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.
@sn0rkmaiden and maistrechat
That’s because it IS Pink. According to Google, it’s a ‘shop of her from Worth1000. This jackass just cut out the background and watermark and ran it through a blur filter.
There’s so much about the wage gap that the regularly pulled out excuses actively ignore.
Like than when people start thinking of a career as being more female dominated, they assume that job is less important. And that proportional pay for that field slides downwards.
The study
Or that in any given field, men make more than women in that field, with only the most minimal of exceptions.
Or that fields that typically pay better face more gender-based discrimination.
Uses stolen artwork? ✓
We should add that to the checklist as well. It happens way too often.
“Supernova on April 14, 2015 at 9:22 am
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.”
Any idea where First Nations (or the American equivalent) fit in?
@PI
Indeed. I swear they put more effort into removing watermarks than they do into everything else combined. =P
Hmmm…a job that pays enough for me to cover my monthly expenses and live comfortably/independently or a job that means I will barely scrape by, if that? Of course if it were just a matter of “choice” I’d pick the first one…who wouldn’t? But in all my working life, I’ve NEVER earned enough to live comfortably OR independently. And this is true even after going back to school to get my degree and changing careers. And it has put me in the position of staying with abusive ex’s way too long because I couldn’t survive on my own salary (or couldn’t even FIND a job).
And even though I’m doing slightly better these days, I still don’t live alone because I couldn’t afford to! It’s so bad that we grow up just thinking it’s “normal” for men to earn more. They’re men, afterall…they’re WORTH more. They get better jobs. Or at least that’s how it seems. But I also grew up seeing my mom bust her ass every day to be able to raise us kids…and we still were very poor. I think anyone who complains about a “wage gap myth” has probably never experienced poverty, plain and simple. It’s another example of male privilege and entitlement, IMO.
@dudeinthewoods | April 14, 2015 at 12:44 pm
I’m not sure where Native Americans fall… I can’t find much info on them, so I assume its either that their population is to small to get a statistic on or they’re at the very bottom that its too hard to chart. Or maybe since many of them live on Reservations, which function as their own government, their pay is a different situation from the United States’ one.
My personal experience comes from working in government and having the salary of everyone on the government payroll published in the paper. This is freedom of information, and it’s not the kind of thing that happens very often, but a local paper decided they cared, and all of our names and salaries got published in the paper. Thus I discovered that my male technician, who worked for me (and about three of the other planners in the department) made more money than I did. I have a master’s degree. He wasn’t even finished with college yet. Now I can explain some of the reasons that this happened, there’s only a certain percentage of a raise you can get every year, and it never keeps up with inflation, so you’re actually financially punished for staying at the same job (I had several colleagues who got hired away, and then hired back in order to get an actual raise.) but there’s no reason for him to be – in his first year on the job, making more than I was in my third year on the job, especially since I was three rungs up the ladder from him.
So yeah, just my anecdotal evidence that this very much still happens.
This is funny, but what would actually but we all know she’d be fired in a heartbeat. Also, where is all the dialogue of men at her workplace calling her a lazy, incompetent bitch?
@idledillettante
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of insecurity. I think a lot of men think that, unless they’re making more money than their women s/o’s, women will have no reason to stay with them. Cf. the omnipresent fears about “cuckolding” in the manosphere.
If you combine
A) the approval and affection of women is absolutely essential to my self-worth
and
B) all relationships are transactional and hierarchical
then you end up feeling like you need leverage and power over women in order to feel ok about yourself. The various elements of the manosphere buy into and reenforce A and B unreservedly.
Oh, typo mammoth you really f**d that post up.
*should read: but we all know she’d be fired…..
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.
Thank you! I mean, just because I’m undead it shouldn’t mean that I should get paid less. Also, the term ‘living expenses’ is problematic. You have no idea how much money it costs for the un-living to make themselves presentable! Of course you then have to deal with prejudice once people figure out that you’re not (fully) alive. Not to mention combatting the whole zombies eat brains myth. Personally I can’t get past the chewy texture. It sets my teeth on edge.
All joking aside, I’ve been waiting for one of these wage gap is a myth guys to explain to me why it’s been demonstrated that male nurses earn more than their female counterparts. Can’t be because of ‘choices’ since nursing historically has been female dominated. I’ve worked in healthcare for many moons and have seen this trend take place.
I know this is off-topic, but isn’t the woman in the picture based on a picture of Pink/Alicia Moore?
Lady Zombie I agree. Pretty damn despicable when this goes on even in a field dominated by WOMEN!
@kirbywarp:
Yes, but evidently children who never experience childhood:
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/01/28/the-top-3-reasons-the-all-female-ghostbusters-will-suck-according-to-some-dudes-who-hate-women/
It’s interesting the kind of creatures they invent just to deal with the real world. Childhoodless children…
Gah! My brain exploded!!!
One informal definition of zombie is “a person whose behavior or responses are wooden, listless, or seemingly rote; automaton.”
The image quotes the zombie’s demand for “equal pay for equal work” as if this is a demand that feminists repeat like “zombies” regardless of evidence presented.
That is what I believe the intention was.
@yutolia “It’s interesting the kind of creatures they invent just to deal with the real world. Childhoodless children…
Gah! My brain exploded!!!”
Well, many of them don’t seem to have a problem with the idea of robbing children of their childhoods…
I wonder what it’s like talking to the guy who makes those “memes.” Because none of them ever, ever make sense.
The closest thing to a legitimate ‘concern’ about your wife making more money than you (as a dude) comes from the fact that it can be looked down upon by society at-large, which is a pain. Nervousness about this fact, however, is yet another reason why dudes in this position (such as myself) are actually better off with MOAR FEMINISM (BRAINS). Ie, as the situation becomes increasingly common, it will be less likely to be considered strange or a sign of weakness, and we’ll all be able to get down to the business of getting on with life without having to worry about this shit.
With regard to nursing, I read that male nurses are more likely than female nurses to enter high tech nursing specialties such as critical care, are more likely to enter RN and BSN programs, more likely than female nurses to have a doctoral degree, more likely to work evening or night shifts, and more likely to gravitate toward unusual positions that pay well, such as flight nurses on medevac helicopters. This may explain the pay gap in nursing at least to some degree.
Yes and no (leaning towards no). Also, that’s missing a bit of context.
Male nurses are more likely to be encouraged (over their female counterparts) to go into the higher paying nursing fields and administration. They’re also promoted faster and more often than their female counterparts. It’s the Glass Elevator. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/05/21/a-new-obstacle-for-professional-women-the-glass-escalator/
I’ve not seen any studies showing that male nurses gravitate towards the evening and night shifts more than female nurses. As a former evening/night shift healthcare worker myself, I saw very little indication of this.
@ the ladyzombie
Your post reminds me of a bit of a discussion I’ve been having with some mates. They’re just changing the rules over here in the military so women can serve in *any* role. We got talking about SF selection. The general consensus was that any woman who qualified on the same terms would earn the same respect as the guys “but they’re not that bothered about applying anyway”.
But we discussed this and one point was that whilst some units men serve in (like say the Paras or The RIfles) have a tradition of people going for selection women still tend to serve in areas without that tradition. It also speculated that there’ll be a “We can’t let her go; she’s the only one who knows how to do (x)!!!” panic amongst the staff officers that will mean there’ll be attempts to dissuade applications.
[Although the current betting is that the first woman to get through P-Company will be a PTI]
As far as the night and evening shift, I was going by this article:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/02/25/male-nurses-make-more-money/
I’m not sure if men are encouraged at all based on your article’s quote:
So why aren’t more men racing to become nurses? Goldberg says despite the advancement potential in female-dominated professions, men still face negative cultural feedback for taking such jobs. Like Ben Stiller’s character as a male nurse in Meet The Parents, friends and family may question their masculinity and even openly mock their career choice
I imagine it’s like trying to talk to a zombie…one who moans and groans unintelligibly, and keeps trying to eat your brains.
It always kills me when some dingus is like “but women chose jobs with lower pay!”
Right. And why, exactly, would the jobs that are viewed as appropriate for women pay less, hmm? Could it be… Sexism?
They never fucking put it together.