Equal Pay Day comes this year in the midst of the renewal of the so-called "mommy wars" on the one hand, and a blatant attack on equal pay rights bills on the other. Last week, Hilary Rosen set off a media maelstrom when she said that Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, "has never actually worked a day in her life." Just a week before (and to much less fanfare), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker repealed Wisconsin's Equal Pay law and one of the state senate Republicans, Glenn Grothman, was quoted as saying, "You could argue that money is more important for men, anyways." Both have serious implications for the equal pay cause.
The National Committee on Pay Equity started Equal Pay Day in 1996 to bring more public attention to the gender wage gap, the difference between what an average full-time, year-round, male worker earned and what the average full-time, year-round, female worker earned. In 1996, the difference was 73.8 cents to the dollar and, today, the difference is about 77.4 cents. Not a terribly huge improvement over the last 16 years.
Researchers have long noted that a number of factors can partially explain the gender wage gap. Notably, women and men tend to work in different industry sectors and different occupations within industry, which can explain a sizable portion of the gap. But differences in pay for various occupations may be due to whether jobs are associated with women or men. In other words, while occupational differences may explain some of the gender wage gap, the pay scale for different occupations is connected to whether or not the occupations are made up of mostly men or mostly women. And as sociologist Paula England and economist Nancy Folbre found in their research, women are more likely to work in caring fields, which offer relatively poor pay given the skill and education necessary for much of this work.
Devaluing the hard work of acting as a primary caregiver of children not only dismisses the unpaid labor done in the home, it also contributes to the struggle of the millions of paid female laborers who work in caring fields and find that their work is neither recognized nor justly rewarded. Calling this past week's maelstrom a renewal of the "mommy wars" dodges the real issue: Caregiving, whether done unpaid in the home or for pay outside of it, is not particularly valued in this country and women (whether in the labor market or not) suffer the brunt of this.
Differences in pay are likely also connected to bias. Having children often increases men's wages, according to research from sociologist Rebecca Glauber, but it often decreases women's wages and women working in low-wage jobs face the toughest wage penalties for motherhood, as sociologists Michelle Budig and Melissa Hodges found. When Grothman argued, "Money is more important for men," he may have been tapping a generally unspoken belief -- that a woman's salary is less necessary to her family than is her spouse's. But, these beliefs are a remnant of times gone by in which men were primary breadwinners and women were primary homemakers (although as historian Stephanie Coontz has noted, even during the 1950s, this gender divide was never as big a phenomenon as we remember it to be).
Today, only 20 percent of children are raised in families with a traditional breadwinning father and stay-at-home mother. Most children, then, live in families that depend on the wages of women, and one-third of children live in single-mother households and are most at risk of living in poverty. The National Women's Law Center reports that bridging the gender wage gap would give the average full-time working woman's family the money to pay for an additional 4 months' supply of groceries, 5 months' of childcare, 3 months' rent and utilities, 5 months' health insurance premiums, 4 months' student loan payments, and 5 tanks of gas. Addressing the wage gap would go a long way in increasing women's economic security, as well as the financial security of their families. In 2010, all Senate Republicans voted against considering the Paycheck Fairness Act. As both President Obama and presidential hopeful Governor Romney continue to vie for women's votes, it would be nice to see some serious proposals from the candidates about how to bridge the wage gap.
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The problem is due to certain industries being seen as primarily female (see: education) thus pay is typically lower than for other fields of equal levels of education.
I'm sorry, but none of us got to where we are without the aid of an educator, they should be better trained, supported AND paid.
There is no going forward if we keep denying the past and how it got us here. Or if we pretend to "debate" while falsifying the facts. http://freecatholic808.com/2012/04/16/the-twiddly-bits-from-the-past/
As far as men being more concerned with money. Evidence backs that up. 75% of men say they choose a job based primarily on income. Only 25% of women say the same thing. Do these people who cite the wage gap between men and women think that women should be forced to make the same choices as men or vice versa? Do they think that they should get paid the same despite their choices and the fact that on average they work less?
What is it about this discussion that scares you so much?
Finding statistic dishonesty in something is not the same as being "scared" of it...in case you were unaware of this fact.
One person can't work overtime because a child has to be picked up at daycare by 5:30 or an extra fee is added and must take additional days off to care for a sick child or attend school events. Another always volunteers to work extra time on a project under a deadline, never asks for additional time off, and schedules vacations at times most convenient to the company.
If you said "yes," you obviously have no idea what it takes to run a business, or you just don't care.
Since the only money government has to run itself is that which it can collect from business or individuals working for business, you should think about your opinion toward the relative value of various workers.
Kudos to the AM for being a good dad because I can pretty much guarantee he pays a salary penalty for doing so.
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Gender issues were known as a problem in 1972 but the GOP has repeatedly blocked the ratification in the various states.
So yes...the GOP has been waging a "War on Women".
And the so-called premises that support claims of systemic "unequal pay" between men & women are akin to frisking wet seals: you can touch them, but you can't get a grip on them.
Compensation variables in private sector jobs are too vast, if not contaminated by flawed data, in which to formulate any rational balance. But the pay inequity debate rages on...simply as a "wedge" issue during campaign season. (Great timing, again...)
"Almost three-fourths of Wal-Mart's hourly wage sales employees were women; by contrast, only about one-third of its managers were."
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2011/03/everyday_discrimination.html
When you define the gender wage gap as " ... the difference between what an average full-time, year-round, male worker earned and what the average full-time, year-round, female worker earned." as your premise, you are eliminating other significant contributory factors and, must, perforce draw false conclusions.
If you define the gender wage gap as " ... the difference between what an average full-time, year-round, male worker earned at a specific job and what the average full-time, year-round, female worker earned at the same job." and, then, demonstrated inequality, you might reach correct conclusions.
Women held 49.83 percent of the nation's 132 million jobs in June