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.
I am completely confused by their reasoning on this. If the woman works, and the way the economy is women pretty much have to work outside the home in order to keep the rent paid and food on the table unless you’re in the upper classes, then if she expects to be paid as much as the other men working the same job, then she is the evil man hating zombie in the photo??
A lot of these MRAs make no sense and unfortunately, I am seeing more and more men act like this and spout the same nonsense. I am thankful I do have a husband who shows me that decent men do still exist and a father who was also a decent family man. Without those two men in my life, I would probably have a hatred for men.
Pat
That would be brilliant if people didn’t also look at the wage gap by individual specialties as well. So While 50% of nurse anesthetists are men, and that’s one of the highest paid nursing jobs, at about 160,000 a year… The pay gap of nurse Anesthetists is still $17,300 a year. You know… for the same specialists.
Fairly obvious point here – employers can’t blatantly refuse to hire women or minorities, or pay them a lower standard salary/hourly rate for the same work. Women are, however, frequently passed over due to the perception that men have fewer outside commitments, won’t take maternity leave or a break in their careers to raise children etc.
Someone also noted men are encouraged into more technical/specialized fields that require expensive qualifications. I’m not sure what can be done outside of employment legislation that already exists (other than fully funded tertiary education plus subsidized childcare.)
@Kirby: precisely. And it’s not like most people are consciously sexist to the degree that they’d think “hm, I’ll save money by hiring a woman and pay her less than I would pay a man” – the system is upheld by mostly unconscious prejudices in people who honestly percieve themselves as simply hiring the best person for each job and paying them what they deserve.
Husband’s dream is for me to one day earn so much money that he can quit his current boring job and open up a little comic book shop instead. 🙂
My first though was “Is that P!nk?”, so we’re not alone. 😛 Even a zombie-Feminist has to have a low-cut top on, I see.
I don’t know what addressing the wage gap would actually do to harm men’s rights… Presumably if women get paid as much as men, they become less dependent on those “Beta bux”, or whatever.
And presumably if the workplace is sexist, they’d be even less inclined to hire women if they had to be paid an equal wage to the “superior” menz. So men would have less competition for jobs from women?
I don’t know what MRAs think the job market looks like, anyway. They seem to think that there is no sexism in the hiring process, but of course women won’t be hired for manly STEM work, because ladybrains and biotroofs?
If I try to think about it using MRA logic, I might sprain my grey matter.
When dickbags go “women choose jobs with lower pay” they never bother to think WHY women might have lower paying jobs. A lot of it is based on the still prevalent idea that childcare is a woman’s job and isn’t really a case of ‘choice’ at all.
1) we’ve already discussed that society expects women to sacrifice their careers for childcare instead of equal parenting/housecare work between mother and father. This means that the mother either has no job at all or she takes up a part time job to boost the family income. Jobs that have part time options tend to be low paid.
2) because women are statistically waaaaaay more likely to be single parents (in the UK anyway, see http://www.gingerbread.org.uk/content/365/Statistics ) and again, lower paid jobs are more likely to have part time or flexible hours.
3) the glass ceiling does exist. Men are more likely to be promoted to higher paying positions while women are more likely to stay in the lower paid ones.
4) even if women do take up full time jobs or stay in their career while taking care of the kids at home, motherhood is an extra layer to the glass ceiling and a likely obstacle to getting hired in a different job. Employers aren’t supposed to discriminate based on parental status but they will choose the person who seems more likely, or able, to commit to the role 100%. ESPECIALLY if it is a high paid position.
Correct me on anything if I’m wrong, guys.
Sunnysombrera:
And of course, if a man is married with children, it’s seen as a plus, and if a woman is married with children, it’s seen as a negative because it’s assumed the woman will be taking care of the kids. So when a couple decide if one is going to be a stay at home parent, not only is the woman at a disadvantage because of societal pressures, but employers would still see her status as a negative even if she’s the one who devotes more time to the career.
@Tessa
Exactly. A married man with kids is “motivated”, while a married woman with kids is “uncommitted”.
Reminds me of that Pantene ad from a couple years ago:
https://youtu.be/kazsEfiwmSM
As always, don’t read the comments.
Also, historically, when a job has gone from being male-dominated to female-dominated wages have gone down compared to the job market as a whole. So if loads of women from now on chooses to, say, become engineers, and we eventually arrive at a situation where there are 75 % female engineers and engineer is seen as a typically feminine job, engineering wages are gonna be lower compared to the rest of the job market than they are now (unless we fix sexism in the meantime).
@Dvarghund
…are you serious? That’s terrible!
It just occurs to me that “Equal pay day” is probably the occasion that flooded imgur with anti-women posts yesterday…
@Dvärghundspossen
I’m not aware of many examples of transitions from male to female dominated occupations.
Regarding engineering, probably not unless that resulted in more engineers in the job market overall. Historically women were of course prevented from taking certain jobs. It’s usually the availability of labour that has the biggest impact on wages though. Because of the imposed child care responsibilities discussed earlier,there’s a large number of women requiring part time or flexible hours, usually in less demanding service sector jobs. An ‘oversupply’ of willing workers.
… probably other factors at play, perceptions that certain types of work – particularly caring for people – are “vocational” (that compassion rather than money should be the main drive) leading to lowered expectations in terms of wages.
A definite historical reason as to why “women’s jobs” were lower paid was because women weren’t considered the breadwinners – any pay they received was known as “pin money” i.e. money they’d use to buy luxuries for themselves. Like a teenager doing chores for allowance money, it was believed that women’s main source of income was their husbands, ergo reasonable pay was unnecessary. If that attitude still continues today in some form that might help explain why ‘women’s work’ carries a lower salary.
I know having a stay at home spouse has benefited my husband’s career over the years. He hardly ever had to miss work due to sick kids or other family emergencies. I handle that. Most women don’t have that kind of freedom.
Only around 20% of USAmerican women are housewives anymore, but that does not mean women with jobs are not still expected to handle home and kids. They are also the ones who are expected to maintain family ties, traditions and obligations. Every prom, Christmas, funeral, reunion, birthday, etc falls to women. Women send out thanks and congratulations. They care for the ill and the elderly. The do the most unpaid work in churches. As an only daughter and a daughter-in-law I was expected to take all of that on. When you don’t have a job your entire extended family and community thinks you should be doing something for them. It’s exhausting. When you fight the assumption that those things are your responsibility, you are considered lazy and even hardhearted.
When I married my in laws thought they had been gifted with a servant. It took years for me to shake off the feeling that I was somehow shirking my responsibility by not giving them just that. Happily, they can all go fuck themselves now. I don’t care. It ain’t happen’n.
Women’s unpaid labor is the linchpin of American culture. Baseball, Mom and apple pie? Odds are Mom made that pie and she sat through hot, dull practices, ran fundraisers etc so her kids play baseball.
A family member of mine ran for a judgeship once. His wife worked just as hard as he did on his campaign. Her name was also on the loan he took out to run. Her paychecks are probably still helping him pay it off. Had he won, it would be his victory, his power and his legacy. It’s expected that she will be a good helpmate and do whatever she can to aid her husband. If a man were to do the same he would be appreciated far more. He’d be considered exceptionally supportive. She’s just giving her husband the labor she owes him.
Appreciating and compensating women equally for their labor would rock the foundations of American patriarchy.
@Lea’s comment at 9:01 am:
http://media.giphy.com/media/9pWXDLSSfno8U/giphy.gif
Blockquote monster is also displeased with cheerleaders getting no pay.
Lea’s point about the societal non-value of women’s domestic work makes me think of my pet peeve as a SAHP: the “validation” I often get when I’m out and about with the kids. I’ve been the lucky recipient of a lot of praise, mainly from grandfather-aged men, about what an important job I’m doing. If I smile and politely thank them, I’ll get Act II: a stream of invective against single moms, or how some liberal politician doesn’t appreciate my kind, or how kids today are so screwed up because more people don’t do what I do.
My admirers don’t really think what I’m up to is important or praiseworthy. They’re just throwing me an “atta-girl” for seemingly staying in my place. I’m not really a paragon, I’m just doing what I’m supposed to do. They point this out so that they can then freely run down all the “bad” women who make different life choices. I also suspect that if I wasn’t so white, so married, and so middle-class, I wouldn’t get so much approval.
I tried to debate one guy, pointing out that my job was a blessing for both myself and my husband, and that a lot of people can’t financially swing that. Heck, a lot of people don’t want that even if they can afford it. And that of course it’s an important job, but that every women with kids does this, even if she does pull in a paycheck as well. Your house doesn’t start cleaning itself if you’re working outside the home. Kids don’t stop needing dinner, or doctors’ appointments, or rides to ballet class.
He eventually stopped talking to me and started addressing compliments to my kids in babytalk instead. They weren’t impressed with him, either. I’m obviously a very good mom. 😀
I’ve read – I think it was in Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine – that working with computers was originally considered work well suited to women. It was in the eighties that the male computer nerd started to become a popular culture phenomenon and that’s when it started being thought of as men’s work. That’s when computer work became prestigious and high paid. So it’s not just that work associated with women is low paid, it gets higher paid if it starts to be associated with men. Just look at how much glee that MGTOWs have at the thought of civilization collapsing if men aren’t doing the manly tech work that only men can do.
Another field this happened in less recently was medicine.
I always say that if men decided en masse that retail is best suited to men, it would become a high paid, possibly union job that you need to be skilled for. We’d hear about how women aren’t strong enough to stand on their feet all day and aren’t mentally tough enough to deal with cranky customers.
I have no interest in being a mother at the moment, not sure if I ever will, but even if I get past 30 and have no kids I don’t want to bow to people saying “you’ll change your mind once you actually have the baby”. Well, what if I don’t? I’m not going to bring an innocent being into this world if there’s a risk I still won’t want them once they’re born. That’s in no way fair to the child.
I am not looking forward to getting to 30 without kids though. I’m okay now but there is bound to be pressure at that point…
Flying Mouse,
ALL OF THAT! YES!
When they find out you homeschool they nearly throw confetti on you because they assume you are Christian and submissive to your husband. They use the same tone of voice white people do when they think they can be racist around you. Anti-vaxxers assume you’re one of them too. Yuck.
WWTH,
That’s probably where the stereotype of the nerdy, unmanly computer geek came from. Those men were doing “women’s work”.
I still remember the last boss I had at the VA. He had transferred to San Francisco from elsewhere, and was somewhat taken aback that the only member of his staff with kids in school was the office Gay Guy. None of his assumptions worked; I neither was a mother nor had a wife. The amount of leave time I took for child-related issues irked him.
Now I’m a SAHF, and very happy to be one.