Today is Equal Pay Day, a well-intentioned if imperfect faux holiday based on the notion that women have to work roughly a year and three-and-a-half months in order to make as much money as men make in a year.
The wage gap is a little — actually, a lot — more complicated than that. Only a portion of the gap is the result of straight-up discrimination; much of the rest is the result of women’s choices.
Well, their “choices.” I’ve put that word in scare quotes because many of these “choices” are the result of living in a still-sexist society in which women, among other things, are expected to do the bulk of the child-rearing, an expectation that has enormous consequences for the careers and earning power of both women and men. In the Washington Post, Catherine Rampell goes through some of these complications; I took a whack at the subject myself a few years ago on Time.com.
Among MRAs, of course, the conventional wisdom is that the wage gap is a “myth,” a conclusion that one can reach only by misinterpreting or deliberately distorting the numerous studies that have been undertaken on the subject. Or, as is probably more common, by simply regurgitating the “arguments” of other MRAs.
This brings us to today’s busted meme, courtesy of the A Voice for Men meme factory.
At first this meme seems merely baffling. Is this gal, all covered in muck, supposed to be a female coal miner, or something?
No. She’s supposed to be a zombie representing the “myth” of equal pay for equal work — “[t]he myth that just won’t die,” as whoever posted this to AVFM’s Facebook put it.
In other words, they’ve got their own propaganda backwards. The MRA line is that it’s the wage gap that’s the myth, not the idea that men and women receive equal pay. In the real world, it’s the other way around: the wage gap is real; women, on average, don’t get equal pay for equal work. By labeling their own belief — that men and women do get equal pay for equal work — a myth, they’re accidentally arguing the feminist case.
And now I’ve given myself a bit of a headache.
Ah yes, the so-called ‘choices’ which are, paradoxically, the consequence of a complete lack of choice.
There’s currently a substantial wage gap between my wife and myself, on account of me being the main childcarer for the last five years or so. But I’m fully aware that I’m in the minority here and that in the vast majority of cases it’s the woman who’s expected to make these financial sacrifices, so I have no problem with interpreting this along gender-based lines.
“Accidentally arguing against themselves”
…why does that happen to these guys so often?
Are any of the MRAs going to call him out on his mistake? SOME of them have enough sense to notice glaringly obvious logical flaws. Sometimes, anyway.
http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/images/made/aadc04afc622ccbb/gollum_395_394.jpg
Extremely poor graphic quality? ✓
Partially illegible? ✓
Makes no sense? ✓
Actually makes them look dumber? ✓
Still manages to include a lady in a low-cut top looking angry? ✓
Must be a Human Men’s Human Rights Human Activists poster.
@Drspacejunk “Ah yes, the so-called ‘choices’ which are, paradoxically, the consequence of a complete lack of choice.”
Here’s where the assholes will start arguing that women have the “choice” of never having children. Because children are the equivalent of buying an expensive purse and not literally our future or anything.
Remember kids, it’s feminists whom are anti-child!
Whenever I hear someone try to refute the wage gap, they always say “well its just because women CHOOSE lower-paying jobs!” Like… They say it as if its so easy to just choose a job that pays a lot. Plus, the 77 cents to 1 dollar is only when comparing white women and white men. When you take race into account it goes like this:
White men earn the most, then come white women, then men of color, and then women of color. I think its hispanic women in particular who are at the very bottom.
Say what you will about it being all a result of choices, but that order seems waaaay too reflective of our social hierchy to be just a coincidence that can all be explained by individual choices.
The MRAs really are the masters of the own-goal, aren’t they?
Howard:
““Accidentally arguing against themselves”
…why does that happen to these guys so often?”
It’s bound to happen when your position is so far from reality. The mental gymnastics these guys have to do to confirm their world view will inevitably crack sometimes. Esp w all the inconsistency.
Actually what I get from this meme is that stereotypical “only beastly women want rights” – right out of the suffrage cartoons of yore.
Does anyone else think that zombie looks a bit like Pink?
I’ve noticed that with the MRM, the only time they acknowledge the wage gap is when they’re whining about how unfair it is that men are paying more tax, just because they happen to be earning more money. Likewise how ‘unfair’ the fact men earn more money makes them more likely to get saddled with alimony.
That meme looks like they disagree with “equal pay for equal work” idea.
And when we’re at it, zombies should get equal pay for equal work too, seriously! They should earn no more and no less than living people walking awkwardly and eating brains all day long.
I work in the legal field (though in a job generally understood to be where smart women went, cause they couldn’t be lawyers). Several studies have been done about the salaries of women in the legal field, specifically lawyers, and even more specifically female lawyers who have not left their job to have children – not even for a month.
And guess what, even with those women, there is a wage gap. So while MRA can say “choices”, it’s really not about the choices women make. it’s that we are dumb blonds who are not trusted with the keys to the Porsche.
At some level, it doesn’t matter what the reason is for the wage gap. Take the salaries of all men and the salaries of all women and compare them against each other; if there’s a difference, that means there’s an issue, because gender shouldn’t be a cause for a difference in employment.
Even MRAs know this, which is why they settle immediately on biology to explain the gap. They also believe that adult women are no different than children, so, you know… not the most reliable folks in the world.
Meant to add links – can’t figure out if you can edit your post.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/06/3434641/lawyers-gender-wage-gap/
http://www.legalspeaks.com/2013/04/gender-pay-gap-exists-for-women-lawyers-too/
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2535080?uid=3739568&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21106455490163
You’d think they’d realize that equal pay benefits men too.
Why hire a man when you can pay a woman less?
@Lea:
They actually use that to argue that the wage gap doesn’t exist, because otherwise women would be more employed. Unfortunately, that assumes that the people hiring view male and female work as the same quality, which kind of defeats the whole reason why they would be paying women less.
Ugh.
Don’t read the comments section of WP article (or do if you’re up for some more of the same ol’ same ol’ and/or want engage in some commentitariate battle).
@sn0rkmaiden
My immediate reaction was “why is Pink covered in mud?” so you are definitely not alone.
Oh noes! Fear the evil bogeywoman of equal rights and equal pay! For, once women are making as much money on average as your average man, that can only mean one thing: She’s not gonna be in a position of forced dependency any more. And when that happens, more terrible things are gonna fall in line like dominoes: She won’t be tied to childbearing and the kitchen sink! She won’t be forced to accept a shitty male partner because her self-esteem will be so high that she’ll actually make REAL free choices! In short, women making equal pay means men will have to smarten the fuck up and start being human, not asinine! Oh the HORROR!
Driving to work one day, the DJ’s were discussing a guy who had called in for advice. The caller was upset because he was engaged to a woman who made more money than he did, which made him uncomfortable. The male DJ was making excuses, saying how this attitude was understandable, but the female DJ was like “so why is a woman making more money a problem?”
When a man says he’s bothered that his partner makes more than he does, what he’s saying is that he believes he’s worth more than any woman. He’s saying that women *should* make less money, because they are worth less than a man. When someone says that being bothered by it is “understandable”, they’re saying that it’s understandable that women are inherently inferior – this is just toxic masculinity at its worst.
The people who spout “free market!” whenever the wage gap comes up are missing the point that markets are comprised of people, and these people have biases. The wage gap exists solely because men believe that the work a man does is worth less than the work a woman does. (Doctors in the west, for example, are well-compensated, because being a doctor is a “masculine” profession here. Doctors in former soviet bloc countries are compensated poorly, because being a doctor is considered a “nurturing” profession and most doctors are women.)
This is why women make 77% of what a man does – because of people who believe men are worth more than women are. There is no other reason besides plain misogyny.
MRAs do know it’s not an issue we made up. If it’s not a real problem, then any solution meant to solve the wage gap won’t have any effect. It’s like they’re protesting too much. In fact, if men are all oppressed and disposable, strengthened labor laws should be a good thing.
Sorry for the US politics centered comment. But it reminds me of the conservatives who complain about the “liberal media” and yet bitterly oppose the slightest hint of the fairness doctrine returning. If the msm was really unfair to conservatives, the fairness doctrine would help them.
These guys know that having children is a much bigger financial burden for mothers than for fathers. They only pretend it’s the other way around.
And, notoriously, doctors are paid substantially more than midwives. Granted, it’s reasonable to expect them to earn more, as it’s a more demanding job – but midwives are also highly skilled medical professionals who are routinely required to officiate over life-or-death matters.
I know a lot of former midwives (and indeed am married to one) who got out of the profession primarily because they felt they weren’t being paid enough for the responsibilities that were being increasingly heaped upon them. This came to a head when UK doctors’ pay was substantially increased in the mid-2000s as the result of some rather successful negotiation (on their part) with the then Health Secretary John Reid, making the pay gap even greater.
Whether there’s an engineered gender bias operating here is open to question, but given that midwifery is overwhelmingly a female-dominated profession there was certainly the appearance of one, and that was part of the problem in itself.
Well there’s another issue. Women with power leave men feeling insecure. Earn 77% of what he does and he won’t feel offended by your career, or, become a corporate executive at your own risk.
It sucks that the woman who buys into this crap is then blamed for her own “choices”, as if it’s their own fault these inequalities exist