Did you hear what Senator McCain said about the Fair Pay Act--a bill that would have helped make sure women receive equal pay for equal work? After it was defeated in the Senate, he said that the solution to employment discrimination was for women to get more "education and training."
This is outrageous! McCain is hugely misinformed: Study after study shows that women are paid less than men for the same work even though they have the same education and training. And his statement also sends a really offensive message that the pay gap is OK.
I just signed on to this public statement calling out McCain and urging him to support efforts to help guarantee women equal pay for equal work--can you join me? You can also submit your resume, which MoveOn will deliver right to McCain to prove to him that women have the right qualifications--what women need is equal pay.
http://pol.moveon.org/fairpay/?r_by=-92
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astraevirgo- Kat(i)e
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I've only been able to see the quotes, not the original statements (and their context). But there is a slightly more charitable reading of the comments.
Suppose that there was "Fair Pay" (either by law or by practice). Even in this scenario, there would be a gap between what men and women earn, because of the differential value society places on different types of jobs. Historically, jobs dominated by men tend to pay better than jobs dominated by women.
So, McCain could have been trying to say that the ultimate goal of closing the income gap between men and women involves more than getting equal pay within each job class ... and that another approach towards that goal is education and training. (And if the Fair Pay act has some unintended consequences that are worse than the benefits, then one might in good conscience look at all the alternatives.)
But, as I said, I'm not terribly well-informed ...
And I would argue that the "differential value society places on types of jobs" is based on a differential value society places on work done by women. Nursing and teaching young children (because there are increasing numbers of male teachers starting in High School, and then they become the majority on the University level) are seen as paid extensions of what women would do "naturally" -- and thus it is not necessary to compensate them as much as you would a man. In fact, "Even in predominantly female medical fields like nursing (9 out of 10 RNs are women), female nurses still earn just 88 percent of what male nurses make." And both teaching and nursing require extensive education and training. (And in Michigan, teaching requires a continuing education degree)
This is also an issue of race. White males are the most highly paid groups of workers in America, regardless of job class. In 2006, Black males made 72.1% of White wages. It's worse for Black women and especially Hispanic women. That chart also shows that the pay gap has started widening again.
I will acknowledge that a federal law requiring Fair Pay is, in the end, a "technical fix" that addresses the symptom, but not the problem. (See Tragedy of the Commons for more details about technical fixes.) But, in the end, requiring only one group in society to get more education and training is still a technical fix. It does not change the underlying assumptions which leads us to a pay gap in the first place. I'm not sure exactly what attitude we will have to change, but it comes from equally valuing men and women from their bodies to their work. Society belongs to all of us, and by allowing any ill to pass us buy destroys the ecology for all -- a modern day tragedy of the commons.
Pay inequity is usually revealed by broad statistical analyses, like the ones you site. And I agree that they're usually damning.
But the remedies for such analyses have to be applied on an individual basis. And herein lies the problem. If we're talking about two concrete people named Alice & Bob, and Alice makes less than Bob does, how do we figure out if the pay gap is due to bias and discrimination, or if the pay gap is due to performance? If we "suddenly" give Alice a big pay raise to match Bob's pay, do we discourage Bob from seeking out advancement in his position because he knows that any pay raise given to him will be seen as discrimination against Alice?
I see this played out in different ways in the University environment ... not just in gender, but in rank issues. Many full professors are paid less than assistant professors at Kettering, and complain about it profusely. On the other hand, many of those full professors are tremendously unproductive, and should get paid less, strictly based on their performance.
So ... I don't know how you fix the broad statistical problem and still simultaneously value individual people.
Let's pretend that Alice and Bob work at Ford Motor Company, and they have the same job on different product lines. Alice and Bob are both on launch for their respective car models. Both are behind schedule, and both have had to raise their voices to get what they needed to try to get the projects back on track. More than likely, Alice would be labeled as an irrational, over emotional bitch, and an ineffective leader because she had to raise her voice. Bob, on the other hand, would be seen as a strong leader who put his people to task where they had been slacking. (In these jokes, you could replace boss with man... and get the same results.)
Who is to say that performance is not measured by standards that are riddled with bias and discrimination?
Now, let's pretend Alice and Bob are lawyers. Alice has been working for the firm for two more years than Bob, and she graduated first in her class. Bob graduated first in his class as well; they both went to the same school. Bob is more likely to have made partner in the firm, despite working there two fewer years. Why? Well, Alice has taken time off to have two children, and thus is not seen as dedicated to her job. And even though she has won just as many cases as Bob, and worked the same amount of time (taking into account maternity leave), she will be passed over again and again. And if she hadn't taken the time off to spend with her infants? Alice would have been seen as a bad mother. If she didn't have kids (or didn't get married), she would be seen as somehow less than woman.
Again, I ask, is the perception of performance purely performance or does it also rely upon cultural markers which hold women to different standards?
These two scenarios are both "case studies." As Timothy often reminds me when I tell him about the case studies I've read, the plural of data is not trend. But if you're talking about valuing individuals, those are the types of problems you're likely to run into. One book I read, entitled Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It, suggests some great policies which are allowing women not to be penalized for their family lives. These policies include flextime, basing promotions on the amount of time spent working (so as to not penalize for maternity leave), among others.
So, yes, the macrolevel trends are based on microlevel decisions, but dismissing the damning statistics by saying, "Maybe there are performance issues" is to say that over all the productivity and performance of women is only worth 73 cents to the dollar that men earn.
The broad statistical problem will fix itself when we truly value individual people. It's just that the broad statistical problem is easier to address (even if it is a symptom) than the individual level problem of assumptions of femininity and masculinity that cloud our perceptions of what is good and bad performance for men and for women.
But how do you address that while still not creating a system in which everyone gets paid solely on years accrued?
At my employer, about eight years ago, they performed a "faculty pay equity" survey, looking at salaries with respect to rank (completely ignoring any other issue like race, gender, performance, you name it). Any faculty member with a salary less than 95% of the mean at their rank was given a raise to bring them up to 95% of the mean. While the intent was to address "salary inversion" (a particularly nasty form of age discrimination in universities), the net perceived effect was that the old-farts who don't volunteer to do anything anymore were given big raises for nothing.
Your case studies are certainly compelling, as all case studies should be. But part of the problem is that life is rarely that simple. Rarely do you have two individuals working side-by-side with exactly the same performance and background, so that you can see the bias for what it is.
So, to try to summarize, and get back on point. I strongly agree that pay equity is a problem. But opposing a particular solution to a problem isn't the same thing as denying that the problem exists. Voting against the Fair Pay act doesn't infer that someone is against fair pay; it may infer that someone disagrees as to whether the specific act will create more problems than it solves.
Back in 1990, Congress was looking for ways to raise revenue. They imposed a "yacht tax"; basically, if you bought a boat for more than $100K, every dollar over $100K was subject to a 10% tax. The thought was that this would be a painless way to raise money; it was a tax on the uber-rich, who had plenty of money anyways, and wouldn't miss the extra money. The effect was the exact opposite; rich people quit buying yachts because of the tax, forcing yacht manufacturers to lay off workers, leading to a loss of payroll and income tax revenue and an increase in unemployment expenses. The extra money taken in by the tax was dwarfed by the other losses.
In short: sometimes a government fix makes things worse, not better.