Sometimes ya gotta fisk. Such as when John Stossel writes about the wage gap between women and men.
Feminists keep demanding new laws to protect women from the so-called wage gap. Many studies have found that women make about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns. Activists say the pay difference is all about sexism.
Sure, I’d agree with that. But I’m probably defining “sexism” more broadly than Stossel. Stossel, I suspect, is defining “sexism” to mean “direct employer discrimination.” That’s certainly part of how sexism produces the wage gap, but it’s not the whole story.
For me, probably the most important kind of sexism going into the wage gap is the sexism of unquestioned assumptions; unquestioned assumptions about who does the housework, unquestioned assumptions about who does the child-rearing, unquestioned assumptions about innate ability, and most of all, unquestioned assumptions about how jobs are designed for people with wives at home.
I call this last factor the “Father Knows Best” economy; most jobs implicitly assume that workers have wives at home who are taking care of the kids and house, so that these responsibilities never need to be accommodated for by the employer. Maybe that assumption made sense half a century ago, but it doesn’t make sense now; and by continuing to implicitly make this assumption, our economy is making it unfairly difficult for caretakers (who are usually mothers) to have careers.
“No matter how hard women work, or whatever they achieve in terms of advancement in their own professions and degrees, they will not be compensated equitably!” shouted Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., at a “wage equity” rally in Washington, D.C.
But how could this be possible? Suppose you’re an employer doing the hiring. If a woman does equal work for 25 percent less money, businesses would get rich just by hiring women. Why would any employer ever hire a man?
And if we extend Stossel’s logic, we can see that wage discrimination has never happened. After all, in the 1950s, why would anyone have hired a man when women would work cheaper? Why did anyone hire white people in the 1950s, for that matter, when they could have hired blacks cheaper? If we took Stossel’s logic seriously, we’d have to conclude that no discrimination existed in the 1950s. Or any other time, for that matter.
Stossel’s big mistake is assuming that if sexism is behind the wage gap, then it must be entirely a matter of women being paid 25% less than men for identical jobs. But actually, most economists who study the wage gap believe that it’s caused, to a significant extent, by occupational segregation, which means women and men are sorted by the market into different jobs – and the women’s jobs, on average, pay less.
Even if we put Stossel’s big error aside, employers still have good reason not to fire all men on Monday and then hire all women at lower wages on Tuesday: crippling transition costs, fear of discrimination lawsuits, the lack of enough women in the workforce to replace all men, desire to cater to customer prejudices, etc.
Despite all this, the market does sometimes make the sort of adjustment Stossel is discussing. In the 1980s, for example, insurance companies lowered wages (or allowed inflation to lower wages), and over the same time period insurance adjusters changed from a mainly-male occupation to a mainly-female occupation.
Historically, this process has happened many times; for instance, schoolteacher wages dropped as towns discovered that hiring a schoolmarm was much cheaper than hiring a male teacher. Similarly, secretarial wages plummeted as that became a female-dominated occupation. In a well-documented example, bank tellers changed from a male-dominated to a female-dominated occupation as wages (and prestige) dropped. (Currently, I suspect the same process is happening to cantors.)
Martha Burk, chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, gave me this simple answer: “Because they like to hire men, John. They like to hire people like themselves and they darn sure like to promote people like themselves.” In other words, men so love their fellow men that they are willing to pay a premium of, say, $10,000 on what would otherwise be a $30,000-a-year job, just for the sheer pleasure of employing a man. Nonsense. It’s market competition that sets wages.
Burk is correct – that sort of direct discrimination does account for part of the wage gap. But it would be a mistake to claim that it accounts for the whole wage gap (of course, I don’t assume that Burk’s full view is represented in this 25-word quote).
In dismissing Burk’s argument, Stossel assumes that either the (more-or-less) 25% wage gap is caused entirely by employers hiring women at 25% lower wages for the exact same job, or that the wage gap is caused entirely by market competition. But this is a straw man; no feminist economist would claim that all of wage gap is caused by men preferring to hire men, even if it means paying $40,000 instead of $30,000.
When discussing direct employer discrimination, it’s more realistic to discuss elements like selective hiring, training, promotion ladders, and other things that are a good deal more complex than John Stossel’s vision of the labor market seems to allow for. Given two equally able applicants for a $40,000 job, one male, one female – which one will employers tend to prefer? Once hired, who is more likely to get mentored? Who is more likely to be given the assignments that lead to promotion? Who is more likely to be perceived as doing good work, all else held equal?
Next comes the obligatory citation of Warren Farrell.
Farrell spent about 15 years going over U.S. Census statistics and research studies. His research found that the wage gap exists not because of sexism, but because more men are willing to do certain kinds of jobs. “The average full-time working male works more than a full-time working female,” Farrell said.
According to the US government’s Monthly Labor Review (April 1997, pages 3-14), the average full-time year-round woman worked 40.8 hours a week in 1995. Men, according to the same source, worked 44.5 hours – a significant difference, but not a huge difference (and not nearly as large a difference as anti-feminists sometimes claim). How much does that affect the wage gap?
Fortunately, we don’t have to do the math ourselves – the US Department of Labor has done it for us. According to a DOL web page in 2001 – a web page that, unfortunately, has since been taken down by the Bush administration – comparing only hourly wages, women were paid 83.2% of what men were paid in 2000. 83.2% is a noticeable difference from the 76% figure for weekly full-time wages – but it still leaves the majority of the pay gap unaccounted for.
Farrell illustrates his findings at lectures by asking men and women to stand in answer to a series of questions about job choices, such as whether they work more than 40 hours a week, outdoors or in a dangerous job. Again and again, more men stand.
Gee – people who like Farrell’s writings enough to attend Farrell lectures, by an amazing coincidence, have job preferences that correspond with Farrell’s expectations. What stunning evidence!
Despite Farrell’s emphasis on “dangerous jobs,” the evidence of a wage premium for things like on-the-job danger or working outdoors isn’t very convincing. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics looked at actual wages and job conditions to calculate what job characteristics are associated with higher pay. The graph below shows what they found. The bar that’s furthest to the right – the bar that’s actually slightly negative – represents factors like on-the-job danger and outdoor work. As the BLS says, “Job attributes relating to … physically demanding or dangerous jobs… do not seem to affect wages.”
Danger and outdoor work have a lot to do with Warren Farrell’s stereotypical view of masculinity – but virtually nothing to do with the wage gap.
Suppose two people have equal potential, but one takes on more demanding, consuming, lucrative jobs while the other places a higher priority on family. The one who makes work the focus will be more productive for an employer than the one who puts his or her home life first. The latter will get more of the pleasures of family. So he (and it tends to be “he”) will make more money, even though she would be equally productive and equally rewarded if she made the same choices.
There’s just so much illogic here to be unpacked, I feel like the wardrobe wrangler on a Cher concert tour.
First of all, notice that taking care of children and home is described just as “the pleasures of family.” Well, taking care of children is extremely pleasurable and rewarding work – but let’s not forget that it’s still work. And it’s unpaid work.
Second, it’s true that there’s a wage penalty paid by primary caretaker parents (usually mothers). But why are jobs and careers designed in such a way that primary caretakers are punished? (Remember what I said about the “Fathers Knows Best” economy). And isn’t it possible that in a less sexist society, any parenting wage penalty would be split more evenly between women and men?
Third, Stossel is forgetting that high-paying jobs generally provide pleasure and satisfaction, as well. It’s a pretty safe bet, for example, that John Stossel finds his job provides him with emotional satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment – despite the high pay. The higher-paid people are, the better the odds are that they have highly satisfying jobs performed in cushy conditions – the exact opposite of what Stossel is suggesting here.
One irony is that some people, especially young women, may make the choices that lead to the pay gap precisely because they have been taught the job market shortchanges women. Women who see the market as hostile may put their hearts into their homes instead of their careers — thus making less money.
Because goodness knows, there was absolutely no wage gap before feminists started talking about the concept.
I’ve written in more detail about most of Stossel’s arguments before. If you’re interested, check out these earlier posts:
- Myth: The Wage Gap is Caused by Men’s Higher Pay for Dangerous Jobs.
- Myth: If women really got paid less for similar work, then employers would replace all of the male workers with female workers.
- The Motherhood Myth.
- Myth: The Wage Gap Only Exists Because Men Work More Hours.
- What Causes the Wage Gap?
Thanks to Outside the Beltway for the link, and “Alas” reader “Barry” (no relation :-P ) for the tip.
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Why did anyone hire white people in the 1950s, for that matter, when they could have hired blacks cheaper?
Check unemployment stats from the 1950s. Blacks had their lowest unemployment rate in the 20th century – full employment, pretty much. (Bearing in mind that there were a lot of agricultural workers whose prospects were marginal.)
People didn’t hire black people on the margin because all the black people had been hired. Real wages for blacks went up significantly, too.
Robert, that has nothing to do with whether employers could hire black people for more desirable jobs than the ones they had. I doubt that a black assembly-line worker would balk at becoming a black middle-manager or skilled tradesman. Besides, Amp was using the 1950’s as an example of a decade that was most definitely discriminatory, with the general point that discrimination and wage disparities have existed at the same time.
>>Even if we put Stossel’s big error aside, employers still have good reason not to fire all men on Monday and then hire all women at lower wages on Tuesday: crippling transition costs, fear of discrimination lawsuits, the lack of enough women in the workforce to replace all men, desire to cater to customer prejudices, etc.>>
My big problem with this argument–Stossel’s, not Amp’s–is that it forgets that bigotry is irrational. Bigoted employers, whether sexist or racist, will be sexist and racist even if it costs them money and deprives them of talented support. They hire white men because they believe white men to be better employees at any price. It is true that employers have hired disadvantaged labor (women, minorities, immigrants, children) because it would be easier to control those workers, but not for skilled, well-paying jobs.
Labor Unions are overwhelmingly male, and there is wage control there. Anyone who has tried to get a union contruction job knows it’s a very restricted club. Around here, it’s also overwhelmingly white, despite a diverse urban workforce. When my husband was in LIUNA, he once asked an old timer (the only woman) why there weren’t any other hispanics. She answered “you don’t want to know.” There was one black man in the union, married to the (white) boss’ daughter. I just don’t buy the argument that a woman with only a high school education doesn’t want to make $20/hour because it’s outdoors and risky or because a 40 hour week is hard with kids. Women with that level of education and job opportunities are going to work long hours with little pay with or without kids, with or without good wages and risk of injury. Nursing is heavy work and somewhat risky, and female dominated. Interestingly, more and more men are becoming nurses becasue of the pay.
Vocational schools have been blamed for offering cosmetology, a very low paying field, to high school girls and not steering them into training that may pay off better in a few years.
Why the hell do people like Stossel get paying jobs? He’s asking questions that any gender theorist or feminist hostorian could answer in ten seconds. And, of course, he didn’t ask any of them.
It’s almost as if he *wants* us to think that people who can answer those questions don’t exist, and that he’s somehow the most informed one.
I think he’s gunning for a level of status in the conservative community by attacking liberal ideas.
Josh,
I think that Stossel is just lazy. It’s been a hallmark of his work for years now. He asks a question that can be answered simply and logically, without doing research, but that simple, logical answer is often flat out wrong. He’s doing an Andy Rooney bit but disguising it as reporting rather than what it really is – an opinion.
Of course that’s what he wants us to think. That’s Stossel’s MO. He’s a paid shill. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he knows also that his main audience also doesn’t know what he’s talking about and will accept his nonsense uncritically because he creates the illusion of being the iconoclast. Just another fake populist furthering the aims of the entitlement class.
I agree prejudices and sterotyping is not based on reason or rational thought, and it is true that men would rather deal with men, woman are not considered aggressive enough or willing as men to sacrifice their families for the sake of the company and more money.
sometimes that is understandable if the man has a large family and it costs alot of money to hire caretakers so that both husband and wife can work.
someone has to take care of the family, and if the husband and wife can agree on who should be the money winner and who stays home, maybe the wife makes more than the husband, and I know people like that, they actually save money in the long run if one stays home and cares for the family and home.
but I agree a woman shouldn’t make less money doing the same job working the same hours, just because in the back of the mind of the employer he is thinking she may all of a sudden quit the job later on down the line (for family reasons) after being promoted trained and given more responsiblity where they would have to find a replacement which is time and money.
a man is less likly to do that, (maybe gender/nurthur has a big bearing on it, I dont’ work outside the home, but I have in the past and there is more prejudice then just in the pay scale.
RR
I’d say the superstructure of bigotry is irrational, but its base is rational. (I’m not treating “rational” as synonymous with “good,” of course.) That is, you ask someone for a justification of segregation or wage disparities, and you’ll get a lot of arguments that you can tear apart without much effort. But the arguments keep coming back — because there are underlying forces that encourage bigotry.
A major rational basis for bigotry is disrupting solidarity among workers. Workers divided against each other are less able to challenge their bosses. The disadvantage of losing the occasional qualified worker is exceeded by the advantage of maintaining greater control over workers.
>Second, it’s true that there’s a wage penalty paid by primary caretaker parents (usually mothers). But why are jobs and careers designed in such a way that primary caretakers are punished? (Remember what I said about the “Fathers Knows Best”? economy). And isn’t it possible that in a less sexist society, any parenting wage penalty would be split more evenly between women and men?
Whoops. Let’s try that again.
>>Second, it’s true that there’s a wage penalty paid by primary caretaker parents (usually mothers). But why are jobs and careers designed in such a way that primary caretakers are punished? (Remember what I said about the “Fathers Knows Best”? economy). And isn’t it possible that in a less sexist society, any parenting wage penalty would be split more evenly between women and men?>>
This issue speaks to what is meant by “sexist”? and “sexism.”? I wrestle with how children should be financed. Good child rearing contributes to society’s wealth (and bad child-rearing detracts from it). So arguably society should subsidize child-rearing more than it does. The failure to offer appropriate subsidies is, in effect, a transfer of wealth from child-rearers to the rest of society. Because in our society (and every society?) women perform more child-rearing than men do, I could argue that society’s failure to subsidize child-rearing adequately is sexist.
But I’m not sure I’d impute this societal sexism to employers specifically. I would expect employers to try to hire people who will provide the best return on their employment dollar. While society derives benefit from your good child-rearing, any given employer is just a small part of society and derives just a small part of that benefit. Thus it is not surprising that the employer would not want to pay much for it.
Economists observe the same phenomenon regarding education. An employer is willing to invest in training employees on work-specific matters (e.g., software, procedures) because the employer will derive much of the benefit. The employer will be less likely to train employees on more general matters (e.g., how to read) because there is some large likelihood that the employee would take this new education to pursue a job elsewhere, depriving the employer of the benefit. I find nothing sexist in the employer’s reluctance to pay for anything other than “productivity,”? narrowly defined.
>>Third, Stossel is forgetting that high-paying jobs generally provide pleasure and satisfaction, as well. It’s a pretty safe bet, for example, that John Stossel finds his job provides him with emotional satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment – despite the high pay. The higher-paid people are, the better the odds are that they have highly satisfying jobs performed in cushy conditions – the exact opposite of what Stossel is suggesting here.>>
I see merit in both Stossel’s argument and Amp’s.
Admittedly, Stossel’s stylized characterization of work suggests stylized thinking. He distinguishes between a job that is demanding and consuming vs. a job that “puts … home life first”? and therefore has “more of the pleasures of family.”? This suggests a grass-is-always-greener perspective of someone who works outside the home. Sure, home life has pleasures, just as work life does, but those pleasures are all the more pleasant if you have a regular opportunity to escape them. Child-rearers often don’t; in effect, they live in their office 24 hrs a day. Consequently, Stossel’s remarks seem a little patronizing. If Stossel were called upon to stand ready to report on breaking developments in some national emergency 24 hrs/day, for days on end, and then read about some housewife pining for “the pleasures of working outside the home,”? he might get a clue about how his remarks sound.
Nevertheless, I agree with Stossel’s general idea that different jobs have different compensations, both financial and otherwise, and that people make their choices accordingly. Yes, people who get high financial rewards sometimes also get high non-financial rewards too, but that does not undermine Stossel’s remarks. The relevant comparison is between the financial and non-financial rewards of “two people [who] have equal potential”? but make different choices.
A professor can net more money working for the University of Nowhere than as an Associate Lecturer at Harvard; in fact, Harvard provides faculty housing precisely because new faculty can’t afford the neighborhood on Harvard wages. And yet, people agree to teach at Harvard. Similarly, NPR says that mechanics can make $120,000/yr if they are willing to go to Iraq, substantially more than they earn in the US. And yet, mechanics have not flocked to Iraq. It is hard not to conclude that there are trade-offs between financial rewards and non-financial factors. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Stossel could make more money by becoming a spokesman for MegaCorp., but that he prefers to trade off the money for the non-financial benefits of his current job. The fact that Stossel appears to get plenty of both financial and non-financial rewards is irrelevant; the relevant question is whether he would need to trade off one type of reward in order to get more of another type.
Ah, yes. But here is the issue: those non-financial incentives don’t buy the necessities of life. You can’t feed your kids, or put a roof over your head with prestige. And for those who are trapped in the bottom wage categories (a majority of whom are single women with children,) we get told about how we are “enjoying the pleasures of home,” so it’s really our own fault that we often have to choose between getting our kids vaccinated and paying for the heat.
The truth is that those who are at that bottom end of financial rewards don’t have real choices. In order to take that job in Iraq, you’d have to have someone at home, presumably the other parent, willing to take on single parenthood (or not have kids, which isn’t a choice once they are about.) In order to take on a higher paying job, you may have to be able to have childcare with hours that aren’t available (ever tried to find daycare for the swingshift? Third shift? Hell, just after 6:30 pm if you have a long commute?) or have a wardrobe you can’t buy on your budget. I get paid $10/hour as a secretary, and yet my job expects me to pay for my own cell phone so that I can be reachable at any time (they do pay for any time that work calls incur, but I still have to pay for the service to keep it on.) But it’s the only job I could get that came with health insurance.
I have found this post and its linked earlier ones very informative, Ampersand. I am guilty of being one of those liberals who swallowed the Farrel arguments without looking into them. This is due in part to many feminists talking about the wage gap as if it IS due only to direct discrimination. When presented with obvious untruths, it is easy to fall prey to less obvious ones that contradict them.
I disagree, however, with your suggestion that the trend of female primary caretakers is due to sexism. You say that women who stay home are working without getting paid, but that is not exactly true. Most major financial decisions within a marriage are made jointly, and stay-at-home moms usually have access to spending money that their husbands bring home, and in fact, women spend more than men nationally (I think; I might be wrong about this last bit). I am an individualist in most cases, but I think that it is often in the best interest of couples when raising a family to become an economic unit with differentiated parts. Anthropologists call this “economic specialization.”
I do not think that all women with husbands and children need to stay home all the time in order to be responsible parents. The important thing is that young children always have access to a close relative and that school children have that access most of the time outside of school. This can be met by the mother or the father staying home all the time or both parents having shifts that don’t overlap when the children are home from school and without access to a grandparent or something. Usually one person not working or working part time is the more feasible, though. Weird shifts are rarely desirable and not always available.
Don’t expect too much from stossel inthe way of anything intellegent. He did a junk science report on climat change that almost made me throw the TV out of the window.
In an example of how oil piplines in alaska are NOT really bad for the environment he said that the caribou population around the pipeline was 4-5 times higher than normal therefore the pipeline must be good for wildlife. If he knew a damn thing he would have realized that that only happens if you kill off natural predators and there is nothing to control the population, and that that is infact a disaster.
This argument, “there really isn’t discrimination against women because if there were, women would be hired to every job” is just as stupid, so stupid infact that Larry Summers said it about women in science.”there isn’t discrimination against women in academia because if there were they would come to places like Harvard that don’t discriminate and Harvard would be full of women” . Thus if women at Harvard are underrepresented, then there is in fact no discrimination against them.
These men are really too stupid to be listened to, if it were me I would be ashamed to associate my name with either of them.
I have formed a bullet-proof method of proving/disproving wage discrimination: just find two people (one male and the other female, if you only wish to study the gap between genders) who work on the same company, doing the same job, for the same amount of hours, and if they STILL get different pay you have wage discrimination (feel free to challenge this definition).
Then you just study the regularity of this sort of discrimination, and the direction to which it occurs (male-over-female or female-over-male), and draw conclusions.
Bottom line: segregation and wage discrimination are whole different things. If segregation isn’t taken into account in a wage discrimination statistics, it will show up as structural bias (a very bad form of statistics error, as it does’t go away even if you’d sample the whole population).
P.S: I don’t mean that segregation – which might even be a consequence of hiring discrimination! – is a good thing; just that it shouldn’t be confused with wage discrimination.
What about differentials in skills, performance, attitude, availability, commitment, and so on?
Oh, everyone knows women have a poor work attitude and availability and commitment, Robert — after all, they’re always running home because their kids get sick, or something.
I’m sorry to hear that you have such a negative view of women in the workplace, Krupskaya.
Come to think of it, at many jobs I’ve had, it was kind of taboo to talk about even the G-rated details of your personal life. So when women had to take half a day off for an issue related to their children, they’d often not clearly say so — so all you knew was that a particular woman kept leaving work.
I was looking at the application process for apprenticeship programs in building trades, and they heavily emphasized as a requirement the ability to keep “personal issues” from interfering with job performance. My first thought was my occasional bouts of depression, people upset by splits with partners, and so on. It didn’t occur to me that I’ve known a fair number of single mothers who were in the trades — it wouldn’t be matters so easy to deal with for them.
La Lubu, are you around? Any insights?
Mikko, if you want to define “wage discrimination” that way, that’s fine. However, what I’m talking about here is “the wage gap,” which can be caused by many things, including occupational segregation.
Nobody.really wrote:
N.R., I agree with that “general idea” – indeed, it’s hard to imagine anyone disagreeing with it.
However, Stossel claims that this accounts for virtually all of the wage gap between men and women, and that sexism has nothing to do with it. That I don’t agree with, and I don’t think that Stossel even comes close to providing evidence to prove that extreme view.
You say that women who stay home are working without getting paid, but that is not exactly true.
Yes, it is true. They are not getting paid. A woman who works outside the home has the exact same access to her husband’s paycheck and ‘spending money’ as a woman who is at home. (Women do spend more, because they tend to make major buying decisions for the household; they don’t spend more in the sense of “spend frivolously more”.)
I’m not saying women are frivolous spenders. I am just saying that housewives are not slaves. And if a woman has as much access to a man’s paycheck when she works, then he likely has similar access to her paycheck. Individual income is not clear-cut in a marriage, as I said before. It is a unified economic sysetem.
Piny points to a major flaw in the argument about the companies would hire women if they were cheaper than men. This would only be the case if this was based on a rational decision. However, descrimination is not rational, and part of the reason that women only can get less pay, is that the employers believe they are worth less as a workforce. So, when you factor this in, there is (in the employers’ eyes) no benifit hiring women cheaper, as they will have to hire more to do the same work as could be done with fewer men.
This line of thought is of course nonsense, but descrimination is that. Ratilonal decisions are very well in economic theory, but it doens’t happen in real life.
Piter, women who take care of their children are unpaid – they are not paid one dime. What they do, is share the income of their husbands, which is something entirely different.
Another significant flaw in the idea that companies would always choose to hire women over men because it could pay them less is that it would be illegal. But the real flaw is that it assumes that hiring is done exclusively on an objective, rational basis.
The Golden Rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules.
There is almost no wage gap between single women and single men who perform the same sorts of jobs and I think that is very telling. The biggest wage gap is between married women with children and married men whose wives don’t work outside of the home and I think that is very telling too. And that only addresses wage differentials within similar occupations.
A huge contributor to the overall wage gap which has already been mentioned is that female dominated professions generally pay less than male dominated ones. The average salary for someone with an M.S.W. seems to me to be pretty close to the average salary for someone without a degree in the IT field.
Two quick points:
marissa: pre-paid cell phone. For the most part, you can find phones that have no charges other than the per-minute charges for calls made or received. So just don’t give the number to anyone but your office, and you will incur no non-reimbursable charges. Not saying this will change your financial situation measurably, but there’s no reason your job needs to be a drain on your income.
Everyone else: setting aside for a moment the question of unskilled jobs, most of which have fixed starting salaries, I wonder how much of the white collar wage gap is explainable by the fact that some 84 percent of women don’t engage in salary negotiation? Anecdotally, I’ve had several female friends express surprise that I was able to negotiate myself into a higher salary during interviews, because most of them simply look at the salary they’re offered and then use that as a basis to decide whether to take the job, without inquiring as to whether they could get more. This fact may indicate that we’re doing something wrong in the process of raising girls and training them for the workforce; if women don’t know how to champion their own skills and negotiate, they must be missing some self-promotion skill that we’re teaching to boys somewhere along the line. But it makes me wonder how many women could be making more than they are if it ever occurred to them to ask.
I realize that it is not exactly the same, Kristjen. Men and women who do not work do not get a salary. But if they are married, they more likely than not have access to financial resources. Which they EARN, in a sense, by being a productive and essential member of the family unit. I understand that a nasty husband might use his role as the sole income provider to be a controlling douche, though I doubt this happens much. This kind of abuse is certainly grounds for divorce, and a woman who is the primary child care provider almost always get the children, which means child support. Add that to allimony, and she will probably maintain a reasonable standard of living. However, I definitely do not think that anyone should get married without being educated so that they COULD get a job if they had to.
I do not have any romantic ideas about the stay-at-home mom who doesn’t work. In fact I think it is ideal, if one parent stays home, that he or she has a part-time job or a job where he or she can telecommute. Not having an occupation with deadlines and a salary means that you must be self-motivated in just about everything you do, from getting up in the morning to your biology experiments or novel writing in the afternoon. This is not for everyone.
“So arguably society should subsidize child-rearing more than it does. The failure to offer appropriate subsidies is, in effect, a transfer of wealth from child-rearers to the rest of society. Because in our society (and every society?) women perform more child-rearing than men do, I could argue that society’s failure to subsidize child-rearing adequately is sexist.”
But would subsidizing child-rearing have the effect of encouraging people with no marketable skills to reproduce?
Also, if I am to be forced to subsidize someone else’s decision to have children, shouldn’t I get some say in whether or not they have children? If we believe in reproductive rights, shouldn’t we also believe that you should be able to provide for your kids yourself?
Actually, this is more than an abstract question. If children start being thought of as a “public good,” government will increasingly take control of child-rearing from the parents; the same way that socialized medicine has become an excuse for regulating smoking and seatbelt use.
“This kind of abuse is certainly grounds for divorce, and a woman who is the primary child care provider almost always get the children, which means child support. Add that to allimony, and she will probably maintain a reasonable standard of living.”
Wow, I’d like to live in that world. This is the 21st century, the courts don’t work that way anymore. IF, and that’s a big if, a woman gets alimony, it’s usually for a limited amount of time. Child support can’t be relied upon either.
Women generally have a much lower standard of living after divorce.
I was looking around a little at Snopes.com, which is some times a good resource, though it has gone down in quality since it started. While there, I found something that reminds us that progress has happened, though not far enough.
1943 Guide to Hiring Women
Men and women who do not work do not get a salary. But if they are married, they more likely than not have access to financial resources. Which they EARN, in a sense, by being a productive and essential member of the family unit.
But they do not “get paid.” And there is no fixed amount (unless the couple divorces) to which the at-home spouse is entitled. When I get paid, I am not required to cut my husband a check for half my salary. There is no law that says I must deposit my money into a bank account to which he has access. I am expect to support him, of course, but I am not obligated to do anything beyond that.
In other words, my employer must pay me, and they must pay me a certain sum. That is a legal obligation. I don’t have that same obligation to my spouse. If I paid all of our bills and didn’t give him another penny, he could divorce me, but he has no legal right to make me hand over anything more. Whereas if my employer doesn’t pay me exactly what they’re supposed to, I can force them to pony up.
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I was looking at the application process for apprenticeship programs in building trades, and they heavily emphasized as a requirement the ability to keep “personal issues”? from interfering with job performance. My first thought was my occasional bouts of depression, people upset by splits with partners, and so on. It didn’t occur to me that I’ve known a fair number of single mothers who were in the trades … it wouldn’t be matters so easy to deal with for them.
La Lubu, are you around? Any insights?
Ahh, it’s good to be back home!
I’ve never seen that phrase (“personal issues”) on any apprenticeship informational ad or application for any of the trades around here; I think that many people, even down here in the conservative sticks would interpret that as code for “women with children need not apply”—even if that was not the intent. And frankly, I can believe that wouldn’t necessarily be the intent; we’ve had a helluva problem lately in my local dealing with some of the white boys due to substance abuse.
Now, folks get up in arms about “political correctness” and discrimination lawsuits, but remember–there’s a reason for those lawsuits. And those lawsuits helped and continue to help pave the way for people like me who want equal opportunity. When I was interviewed for the apprenticeship, back in early ’88, it was an….interesting process. My interview took much longer than that of my male classmates, and was peppered with all sorts of commentary designed to get me to say “oh, you’re right! I don’t really want to do this.” But the fact was, I really did want to do this, and I told the apprenticeship committee that if I wasn’t accepted I would just obtain my education by going to trade school, and take that route (translation? you can either have me as a union worker, or someone else will have me as a nonunion worker). I come from a strong labor union background (as in, my dad was president of his local, and my mom was a steward and sat on the executive board of hers, and so on into my grandparents and great-grandparents); I’m sure I would have had an identity crisis if I had to go that other route, but I was fucking poor at the time, and I saw a career in the trades as my only hope!
Anyway, the apprenticeship committee kept going on about how hot it was in the summer, and how cold in the winter (“no problem. there’s no air conditioning in my apartment or at the job I have now, either.”). How dirty it was (“no problem. dirt is much cleaner than the occasional vomit and poop I have to deal with now”—I worked in child care. I also mentioned the food slop I had to deal with working in a restaurant as waitress and food prep, again much nastier than dirt). How heavy everything was (“I’ve been lifting weights since I was fifteen.”). How the guys liked to cuss (“I can handle cussing”—as I put on my best sunny smile while biting my tongue until it bled to keep from blurting out, “Fuck No! I don’t mind cussing!”).
Ultimately, I think they accepted me because my grades were good, and I had the second-highest score on the aptitude exam (out of 450 people who tested that year). So, they were kinda “stuck” with me, because there was no legitimate way to reject me (‘specially considering that two of the white men they accepted that year had abysmal scores on the aptitude exam—like in the 50’s. I saw the scores, much later on in my journey.).
This year, like last year, no women or men of color applied to my local’s apprenticeship. The perception is that it’s a bigoted environment with a limited future, especially in tough economic times like now, when so many are laid off. It’s no secret that contractors lay women and men of color off first. And promote young white men with little journeyman experience to be foremen, instead of offering those opportunities to more experienced others. With that said, I still think it’s a good option for people who can’t afford or manuever the logistics of attending college, and who have the ability to save money for the inevitable tough times. I look at it this way—-I’d be experiencing discrimination in any environment, so why not do it for high pay, a good pension and benefits, and union protection?
La Lubu, an aside: What trade?
Krupskaya, I’m an electrician.
This has probably come up before in discussions I wasn’t around for, but La Lubu’s post reminded me of it, in case anyone’s curious:
National Institute For Women In Trades, Technology & Science–
http://www.iwitts.com/
These folks are right in my neighborhood, and they have a convention every year 8) —
http://www.tradeswomen.net/
Oh gawd, I want to be an electrician. Once the kids are both in school, it’s a possibility for me.
Krupskaya, I love it! I posted on the subject on my blog last year. If you’re really interested, call your local IBEW Local; they should be listed in the yellow pages under “Labor Organizations”. Ask ’em when they’ll be taking applicants for the Inside Wireman apprenticeship.
Most lower-paying jobs don’t leave much room for negotiation. Leaving the gender-bias behind, traditionally the more professional an occupation, the more negotiation room. It doesn’t help that more of the lower-paying occuptions are filled mostly by women. I don’t believe that learning how to negoatiate is the answer. I, being a woman, have brokered to my advantage numerous times. Of course I am professional and there are many books on negotiating salaries and such out there, equally available for both sexes. With that being said, having worked my way through many low-paying jobs while in college, lower-level jobs leave little or no room for negotiation because frankly the companies have set limits on what they see as non-essential roles.
The way that I see it, companies feel justified paying lower wages to women because they “suppose” many things. That a woman has a man, that a woman has a wealthy family to support her, that a woman has some type of subsidy. The way our society views gender and its roles is sexist. Why is it that some jobs are so much lower paying than others? And more importantly, why is that gap is widening even more? Leaving gender out of the equation, why are American companies so keen on paying some members so little and some members so much? Now, there lies the real solution to our query. Some of it is economics, pure and simple. Some of it is sexism. Only when a society cares about its people, will a more equalitarian exchange of dollars for work hours exist.
Our system has some great things about it, and some not-so-great. Most importantly, our system is (purposefully) set up so that there are big winners and big losers. Our society must recognize that fact and account for it with social policies to help reconfigure the money systems more fairly. I feel for anyone trying to make in this day on $5.15 an hour (btw, it is still the minimum wage).
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Everyone else: setting aside for a moment the question of unskilled jobs, most of which have fixed starting salaries, I wonder how much of the white collar wage gap is explainable by the fact that some 84 percent of women don’t engage in salary negotiation? Anecdotally, I’ve had several female friends express surprise that I was able to negotiate myself into a higher salary during interviews, because most of them simply look at the salary they’re offered and then use that as a basis to decide whether to take the job, without inquiring as to whether they could get more. This fact may indicate that we’re doing something wrong in the process of raising girls and training them for the workforce; if women don’t know how to champion their own skills and negotiate, they must be missing some self-promotion skill that we’re teaching to boys somewhere along the line. But it makes me wonder how many women could be making more than they are if it ever occurred to them to ask.
Lizbeth, how can you say “The way that I see it, companies feel justified paying lower wages to women because they “suppose” many things. That a woman has a man, that a woman has a wealthy family to support her, that a woman has some type of subsidy.”
Companies pay based on productivity. If/when a company pays based on other factors, then it is surrendering potential productivity to the competition. Companies need to get the best talent they can get their hands on, regardless of sex.
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I have to say I once liked John Stossel of ABC’s 20/20 program, but the last few years John seems to be out of touch with his ‘GIVE ME A BRAKE’ reports like tonight, John was sticking up for employers that fire older employee’s for being old! WHAT! John are you so removed from the real world that you think this is a good thing? he had on the spot interveiws with people on the street, all kids in there 20’s making comments like ‘Yeah some old people like don’t even know how to log onto the inter-net’ WHAT! this is the kind of crap that is killing America in the world market some 20 year old ass-wipe that thinks the inter-net makes the world go round, my 78 year old mother knows more than alot of these guy’s.
Anyway John Stossel needs to be fired by 20/20 and ABC if he thinks firing someone from there job because they turn 50 in a good deal, yeah john I’d kick your ass if you wernt so fucking old and stupid. And for the rest of you that think you know so much because you can log-on to a computer, one day you’ll be old and it’s going to happen so fast you wont believe it, yeah just keep talking your trash, your kids are going show you how it works when they tell you your old and need to be put down because your a drag to be around and you smell old!