and their soon-to-be criminal children are not flocking back to a city doomed to be sunk in water pretty soon!
Single-mother-led (mostly) black households are a big part of why there was a problem after the storm with that whole rape/murder/shooting at helicopters trifecta. Fuck you allllll, don't try to tell me that was some fantasy of the media to make minorities look bad ---- my family was there, my friends were there, and it happened in a very bad way. Single mothers and their children got into this mess because Big Daddy Government has enabled them to casually not care about absent REAL fathers. They should not be given free shit, ok? I'm sick of people being dependent on the government because they can. It is the worst possible thing you can do for people who are struggling. Let the black community help, I know I have. I have given my money because I believe in helping people privately, but why should my money be taken to support these women? And they sure as hell should not be rebuilding this sinkhole.
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problems...
1. Not much in the way of a centralized school system. The Orleans Parish Public Schools were for the most part dismal before Katrina. Now, most of the ones that have been reopened have been chartered. We'll see about their educational gains, but it makes registering a kid for school a complete pain in the neck, esp. considering that there are more kids than there are places.
2. Ditto for day care.
3. The jobs availiable to poorly educated people are, not surprisingly, in construction, which isn't exactly a female-friendly industry. Poorly educated women before the storm tended to work in restaurants and hotels. With the tourism industry way down, there aren't as many of those jobs.
4. Two of the big pink-collar, middle-class jobs that required education were teaching and nursing. See above for the status of teaching jobs. With so many of the hospitals, nursing homes, and doctor's offices shut down, there aren't as many of those jobs to go around.
5. Public transportation now seemingly consists of random vehicles, driven by random people, stopping at random places, at random times. I know. I'm dependant on it.
6. I was forced to move after Katrina. My rent nearly doubled.
If I were a single mother, there would be no way that I could make it here right now.
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Play with stats...
As for their average earnings, women make $11,400 to $20,000 in the city’s lowest paying jobs; compared to men who make $15,150 to $23,500. Among the highest-paying jobs, the pay-discrepancy balloons even higher: Women make $30,000 to $63,000, while men make $38,700 to $130,000.
The above two statements tell the reader nothing - what jobs are we talking about? What are the highest paying jobs? Which are the lowest? If N.O. really is a disaster site, doesn't it make sense that the dirtiest and most physically challenging jobs would be the highest paying - and that women might not be able to compete for jobs like those - unless you consider it discrimination, for example, that pro football players are all men - not because of their size and strength, but because of their gender. Guess what TC-F: New Orleans is not a teachable moment - and not a project for women's studies majors - this is where the rubber hits the road - you know the real world, where they never heard of or don't care about feminsist critical theory and where strength and guile win the day. As a side note, I think a more interesting point for feminists (and coastal wimps like myself) to ponder: when the veneer of law and civility is stripped away, who will bear the burden the hardest? Barefoot and pregnant? If we have a hundred Katrinias and a few more 9/11s, you'll all be clinging to the guy with the biggest guns and the most battle scars...
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Source for statistics?
The article states, without attribution:
As for their average earnings, women make $11,400 to $20,000 in the city’s lowest paying jobs; compared to men who make $15,150 to $23,500. Among the highest-paying jobs, the pay-discrepancy balloons even higher: Women make $30,000 to $63,000, while men make $38,700 to $130,000.
The last sentence seems to say that $130,000 annually is the highest annual salary of anyone in New Orleans, and that no woman in New Orleans makes over $63,000 annually.
Both of these conclusions are very hard to believe, and so I'd appreciate knowing exactly what these salary figures represent, and where they come from.
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Source for statistics found -- and they're not as reported here
The article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune includes this paragraph:
. . . median earnings for men in their lowest-paid occupations range from $15,150 to $23,500 annually in New Orleans, compared with women's earnings of $11,400 to $20,000 in their lowest-paid occupations. Median earnings among the highest-paid jobs for men range from $38,700 to $130,000, compared with $30,000 to $63,000 for women.
A few comments:
1. The numbers in this Broadsheet item cited these as average earnings in their job categories, but according to the Times-Picayune they are median figures. This could signify a very big difference from what the numbers seem to show, depending how many men and how many women are in each "job category".
2. The source for these figures is the "Institute for Women's Policy Research" -- which by its name sounds like a respectable, believable organization.
But it also sounds like a women's advocacy organization. If women's advocacy organizations have anything remotely like Broadsheet writers' tendency to distort the truth when it suits their purposes, then there is no way these figures can be assumed valid.
This is not limited to women, of course. Advocacy organizations of all stripes tend to distort the truth when it suits their purposes. For this reason, I would sooner trust a disinterested organization's figures than those of an advocacy group.
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Re: Stats
Average/median language fixed. Thanks.
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What's the post-Katrina marriage rate?
Does anyone have any statistics on how many hurricane survivors got married in an effort to increase their economic status and social stability?
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Thanks
Thanks for posting this information. I live in New Orleans and this information needs to be known.
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THEN WHY THE HELL....
...is this subject sidelined in flipping Broadsheet when the MAIN PAGE gave half its real estate to the likes of Paris Hilton on Saturday?
For Gods' sake! Don't the editors realize that much of the male readership skips right over Broadsheet because it's presented as the GIRLY CORNER?
YES the content is often serious. But you are burying news on half of the population in a corner that reeks of triviality. A serious-sounding headline now and then isn't enough to offset the prevailing image.
Oh Cripes, this is depressing. Could you, Eds, please at least do a thoughtful survey?