At an individual level, it is good actionable advice. At a societal level, it really is just victim blaming. And it is hard to day where the line is between those views.
What sick thought crept its way into our collective consciousness that has made us glorify being a victim above all else. We have been fooled into holding up literally the opposite of success as the highest virtue.
That is, my question is what sick thought made it acceptable to take repression and holding down of full segments of a population under the guise of them individually not standing up for themselves acceptable?
Seriously, the evidence is quite clear that this attitude is complete nonsense and only works for people that have certain advantages already. I get that you feel you have worked hard for your position. So have I. I also get that I was additionally lucky that I was able to reap the rewards of my hard work. Many aren't. And to be ok with that is a truly disgusting collective consciousness problem.
Ahem... citation needed
For this attitude to be accurate, the problem is simply that women and minorities are not educating themselves and/or are not "shopping themselves around." If you want me to cite studies showing that specifically is false, quite frankly I don't have time to dig around for that. You could find studies showing it is true.
You need to study more.
Then compare the cost saving, and time spent on the above, to the marginal cost of your free time. Have you saved anything?
However, careers are what sort of determine how much our time is worth...so it generally ALWAYS makes sense to shop for multiple job offers.
Hypocrisy?
My example was supposed to be that you are rewarded for looking fair, but it would actually be detrimental to be so.
Deception and hypocrisy, I think, are related to this, but I feel they are a little different, too. Don't know if I can explain why. So perhaps I'm just wrong on that feeling?
If both parties sign an agreement with complete agency, who is getting abused? How can it be "unfair" if you both parties freely agreed to the exchange?
(inb4 "What happened to your fuck-you money?" As if it's always the employee saying "fuck you".)
I don't want a society where there are people left behind simply because they did not make a job out of making more money. Nor do I want a society where services performed by folks leads to a massive wealth imbalance in workforces that don't have people specifically tasked with keeping this from happening. Especially with how anti union/similar setup current cultures are.
And to be clear, I realize that that ship has somewhat sailed. Nobody was specifically tasked with making sure women/minorities were paid fairly. As a result, we have an obvious problem. One where the incentives have aligned such that many companies do not have an incentive to fix it. (There has to be a term for the occurrence where virtue signaling is high, but actual virtue is punished. Anyone know it?)
That is, you are absolutely right in many senses. But I worry that as long as not all companies are paying more fair wages, than there is little incentive to be the one company paying fair wages. (There are incentives to pay above normal pay, but that can still be below fair. See again current women's pay gap.)
So, can you reduce it down to folks are ultimately paid what they are worth. And if they simply shopped themselves around they could get more, but they didn't so they have accepted their low worth, so they are, ipso facto, worth less. Great. I just think we have plenty of evidence that shows that doesn't actually work.