Today is Equal Pay Day!
(I am not writing a transcript for this, but basically every man that interacts with this woman in the work place calls her a different derogatory term)
And why is it on a Tuesday? Because it is by Tuesday that women catch up to the wages earned by a man from the previous week.
via National Committee on Pay Equity.
Equal Pay Day was originated by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) in 1996 as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men's and women's wages. The day, observed on a Tuesday in April, symbolizes how far into the year a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year. (Tuesday is the day on which women's wages catch up to men's wages from the previous week.) Because women earn less, on average, than men, they must work longer for the same amount of pay. The wage gap is even greater for most women of color.
Jon Henner at Open Salon is putting together stories, blog posts, artwork, etc. on the impacts of equal pay. You can go contribute your story.
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The problem with this stat is that its mischaracterized. While women on average earn less than men on average, the great majority of the gap is explained by differences in career paths & seniority. So the gap is an indication we should encourage/educate women about higher paying careers, and support them in those career tracks so that they develop seniority; its not support for some of the more radical arguments being made out there.
That's not to say there's no wage discrimination (the Ledbetter case proved that there is). There appears to be some wage discrimination when you actually do the career tracks apples-to-apples comparison. In March the NY Times documented it very clearly in this piece: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/01/business/20090301_WageGap.html
Albeit this is a career track apples-to-apples comparison & doesn't take into account seniority, this helps document the impact of choosing different careers on the income spread between men & women.
cattrack, I appreciate your comments and especially the NYT link, but I disagree that the problem is mischaracterization, the problem is that women are getting paid less. The NYT link is interesting. I notice two thing right away:
1. Only 2 occupational categories show women making more money than their male counterparts, they are Special Education Teachers (3%) and Postal Service Clerks (4%). Every other entry lists women making substantially less. THAT is the problem.
2. The disparity in income between the genders increases as the income level itself increases. The problem is not that women are choosing career paths with lower incomes. The problem is that women are getting paid much less in those high income careers than do their male counterparts, for example Physicians & surgeons(40%) Financial Managers (37%) and Medical Scientists (37%). Percentage wise women are better off in low income jobs!?!?
Yes, statistics can be sliced and diced and interpreted for the advantage of making one's point.
Yes, statistics are a generalized snapshot view of an often complex situation, and can not account for the nuances of specific circumstances.
The fact is that women, across the board, are getting paid less money than men. THAT is the problem.
In considering this pay equity issue, we should all, regardless of our genders or income levels, ask ourselves, "What could I do with 24% more? What couldn't I do with 24% less?"
Sorry, Jele, I was trying to be solutions focused...I was clear that discrimination exists, the question is how much of the wage gap is explained by it...and as a result where to you focus energy, resources & public policy.
The overall wage gap is 25% but we can see that in the majority of occupations the wage gap is much less...Therefore, controlling for career track explains much/most of the wage gap.
What we don't have is a control for seniority. Considering your example of surgeons for instance, senior surgeons are more likely to be male, while female surgeons are more likely to be junior (the legacy of discrimination). So when you compare female surgeons to male surgeons, its not surprising that on average female surgeons would make less, afterall on average they'd have less experience/seniority. (Oftentimes in these types of jobs a partnership is involved & sr partners make a lot more than jr partners).
A more disturbing case, and one where your beef is more germane, is something like File Clerks or Customer Service Representatives. In these types of careers of high turnover, starting out jobs, seniority should be a fairly non-existent issue, and yet the wage gap is ~10-15%.
Women are tracked into lower paying jobs very early in their worklives, and systematically discriminated against in male dominated jobs.
In construction - my field - only 1.8% of the workers are women.
Is this because women "chose" not to be construction workers?
Not really - it's because of systematic sexism in the industry.
Contractors don't like having women on the jobs - they feel that women should be secretaries, nurses, teachers, waitresses or homemakers, not high paid skilled workers who use lots of judgment and knowledge when they install very expensive materials.
Also, having all male work crews means less money spent on providing temporary toilet facilities on the job.
Some of the smaller all male jobsites have no toilets at all - they will literally tell the men to pee in a slop sink or a bucket!
You can't do that with a woman on the job (or actually you CAN - and contractors HAVE done just that - but the women can sue, even though, sadly, the courts have generally held that contractors don't have to have an on site toilet just because there's a woman on the job...but it cost those contractors thousands of dollars in legal fees to get those rulings).
So, there's sexual harassment large and small, from the moment a woman walks onto a site.
Plus, we're apprenticed - so for you first 3 to 5 years on the job, you're in on the job training, and are dependent on the journeypeople to teach you how to do the job right.
And if they don't want to teach you because you're a woman, you'll spend your whole apprenticeship unloading delivery trucks and getting coffee, and you'll never work when you make journeyperson because nobody ever trained you.
So it's not an accident we have so few women in the trades - and the jobs with the most women are unskilled, low paying and very dangerous positions.
One of those jobs is "flag girl" (yeah, that's what they actually call it - men in that field are called "flag MEN") - unskilled laborers who direct traffic on highway jobs and who are at high risk of being hit by a car.
The other is asbestos handler, workers who remove asbestos from old buildings under renovation, and who are at high risk for cancer, mesothelioma ["white lung"] and asbestosis.
Even in those jobs, women are less than 5%.
And this is in a field that would be ideal for women - high pay, flexible working hours, you can take personal leave any time you want and come back and pick right up where you left off.
But that's PRECISELY why women are excluded from those jobs!
A good point, Jele.
If I may add, it is possible that the higher paid male financial managers, physicians, etc., are able to achieve higher incomes because they are part of single-income households. I'd bet that most of those female financial managers or physicians are part of two-income households, which, even if they have the dominant career in the relationship, still means that they have to share homemaking responsibilities with their husbands.
So one idea would be to promote stay-at-home fatherhood. Because as long as men are able to find a spouse willing to be a stay-at-home wife and mom, and women aren't, then women will be at a disadvantage.
I want to apologize ahead of time in this comment. What I am about to say is going to say trollish, but it really is a request for teaching. If anyone could post a few links for people like me who simply do not understand, I would appreciate it!
I do not believe the statement "Women make less than men."
There are two reasons. The first is that it does not mesh with my personal experiences. The second is that I do not understand the statistics that support this statement.
First, my personal work experiences don't agree with this statement. I have had relatively few employment experiences. Most of them have been stipend-funded academic positions that gave a fixed dollar amount to everyone and thus was equal. The only wage-based job I had was at a female owned private company where the women actually made more than the men. Small sample size, limited experiences, not characteristic of everyone's situation. But it is my work experience.
Second, I don't understand the statistics. What is actually being considered? Are women who are just starting in a field being compared to men who have been established in their jobs? Are lifestyles between men and women comparable? Are we talking hourly wages or total annual wages? Are women working the same number hours as men? Are these women more or less educated than their male counterparts?
Let me take a specific example that was cited in the New York Times article: women physicians and surgeons makes 40% less than males. This is a very problematic statement to me.
First, "physicians and surgeons" is a huge category with multiple fields that vary widely in their compensation. A primary care doctor would be thrilled to make 40% less than a orthopaedic surgeon with a booming practice, for example. Are women more likely to go into different fields of medicine than men? Why is that? Is that wage discrimination?
Second, let's compare two surgeons. Why might one make less money than the other? In the current payment scheme, everyone gets essentially the same fee or service. So the amount they make is based on the number of surgeries they do, plus some money for other responsibilities they take on (but mostly the surgeries). I have a female friend who is an established surgeon she makes less than her male colleagues per year. Why? She gave me two reasons. The first is that she has a family and she chooses to do fewer surgeries so that she she can fulfill her role in her family, whatever that may be. The second is that she chooses to do fewer surgeries so that she can teach, which is less lucrative than additional procedures. So yes, she makes less than someone who does the same job as her regardless of their gender, but that is because she chose not to optimize her income. Is that wrong? How much do situations like hers account for differences between gender?
So, like I said before, I'm not trolling. It's just that my experiences don't fit with this statement and the data as I have seen it hasn't made a strong impression on me. I'm confident that the arguments and the data are out there, but I haven't found it. I'm also confident that one of you readers *has* found it, so please help me out. And please, be kind to my ignorance.
:-)
I think this link would be helpful to read if you are like me and have lots of questions about how to digest this issue. It has lots of numbers and I admit I am still scratching my head, but it's a good start.
http://www.aauw.org/research/upload/behindPayGap.pdf
After a quick reading of the AAUW document I cannot give a nuanced explanation of the data, but they make two conclusions in their summary (pages 40 and 41).
One year after college, 5% of the difference between men and women cannot be explained (1999-2000).
Ten years after college, 12% of the difference between men and women cannot be explained (1993-2003).
They also make a pretty strong case that these numbers are conservative and may underestimate the "unexplainable" difference between men and women. It's a very informative document, I suggest you read it if you haven't had the chance.
You summed up everything I could hope in a post this subject. One "I liked" didn't seem to cut it.
Thanx
I read somewhere that the reason many women and men are resistant to the idea that there is a wage gap is that the idea doesn't match their experiences in the first 15 years of working. And that generally gaps in wages only become apparent after many years of working (I think it was 30ish years of working). And this was because most people DO start out a relatively similar wage, but then, men's salary increases are a tiny fraction higher than women's salary increases. So it takes a long time for individuals to notice the disparity.
I'll try to find the article, but I don't know if I'll have time. I just thought it would be very unfortunate if you decided early on that because of your personal experiences, the wage gap didn't exist because right now you are making as much as your coworkers, only to find out in 30 years that you make $40,000 less per year.
I came across this trend as well. The way the data is now though, I am not sure if this is due to a gradual increase in the gap between men and women with advancing age or if this is a historical artifact because to get these longer trends we have to reach further back in time, when things may have been more unequal than they are today.
Why does feministing continually refuse to post transcripts for the videos they post? There is either no transcript or a link to someone else's. I've seen recently quite a lot of commentors that have asked and even demanded transcripts, upset that it is ablist, and nothing has changed. Either post transcripts, or don't post video.
I could not agree more. If there's not enough time to make the video accessible to everyone, then just don't post it.
So, just because SOME people can't access the video because there's no transcript, then NOBODY should get to see it?
That's asinine!
Following that logic, it should also be subtitled in Spanish, and French, and Portuguese, and Yiddish, and Russian, and Italian, and Uzbek and ever other one of the 200 languages spoken in New York City.
And there should be a sign language interpreter superimposed on the screen.
And an audio track (in all 200 of the above mentioned languages) so blind people can hear a description of the visuals.
And there should be a printed version mailed to the homes of people who's religious beliefs do not allow them to use electronic devices!
Here's a novel idea - how about those who cannot hear the audio taking the personal responsibility to download software that automatically captions audio files with a subtitle track?
I shouldn't be punished because you didn't take care of your medical issues - the same way I wouldn't bar you from putting salt on your food because I have high blood pressure!
"Hey, bitch."
"Hey, John!"
"Here's your report, cunt."
"Thanks!"
"Good morning!"
"Hey."
"Hold that, slut!"
"Sorry, Chip. I didn't see you. How was your weekend?"
"It's none of your business, stupid fuck."
"Bye."
Seriously, this. I can't see any decent excuse for there not being a transcript here. There was enough time to write out what basically amounts to "I am not writing a transcript for this, even though I know I really should because it's ablist not to and keeps many of our readers from joining the discussion, but here's an inadequate summary of the video's content instead" so why not just type up a transcript?
It's interesting because feministing is one of the only blogs we read that regularly does transcripts, and yet they also get way more criticism than any other blog we read on the occasions that they don't. And that's not to say 'don't criticize!', but why is there so much criticism here and hardly any on, say, Feministe for a random example?
The video says equal pay day is March 31st ... is the one in April just for the US, or has it been moved since the video was made?