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Loading...A Primer for Men On Women’s Rights
When I was an undergraduate and knew everything, I happily identified myself as left-leaning, environmentally-minded and a staunch supporter of “classical” feminism. Why the qualification? Because of course I believed in equal opportunity, equal rights and all the rest for women. Who wouldn’t? But women have all those things now, right? So what else is there to demand?
Actually, the sort of discrimination that is easiest to discover and to measure, where men are treated one way and women in the exact same position are treated another, still happens pretty frequently. It’s been well-established that when men are ambitious and ask for raises or take on leadership roles, it’s considered a virtue, while when women do it, it’s perceived in a less flattering way.
But it’s the more pervasive sexist mechanisms built into the wheels and gears of our society which are the most nefarious, because they’re invisible to most people. No company could get away with advertising for male and female engineers, offering two different salaries depending on sex. Yet, men and women with similar amounts of education tend to earn significantly different wages on average, and we have to ask why.
I used to hate these studies because they seemed full of holes. “Women and men with similar education” are compared, for example, but what qualifies as similar? If women tend to get English degrees and men tend to get engineering degrees, it’s no surprise that they earn differently, and easy to conclude that sexism has nothing to do with it. But this is wrong. We have to dig a little deeper.
Once upon a time, teaching was reserved almost exclusively for unmarried women. Most would do it for a few years, and leave the classroom once they’d found a suitable husband. (Life-long teachers were automatically denigrated as “spinsters”.) But around mid-century, that began to change. Men started going into teaching, and found the wages currently on offer lacking. It was one thing to give a woman a little pocket change as she whiles away the days pining for a husband, but a man needed a real paycheck. There’s a sharp upward trend in rate of pay for teaching at the same time that men started entering the profession.
Does this still sound like an imagined problem?
Read more: childcare, gender, gender gap, graduate school, lifetime earnings, masters, maternity leave, PhD, wages, war on women
Photo credit: Howard Hollem
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65 comments
+ add your ownThank you putting the facts on the table. Saddest of all is that all the facts are never taken into consideration by the human resource departments of major corporations nor our politicians here in the USA.
Thank you for sharing.
Jerry, I read the article at the link you provided, and it does a great job of explaining away the wage gap and gender disparities in various professions. I just about burst out laughing when the article said, with all seriousness, that gay men don't feel as much of a need for a high-paying job to be attractive to the sex that's on their radar. Unless the author of the article is a gay male or can cite a reputable study that shows the statement to be true, I call bullshit.
Why are jobs that women tend to go for lower-paying, as a rule? Could it be because those professions are undervalued and, as a result, underpaid? Could it be pressure from society to conform to gender roles? There are issues in society that need to be addressed and attitudes that need to be changed. That's hard fact. The author of the article seems entirely happy to make excuses and, like I said, explain away issues of concern and say feminists are getting worked up over nothing and going out of their way to stir up dissent.
This could use a bit of balance. No, a lot of balance.
I recommend:
“The Doctrinaire Institute for Women's Policy Research”
http://malemattersusa.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/the-doctrinaire-institute-for-womens-policy-research/
Thanks for the article. It really pisses me off, though.
Well, my mom makes more than my dad, I know that. She's a nurse, actually. And my dad went right into work after high school and worked his way up.
I think it's better to go into college because you learn so much more than you would if you became an electrician or a plumber, plus you make friendships and gain experience in all sorts of things.
Now, I wonder if a woman would be discriminated against if she tried to go right into plumbing or other things?
As for me, I'm going to college next year and have no clue what I want to do with myself. Hopefully self-employed. Maybe a farmer. I don't know.
Thanks.
We've had the ERA on hold since 1974 and still not enough women in Congress to have is passed.
Great article. Thanks Joel. I have a story to add that illustrates how pervasive sexism is. A few years back I owned a computer store. My youngest son helped me run the store and we developed an act for the macho buyers who would come in to our store. I was the first to approach most customers. If a male customer acted uncomfortable talking to me, as a woman, I would find a reason to call my son over. He would then start a conversation with the person and when my son didn't know the answer he would say, "Mom, what do you think about this?" I would give him the answer and we would continue this way until the sale was made. Once the man had bought a computer from us he didn't have any choice but to deal with me since I was the one who really knew about computers and had all the certifications. I did notice a shift, in the way new customers treated me, once it got around that I was the go to lady for computers lol.
Thanks, Joel, excellent article. I am retired now, but when I worked, I made 75% as much as the guy who was doing the same job, and this was for the government.
Good article Joel, but the sexism is even more insidious when you try to borrow money from a bank ...I consistently earn't much more than my husband , yet they way the bank calculated my borrowing power was discounted by 2/3rds because " you might get pregnant".
In other words what I could do with my money was 2/3 less than my husbands.. my dollar was worth 33 cents compared with my husbands full $1.
Crippling...
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