Editor’s note: This is the first of many columns by members of the Maine Regional Network, which is part of the national Scholars Strategy Network. Members share the policy implications of their research and aim to bring greater understanding to social and political debates.
In the United States, women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. Maine women make considerably less: 68 cents. While some of these differences can be explained by working in different fields, women earn less even with the same education, experience and length of time employed.
Delving deeper into a range of pay levels, 2010 census data reveal significant disparities: Women physicians make 63 cents on a man’s dollar; female CEOs, 74 cents; female lawyers, 78 cents; female university professors, 80 cents; and female bank tellers, 96 cents. In fact, the only job in which a woman makes more than a man is as a shoe shiner on Wall Street: $1.02 to a man’s dollar.
Despite these inequities, on June 5 the U.S. Senate blocked a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act, allowing such discriminatory practices to continue. All Republican senators voted against the bill.
Having thought I knew what fairness means, I headed to the dictionary and found the following definition: “the state, condition, or quality of being fair, or free from bias or injustice; evenhandedness.” So, I ask, how is an act that affirms women’s pay equity not supportable? What are the implications and consequences — both long and short range — of this action in the Senate?
At present more than half of all workers are women. They are employed because they want to be and have to be. Employment is both personally and professionally fulfilling while also economically necessary — as is mostly now the case.
But women’s wages do not just affect them; their families also are deeply affected. If women are paid less than men, their husbands and their children lose too. In families earning two wages — more often the norm than not — these inequities are of serious concern. For single mothers who are paying 100 percent of child care and other expenses for their children, lower pay really hurts.
American workers are on their own more than employees in other wealthy nations, as the U.S. has very limited family leaves and no requirement for paid sick days. These policies disproportionately affect women.
A woman who begins employment at a wage less than a man’s has been shown over the course of her work life to lose more than half a million dollars in earnings. It is thus critical that women receive fair pay as early as possible, before these disadvantages accumulate as their work lives proceed.
Women also live longer — at least eight years longer — meaning that savings (if they are fortunate enough to have any) need to last longer. And Social Security payments, the mainstay of the retired segment of the population, are determined by salary, so the less you make, the leaner your Social Security payments will be.
Some opponents of the Paycheck Fairness Act say that women don’t get higher wages because they don’t negotiate as well as their male counterparts and are more likely to work part-time. The wage gap, they say, is based more on women’s choices than on discrimination by employers — a situation for which business should be neither held liable for nor punished.
It is well established, however, that there is wage discrimination between women and men and that current law doesn’t do enough to deal with it. For one, women may not even know that they are being discriminated against, in part because employers can discourage or even prohibit sharing salary information. Without the evidence or even knowledge of discrimination, women can’t ensure their pay is fair.
The Paycheck Fairness Act would help for a number of reasons: It would increase damages to plaintiffs in pay-discrimination legal actions, strengthen requirements for employers to demonstrate that pay disparities are not gender-based, ensure women an appropriate “window of opportunity” in which to bring a gender discrimination claim, and lessen sanctions against workers who inquire about the salaries of others in their workplace. In essence, employers would be held accountable for violations of sex discrimination laws.
Women and men should have assurance from elected officials, employers and the U.S. government that the work they do not only is equally valued but equally compensated. Not having that assurance leaves us all in considerable jeopardy.
Luisa S. Deprez is professor of sociology and women and gender studies at the University of Southern Maine. She is co-director of the Maine Regional Network, part of the Scholars Strategy Network, which brings together scholars across the country to address public challenges and their policy implications.
Pay is corporate business. Government has enough strangle holds on American business and continuing to handcuff them with these feel good legislation boondoggles will stifle America. You have a choice. You do not like the pay, change jobs. It may require relocating.
Big corporations have a stranglehold on America. They are by no means “handcuffed” by regulations. If you think of equal pay for women as merely “feel-good” legislation I must conclude that you either–
1) are not female and/or
2) do not have any females in your family or friends or neighbors, and/or
3) are far too wealthy to be concerned about economic injustice toward ordinary humans, and/or
4) are blissfully unaware how few jobs are available these days.
It makes no sense to deny women assistance in redressing an inequality. Opponents of this legislation are essentially saying that it is more important to protect business’s practice of gender discrimination in compensation than it is to allow individual women the means to redress a wrong. That can’t be what America is supposed to be about!
This isn’t about government strangling business, its about business getting over on the individual with no accountability!
It is very hard to prove gender difference in pay. Many workplace make it a firing offense to discuss your pay with fellow workers in an effort to protect these unfair practices. Saying that a person can simply go elsewhere is naive, many people do not have the ability to relocate and jobs are already scarce. Certainly if men were in a position where they were receiving unfair wages they would not accept an argument that they should not be able to take action or that the needs of business were more important than the needs of the working person and their family!
Allowing greater protections and options for people to discover inequity will not result in unfair results. The courts still need to look at skill, time in service, and quality of work in making a determination.
The statistics are finding, as pointed out in this and other articles, that men and women with identical years of service, career choices and investment in their work are still suffering large deficits in compensation. That more or less blows the “its because women have kids and don’t want to do as much” argument out of the water.
America used to be about looking after the little guy. All this legislation does is give someone a fighting chance to address an inequity without being automatically fired for ever bringing the matter up. Why should business be protected from the consequences of their actions when individuals remain accountable for ours?
It is illegal to discriminate in pay on the basis of sex, and has been since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That means that, since 1964 — a long time ago — pay has not just been “corporate business.”
While the Paycheck Fairness Act doesn’t establish that principle, it adds means to prevent discrimination and to hold employers accountable who discriminate.
Or… it contributes to hyperlexus and increases cost of doing business further.
So you are arguing that your business model only works when you can exploit people?
Do you even understand the concept of hyperlexis? maybe before you try and twist my words you should research the topic and realize that creating more laws restricting or regulating a behavior that many other laws fail to control will be ineffective. Legislation is the use of force and coercion maybe we should try something else for once.
Read what MaleMatters wrote below I don’t have time to reiterate it for you right now.
Hyperlexis sounds to me like anti-government incivility wrapped in a fancy new word.
Nobody succeeds without laws. No nation has achieved prosperity without laws. You say we have too many and that makes me wonder; what is your desired future state?
The sour economy and declining living standards we are seeing are the DIRECT result of weakening regulation and allowing the roosters to guard the hen house. We are already traveling the road you and yours seek and have been since roughly Nixon. It will eat us alive. Marx was right about capitalism when he foretold you coming with your avaricious crowd.
I see your Gadsden flag, which I find supremely offensive, so I appreciate how much you hate this country when democracy works to elect an “other”. That flag represents a rise against tyranny, not against the will of a free people.
Nobody succeeds without laws… All the great empires declined as a result of hyperlexis. Too much time is spent trying to legislate lives of the people.
What we have today is not capitalism. At best you can call it crony capitalism. I am not implying that our current financial crisis isn’t the result of certain de-regulatory practices. However, laws (regulation) will always result in some loss of liberty for someone. A regulation will always protect someone at the expense of someone else. That is a base fact.
I am not an anarchist and I believe thoroughly in the rule of law. However, I also believe that human beings are generally capable of protecting and providing for themselves. The protectionism of legislators and presidents for the last 70 years has engrained in the average American that we can’t think for ourselves, that we can’t make rational decisions, or that we don’t know whats best for us.
Hyper lexis is a concept developed by a man named Dean Manning. You should read up on it before dismissing it as “anti-government” slander. Too many laws is relative to the size of society. There was a time when the laws of the land would need only a small shelf in the library now it requires a whole stack or room. Hyper lexis is the theory of adding laws to law about law. Complicating the complex. That is what I am driving at here. We already have laws on the books making pay discrimination illegal…. but if people are still doing it what good is this law going to do? If a CEO hates women and believes they are less valueable then male employees but has hired them because they are a cheaper alternative in some positions now this evil chauvinist CEO will now just not hire ANY women and/or find other loopholes to all this new payroll paperwork rigmarole.
The reason I say this will increase the cost of doing business because in companies of a certain size and diversity there may be several complaints of wage discrepancy a day… week… month… w/e which may require an additional position (yay job creation) to vet these complaints and fill out the paperwork and citations of why x employee is paid more than y employee. However because this position is useless to the company and will hurt the bottom line they will want to reduce pay for other positions (boo wage loss) or outright cut another useless position and pass workloads to other employees. All because some hocum about .77-1.00 pay inequalities.
Then on top of all that our legislators spent days upon days drafting and enacting this legislation and getting the supplemental reprints out for the codification system when they could have been doing something more useful like auditing the federal reserve.
I envision a much more liberated and enlightened society. The only true danger we face today is our own ignorance and complacency
We agree that America is not capitalism. It has become a game where insiders bilk the masses and then blame government. They want government weak so they can do whatever they like. Sell dangerous goods, steal, charge exorbitant fees, etc. Regulation is what protects working people from powerful interests. You are right about the environment but missing the point on the cause.
Blaming the size of government, the number of laws or the wordiness of laws is not helpful. these are distractions. An elite class that passes law after law to protect themselves and immobilize any potential competition IS what we have. Wage inequality is a symptom of this but hardly the root cause.
well… I don’t directly cite a complex and convoluted legal system to our ills. However, the size of government is reflective of what I am talking about in liberty. We grossly inefficient and all too often ineffective government agencies is so many areas of our lives; food industry, housing industry, transportation industry, etc. The government keeps growing at all levels and both of our so called “two parties” are responsible.
I do agree that the world elite strive to stay such and keep the rest of us as blind subjects. A larger government only further enables them to take away more liberty and fortify their collective positions at the top of society.
More law is not the same as = sound law.
Reduce debt, reduce the size of government, end Keynesian central banking/planning practices, let entrepreneurship and free markets be free.
and along with blaming the government, they blame the poor people…
Pay is based on worth and what you ACCEPT to take for doing the job hired for. Man or women if your not getting what your worth go elsewhere. I had 3 women drivers for me they made the same as the men.
I believe this would be good. This way we can see, once and for all, if this pay gap argument is truly valid. I always cringe when I see that .77/1.00 figure. Many women interrupt their career to raise kids ( their choice) or take additional time off because of their kids (sickness, etc.) Choice of occupation plays a big role… a retail job at the Gap will not pay as much as an electrician or doctor. Ask girls what they want to be when they grow up. Some will tell you a ‘veterinarian’, maybe ‘nurse’.. but most will say ‘mother’ or ‘married’. Why not ‘doctor’, ‘Own my own company” etc. We need to start setting expectations early with these kids. It’s time, as a society, we start throwing out ALL our gender stereotypes in the occupation and social fields and start treating everyone the same..
Here’s why the Republicans blocked the bill:
The “proof” cited to show there is wage discrimination against female workers is “women earn 77 cents to men’s dollar in the same jobs.”
Contrary to what pay-equity advocates say, though, “women’s 77 cents to men’s dollar” does NOT mean women are paid less than men in the same jobs. Nor does it mean, even more incredibly in the vein of “men are stronger than women” (which to many people translates into “every man is stronger than every woman”), that every woman earns 23% less than every man, perhaps leading some of the more benighted and the blinkered ideological to believe Diane Sawyer of ABC News earns less than the young man walking up and down the street wearing a “Pizzas $5” sign.
Women’s 77 cents to men’s dollar is arrived at by comparing the sexes’ median incomes: women’s median is 77 percent of men’s. In 2009, the median income of full-time, year-round workers was $47,127 for men, compared to $36,278 for women or 77 percent of men’s median. http://www.catalyst.org/publication/217/womens-earnings-and-income
Median income is defined thusly: 50% of workers earn above the figure and 50% below. Think about what this means when you hear that women’s 77 cents to men’s dollar proves that women earn less than men for the same work: A lot of female workers in the higher ranges of women’s median make more money than a lot of male workers in the lower ranges of men’s median.
Moreover, “women’s 77 cents to men’s dollar” doesn’t account for the number of hours worked each week, experience, seniority, training, education or even the job description itself. It compares all women to all men, not people in the same job with the same experience. So the salary of a 60-year-old male computer engineer with 30 years at his company is weighed against that of a young first-year female teacher. Also, men are much more likely than women to work two jobs; hence, more often than women, a man earning $50,000 from his two jobs is weighed against a women earning $25,000 from her one job, so that he appears to be unfairly earning twice as much as she.
Over the decades, strategically ignoring the true meaning of “women’s 77 cents to men’s dollar” has been less than productive:
No law yet has closed the gender wage gap — not the 1963 Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, not Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, not the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, not the 1991 amendments to Title VII, not affirmative action (which has benefited mostly white women, the group most vocal about the wage gap – http://tinyurl.com/74cooen), not diversity, not the countless state and local laws and regulations, not the horde of overseers at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and not the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act…. Nor will a “paycheck fairness” law work.
That’s because women’s pay-equity advocates, who always insist one more law is needed, continue to overlook the effects of female AND male behavior:
Despite the 40-year-old demand for women’s equal pay, millions of wives still choose to have no pay at all. In fact, according to Dr. Scott Haltzman, author of “The Secrets of Happily Married Women,” stay-at-home wives, including the childless who represent an estimated 10 percent, constitute a growing niche. “In the past few years,” he says in a CNN report at http://tinyurl.com/6reowj, “many women who are well educated and trained for career tracks have decided instead to stay at home.”
(“Census Bureau data show that 5.6 million mothers stayed home with their children in 2005, about 1.2 million more than did so a decade earlier….” at http://tinyurl.com/qqkaka. Consider also: “a 2007 Pew Study on working mothers revealed that 60 percent of full-time working moms would rather be part-time — up from 48 percent 15 years ago” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peggy-drexler/dont-call-him-mr-mom-the_b_1573895.html.)
If indeed women are staying at home at a higher rate, perhaps it’s because feminists and the media have told women for years that female workers are paid less than men in the same jobs — so why bother working if they’re going to be penalized and humiliated for being a woman.
As full-time mothers or homemakers, stay-at-home wives earn zero. How can they afford to do this while in many cases living in luxury? Because they’re supported by their husband, an “employer” who pays them to stay at home.
The implication of this is probably obvious to 10-year-olds but seems incomprehensible to or is ignored by feminists and the liberal media: If millions of wives are able to accept NO wages, millions of other wives, whose husbands’ incomes range from moderate to high, are able to:
-accept low wages
-refuse overtime and promotions
-choose jobs based on interest first, wages second — the reverse of what men tend to do
-take more unpaid days off
-avoid uncomfortable wage-bargaining (http://tinyurl.com/3a5nlay)
-work part-time instead of full-time
All of which lower women’s median pay.
Women are able to make these choices because they are supported — or if unmarried anticipate being supported — by a husband who must earn more than if he’d chosen never to marry. (Still, even many men who shun marriage, unlike their female counterparts, feel their self worth is tied to their net worth.) This is how MEN help create the wage gap: as a group they pass up jobs that interest them for ones that pay well. If the roles were reversed so that men raised the children and women raised the income, men would average lower pay than women.
Points to ponder:
Why would “greedy, profit-obsessed” employers, many of whom where possible hire illegal immigrants for their cheap labor, pay men more than women for the same work? If employers could get away with that, they would not hire one man, ever.
The power in money is not in earning it (there is only responsibility, sweat, and stress in earning money). The power in money is in SPENDING it. And, Warren Farrell says in “The Myth of Male Power” at http://www.warrenfarrell.org/TheBook/index.html, “Women control consumer spending by a wide margin in virtually every consumer category.” (Women’s control over spending, adds Farrell, gives women control over TV programs.)
“There were fewer cases charging sex-based wage discrimination last year than the year before the [Ledbetter law] was signed, and the wage gap was wider in 2010 than it was in 2007…. The bottom line: In Obama’s first three years in office, the EEOC filed six gender-based wage discrimination lawsuits — down from 18 during Bush’s second term.” -BusinessWeek, May 13, 2012, at http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-17/to-lure-womens-votes-obama-turns-to-lilly-ledbetter” and at http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-13/obama-pitches-equal-pay-to-win-women-even-as-charges-drop
The Fact Checker at the liberal Washington Post gives President Obama “One Pinocchio” for lying about the gender wage gap. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-white-houses-use-of-data-on-the-gender-wage-gap/2012/06/04/gJQAYH6nEV_blog.html
Excerpted from “Will the Ledbetter Act Help Women?” at http://malemattersusa.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/will-the-ledbetter-fair-pay-act-help-women/
See also gender wage gaps in two major professions:
Lawyers at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2050037
Physicians at http://faculty.som.yale.edu/keithchen/papers/GenderNPV_WorkingPaper.pdf
“Adjusted for factors that could affect pay, like age, race, education, number of children in the household and part-time status, women earn 86 cents for every $1 earned by men. That’s up from 81 cents in 2000….” New York Times.
Excellent rejoinder!
Of course, all your points will be blithely ignored by the progressives at the “Scholars” Strategy Network.
I am a “progressive” and will challenge those points which are errant and blithely ignore hateful partisan rhetoric which has no value except to confuse and mislead. Progressives and conservatives are your neighbors and neither has a monopoly on virtue.
A real polemic. I guess only tea-party loyalists pay attention to the facts……
I saw nothing in his argument that could be described as blithe. Errant, I do not know, I havent fact checked every source he provided however his logic was of good logic.
Not sure if you just finished a rhetoric 101 class or someone bought you a thesaurus for your birthday but you use big words but do not back them up. Every citizen over 18 is counted in the census and IRS tax review. If you dont earn anything then you are exempt from filing however most married couples with a single income will file jointly.
What is your polemic here? I see no truth being refuted, maybe your claiming “Progressives and conservatives are your neighbors and neither has a monopoly on virtue.” is your truth being asserted…
well written retort. I enjoyed reading this far more then the article.
There is ample evidence that women who are working the same job with the same education and the same experience ARE getting paid less!
MaleMatters’ post was replete with links to bolster his argument and to provide the reader with a basis for making a judgment.
Wouldn’t readers be better served if you did the same?
do you have some citations of this claim to share?
When you account for each of the variables you list, the result is still the same. Women are paid less than men. I have read some of the studies and seen some statistical analysis of wages by gender. Even when you account for the factors you cite, they still get paid less.
The data is not extrapolated from some far flung study. The IRS has earnings information on every tax payer.
Your citation of housewives bending the curve is preposterous. They are NOT counted in the numbers. If you just look at any given profession, full time workers only you still find the bias. If you look at part time workers, you still see the bias.
I understand some people want to perpetuate misogyny badly and will not consider the weight of any evidence to the contrary. Still, their agenda does not change the statistically relevant fact that women earn less than men do for the same work.
Misogynists and their apologists, which one you are I will not speculate on, will lose this battle in the end. Social justice and equality are ideals that we grow closer to each passing decade.
We have had leadership by strong and wrong for too long. Lets give women an equal shake.
The Republicans blocked the bill because they block every bill unless it cuts taxes for the rich.
U.S. Congressmen and Senators make 1.00 to every .28 cents the average american makes and to boot they only work like 200 days a year.
maybe we should jump up and down about that pay disparity?
Personally, I believe that gender should have no bearing on pay. Neither should race, orientation, marital status, weight, or looks. Unfortunately, all of these factors effect the pay of one person or another in many cases.
Pay should be based solely on position and experience. That is how I would base pay if I had employees.
That said, the government has no right to demand that businesses pay according to government imposed rules and regulations, whether or not those businesses have their own rules and regulations in place. Rules such as pay secrecy and termination of employment for those that discuss wages are between the employer and employee, and the government has no right to interfere.
By the way, the example of pay equality should start at the top, and it is rumored that women in the White House make considerably less than their male counterparts. Imagine that.
In any company I have worked in, I have
never…not one time..ever met any woman
doing the same work as a man not getting
paid the same salary. In many instances,
I have know a number of women who made MORE
than their male counterparts. I would believe they
made more because they were better than their
co-workers in performing their job.
Both Maine senators, Snowe and Collins voted against the bill. It should also be noted that neither of them offered any amendments to improve the bill, if they had particular objections to it. Even in her last days as senator, Saint Snowe votes in lock step with Mitch McConnell.
The big question is will this legislation force President Obama and Nancy Pelosi to pay their female staffers at the same level as their male staffers? Time to put up or shut up, Liberal Leaders…
Nearly every working woman I know, myself included, took family leave when pregnant or after giving birth. Taking family leave has the effect of pushing back your date of hire, or the date of an annual pay increase. If a woman has multiple children, then her annual pay increase gets pushed further and further off. That has the net effect of creating a situation where you have a man and a woman, each of whom started a job at the same time with the same rate of pay, but at the end of five years, with the man (assuming he never took family leave) making more money than his female counterpart. Taking a temporary leave of absence to watch children during the summer months has the same effect. On paper, the woman looks to be earning less, when in reality, she simply made different choices.
Do you really think that is unfair?
Yes.
so you think a business should be forced to increase the pay of an employee who has been absent and non-productive for 25% 50% 75% of the year?