Will Women Ever Get Paid What They Deserve?

[Triana]

Will Women Ever Get Paid What They Deserve?
By Martha Burk, TomPaine.com
Posted on April 12, 2007, Printed on April 13, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50110/

We're coming up on Equal Pay Day again. That's the day in April every year -- this year the 24th -- when women's earnings finally catch up with what men made by Dec. 31 of the previous year. Women's groups, led by the National Committee on Pay Equity, will rally on Capitol Hill to call attention to the issue.

The pay gap is still a stubborn problem, with women who work full time year-round making 76 cents to a man's dollar. Though it consistently polls No. 1 with female voters in election years, politicians don't seem motivated to do much about it.

Some people say pay disparities between women and men are an illusion -- women just like to choose jobs that pay less because they're not as risky or have shorter hours. But the data don't back up these claims. Even when researchers take into account such factors as part-time work or time out of the work force to care for kids, the numbers show that men make more. Another problem that just won't go away is that so-called "men's jobs," like plumbing, pay more than "women's jobs," like nursing. That tells us something about what we value as a society, and it's not women's work.

The Fair Pay Act, a bill that would help narrow the gap, has grown old bouncing around Capitol Hill since the early 1990s, never receiving as much as a hearing. If the FPA ever passed, it would require employers to rate their jobs on skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions, and equalize pay for comparable jobs even if the job titles and duties are different. Employers naturally resist this, citing loss of "competitive advantage," but women's advocates suspect the real reason is that the numbers would be too damning. Women might even get big ideas like suing their employers for sex discrimination in pay and promotion, as female workers at Wal-Mart have done in the largest class-action suit in history.

[Lint Head]

1. Not as long as a male can only be elected president.

:dem:

[iamjoy]

2. Sorry, As A Woman, I Don't Agree

that's not to say there isn't some deliberate discrimination, especially in certain sectors.

But a lot of it is not deliberate, it's sub-conscious. It is the same type of discrimination that leads to tall people getting paid more than short people and slender people getting paid more than fat. It's not so much a matter of employers saying, "this employee is tall and thin, I'm going to pay him (her) more." No, it's just unintentional prejudice, that some are "liked" more than others.

I don't see how we can legislate that. Even if you rate jobs differently, managers will still rate employees the same. The male is more likely to be seen as performing better than the female, the tall person better than the short, the thin better than the fat, the attractive better than the homely. That's the case even when performance is comparable, because it's about perception.
That's part of the reason African Americans have it so rough. Even people who consider themselves open minded and who could never be labeled a bigot have little prejudices to which they are blind.

[wildhorses]

3. in a word--no

sorry but, i don't see it happening...would like to but i doubt i see it in my life time.

would love to have to eat these words.

[Solo_in_MD]

4. There has been major progress with equal pay for equal work

but equal pay for equivalent work, the essense of the FPA ignores the marketplace for labor and should not go forward.

[snot]

5. When enough women are willing to fight for it. nt

[Warpy]

6. If you want to triple the GDP of any country in the world

factor in all the unpaid work of women.

No, as long as patriarchy exists, we won't get paid what we're worth, and our real work will be slave labor. Men are too terrified we will leave them, and as underpaid as we are, we do.

[Triana]

7. Bingo....(n/t)

[mrreowwr_kittty]

8. Thank you for bringing up the unpaid work. nt

[Nikia]

9. I read some of the comments about the article

If those comments represent the opinion of the majority of men, there won't be equal pay anytime soon.

[lukasahero]

10. Lovely - and that's a liberal site... eom

[Triana]

11. ..and the men run most of the corps and gov't...

...there's the problem. I always love the one about "well men work more hours so they deserve more pay". These same men, however, seem to think that women who work a fulltime job and have another one waiting for them @ home (where WOMEN work more hours while many men sit on their butts after work) ought to do so at home (work more hours) for charity.

If women work less hours in the workplace, it's because their men aren't pulling their weight at home, forcing them to have to divide their time more carefully between their two fulltime jobs. Two fulltime jobs that most men don't have. They only have ONE fulltime job to spend their time on.

Using that as an excuse to pay men more just adds insult to injury.

The same jockstrap on that site declared that the only reason women had any rights was because kindhearted men ALLOWED them to have them and threatened that if women kept complaining, they'd leave them in the dirt.

Ugh! What a mysogenist, self-important, arrogant pig! Trash like him run the corporations as managers, CEOs, CFOs and one of them is the Pres of the US. Sociopaths.

No wonder women's pay has gone DOWN in comparison to men's pay over the past decade or two.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

12. Work in the home (or other jobs) should not be taken into account when calculating pay for jobs.

Like any other work, it should be paid for by the beneficiary/ies - the people who live in that home.

If two people are doing the same job, the fact that one of them also does other work for someone else should not make them be paid more.

How does the picture change if you count homemakers who are supported by a working partner as being paid (which in effect they are)?

If, on average, women work fewer hours per week in the workplace than men (I don't know whether that's true or not; it may well not be) then it would be a gross iniquity if they were paid the same per week per capita on average.

Fair pay means equal pay for equal work.

At present, women are, on average paid less per hour for identical jobs than men. That *is* clearly unfair, and should be remedied. But even when it has been, *if* women are still doing less of the kind of work that ought to be formally paid (this may of course not be/remain the case), then they *should* earn less per capita per year on average than men, whether or not they are doing more of the sort that shouldn't.

[hfojvt]

14. sorry, that averaging is just a load of crap

In every job I have ever worked women got paid just as much as men. Every job, no exceptions in 30 jobs. And, at the same time, in a lot of jobs - they did not do equal work. Men, even puny men like myself, are expected to do the heavy lifting and hauling. (Not that there are not individual variations. I have known plenty of men who were slackers and plenty of women who were awesome workers, but even the one 52 year old woman who was an absolute dynamo on the drill presses, doing the work of two people by herself, she still had a man help her move the heavy plates when the drills got switched between sizes.)

As far as work in the home - as a man, I do all of it. All of the cooking, all of the cleaning, all of the dishwashing, clothes washing, shopping, repairing, grass cutting, bill paying, budgeting, pet care, and snow shovelling. If men get some sort of break on this work, which is really not that big of a deal, that certainly does not apply to single guys living alone.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

16. I'm afraid anecdote is no substitute for statistic.

And the statistical evidence is strongly against you.

It *may* be the case that the 30 jobs you've worked at were all among the exceptions rather than the rule, but I'm afraid I think it's much more likely that you've simply overlooked evidence of discrimination.

I do agree with you that work in the home ought not to be a factor when calculating pay scales, though.

[hfojvt]

17. statistical evidence is not against me

My experience, which I relate in anecdotes, leads me to believe that the statistics are cherry-picked and in error. Plus, the statistic is given AS IF every woman is only making 78 cents to the dollar of every man, and it just ain't so.

http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/women/equalpay/FactSheetTimeForEqualPay.cfm

"Equal pay is a problem for all working women:
For women lawyers, whose median weekly earnings are nearly $373 less than those of male attorneys, and for women administrative support and clericals, who receive about $100 a week less than male administrative support and clericals;"

Comparing one median to another seems to me a big step back from comparing people of the same skills, education, and experience. (For example, how do we know that men and women have the same median of skills, education and experience?) Wide differences in pay due to those things and perhaps due to working for different companies, on different cases, and for different number of billable hours, those are all swept under the rug. Same thing with the clericals.

"For women doctors, whose median earnings are nearly $679 less each week than men's—or 58.3 percent of what male doctors earn—and for the 95 percent of nurses who are women but who earn $90 less each week than the 5 percent of nurses who are men;"

Again comparing medians and ignoring all other differences. Is this really a valid way of comparing salaries? I do not think so.

"For women professors, whose median pay is more than $244 less each week than men's, and for women elementary school teachers, who receive $86 less a week than men;"

In this case, do we not know that almost every university and every school district has a pay scale which is sexless? Pay is based on education and experience and other duties (coaching, tutoring, etc.) Show me just one major university where a woman with a PhD is paid less as an associate professor than a man with a PhD and I might believe in the dogma. However, the very fact that these differences in medians exist in places where I know the pay system to be quite fair, to me just makes the whole argument look weak.

"For women food service supervisors, who are paid $60 less each week than men in the same job, and for waitresses, whose weekly earnings are about $46 less than waiters' earnings."

The last one really takes the cake. The weekly earnings for a wait-person do not even depend on the employer, they depend on the customers. I think whoever did this study is really saying that the base pay for a waiter is higher than the base pay for a waitress. Total pay is going to be base pay plus tips. Anybody who can think with their little head can understand why the difference in base pay is not at all unfair. That is, if you believe people should receive equal pay for doing the same job. The difference in base pay helps to equalize the fact that women are getting more tips.
Then there is the whole matter of comparing different occupations:

"Jobs usually held by women pay less than jobs traditionally held by men even if they require the same education, skills and responsibilities. For example, stock and inventory clerks, who are mostly men, earn about $520 a week. General office clerks, on the other hand, are mostly women and they earn only $474 a week."

First of all, I hate to see an "outside expert" make that determination rather than someone who has worked both jobs. Second, isn't a clearer remedy, rather than doing all these comparisons, to make sure that women have equal opportunity to work as stock and inventory clerks and that men have equal opportunity to work as general office clerks. Also, they do not say if they are looking at starting pay or median pay.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

18. You make several errors, I think.

First of all, the statistics show that, *even when all factors related to the differences in distributions of choices or characteristics are controlled for*, women still earn at least 5% less than men. See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=229&topic_id=7054&mesg_id=7054

I think your argument that male waiters should be paid more than female ones is deeply flawed - they're both doing the same work for the employer, and should be paid the same amount for it. If the women are, on average, better at aquiring tips (and I have no idea whether or not that's true) then they're better at doing so, and should profit from it.

[hfojvt]

19. not very impressed by that article

"Female students tended to study areas with lower pay, such as education, health and psychology, while male students dominated higher-paying fields such as engineering, mathematics and physical sciences, it said."

That sorta jumped out at me, since I am a math major and would just about kill for teacher pay. I have not even been able to find a job utilizing my degree since I quit DOD. I dropped out of the math teaching department because apparently the women running it could not teach me how to teach even though I generally get A's and B's. But that's anecdotal.

It is nice that they start their headline with a bogus comparison - comparing all men to all women, and only later do they include other variables. I am not sure they included all variables. Ferrell talks about 25, they only mention 3.

"Even as the study accounted for such factors as the number of hours worked, occupations or parenthood, the gap persisted, researchers said."

Are there other factors that might account for the gap? What about experience? What about connections? (Does the boss's nephew make as much as the average Joe or Jane?) What about location? (Do people make the same in Sioux Falls as they do in New York City?) I can quickly think of half a dozen variables that need to be accounted for. One telling point is that they even talk about a gap among teachers. Teachers! Show me even one public school district which has a discriminatory pay scale. If there's widespread discrimination, then it ought to be easy. Yet they quickly conclude that a gap they cannot explain proves the existence of discrimination.

"These unexplained gaps are evidence of discrimination, which remains a serious problem for women in the work force," it said.


As far as the waitperson argument goes. I think your argument is flawed. You see a wage gap where women get more money (theoretically in the form of base pay plus tips) and you conclude not that it is sexism, or discrimination, but only evidence that the women are doing a better job. Maybe I can use that same argument to explain the supposed 5% wage gap.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

20. A pay scale needs to be applied.

Obviously, no school pay scale is going to explicitly discriminate. However, the place where discrimination can and does arise is in which teachers (or members of any other profession) get moved up that scale. I find it wholly believable that there is a pay gap among teachers.

And the 5% gap is what's left after all the things that possibly could (although not necessarily are) be a result of men doing a better job are accounted for - the raw gap is more like 20-30%.

[hfojvt]

21. but you assume that all the variables are accounted for

without having detailed knowledge of the study.

The pay scale, AFAIK, is automatic. Like when I worked for DOD, employees moved up the scale - got a step increase, every year. Discrimination in promotion or advancement is another issue than the 'wage gap' which says that there is a gap when men and women are working the exact same jobs.

I assume that the study has not accounted for all variables, based on working a number of jobs where there was no wage gap and my limited knowledge of teacher pay scales.

Also the fact that they start their announcement with clearly bogus 'facts' weakens their entire argument in my eyes.

"One year out of college, women working full time earn 80 percent of what men earn, according to the study by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, based in Washington D.C.

Ten years later, women earn 69 percent as much as men earn, it said."

In those two groups, they are not comparing the same jobs, the same degrees, or the same schools - just comparing 32 year old college educated men with 32 year old college educated women by pay. They lead with a statistic that leaves out many non-disriminatory reasons for such gaps. They do not answer Ferrell's research conclusions:

"After years of research, I discovered 25 differences in the work-life choices of men and women. All 25 lead to men earning more money, but to women having better lives."

[iverglas]

22. so much nonsense, so little time

One in particular is easily disposed of.

The weekly earnings for a wait-person do not even depend on the employer, they depend on the customers. I think whoever did this study is really saying that the base pay for a waiter is higher than the base pay for a waitress. Total pay is going to be base pay plus tips. Anybody who can think with their little head can understand why the difference in base pay is not at all unfair. That is, if you believe people should receive equal pay for doing the same job. The difference in base pay helps to equalize the fact that women are getting more tips.

Well ... not so much, actually.

First, the study is absolutely not saying that "the base pay for a waiter is higher than the base pay for a waitress". It is saying that WEEKLY EARNINGS for a server are higher for men than women. I mean, that's what it said.

I absolutely cannot believe that someone typed that bumph about how, since women make more in tips (false), men should be given higher base pay (that's called "discrimination", and it's nonsense anyway).

Men receive higher base pay because they work in expensive restaurants in higher proportions than women do.

Men receive more in tips because they work in expensive restaurants in higher proportions than women do. Tips generally correlate to the price of the meal.

Men accordingly receive more in total earnings.

Discrimination may be illegal, but it exists. If you want to try to tell me that high-end restaurants do not favour men when hiring wait staff, I'll laugh.

If you want to try to tell me that the local diner or chain restaurant has equal numbers of men and women waiting tables, I'll laugh. And if you want to try to tell me that equal numbers of older men and older women work as wait staff -- i.e. got stuck in dead-end jobs (for a variety of reasons, the big one being the fact of women's disproportionate responsibility for family/household care and the disproportionate representation of women among single-parent heads of households) -- I'll laugh at that too.

I could point out and refute more of the nonsense in that post, but I see little need.

But I do just love the assumptions you make about the skills and integrity of the people who do studies like this. Obviously, if we believed you, they would be making a good deal more than they're worth.

[Boojatta]

13. I made a choice to try to look carefully at one paragraph.

Excerpt #1:

Some people say pay disparities between women and men are an illusion -- women just like to choose jobs that pay less (...)

Note: I have stopped the author in mid-thought, but there might be a method to this madness.

Excerpt #2:

because they're not as risky or have shorter hours.

In other words, people believe that women consider no more than two different issues when making occupational choices? Which people believe that and why should we care what they think?

Excerpt #3:

But the data don't back up these claims.

Which claims?

Excerpt #4:

Even when researchers take into account such factors as part-time work or time out of the work force to care for kids, the numbers show that men make more.

Was that supposed to say "receive more"? If men earn more, then it's not clear what the problem is. Also, instead of focusing attention on anonymous "researchers", why not make reference to actual research papers so that readers can study them?

Excerpt #5:

Another problem that just won't go away is that so-called "men's jobs," like plumbing, pay more than "women's jobs," like nursing.

Consider a slightly edited version of excerpt #1: "Some people say pay disparities between women and men are an illusion -- that women work at jobs that pay less." Now, if we consider that edited version of excerpt #1, then are we talking about a claim not backed up by the data?

Excerpt #6:

That tells us something about what we value as a society, and it's not women's work.

Does it? How many nurses are ready, willing, and able to work with permanent removal of access to running water? Is it of any value to attempt to distinguish between:

1. labor markets in a particular occupation; and

2. the goods or services provided by people who belong to various occupations, and who rely upon each other to make various contributions?

[hfojvt]

15. One person who makes this claim is: Warren Ferrell

Why should you care what he thinks? The article is trying to prove a point, and one of the ways it does that is to debunk various counter-arguments that have been made to that point, such as this from the NY Times:

"After years of research, I discovered 25 differences in the work-life choices of men and women. All 25 lead to men earning more money, but to women having better lives.

High pay, as it turns out, is about tradeoffs. Men's tradeoffs include working more hours (women work more around the home); taking more dangerous, dirtier and outdoor jobs (garbage collecting, construction, trucking); relocating and traveling; and training for technical jobs with less people contact (like engineering)."

by this guy:
Warren Farrell is the author of "Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap - and What Women Can Do About It."

"Don't women, though, earn less than men in the same job? Yes and no. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics lumps together all medical doctors. Men are more likely to be surgeons (versus general practitioners) and work in private practice for hours that are longer and less predictable, and for more years. In brief, the same job is not the same. Are these women's choices? When I taught at a medical school, I saw that even my first-year female students eyed specialties with fewer and more predictable hours.

But don't female executives also make less than male executives? Yes. Discrimination? Let's look. The men are more frequently executives of national and international firms with more personnel and revenues, and responsible for bottom-line sales, marketing and finances, not human resources or public relations. They have more experience, relocate and travel overseas more, and so on.

Comparing men and women with the "same jobs," then, is to compare apples and oranges. However, when all 25 choices are the same, the great news for women is that then the women make more than the men. Is there discrimination against women? Yes, like the old boys' network. And sometimes discrimination against women becomes discrimination against men: in hazardous fields, women suffer fewer hazards. For example, more than 500 marines have died in the war in Iraq. All but two were men. In other fields, men are virtually excluded - try getting hired as a male dental hygienist, nursery school teacher, cocktail waiter."


Seems to me that he debunks alot of the 'Pay gap myths' and feminists should like his conclusion, shouldn't they? "Men make more money. Women have better lives."

Do some women want to trade their better lives for more money? Or do they think they should be able to have their cake and eat it too? I think that we, as a society, should value money less than we do.