Tomorrow, April 28th, is Equal Pay Day. I’d like to put aside any feelings we have about how Equal Pay for Equal Work has been politicized far beyond the original message, and focus on the human reality of unequal pay.
The lack of Equal Pay impacts every one of us, regardless of whether or not we realize it. Excessive allocation of capital towards a particular group of people allows that group to make the economic decisions that affect all of us. Equal Pay for Equal Works puts money in the hands of a diverse group with diverse needs. More money in the hands of women means more businesses oriented towards women needs and wants. More money in the hands of the disabled means more businesses oriented towards disabled needs and wants.
Even that starkly economic example doesn’t really examine the human rationale for Equal Pay for Equal Work.
My Story
A year and a half ago, my partner and I lost our jobs. Another company quickly rehired her, but a year and a half later, I’m still unemployed. Although I cherish the time I’ve had to raise my son, it’d be nice to have a job so that I can contribute to the family economy. But, as is, my son and I are wholly dependant on my wife’s income. Our quality of life is directly proportional to the amount of pay she takes home. If her pay is in any way affected by her gender, my son and I suffer too even though we’re both white males.
Media-driven studies show that the current economy has created many family situations like mine. For the first time in our male-privileged lives, the need for Equal Pay for Equal Work becomes so utterly clear.
I’d like to dedicate the rest of this posting to aggregating stories, poems, pictures, songs, music, and other artwork from other bloggers on how Equal Pay for Equal Work will and has changed their lives. If you’d like your work to be posted here, please send me a message with a link to your work and I’ll get it up as soon as my son’s schedule allows me.
Much thanks to FingerLakesWanderer for helping me get this message out.
UPDATE: We got a shout-out on Feministing. Thanks to whomever made them aware of this little project.
FingerLakesWanderer - Soup Kitchen Memories
Owl Says Who - The Women who came before Equal Pay Day
JustJuli - Equal Pay and Me
CoyoteOldStlye - Equal Pay Work
Kent Pitman - Bonus Pay for Bonus Pay
OFF OPEN SALON
Kay Steiger - Three-Fourths of a Paycheck
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Ruby Tuesday
Belyana
Max the Communist
Peterson Toscano
spotted_mind
Drew-Silla
Salon.com
Comments
I actually wrote this post a few months ago. It was about my experience of not being able to find a job that would pay me a living wage. I think it's appropriate to the topic. You can include it in the open call, if you think it's okay. Sorry to use older stuff, but this spoke to me as what I wanted to have represent me as what happens to women when they lose the financial support of a man while they're trying to raise children--even if they are working.
http://open.salon.com/blog/fingerlakeswanderer/2008/12/19/soup_kitchen_memories
Poet - Would you mind terribly sending me the links to specific postings. I'm afraid I don't have the appropriate judgment criteria to select postings from a library of them.
jimgalt - It's never that easy, regardless of what a specific soft science research might claim. While it's true that many women choose so-called "pink collar" jobs that pay less than the jobs many men take, even within integrated, high-skilled fields such as engineering, women still earn less than male counterparts. Simply saying that women lack the ovaries to ask for equal pay places blame solely on the women and is probably only one of a multitude of reasons. Perhaps we should stop focusing on how to blame women and instead question why pink collar jobs are so low paid and devalued accordingly.
It is really time for our society to get over it. It needs to start in the multitudes of households around the country, where women, for the most part, manage the house/apartment, raise children, book appointments, wash, clean, promote, chauffeur, teach.......the list is endless, and in many cases, not appreciated or compensated. This attitude needs to be changed, because I feel the basis for applying less value to the work and skill of women starts with the home situation.
Thanks for this--I think I'm going to write a post about my parents' "family economy" and how (un)equal pay affected us. Rated.
I just read Owl Says Who's piece. Frickin' Amazing. Can't recommend it highly enough. Thank you for the opportunity to bring these all together.
Average salary for man with B.A=71,000
Average salary for woman with B.A=43,000
http://open.salon.com/blog/coyoteoldstyle/2009/04/28/equal_pay_equal_work
so, jimgalt et al, it is 1) not just a matter of asking for more money. and 2) we should not be made an offer that is lower than our male counter parts in the first place and thus be put in the position of having to ask.
example: when i was a cocktail waitress, i wanted to bartend. cocktail waitressing is the worst job possibly on earth. it entails exposure to constant sexual harassment as well as arduous physical labor. tending bar is much safer, and puts the worker in a position of not only more personal and physical space with an actual boundary between him or her and the drunk person, but more perceived authority, and also, far more pay for less physical labor.
i could not, for the life of me, get management to consider making me a bar tender. i offered to work the bad shifts. I offered to bar back. I offered to shadow a bar tender and work for free. I offered to take a test on the bar's most popular drinks. I was denied. Men were hired for the open positions. When I finally asked why, they told me that I wouldn't be "safe" behind the bar. "but i'm safe out here, in a cropped tank top and a little skirt, dealing with drunks?" they didn't have an answer for that.
Sick of being groped and grabbed every night for a mere $90 a shift when the bartenders pulled in triple that from their safe places behind the bar, away from the customers, I quit.
http://www.campusprogress.org/cribsheets/3964/three-fourths-of-a-paycheck
I agree with your point about how women are paid and how it affects things. I've seen situations where women are paid a scale that appears to me to say “we know you're not the primary income of your family so we figure you can get by on less.” So when it turns out this is not a true assumption, the callousness already built into it affects it's victims doubly much.
Your point about the human capital in which we invest is especially well made. To some extent, a lot of the problems we have today is that we have allowed certain groups to be so rewarded that they have come to think of themselves as nearly royalty, and it's hard, I think, for them to think objectively any longer, so sure are they that without them, the world would crumble.
I've said it a lot around here, and here I go again! "I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan!" And raise the kids, clean the house, go to Victoria's Secret, wash the car, split the atom, learn opera, volunteer at the school carnival, make sure Suzie has her costume for the play, earn a Master's degree in the hopes I can make a little more, go to couples therapy because I'm exhausted and getting little or no help, and do all of this on 3 hours of sleep a night.
Women are sci-fi. Seriously. I know women who do it all. Super Heroes. Mother's Day isn't near enough celebration.