Yesterday was National Equal Pay Day. Apparently, April 12 is the day “that symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year.” (http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2016/04/12/equal-pay-day-inequality-women-gender/82913078/)
Now I was well aware that women earn less per hour than men for doing the same job. That is old information – which I had hoped would have changed more by this point in our nation’s history. But I had not heard of the reasoning for marking that particular date.
What brought all this to my attention was a facebook post. A friend of a friend had posted a screen shot of a series of tweets by a woman on the topic of #EqualPayDay. I was surprised by the litany of complaints that almost protested the day. Basically, they boiled down to the following list of problems that the speaker seems to believe women “complain” about and the way that women can overcome those problems, earning more money.
–Women with kids leave the workforce more than men – so keep working
–Men work more dangerous jobs – so women should go be oil drillers
–Women go into fields like education & psychology – so go into STEM fields
–Women want jobs with flexibility – so get a 9-5 job
–Men work longer hours – so women should work longer hours
–Women don’t negotiate their pay like men do – so ask for more money
While my friend had commented (and that was why I even saw this post) on the difficulty that women have in the STEM fields (put a pin in that – we’ll be back), most of the comments that I saw below the post were along the lines of “Exactly!” – “Women are whiners!” – “Shut up and work if you want to make more money!”
My reaction was, “Wow, they really don’t understand the concept of equal pay.”
Most of these points are – well – dumb. Of course someone who works more hours will earn more money – if the work is paid hourly. Of course someone who works more years will earn more money. A person can’t earn money with no job. And of course certain jobs have higher rates of pay. A customer service rep does not earn the same salary as a shift manager; a paralegal generally does not earn the same salary as a lawyer.
Duh.
No one is saying that “equal pay” means a woman and a man should have the same income for the year regardless of their jobs. The crux of the matter is that if there are two open spots with the same level of responsibility, and a man and a woman (with identical degrees in business and identical GPAs) are hired, the chances are strong that the man will be hired at a higher rate of pay than the woman.
That’s the problem we’re talking about. Two people doing the exact same job should earn the same amount of money.
I’m reminded of the leaked info from the Sony hack. Not only did it point out that Jennifer Lawrence made less than her male co-stars (and she already had an Oscar while Cooper and Renner did not), but it highlighted that the two co-presidents of production at Columbia Pictures have an almost $1 million difference in their pay: $2.4 mil for the man, $1.5 mil for the woman. While I can certainly understand that the higher paid person might have more experience, that’s a pretty steep gap for two people doing the same job. (And I’m not just holding Ghost Rider and The Love Guru against De Luca.)
These tweets also try to make the whole situation appear incredibly simple: just make different choices and voila! more money. But reality is not that simple.
Women have trouble getting maternity leave or coming back after maternity leave – or even just getting hired because employers assume that women will *at some point* go off and have kids. According to a Guardian article,
“A third of managers would rather employ a man in his 20s or 30s over a woman of the same age for fear of maternity leave, according to a new study. A survey of 500 managers by law firm Slater & Gordon showed that more than 40% admitted they are generally wary of hiring a woman of childbearing age, while a similar number would be wary of hiring a woman who has already had a child or hiring a mother for a senior role.”
The study to which the article refers also discusses how a third of management “claim that women are not as good at their jobs when they come back from maternity leave.” And this was written in 2014.
So what should women do? Not have children? Promise that the husband will be staying home to shoulder the majority of the burden? It’s not even the woman’s problem. Managers don’t want to hire a woman of a certain age just because they fear she will want to have children. And women are penalized for already having children in a way that men are not (when it comes to hiring) – because it is assumed that the woman will be with the children more than the man.
That is all on society. How is a woman supposed to fight all that before she even gets the job and wants to earn equal pay?
As for “work more hours” or “work a 9-5 job” or “work longer,” well, that again is not always in the control of the worker. Just wanting a 9-5 job does not mean a person gets to have one, nor does wanting extra hours mean a person gets them – regardless of gender.
Oh, and the “ask for more money” bit? Okay, pumpkin, you try that and let me know how it goes.
Asking for more money – either at the start of a job or as a raise – just doesn’t go over well for almost anyone these days. The employers hold the cards; there might be hundreds of applicants for the job. Why bother with someone who wants more money when the employer can just move on to another qualified person who will settle for the first offer?
Add in that women in particular are seen as “pushy” or “bitchy” or “hard to work with” if they ask for more money. Again, this is not a new idea and is well documented. I remember the blog post that made the rounds a couple of years ago about a woman who had been offered a job at a college and when she tried to negotiate, her job offer disappeared. Granted, there could be factors we don’t know about, and we cannot assume we know the whole story. But the consensus seems to be that there was no discussion: she sent an email with requests, acknowledging that some might be easier to fulfill than others, and asked what the new employer thought. The response was not to talk about the options but to say never mind about the job.
Women in general suffer more when they try to negotiate. The New Yorker article about this incident points out that studies have shown this repeatedly. “In four studies, Bowles and collaborators from Carnegie Mellon found that people penalized women who initiated negotiations for higher compensation more than they did men.” Just another hurdle in the “do these simple things and you’ll make as much money as a man” checklist.
So let’s go back to the argument of how women should just go into fields where they would make more money. I know nothing about being an oil driller, so I checked. An NPR article from last year tells me it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I assumed a fair amount of sexism and trouble getting hired. This article suggests that while the sexism is there, the climate has gotten better, and that companies like ExxonMobil are now going after female employees.
“The oil giant holds an annual “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day.” The company also sends its female engineers and scientists to middle schools as mentors and instructors, “all aimed at getting [female students] interested in the subject and preparing them for taking math and science courses in high school that will help them study engineering in college,” Keil says.”
Great – so what’s stopping women?
Oh, yeah, back to my friend Rick’s point about women having trouble in the STEM fields. It’s well documented that girls are simply not as encouraged from a young age when it comes to interest in math and science. (Interesting article with Eileen Pollack about her book on being a woman in the sciences: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/encouraging-girls-become-scientists-rocket-science/)
Women also have to deal with things like the idiocy of elected officials (like U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert and a few others) who vote against a bill that would “increase federal funds to programs that promote women in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) within the commercial free market.” Mainly because what about those poor little boys we’ll be leaving behind if we force girls into science?
(This from the man who brilliantly links a idea of limits on gun magazines to the issue of gay marriage – no, I can’t really explain it because it made no sense to me. Something about how limiting a magazine to 10 bullets was arbitrary, like if we say marriage is not just one man and one woman, then we’ll have three men and one woman or one person and an animal – “There is no clear place to draw the line once you eliminate the traditional marriage and it’s the same once you start putting limits on what guns can be used” – like I said, I can’t explain it. Bonus points to you if you can. But I fear understanding Gohmert is a path to Lovecraftian sanity loss.)
Or women have to deal with a Nobel Prize winning scientist who suggests that women should be banned from labs because they are a distraction. He says, “Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry.” And he defended these remarks by saying he meant them to be “light-hearted and ironic” but he was also trying to be “honest.” The Daily Mail article additionally points out that, “Science careers are still vastly dominated by men, with only 13 per cent of workers being women. The gap is also significant in academia, where 84 per cent of full-time professors working in science, engineering and technology are men.”
(Incidentally, if you didn’t follow the eruption on twitter of women scientists tweeting pictures of themselves as #distractinglysexy in things like hazmat suits, then you missed out. “I did an entire liver transplant without crying or falling in love!” one scientist bragged.)
So where and how are women supposed to study and get into these higher paying STEM fields? Yes, they can make it through – it’s not impossible. But it’s also not as simple as just saying “oh, I think I want to make more money so I’ll go into ____.” The bias against women in the field exists, and so getting the education or experience necessary to get the jobs can be a great challenge.
Again, not that women can’t overcome that challenge. But it’s a complex issue, layered with centuries of sexism and bias. These tweets are missing the critical core issue of equal pay for equal work and displaying a lack of critical thinking. Yes, these issues of being discriminated against simply for being able to bear children and the subconscious bias that privileges men do need to be dealt with eventually. (And that bias is there – everywhere – just check out the story about how students give better evaluations to teachers they think are male – https://news.ncsu.edu/2014/12/macnell-gender-2014/)
These attitudes are entrenched and will take a long time to overcome. It’s not as simple as “just work more” or “get a different job.” But let’s start with the core issue – being paid the same amount for the same work. Maybe if we can conquer that, we can feel more like we’re building something and less like Sisyphus rolling that boulder up the mountain.
Whew – more than I meant to write, but these things happen.
Sony Hack info
Maternity leave issue
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/aug/12/managers-avoid-hiring-younger-women-maternity-leave
Negotiating
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/lean-out-the-dangers-for-women-who-negotiate
Women on oil rigs
http://www.npr.org/2015/05/08/400353815/oil-companies-look-to-fill-employment-gap-with-more-women
Nobel scientist
Distractingly sexy
Gohmert’s comments
Louie Gohmert Thought He’d Be the Speaker of the House. Here Are 14 Other Crazy Things He Believes.
To Be A Polymathlete 