Paycheck fairness. I guess this is the modern way of saying, "Equal pay for equal work." On one level, I support the idea behind this belief without hesitation. Unfortunately, many levels need to be considered. If a man is paid more than his female counterpart, the reason may have nothing to do with gender.
Maybe the man does the better job. Maybe his strengths are not so easy to quantify. He could be less argumentative, a better listener, a better team player. And then again, maybe not.
Nancy Folbre wrote an article about the Paycheck Fairness Act in yesterday's New York Times, explaining that this legislation has been successfully shelved by the Republicans. Under this act, employers would be required to defend their decision to pay their male employees more, which, in my view, is an unnecessary intrusion.
Nancy Folbre writes:
The debate over this proposed legislation reveals serious flaws in reasoning about the impact of public efforts to promote fair pay. Recent academic research suggests that many women are underpaid for the same reason that many chief executives may be overpaid — because the labor market doesn’t work according to the standard textbook model based on impersonal forces of supply and demand.
Speaking of overpaid chief executives, Ms. Folbre wrote the following unsettling paragraph:
Board members are often reluctant to challenge the pay demands of chief executives, who exercise considerable influence over board membership and remuneration. The invisible handshake pre-empts the invisible hand of market competition.
This is an agency cost that requires further investigation. The behavior of the Board of Directors should not be affected so strongly by its CEO.
The male female wage gap is essentially bullshit. Do your research.
Question, should a company be required to disclose as to why it's female counterpart is being paid more than a man? I am sure there are many companies that for whatever reason have women making more than men potentially so they can say they give equal pay, and support women's rights etc. even though giving women more then skews the comparison to the other side. My point is that this legislation seems to put a lot of emphasis on societies belief that if men make more it is because they are men, but if women make more then it's because they deserve it.
Just to be clear, I am all for equality, I just don't appreciate it when people get so extreme and try to get uber involved in the worklpace, especially when they don't consider all the variables. And because you asked, these variables include the pure fact that women have children. This is the basis for a difference in pay. (Disclaimer: what I am about to say is not an insult, or anything to anyone, merely an attempt to open people's eyes) Women naturally are more hormonal than men, which is why TYPICALLY one could argue they are more faithful than their male counterparts. Having more hormones, and being the one that physically bear the baby causes a natural desire to want to take care of the baby after it has been born. Being that taking care of a child is a full time job, you do not have time or ability to go to work. Obviously this is not true for everyone, but for many women it is, and it is the first reason why one could find more men than women in the workplace. If you are going to argue that well after the baby has been born, why should the male not stay at home and take care of the baby, then go back and read the bit about hormones, and also if you have been working or training at something for the past year (including recovery time of birth) it does not make sense to go and lose that year and hand over the reigns to your partner who in turn would have to start from fresh and bringing you back a whole year of progress. Next, one could argue that well since there are already more men in the work place, that men work better with other men for any number of reasons, their more aggressive assertive personalities mesh together, or they are not distracted by sexual attraction, or any of the differences in personality or physical appearance between men an women. Sometimes, believe it or not perhaps the women for whatever reason are just not doing as good of a job. All of these reasons are not meant to be absolutes, so please do not try and hark on any one point and give an example of where they do not apply, because clearly there are many exceptions. My point is that all these variables considered, and include even the ones that I have forgotten, it creates a situation where it is just harder for women to get paid exactly the same amount. I am all for equality, I really am. But at the same time, equality doesn't ALWAYS mean equal pay. Equality means that everyone gets paid equally according to their production. If the female productions is somehow less more often (not ALWAYS) than national statistics will obviously show a difference in pay. One last thing to add is that there are just some things in nature are not equal. It's not equal that women always have the baby, and men don't. It is not equal that men are physically stronger than women. This is not up for question, its a biological fact that. For someone to say oh I know a girl that is stronger or faster or better than you is irrelevant, because I am sure I can find a guy who is stronger than her too. It's not a bad thing, that's just how it evolved to be. What you don't have in strength or endurance, you make up for in pain tolerance and finesse. And for all you women out there who work harder than your male counterparts at work, and this doesn't apply to you, I hope you make more than them, and are super successful. P.S. - I figured this would make a good first post to WSO. Been reading for a while and decided to finally chime in.
Read this and then you'll think differently. This is a Forbes article
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/04/16/its-time-that-we-end-th…
[quote=bfin]Read this and then you'll think differently. This is a Forbes article
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/04/16/its-time-that-we-end-th…]
This.
"The wage gap statistic, however, doesn’t compare two similarly situated co-workers of different sexes, working in the same industry, performing the same work, for the same number of hours a day. It merely reflects the median earnings of all men and women classified as full-time workers."
Republicans have been aware of this myth for about 30 years. For some reason Democrats continue to perpetuate this unequal pay myth, which is mind boggling. The pay gap is like comparing a male engineer with a female architect and saying that the woman makes less because of discrimination. The intellectual bankruptcy of this position is breathtaking.
A person should be paid for the job, regardless of gender, etc... I'm not sure what this has to do with executive pay. Finance jobs have standard paygrades, so there's really no issue here.
In other industries that aren't as standardized, yeah, women are taken advantage of. Why? Because employers often can and it has its roots in political/cultural tendancies. Look at New Jersey: the governer made great efforts to balance the budget. Good for him. I sincerely applaud him. But look who he targeted: teachers. I know more corrupt cops, construction workers and firemen than overpaid teachers, but he went after the teachers because they're primarily women...he wouldn't DARE fuck with the 200 Club or the mafia. Another example is the service industry: stripping and serving....yes some are pulling down much more than us (I know a stripper with 7 houses and a Benz) but our society has marginalized two primarily 'female' industries: hospitality and sex. Soldiers are treated like heros and paid, hookers (same category of lower end human functions...sex and violence) are forced almost completely off the grid. Why? Because that's our culture. I say let them both be paid legitimately.
Also, women simply don't WANT to work unhappy jobs just to make more money/power as often as men do. Why? I don't know why. It's just a large part of nature/nurture, and while there are exceptions, women basically check out after a certain point while men are more likely to just go all in. Example: my cousin is a doctor who pulled herself off of regular work to make time to have a baby and her husband is filling in the pay gap.
Again, there are exceptions, plenty of them, and I honestly think that everyone should be able to do what they want, it's just that women are...in general...more likely to take a pay cut for a more decent work/life balance. It's probably why they actually end up with more assets and live longer than the average man, they think long term while we think ...at best... a couple of years ahead. I'm actually a huge fan of women and women's rights, and work primarily with women: very smart and hard working women who often make more money than me (it's hot, really, have you ever had a chick buy you dinner?) They must do as they please. I'm just pointing out HOW IT IS, not necessarily how it could/should be.
....preparing for femnazi attack denouncing anything other than one sided attack on men. Bring it, bitches, I have nothing to lose.
I'm a little perplexed by the comments from bfin and happypantsmcgee. I don't think either of you paid attention to the quotes from the New York Times article, nor do I think either of you understand my perspective on this issue.
I never said that women as a gender are underpaid compared to men. However, the politicians behind the Paycheck Fairness Act are of this opinion. The writer of the Times piece, Nancy Folbre, also questions this conclusion. Please reread the quote:
I think that when the dust settles, all of us--bfin, happypantsmcgee, Carrie Lukas (who wrote the Forbes piece), Nancy Folbre, and yours truly--will be in the same ballpark regarding this issue...
Profession specific wage gaps should and generally are addressed by the appropriate professional organization. Hourly wage gaps basically don't exist. Aggregate wage gaps exist but are meaningless numbers.
Here is part 3, my third installment:
The Paycheck Fairness Act didn't receive the votes it needed in the Senate. Every Republican voted against it. The final vote was 52-47. The Huffington Post reported this as if it were a major travesty against society as we know it:
President Obama was not alone in his condemnation of the vote:
Jennifer Bendery wrote the article for The Huffington Post on 6/5/12. I refer to it here for the sole purpose of exposing another point of view. I do not agree with either the President or Senator Mikulski. I suspect that many in the WSO Community don't agree either.
The Forbes article points out that women who work full-time make 81 percent of what men who work full-time make, but the conclusion that is reached is different. Women have different needs and are drawn to different jobs.
The Washington Post presented a different position entirely regarding this piece of legislation. Ed O'Keefe wrote on June 4, just before the vote was taken:
The purpose of the vote was not to pass legislation, Mr. O'Keefe's argument goes. The purpose of the vote was to improve the President's approval rating among women. In a tight election, this could be a game-changer. What an astute political maneuver, if it's true.
Need to get this off my chest, especially since Wimbledon just started:
Men and Women tennis players are getting paid the same in prize money for Wimbledon. That is complete bullshit, because the guys play best of 5 set matches and the ladies only best of 3 sets. So if you think about it, the "fair" pay for the Ladies champion would be something like (3/5)ths of what the Men's champion gets.
That's not even counting the difference in commerical appeal of the two. Most people would rather watch any of the top 4 men than top 4 women (for the tennis, not the legs). But hey, pay equality - in this case more feminist bullshit.
Agreed, fair pay in sports for women is complete bullshit. Your pay should be in direct proportion to the add and sponsor dollars you bring in, not to some oversensitive societal standard. However, Wimbledon as a tournament will be getting some positive publicity from this, so I can see their angle. Even though this may be a smart move for Wimbledon, the precedent they set may be difficult to reverse.
I agree with UFO that any person should be paid the same as any other person for the same work. But, Women here aren't doing the same work - their actually playing the sport more poorly than their male counterparts. I digress, but I never understood the idea of watching women's sports for precisely that reason; the point of sports is to watch the best people in the world play and Women are generally not the best.
The fairest thing to do would be to look at the TV ratings and pay the gender that brings in the highest ratings the biggest bucks. If more people want to watch two sexy Russians prance around a grass court in short skirts than Andy Murray huffing and puffing then pay them the money.
Why discriminate at all. Just put all the tennis players in together, let the top X qualify and play at Wimbledon, and pool the prize money. To argue that women should be paid the same means they have to compete on the same level.
Income equality isn't going to occur for women if they continue to fuck around seeking regulation to solve it.
Income equality will occur if and only if people are more open about what they get paid. For some reason, people take it the wrong way when you ask them what they get paid, even if you already know an approximate range. Next time you go to McDonalds, ask the cashier lady what she gets paid when she hands over the fries - she won't tell you, even though she know's that you know she gets paid minimum wage or slightly more.
Why can't you ask around the workplace what everyone gets paid? Why isn't it acceptable to go to lunch with co-workers in different positions one day and ask them straight up what they get paid? If everyone knew what everyone else got paid, employers couldn't get away with paying females less.
But besides that, why are women so unwilling to accept that having children and subsequently taking time off (at least a few years off if your a good, caring mother) hurts their career. Imagine if a man decides to take two years off when he turned 30. Should he expect that it won't hurt his career?
Solid post. I won't +1 you though cos I haven't +1'ed a female poster yet and that's discrimination.
Additionally, would you as an employer prefer to recruit an equal candidate who has the potential for a year of paid leave, or one that doesnt. If you need to take on more risk, you need a reward to do so (i.e. lower salary). If a woman signed a contract promising not to have kids, then I have no issue with this.
T
As a woman, I'd be incredibly upset if I made the same as a woman who took time off to raise her kids. Hell, I'd be upset if I made the same as one who left early to go hang out with friends instead of staying to get the job done. And beyond that, I'd be upset if anyone slacked off and still made the same as I did. There's a big choice for women (and nowadays quite a few men): work or children. There's not a right or wrong answer, but no one should expect to have a thriving, successful career while also being dedicated to their kids.
Legislation won't fix anything except be divisive...there's also a nasty incentive in there for women, along the lines of "I'll automatically earn as much as a man so I don't have to bust my ass as much."
But, question...I'm under the impressive that (at least at non-MD levels), pay among non-mother females and males in ibanking is pretty equal. True?
I'd say so. Of the people I know, I haven't seen any correlation between gender and bonuses. Base salaries are lockstep anyways.
I would think that if a woman stays around to the VP/Director level, their odds of getting the MD promotion are higher than average. Banks want to look diverse; the few female MDs I met always seemed to be going to "Women in finance" speaking events.
If women want treatment like this, they should join the military. They will love an environment where they get preferencial treatment at every turn.
Showed this to my rather feminist friend:
"That quote may be true for the general population, but there's a recent duke study out in jama or nejm that compares medical researchers' salaries, controlling for specialty and productivity as measured in publication or grant receiving output I forget which. Basically they controlled for everything and still found that male medical researchers make 13k more a year than women. http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/q-peter-ubel I think his squeaky wheel hypothesis holds.
"Academics can debate why men and women make these different choices. The important takeaway, however, is that there are many reasons that men and women on average earn different amounts. It’s a mistake to assume that “wage gap” statistics reflect on-the-job discrimination." They didn't bring up anything about societal pressures on women to be the primary caregiver of the household, and that they face the double of: if they put their career ahead of their children (like most men do), they're career-obsessed bitches who are bad mothers. If they do accept their primary caregiver role, they're considered to be weak and compromising and "unfit" for the professional world b/c they've yielded to their feminine instinces. instincts I mean the same holds for men, too, who are unfairly expected to be the primary breadwinner of the family, and sacrifice their family life for work. And also because capitalism views workers as capital and expects them to be fucking machines, who are consistent and efficient and blah blah so of course women are going to be disadvantaged in a pure capitalist market, because their biological disposition inherently makes them a less reliable worker because of the fact that WE HAVE TO CARRY A FETUS FOR NINE MONTHS AND PUSH IT OUT OF OUR VAG, so we have to take time off.
Certainly some points. Based on what we have, the wage gap is not "unjustified" it exists for a reason, almost systematically.
No, no you don't... See? Problem solved.
EDIT: To borrow Don Draper's quote:
You're born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to forget that.
Come on - make your choices, and reap the rewards. Don't blame society because it tells you to look a certain way / do certain things.
The cruelest thing that feminists ever did to themselves is sell each other out for personal profit in the effort to convince women that they would be respected as equals on men's terms.
I'm not touching this with a ten foot pole. I took a couple econometric classes, and a lot of studies (when controlled for all potential factors such as education, expierence, etc.) indicated that there was a wage gap. Then of course there are a lot of other studies that indicate there isn't one. It all depends on what you do with your data.
We all know Obama's stance on this, just look at his White House...
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/war-on-women-white-house-found-to-pay-w…
Regards
My interrogatories into this topic have left me comfortably unmoved by recent clamoring. Admittedly, the wage gap has existed before, but today, I have serious doubts about the assertion. If you track two recent graduates from the same school, same degree, and same employer (controlling for all exogenous factors) there is zero, I repeat zero, wage gap. As long as they remain similarly situated (unmarried, childless, etc.), their wages tracks 1 for 1. Once life-altering events happen (marriage, children, etc.) the wage gap emerges. Now, this is where things get interesting. Men, statistically, are likely to favor work and pecuniary gains and women, statistically, tend to choose hearth and home. Regardless of the merits of these choices, they have inevitable career and fiscal consequences. The assertion that this needs to be corrected is ridiculous. If, hypothetically, Person A chooses to leave the workforce for 2 years to do something else (vacation, raise a child, volunteer, mountain climb, whatever)- it is hard to argue rationally that when Person A returns to work, he or she should make the same wage as Person B who stayed on at work during that time. And It is patently unreasonable to think that employers should be required to adjust the wages and compensate based on personal decisions.
But that's not fair!!!! LOL.
Regards
Great video clearly explaining the issue:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/EwogDPh-Sow
I would guess that if you controlled for absolutely everything that you'd still see a wage gap between women and men. Men typically negotiate harder on salary than women do. As a general rule, men are more aggressive in this capacity.
When it was pointed out that the Obama administration has a huge wage gap, I suggested to my Facebook "friends" that there were 2 scenarios: 1) the Obama administration is full of virulent, mysogynistic bigots or that 2) the wage gap is a statistical myth explained by any number of potential things. Obama supporting liberal Democrats immediately came to the defense of Obama, artfully and correctly pointing out the wage gap myth.
Can I go with the answer "D. All of the above."? LOL.
It's been stated many times, though retracted in some instances that the Obama White House is more of a frat environment than anything else. While the points made in the video can justify the gender pay gaps it can't justify the sentiment that some of the female workers have held about their time in the WH. In one particular case, it was pointed out that women hold a number of high ranking positions in the Obama administration, but that their ideas and suggestions are often ignored and in some cases, lauded as great several days later after a male staffer makes the suggestion.
http://www.nrcc.org/blog/main.asp?Tid=1951
Regards
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