ToadHunterRN

What you missed by not reading the entire thread is that the white nationalism addition to the conversation from ConstantGardener was a critique of OP's original source. There was no escalation of the topic, merely a concern about the biases of the video. Seems like a fair point to add considering that OP was basing a broad statement off of this source. I do agree that the use of "snowflake" is another useless buzzword utilized by people who feel that the equality of women and people of color is a direct threat to their privilege. It's difficult to empathize with the reality of others' experiences so we create terms to alienate and invalidate their experiences. Arguments about the supposed similarities between hourly pay of men and women, disproportionate number of men in STEM, and propensity of women to take time off for children all ignore the cultural context. "Wage Gap" is a bit of a misnomer because it's not about hourly pay. It's about the way we foster such different interests in boys and girls in order to fit gender roles (with nurses being a female-dominated profession and stem being the opposite surely this doesn't come as a shock to any of us). It's about the assumption that women will stay home with children and how we as a culture do not have widespread paternity leave. It's about how men are viewed as "natural leaders" and women are "bossy." In a conversation about sexism it's ironic that many women have chimed into this thread to share their personal stories of sexism in the workplace but their stories are so readily dismissed. Those of you who deny the existence of a wage gap by clinging to the hourly numbers, can you at least agree that American culture sets women at a career disadvantage straight from the get-go? Our culture and the way we enforce gender roles must change in order to achieve career equality.

I'll second reddit's r/nursing sub. I'm not taking any advice from there without checking up on it, but there are usually some great stories and question threads. I don't use instagram much but I do love the NurseLifeRN page's memes. There's a lot of humor in nursing and as silly as it seems, sharing memes fosters camaraderie.

When it comes to the wage gap, society places the brunt of childrearing on women. So for many women hoping to have children, they look ahead at their futures and select education paths and careers that will afford them more flexibility and time off for raising children. This results in a very evident wage gap that exists, but is not as cause-effect as chalking it up to "sexism." Some people would point to this as reason to dismiss the wage gap, but actually this means that we have an inequality between men and women where women are pressured by society to assume the majority of childrearing. If men were afforded paternity leave and took on an even amount of the responsibilities of raising children, the wage gap would lessen. Our culture and view of gender roles is in need of a major shift to close the gap and achieve income equality.