Thursday, June 07, 2007

How to Make Money, How to Give it Away

First, how to make money: Forbes has posted its list of the America's 25 highest-paying jobs. I scrolled through the slide show to see what they were (mostly varients on "Doctor, lawyer, engineer") and was suprised to see that there were very few female faces in the pictures.

Of the 25 pictures (not always one person per picture) there were only four where women featured as the earners: obstetrician/gynecologist, oral surgeon, family and general practitioner, and physicians and surgeons (all other). There were also a few women who were receiving services, such as the girl in the dentist chair, the girl with braces, and the woman consulting with a lawyer. To be fair, in some of the pictures there is no service provider, or the provider's gender is unclear (picture of hands only, or face behind a mask), but even still there are a far larger number of men pictured than women. I'm not sure what this means, but it reminds me of Forbes now infamous article about why not to marry a career woman.

At any rate, once you make your pile, clearly your first priority should be giving it away. (I actually have a few friends who give away 10% of their after-tax income every month) If you are looking for a new cause, may I suggest this one? Bam Margera and Adam Colton (who went to High School with one of my best guy friends) are skateboarding across Europe to raise money for three charities: Lowe Syndrome Trust, Link Community Development, and Sailability Australia. All three are great charities, of which I had never heard.

Also, I'd like to point out that Forbes has another list, 25 lowest-paying jobs in America. This one includes, unsurprisingly, food service workers, domestic laborers, and many other service-industry jobs (like carnies. Apparently they make less than $20k a year). And in these representations the employees are predominantly female. Maybe Forbes IS trying to tell us something. Especially since I assume that, for the most part, the pictures are just representations, and not actually people who work in the industry, so it would be easy enough for them to just divide along gender lines 50/50. Or, apparently not.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You did not link to the Forbes articles! -TR

Annie said...

I linked to the slideshow, which was the important part.

Also, the original article about not marrying career women is no longer online.

QP said...

My favorite charity concept is The Heifer Project.

Jack Steiner said...

My favorite charity is the "Send Jack Money For His Pleasure" fund.

Anonymous said...

did you notice that the depictions of women were all near the beginning of the show (i.e. the higher end of the pay scale) though?

Sherbs said...

Women working to make money and not to suppliment their own income for mani/pedis, make up and shopping. Come on, Annie, didn't you learn anything going to a women's college?