“We are the slaves of slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men.”
Lucy Parsons
Most of us know that women, on average, make less than men. As of 2007, women earned about 77.8 cents for every dollar that men earned in the United States. What is 22.2 cents? Over time it adds up. If you are a woman with a college degree, chances are that you will earn
almost one million dollars less, in your lifetime, than a man with a similar college degree.
http://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.htmlThis problem does not hurt just women. If affects their families, too.
According to the AFL-CIO, working families lose $200 BILLION every year due to the wage gap!
http://www.todaysworkplace.org/tag/chamber-of-commerce/Wow! That is like a whole stimulus package every year. And the nation's women (and their children) pay most of it.
While all women face unequal pay, mothers are especially hard hit. A study done was done by Cornell to see if potential employers discriminate against mothers.
Suspecting that discrimination may play a factor in the lower wages of mothers, the researchers created hypothetical job seekers with resumes and other materials, and 192 Cornell undergraduates were asked to evaluate them as candidates for a position as marketing director for a start-up communications company.
"We created two applicant profiles that were functionally equivalent," Correll said. "Their resumes were very strong; they were very successful in their last jobs. In pretesting, no one preferred one applicant over the other; they were seen as equally qualified."
Next a memo was added to one of the profiles, mentioning that the applicant was a mother of two children, and her resume was modified to show that she was an officer in a parent-teacher association. The memo and resume in the second applicant's materials made no mention of children.
When asked if they would hire these applicants, participants said they would hire 84 percent of the women without children, compared with only 47 percent of the mothers. In assigning a starting salary to the applicants, given a pay range appropriate for the job, participants offered non-mothers an average of $11,000 more than mothers.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug05/soc.mothers.dea.htmlApplicants who happened to be fathers were offered an average of $6000
more , suggesting that the “Mommy tax” has less to do with being a parent and much more to do with gender.
Here are some statistics about mothers in the workforce:
We face growing wage gaps between mothers and non-mothers (in 1991, non-mothers with an average age of thirty made 90 cents to a man’s dollar, while moms made only 73 cents to the dollar, and single moms made 56 to 66 cents to a man’s dollar).1 And this maternal pay gap has been growing. The pay gap between mothers and non-mothers actually expanded from 10 percent in 1980 to 17.5 percent in 1991.
Yes, it’s with motherhood—a time when families need more economic support for basic needs, childcare, and healthcare; not less support—that women take the biggest economic hits in the form of lower pay.
http://www.momsrising.org/manifesto/chapter7No wonder the face of working class poverty in this country is so often that of a single mother. Imagine trying to support yourself and children and pay for day care---all on half the salary that your unmarried brother without children makes. This problem is not unique to the U.S. The European Union—which is supposed to have laws to ensure fair pay---also has a gender and a Mommy gap.
http://dev.ulb.ac.be/dulbea/documents/1238.pdfWomen in this country have been trying for years to achieve equal pay for equal work. However, these efforts have been opposed by the right wing, which portrays the gender wage gap as a
choice that women make.
(W)e calmly demonstrate that while the average woman does indeed earn less than the average man, the gap has very little, if anything, to do with discrimination. It has everything to do with choice.
snip
Women earn less largely because we have the luxury of decisions that men generally can only dream of. We work less hours in the average work week, we are more likely to take time off to have kids or care for aging parents, and we choose lower paying fields requiring less formal education. Oh, and we’re less far less likely to be killed at work, a little detail often neglected at the NCPE.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26066“Choice”? Did I just read a conservative celebrating women’s right to choose? The right wing has done everything it can to deny women “choice” Their policies---sex education that is worthless, restricted access to contraception for underage and poor women, limiting abortion rights----are ultimately intended to create a large subclass of undereducated women who have the sole responsibility for providing for their families.
$200 billion dollars a year is a lot of money, particularly for businesses which rely upon low wage female employees to keep their bottom line lean. Here is the U.S. Chambers of Commerce arguing against the “Paycheck Fairness Act”. In the quote that follows, they describe the current rules which allow employers to set different wages for men and women based upon a variety of factors. Note that employers do not have to prove that the “difference” actually makes any difference in the employee’s ability to perform her work.
For example, employers may consider an applicant’s or employee’s education, experience, special skills, seniority, and expertise, as well as other external factors such as marketplace conditions, in setting salaries. Although some circuit courts have attempted to read a “business justification” or “business necessity” element into this
affirmative defense,26 the Supreme Court, quite prudently, has never endorsed such a reading and has made clear that the affirmative defense means what it says – any factor other than sex.
http://www.uschamber.com/NR/rdonlyres/ees4wigl7kc5bhgt4qbbsmvho3grefcnzjbgfufcubu3jgjetndeykqq2wkjkmsbff3vqatushkdsv6kzwt2l7t7mdh/070711_paycheck_fairness.pdfWhen women are forced into motherhood at an early age, they miss out on education. They may also have to take a few years off work, which will place them a few years behind male coworkers in experience
for the rest of their lives. . If some “special skills’ (like time in the military or participation in sports) are valued more highly than other “special skills” (like motherhood) then men get an additional boost. As for “marketplace conditions”---I assume that is a euphemism for
Women who have to feed their kids will work for peanuts. Mom, baseball and apple pie indeed.
Wal-mart, the subject of a gender discrimination suit as described in this article
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/business/24gap.htmlResisted calls to provide insurance coverage for birth control for its many female employees until faced with a lawsuit.
http://walmartwatch.com/blog/archives/wal_mart_finally_adds_birth_control_to_insurance/Now, why would a company that employees so many women want to increase their chances of accidental pregnancy? When employers decide to cover other drugs but not birth control, they place an unfair burden on their female employees.
The exclusion of prescription contraceptives from health insurance coverage
unfairly disadvantages women by singling out for unfavorable treatment a health
insurance need that only they have. Failure to cover contraception forces women
to bear higher health care costs to avoid pregnancy, and exposes women to the
unique physical, economic, and emotional consequences that can result from
unintended pregnancy.
One of the most immediate economic consequences of not providing
contraceptive health coverage for women is the out-of-pocket cost of paying for
contraception. Women insured through employer-sponsored insurance or with an
individual policy are more likely than men to spend more than 10 percent of their
income on out-of-pocket costs and premiums.
http://www.nwlc.org/pdf/contraceptive%20coverage%20facts%20should%20know%20may%202008.pdfFrom an economic point of view, unintended pregnancies should not be good for the employer--like Wal-Mart. If a women gets pregnant, she may have to miss work or quit. If she decides to get a termination, she may have to take several days off to travel to a different state, since the procedure is not available everywhere, thanks to anti-abortion efforts. So, why would employers fight so hard to resist paying for health prevention which would ensure a better work force?
I believe that business interests in the United States benefit from the reduced salaries they can pay women by claiming that the average man is “more committed to his job” (see the comments of one of the researchers in the New York Times article above).
Just as members of ethnic and racial minorities are denied equal education and are incarcerated at an increased rate in order to maintain a low wage, unskilled work force (which drives down wages for every worker) so women are denied adequate family planning, because it allows employers to stigmatize their whole gender as unreliable workers. And yet, women have been the most
reliable underpaid workforce in this country for almost two centuries, since the start of the industrial revolution.
“Wherever wages are to be reduced, the capitalist class uses women to reduce them.”
Lucy Parsons as quoted in Angela Davis’ Women, Race and Class .
It is no accident that the political party which represents the interests of employers also embraces restrictions on women’s right to choose. The Republican Party platform of
no abortion combined with their insistence that young women be denied birth control and even meaningful sex education is a recipe for an increased low wage work force. Note in this article
http://www.fnsa.org/v1n2/liagin.htmlThat while industrialized countries will go to great lengths to forcibly sterilize third world women, they do the exact opposite at home, enacting policies that encourage an increase in domestic birth rates. More kids per family---especially working class families headed by a single woman living in working class poverty—means more cheap labor for the future. From the standpoint of the working class, state laws which restrict teenaged girls’ access to birth control, (sensible) sex education and abortion have a negative effect on overall wages. Because, if employers can get a woman to do the job for half of what they pay a man, they will employee the woman. And complain that her kids make her a bad worker.
We can call abortion opponents “terrorists” and they can call us “Satanists”. Or we can stop playing the game of Divide and Conquer which the employer class in this country has staged for us. No one wants to see one in four U.S. pregnancies end in abortion. For those who believe that life begins at conception, it means that lives have been lost. For those who believe that women should control their own bodies---and destinies---it means that way too many women are the victims of unintended pregnancy---which is a public health problem, not a lifestyle choice as some would have us believe.
The solutions are not that hard. Follow the example of the Netherlands, which has a working sex education system and which provides universal access to contraception. If we do that, our abortion rate (and unintended pregnancy rate) should drop. At the same time, the standard of living for women and their (planned) children should rise. Give more than lip service to "family values". A woman does not stop having "value" the minute she gives birth. Show her that she matters. Ensure that her child will have health care and day care and good schools. Reward her for raising the next generation of workers, rather than docking her half of her pay.
We can continue our present war of name calling and violence. And the nation's employers will laugh themselves silly as nothing is done to address the economic situation of our nation's women and children. Or, we can actually do something to make things better in this country. We have nothing to lose but our sky high rates of childhood poverty (25%).
http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/
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