“It’s time to recognize that the women’s movement is stalled. We have spent the last decade fighting to protect the hard fought gains of my mother’s generation. This is not good enough. We need to be moving forward” (Gillibrand). U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York said this quote on April 12, 2011.
April 12, 2011 was Equal Pay Day. In other words, it is the day in the next year that women have to work until in order to make the same amount of money that men made in the previous calendar year. Women have to work 467 days in order to make the same amount that men make in 365. Despite the fact that women have made remarkable strides in gaining equal education in the past several decades, these educational gains have not been seen in equal pay. This is true for all women, even those with college degrees (or higher) who work full time. In 2007, “a typical woman earned $35,745 compared with $46,367 for a typical man, a pay difference of $10,622” (Boyce-Wilson).
This wage disparity, according to Forbes Magazine, will cost a woman, on average, between $375,000 and $1.5 million (Gates). This is an astonishing amount of money. In fact, this number is so high that if women were to receive equal pay, close to 40% of the poor working women who are on welfare could get off of it (Bryce-Wilson). In a time when welfare is a very hotly debated topic, as we discussed in class, this could be very monumental. In November 2010 the Paycheck Fairness Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives with bipartisan support (a vote of 256-163) but unfortunately stalled in the procedural rules of the Senate (Guise). This act will “help close the gender gap by updating 48-year-old fair-pay laws. [It will] close loopholes and prohibit retaliation against workers who inquire about employers’ wage practices or disclose their own wages” (Guise). Just as we cannot keep letting the Equal Rights Amendment die on the table in the states, we cannot let this issue keep dying in Congress.
Women have been told their entire lives that they can do anything they want. However, as we can see here, although they might be able to do everything, they are still not treated equally for it. One suggestion that has been made to help women achieve equal pay is to strengthen their negotiation skills. However, this will only be a temporary fix (in my opinion). Women need to demand more and tackle this issue at multiple levels.
In class on March 29th we discussed who the ideal worker is. The ideal worker is free of any ties/duties besides the job and they are able to be fully dedicated to their job because they have a partner who can take care of everything else (Simonson 3/29/2011). In other words, the ideal worker is not compatible with having a family. The ideal worker is not a woman. Besides the notion of the ideal worker, we also discussed possible other barriers to achieving equal pay. They included the responsibility of coordinating childcare and cost of childcare, coordinating maternity leave, and the “unpaid second shift” (Simonson 3/29/2011). A very similar list of reasons is given in the San Francisco Gate: “Women don’t negotiate effectively for salaries, they lack ambition, they focus on family and having babies, they aren’t as productive, and they choose so-called ‘female’ work that pays poorly” (Guise). We touched on most of these myths and supposed “reasons” with the exception of negotiation.
Much that has been written about Equal Pay Day this year, 2011, has focused on how women need to be able to negotiate their salaries more effectively in order to achieve equal pay. Even one of the seventeen women currently in our U.S. Senate said the same thing, Senator Gillibrand. She has led the fight with Senator Barbara Mikulski to pass The Paycheck Fairness Act and part of this legislation would be to “establish training groups to help women strengthen their negotiation skills” (Gillibrand). It has apparently been found that “‘when [women] do negotiate on their own behalf, women ask for and receive lower wages than men’” (Forbes). Furthermore, “[Fiona] Greig finds that the gender gap in propensity to negotiate completely accounts for the gender gap in seniority” (Gates). Essentially this means that if “women were to negotiate for themselves as much as men do, they would advance as quickly as men and eliminate the under-representation of women in the top ranks of the organization” (Gates).
Okay, so this is all fine and well in theory, but is it even possible? Our society, even today in 2011, is still very patriarchal. We still believe that the masculine characteristics are more desirable, better, more valuable, and more worthy of power. Senator Gillibrand even tells us this (albeit in an indirect way). What she wrote in the Huffington Post (what was quoted above) implies this. Women need to somehow be trained to strengthen their negotiation skills to gain equal pay. Why is it that women need to become more like men in order to achieve equal pay? Why does the fact that women are not as aggressive with asking for a certain salary amount or a raise make it somehow okay that they are paid less? Is it really their (our) fault? I am not convinced that improved negotiation is the way to truly achieve equal pay.
In order to close the salary gap we need to employ a mixture of liberal and radical feminism. Liberal feminists (such as Betty Friedan) believe that reforming laws are the way to ensure that women have access to the public sphere (or, in this case, equal wages), while radical feminists believe that equality cannot be achieved by working within the system because the system is inherently patriarchal (Simonson 1/25/2011). We need to reform the laws like the liberal feminists believe (and like Senator Gillibrand is trying to do), but it is also true that our system is still inherently patriarchal. We need to somehow find a balance and fix both. (Although I know this is easier said than done.) Guise agrees: “There are a number of ways to close the pay gap. Among them is strengthening national legislation regarding pay equity…and increasing women’s employment options by supporting family-friendly policies.”
As mentioned, reforming the laws will not completely eliminate this issue. There need to be changes at the company level as well. While companies should want to do it for the sake of equality and because they are good and fair employers, we all know that is not the case and, in most cases, will never happen. There, unfortunately, have to be other motivating factors. One motivating factor the employers should realize is that “eliminating pay differentials makes good business sense and that pay equity can help with competitiveness, worker retention, and productivity” (Boyce-Wilson). This is a huge motivating factor for many smart employers. However, on the other hand, Boyce-Wilson also notes that pay adjustments would cost the employer 3.7% percent of their total hourly wage expenses. You and me both know that this is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but many companies would most likely not be able to afford paying women more without decreasing the earnings of the men by at least a little bit. While it most likely would not come out of the top executives’ salaries and/or bonuses, I would venture a guess that they would be very concerned about that happening. Therefore, I do not see them being all that willing to increase a woman’s salary if it would mean giving up some of theirs. Our society is greedy. In class on February 10th we talked about how in order to increase a woman’s wage men would most likely have to give up some of theirs. I remember thinking at the time that since the majority of the top executives and legislators who would make those calls are men that I doubt this would happen. I still believe this. Our society needs to deal with many imperfections and issues and it will take time.
As we discussed on January 25th in class when we were talking about Simone de Beauvoir, as long as we still think of the male as the norm and the female as “The Other”, all the issues that are present in our society today will remain for a long time. While it might be true that improving a woman’s negotiation is a temporary fix and a way to achieve pay equality, we should not depend on that. There need to be changes at the company and legislative level as well. In the meantime, we need to do what Senator Gillibrand said: women need to keep moving forward and not settle. Our mother’s generation accomplished a lot but we still have a long way to go and we need to persevere.
Works Cited
Boyce-Wilson, Bonnie. "Paycheck Fairness Act an important step toward economic recovery." Explorer 12 Apr 2011, Print.
Gates, Lisa. "On Equal Pay Day: Close Your Wage Gap Tomorrow." Forbes Magazine 21 Apr 2011: n. pag. Web. 13 Apr 2011. <http://blogs.forbes.com/shenegotiates/2011/04/12/on-equal-pay-day-close-your-wage-gap-tomorrow/>.
Gillibrand, Kirsten. "Paycheck Fairness: Progress for America's Women and Economic Security For the Middle Class." Huffington Post 12 Apr 2011, Print.
Guise, Roberta. "Women." San Francisco Chronicle 11 Apr 2011: A-10. Print
Simonson, Mary. Intro to Women's Studies. Colgate University. East Hall, Hamilton, NY. 25 Jan 2011. Address.
---. Intro to Women's Studies. Colgate University. East Hall, Hamilton, NY. 10 Feb 2011. Address.
---. Intro to Women's Studies. Colgate University. East Hall, Hamilton, NY. 29 Mar 2011. Address.
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