The gender wage gap has long been an issue of importance for feminists, and one that consistently finds itself on the UN and government agendas. Despite this, there is a persistent idea among many in mainstream society (mostly men, and some women) that the gender wage gap is simply a myth, that women are paid less on average because of the specific choices that women make in their careers. Everything, they claim, from the industry a woman chooses to establish herself in, to the hours she chooses to work, to her decision to take time off to spend with her children, and so on, leads to lower pay, for reasons, they confidently assure us, that have nothing at all to do with sexism. Now we could delve into, and rebut, these points at length, but in this post, I will focus only on the assertion that the wage gap exists partly because women choose to go into industries that just happen — what a coincidence! — to be lower paid.
So here’s how the argument usually goes. Women, they say, gravitate towards lower-paid industries such as nursing, cleaning, teaching, social work, childcare, customer service or administrative work, while men choose to work in politics, business, science, and other manly, well-paid industries. Those who propagate this idea usually aren’t interested in a solution, since they see no problem, but if asked to provide one, they might suggest that women behave more like men, one aspect of this being to take up careers in male-dominated industries that are more well-paid (and respected, but they seldom say this out loud).
But is this really a solution, even a small one? What their analysis misses out is the question of how the average pay levels of different industries are decided in the first place. There’s demand and supply, of course, but another factor is the perceived value of the role, and what it means to society. Let’s examine a traditionally male-dominated role that is very well-respected, and well-paid, in many parts of the world — that of a doctor. In the UK, it is listed as one of the top ten lucrative careers, and the average annual income of a family doctor in the US is well into six figures. It also confers on you significant social status, and a common stereotype in Asian communities is of parents encouraging their children to become doctors.
One of my lecturers at university once presented us with this thought exercise: why are doctors so highly paid, and so well-respected? Our answers were predictable. Because they save lives, their skills are extremely important, and it takes years and years of education to become one. All sound, logical reasons. But these traits that doctors possess are universal. So why is it, she asked, that doctors in Russia are so lowly paid? Making less than £7,500 a year, it is one of the lowest paid professions in Russia, and poorly respected at that. Why is this?
The answer is crushingly, breathtakingly simple. In Russia, the majority of doctors are women. Here’s a quote from Carol Schmidt, a geriatric nurse practitioner who toured medical facilities in Moscow: “Their status and pay are more like our blue-collar workers, even though they require about the same amount of training as the American doctor… medical practice is stereotyped as a caring vocation ‘naturally suited‘ to women, [which puts it at] a second-class level in the Soviet psyche.”
What this illustrates perfectly is this — women are not devalued in the job market because women’s work is seen to have little value. It is the other way round. Women’s work is devalued in the job market because women are seen to have little value. This means that anything a woman does, be it childcare, teaching, or doctoring, or rocket science, will be seen to be of less value simply because it is done mainly by women. It isn’t that women choose jobs that are in lower-paid industries, it is that any industry that women dominate automatically becomes less respected and less well-paid.
So it is not enough for us to demand access to traditionally male-dominated fields. Yes, we need to stop holding women back in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers, and yes, we need to allow more women to take an interest in, and succeed in business and politics. But far more than that, we need to change the culture that imbues us with a sense of the inferiority of women, that tells us, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that anything a woman does is obviously easy, requires little effort, and is of minimal value to society.
Crates and Ribbons 
Reblogged this on .
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It used to be in the United States that women were not allowed to be teachers. It wasn’t until the 40s’ really when they made a CONSCIOUS DECISION to start highering women teachers on a larger scale specifically so they could pay them less. The powers that be said, “how can we save money?” “I know, higher chicks and we’ll pocket 40% of the pay checks!” Now teaching is seen as a prodominantly female role and the salaries haven’t been corrected. Forget that teachers mold the minds of the next generation.
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That’s not remotely true. Women have been elementary school teachers since Colonial times. “Dame schools” were very common in New England.
And the pay rate for medical doctors in the USSR was set by the state, which also selected which students would be allowed to attend medical schools. The pay rate today in Russia is vastly different.
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Actually, it was in the 1830s that they made the decision – but it was definitely for the same reason, female teachers were paid about a third of what the male teachers were.
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Sigh you know what ? I’m just going to say it from my own experiences.
First just so you know I live in Australia and am a man so My lived experiences will be different to yours
I live in a country where there are two big gender disparities one is the work place death gap where man make about 96 % of work place deaths it’s at the point where women would have to work about 10 days for every 1 day that men work to get the same work place death rate.
The second is what your talking about the gender wage gap again this is my own experiences.I have worked casual for a wail now.
If had $1000 every time I have seen a woman doing night shift I’d still be a very poor man.
If had $1000 every time I have seen a woman doing hard labor lifting a lot every day.
Now if on the other hand f had $1000 every time I have seen a woman doing part time work wail her husband is being the provider work horse turned ATM I would never have to work another day in my life.
so as gender wage gap it needs to calculated in an hourly rate not a yearly rate as it is now
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Apparently you don’t work in health care where women do all the night skifts and all the heavy lifting. But please just assume the whole world is exactly like the one you see through your tinted glasses every day. Sigh!
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I agree thyra, my grandmother worked in nursing homes most of her life, did a lot of night shifts, and lots of heavy lifting of patients.
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I did start off saying I’m speaking from my own experiences did I not ?
Again the gender wage gap it needs to calculated in an hourly rate not a yearly rate as it is now
Because for well for one there is a women I know who makes almost double what I make in an hour but would make a little less a year then I do because… well she works less hour’s then me
so I ask:
Is calculating the gender wage gap as in an hourly instead of a yearly rate unfair ? And if so why/why not ?
thanks
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In my country the wage gap is broken down so it can be compared even if not everyone works full time. And you know what? Women still only make 80% of what men make. And I live in gender progressive Scandinavia. So do you have more poor excuses from your own life you want to throw around?
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So, he goes out to work full-time, she works part time. is she being paid for her other fulltime job – parenting? Maybe if you factor in those hours it doesn’t look so rosy?
Even with no kids, managers always assume that women are going to take time for children. So where there are full and part time positions available, women are more likely ot be considered for part time roles.
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“In my country the wage gap is broken down so it can be compared even if not everyone works full time. And you know what? Women still only make 80% of what men make. And I live in gender progressive Scandinavia. So do you have more poor excuses from your own life you want to throw around?”
– Which country is this and give us a source. Secondly, does it also break the pay down by past experience, seniority, qualifications?
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This is also something what I’d like to know.
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@imdefender, Sorry but you have missed the point. Childcare workers for instance have been the lowest paid profession on an HOURLY basis since year dot, this is because it is 99.9% dominated by women. It was only the Gillard govt. that recognised the gender gap who increased it to parity with other similar caring professions. Abbot now want to rescind these gains and had actually had the audacity to ask for the funding back voluntarily. Even executives who get paid 250,000 get 50,000 to 100,000 less for the same position for no other reason than being female. This has been well documented only recently. It has nothing to do with women working less, or not lifting heavy objects, or not wanting to stay awake all night, which by the way nurses do to keep our hospitals running every night, and which are mostly which gender?
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First I like to thank you on addressing things from an HOURLY basis as in my opinion its more honest and also let me say yes sexism exists and may be one of the many reasons behind the pay gap
Also I did start off saying I’m speaking from my own experiences did I not ?
“Even executives who get paid 250,000 get 50,000 to 100,000 less for the same position” ok link
“for no other reason than being female” Ok first I believe sexism could be a part the reason but to say its the only reason is… well how do go about this …
I know I’ll use an analogy
Lets look at another gap between the Sex’s for just a moment go to any Jail at all most of the inmates are which gender?
Also there is real prove that Men are Sentenced To Longer Prison Terms Than Women For the Same Crimes
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/men-women-prison-sentence-length-gender-gap_n_1874742.html
However If I was to say the ONLY reason more men then women are in jail was because of sexism well that would still be dishonest would it not
Again sexism exists however it may be one of many reasons behind the pay gap, death gap,jail gap ect god only know hows many gap’s there are
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The important thing is to look at this as an economic question, not a gender or sexual one. As economics 101 will tell you, the capitalist economy is built on workers doing the work that produces the wealth in society; and the bosses who accumulate the profits from that wealth.
There is an inverse relationship between workers’ and bosses’ economic interests: the less the workers are paid, the more profits to go the boss, and vice versa.
Cheaper labour has always been used to push down the labour market, thereby making everyone’s pay smaller. Just think of how illegal immigrants are so badly underpaid, or how teenager workers are underpaid; and then this pushes down the entire industry, making everyone’s wages lower than otherwise. Women are certainly not unique in being underpaid.
We need to see women’s pay not as sexism in the abstract, but as an economic reality of the exploitation of labour.
As the old saying goes, if you want to understand something, follow the money.
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You know, issues like why there are more men in jail than women, and why there are high rates of death at work for men are important issues and worth discussing. However, I would suggest that a blog post about why women are underpaid is not the appropriate place to discuss those things. What you are doing is trying to deflect attention from the issue around women’s pay by discussing men’s issues instead. I really wish we could move conversations like this to the point where we can all just say “yeah, women get paid less and that kind of sucks, so what can we do to fix it”.
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“However, I would suggest that a blog post about why women are underpaid is not the appropriate place to discuss those things”… please tell me your smart enough to know that work with higher risk will pay more and thus is directly related to said pay gap
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or people who are stupid enough to accept higher pay to take unnecessary risks instead of taking action to increase safety are more likely to end up either dead or injured at work and shouldn’t expect a discussion about the gender pay gap to be about them and to be limited to his “own experiences”.
There should be more men like Ark Tribe.
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“or people who are stupid enough to accept higher pay to take unnecessary risks instead of taking action to increase safety are more likely to end up either dead or injured at work and shouldn’t expect a discussion about the gender pay gap to be about them and to be limited to his “own experiences”.
Do I hear victim-blaming?
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Taken directly from some woman-hating men’s rights page. Your comment about men as ‘provider work horses’ exposes your deep-seated bias and disdain for women.
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and “doing heavy labour lifting a lot” is more valuable than nursing, child care or teaching because?
As you seem to think that no-one has a valid argument if their life experience isn’t comparable to yours, let’s compare experiences.
In my life I have worked as a labourer on roadworks and as a nurse. I did heavy lifting in both jobs although when I did labouring I had to keep telling the blokes, who unlike me didn’t seem to know how to lift properly, that I didn’t need their help with the heavy lifting, but thanks for the offer and I would ask if I needed it, as I would expect them to ask me if they needed help.
In the labouring job we labourers were not permitted to take any responsibility and when one job was finished we spent a great deal of time waiting for the supervisor to come and tell us what to do next. That’s right, the quintessential council worker being paid to lean on a shovel. There was no night work available but I would have done it if it had been offered. I also had no evening shift, weekend or public holiday work as a labourer.
As a nurse, even as a student, I was expected to organise myself and my patients to get the job done, take responsibility for my work and people’s lives, do heavy lifting and other jobs which would send many a brave and masculine man into a faint. I did 3 year’s training which included pharmacology, biology, physics and other branches of science. I cared for people with vastly different needs from the newest baby to the elderly and everyone in between. I also did night shift, my shifts changed every day, morning one day, evening the next with a minimum break of 8 hours. I worked weekends and public holidays. As a nurse I was in danger of infection, assault by patients and accidents caused by fatigue. In fact a colleague was in a serious car accident as a result of fatigue when driving home from night shift one morning.
When I was a labourer, I didn’t save anyone’s life. When I was a nurse I contributed to saving many lives.
Given the above, I would say that the work I did as a nurse was more valuable than the work I did as a labourer. Despite this I was paid more as a labourer than I was as a nurse. The only reason I can think of for this is that “men’s work” is valued by our society as more valuable than “women’s work” without much regard for what is actually done.
I might add that if I had a $1000 for every time I saw a woman do night shift I would be as rich as Gina Rinehart as my mother did it for most of my childhood so she and my father could both work and care for their children in shifts. I would suggest that when childcare is available at night or more men pull their weight in the home, you might see more women doing night shifts.
If you think that men get paid more to do more dangerous work (which I dispute but not here), then the answer is for men to not to accept higher pay as a trade-off for unsafe work practices, instead insisting on investment in safety. For example, crook backs from heavy lifting could be avoided by investment in lifting machines, training in how to lift correctly and enforcement of safe work practices. Falling from a height could be prevented by using scaffolding instead of ladders. Not wearing loose clothing around moving machinery. Funny how the danger and the death rate increases when unions are prevented from entering work sites to enforce safety.
My experience is also in Australia, as you can tell by my spelling of “labour” and the use of expressions like “crook backs” and “blokes”.
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Yes, I worked in a stables and when I left a man took over my block but left as he considered the work too physically hard for the money paid.
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Bravo!
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I remember being taught this point when I studied political science back in the late 80s. Helga Hernes wrote a great book about it called “Når kvinner går inn går makta ut”. (When women enter power exits)
It’s sad if now 25 years later people still don’t realize what is happening.
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Can you tell me any more about Hernes’s theory on this? I cannot find any reference to the book on line, and in any event I couldn’t read it if it is only published in Swedish. I’d be very grateful if you could provide any details of what she says about power departing when women enter the field. Thank you.
Melanie Phillips
The Times of London
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PS Apologies, for Swedish in my previous message please read Norwegian.
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RE: Russian Healthcare
Russia has one of the highest numbers of doctors per capita,[1] most years beating out countries with better medical technology and training, such as Israel, Japan, The US, Finland, and Switzerland.[2] Combine that with a poorly run healthcare system and a crippled economy, and you have a situation where there’s a great supply of doctors and not a great demand.
[1] http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_phy_per_1000_peo-physicians-per-1-000-people
[2] http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2011/10/worlds-leading-nations-innovation-and-technology/224/
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Yet you cannot deny the fact that women are treated like second-class citizens in Russia and in the majority of the former USSR Republics, which undoubtedly affects their salaries regardless of the supply/demand ratio. I was 8-years-old when The Soviet Union collapsed, which gave my family the opportunity to leave this God-forsaken country 11 years later, but I still remember the attitude towards women. Here are two Russian proverbs about women that in my opinion sum up this attitude: “Woman’s hair is long, and mind is short”, “As chicken is not a bird, woman is not a human being”. I remember hearing those words quite a lot.
My Dad, ever the progressive man, let me drive his car when I turned 18 and the amount of harassment I received from male drivers (I was the only female driver in our very modern town) was awful! That was in 2001. I started helping Dad with his business and many of his clients refused to even talk to me because of my gender. I cannot imagine men like that EVER paying fairly to their female employees.
I know the article was not just about the treatment of women in Russia, but I must say that when I moved to the UK at the age of 19, I felt free and I honestly believed that men and women were equal here. I think Russia is light years behind the US and Europe in terms of appreciating the fact that we are, indeed equal in many-many fields and should therefore get paid what we deserve because of how well we do our jobs, not because we have/don’t have certain body parts.
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Actually, his point is valid. The article dresses the issue in Russia as being purely because most doctors are women, she never mentioned the massive amount of excess doctors and the lack of hospitals to employ them, in any industry that would plummet the wages.
Not to say that there isn’t a sexist culture in Russia, but using examples like this out of context is something I really hate about any article about any movement or agenda.
For example pro-lifers in Ireland love to drive home that “Ireland is the safest place to have a child”, while they blatantly ignore the fact that women are going abroad in their thousands every year to get abortions and have no access to after care as a result.
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I can’t beivele I’ve been going for years without knowing that.
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I really liked this article. Women’s pay, or lack thereof, is not nearly talked about enough. The reality is that women are 50% of the workforce, so obviously anyone interested in fighting against sexism must also take an interest in the related women labour issues. Too often, the generations-old stereotype of the women are strictly only homemaker is still pervasive in our society, and this comes out in the kinds of analyses of women’s oppression that are made.
What really needs to be done is the laboriously collection of the data necessary to scientifically prove that women’s underpay functions in this way. That’d shut up the sexists who try to argue away the importance of talking about these issues and looking for solutions to them.
The other thing to consider is that women’s underpaid labour pushes down the labour market as a whole, thereby putting downward pressure on men’s wages in other industries. Much the same way as low unemployment pushes wages down and high unemployment pushes wages up, women’s low pay would also have an effect on wages across the economy. Men’s wages would be pushed down through the laws of supply and demand within the market. And if this is true, then it’s in the interests of working class men to see their sisters get properly paid, which would thereby annul this downward pressure, and restore their own personal wages to higher levels.
If this is the case, then the issue of women’s underpay is both a women’s and labour issue and should be dealt with as such.
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I don’t think the sexists would shut up, they would just ignore anything that didn’t fit their ideas.
Here are a couple of reports anyway;
http://www.actu.org.au/Publications/Other/TheGenderPayGapOvertheLifeCycle.aspx
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/money/money-matters/women-miss-out-on-165-a-week-thanks-to-gender-pay-gap/story-fni0ctkz-1226687163943
http://apo.org.au/research/gender-pay-gap-statistics-2013
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Agreed, Justen B, it is a big thing to get one’s arms around, as I discuss a bit here:
http://risingtideblog.com/2013/12/08/fast-food-strike-whats-bigger-than-a-big-mac/
There’s a piece of this problem that is structural, that does not involve a bunch of men in a room somewhere deciding to underpay women. There is also a piece that is about depressing labor and driving wages down, and that is *not* structural. It is literally a bunch of people (mostly men) in a room somewhere deciding they are going to screw people. But women in these undervalued professions and low-wage workers in general need to get past whatever issues are preventing them from forming what ought to be a natural coalition.
Nursing is a prime example; as a profession, for 2,000 years, it was male dominated. When it became feminized, around the time of World War I, it also became a less lucrative profession.
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I think pay should be directly proportional to hourly mass lifted
speaking from my own experience of course
At work, I quite often raise my hand with a textbook in it and ask my students where its gravitational potential energy has come from and what will happen to it when I let go. We say the book is about 1kg. We could use this concept to understand the gender pay gap, surely.
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Pay directly proportional to hourly mass lifted? Hmm… that would be one way to iron out the discrepancy of income awarded to CEOs and other high-level paper-pushers.
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It’d be better if you gave more than one example. There should be more than just comparing one profession across 2 countries. I do agree with the article, that traditional “women’s work” is not respected and b/c of that, it is more acceptable for them to be paid less. There just needs to be more cross-cultural and sociological data.
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Next cross-cultural profession to examine might be teaching in China. In China, the role of teacher has long been highly prestigious and respected (although not necessarily always well-paid; the question of how different cultures award prestige in ways that the culture values, and how this manifests in cultures that don’t value wealth, is another topic for another time.) Coincidentally, it has also long been an exclusively male profession. Examine the numbers to see if the increase in female teachers throughout the Far East correlates with a decline in both pay and prestige. I’d be willing to bet you a fifty that it has.
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D’ya think maybe you could provide that? Instead of criticizing the writer, who writes for free, by the way, who is trying to raise people’s consciousness, for free, who is trying to make the world a better place, without being paid for her efforts, for not being as complete as you’d like?
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When I started as a Nurse I worked nights to earn as much as possible per hour. The night differential made a difference. My husband still made way more per hour than I did (and in the day time). After 25 years my earnings were way higher than his and I was still working nights to get the higher pay. So I was pleased to see that in my case having longevity on the job and night differential was important.
When I graduated I made less than a clerk in a grocery store that may not even have a high school education. I had an education.
Dorothy
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Another job category to face this is college professors. When this profession (in the US) was primarily male-dominated, most positions were tenure-track, full time. However, following WW II, when more women entered the workforce and community colleges sprang up, more women became professors. Once that happened, a low-paying branch of college teaching was created called “adjunct,” with positions filled primarily by women, positions which pay often 1/10th of the salary of a tenure-track job. Many universities, which pre-1950’s were made up of 99% male, tenure-track professors, are now over-whelmingly made up of women adjunct teachers, who are paid at distinctly lower salaries.
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It’s not clear if this is a gender issue or the result of supply and demand. Before the 1950’s there were much fewer people with advanced degrees. The supply of professors was relatively low and the demand was high, boosted first by WWII veterans and then by the baby boomer generation reaching college age. That was the golden era for academic jobs.
But two things changed: First, women started graduating from college in much higher numbers, surpassing men in the early 1980’s. This greatly increased the supply of potential college instructors. Second, the baby boom turned into a baby bust. This reduced the demand.
As I stated in my reply to the OP, it is very hard to distinguish if the low wages of female-dominated fields are due to gender bias or supply and demand, especially since increasing female labor participation necessarily resulted in a large increase in labor supply. It is worth noting that average male inflation-adjusted wages have also fallen steadily since the early 1970’s as a result of the same economic forces.
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This is interesting stuff. I have been studying the history of the home economics movement in America, and I can see the effect of defining certain things as “women’s work” quite clearly. I’m sure someone will try to tell me how home economics holds women back, etc. However, that only shows how underinformed the public is about this movement. Early home economists were interested in helping women go to college, work outside the home, and study science, all in the name of people having better lives. These women fought to have their curriculum included in liberal arts colleges, mainly because the colleges thought that “women’s work” wasn’t intellectual enough despite rigorous and science based curricula. (To take foods 1 at one college, prerequisites included: chemistry, organic chemistry, physiognomy, physics, botany, and nutrition!) I am deeply sad that this discriminatory attitude regardion Hestian labor still exists.
//end rant
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The problem isn’t “Home Economics” itself, it’s its presentation as a feminine goal.
Much of the problem is that home economics is generally (or was in my day) only or mainly made available as a topic for study for girls and women. A man may also benefit from the study of home economics, especially if his life turns out to be as a single man responsible for his own meals, hygiene and housekeeping. Study in home economics by boys and men may in fact lead to an improvement in men’s health through improved nutrition, budgeting and general home management. It could also improve his desirability to women who are struggling to combine work and home responsibilities as a life partner.
I don’t know but I expect that boys’ schools still offer industrial subjects and not home economics and vice versa for girls’ schools. Its feminine associations means that it may be necessary at first for it to be a compulsory subject for boys (and many girls) to take it up although it would be preferable to make it presentable enough for people of both genders to wish to study voluntarily. We currently see celebrity cooking TV shows leading to an increase in the number of boys taking an interest in cooking so that would be the better way to go with home economics, Maybe some home management reality shows are the answer!
In the 1970’s I went to a selective girls’ high school with an emphasis on academic success. The home economics course available was really a lip service course included in the school’s curriculum in the late 1890’s to assuage the concerns of those who were worried that educated girls would not be able to manage a household. So it was presented as something that boys and smart girls saw as beneath them. I think this sums up the image problem of home economics (and other gendered occupations, studies and preoccupations) suffers from when in fact it’s something that everyone, single, partnered, male, female, rich or poor could benefit from.
We all have homes to manage regardless of whether we have fabulous careers or not and all members of a household have an interest in it being well run as it supports everything else we do in our lives. All members of a household should also participate actively in its management with no one having an indispensable role where the home disintegrates if one member cannot continue in their usual role.
Once again gender presentation devalues something that both genders could gain from. It’s sad that “feminine” occupations are not respected as it shows a general lack of respect for femininity itself and we need to work towards correcting that but the solution to assigning occupations an inappropriate value is to remove gender from the equation used to give value to an occupation in the first place.
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You’ve hit the nail on the head. Originally, the home economics movement was not intended to be a gendered field. Many attempts were made to interest men in becoming home economists, and many did! The real devaluation of home ec didn’t happen until the late 1940s, when pre-packaged fooods and pre-made cleaning products took the place of home made and stripped homemakers of the authority that they once had. It’s too complex to get into much on a blog discussion, but it’s pretty interesting stuff.
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That may be a reason it was called home “economics”, to attract men to its study. I’ve also heard it referred to as domestic “science”, another suitably “masculine” term which may have been intended to interest men and boys.
Perhaps a discussion for a blog of its own!
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Actually, it’s interesting how hard they tried NOT to call it home economics! Because of the word “home” their work was being dismissed as unimportant and colleges were refusing to allow their curriculum despite it being heavily science based. Unfortunately, home ec was the name that stuck. (On the bright side, they didn’t call it euthenics (the science of the perfect home), which they were considering at one point!)
You’re right though. This probably needs to be a blog post of its own. XD
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Apologies if this posts twice. My phone is being weird today…
This is interesting stuff. I have been studying the history of the home economics movement in America, and I can see the effect of defining certain things as “women’s work” quite clearly. I’m sure someone will try to tell me how home economics holds women back, etc. However, that only shows how underinformed the public is about this movement. Early home economists were interested in helping women go to college, work outside the home, and study science, all in the name of people having better lives. These women fought to have their curriculum included in liberal arts colleges, mainly because the colleges thought that “women’s work” wasn’t intellectual enough despite rigorous and science based curricula. (To take foods 1 at one college, prerequisites included: chemistry, organic chemistry, physiognomy, physics, botany, and nutrition!) I am deeply sad that this discriminatory attitude regardion Hestian labor still exists.
//end rant
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There are two questions staring you in the face.
If it is possible to pay women so much less for the same work, why isn’t the entire work force female?
And, as a corollary, why don’t women follow the money?
(I couldn’t help but note your link to the geriatric nurse practitioner was from 1983. Really?)
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Reblogged this on The Chequer-board of Nights and Days and commented:
An excellent and thought-provoking post, especially for those of us who don’t consider feminist a dirty word.
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Reblogged this on emmasrandomthoughts and commented:
Can I get an amen?
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This is an interesting point that I’ve encountered elsewhere, but I don’t think you made a convincing case for it. In particular, you failed to address why market forces of supply and demand are inadequate to explain the wage differentials. Your one example – the wages of doctors in the U.S. vs Russia – is not relevant because Russia does not have a free economy even now and was for a long time under a socialist economy.
To make this case convincingly, you would have to show that within a given free economy, the wages fell because the workforce became predominantly female, and not because the influx of female workers created a labor surplus. This might be possible to do, but it will take a lot more work than an anecdote from Russia to prove it.
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Generally speaking, I love and agree with your posts; however, this one is quite a stretch. My Background in economics won’t let me look past the vast economic and historical differences between the US and Russia. It’s an interesting correlation, but that’s really all it is.
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I leave a leave a response whenever I like a post on a site
or I have something to valuable to contribute to the conversation.
Usually it is a result of the fire communicated in the post I read.
And after this post Patriarchy’s Magic Trick: How Anything Perceived
As Women’s Work Immediately Sheds Its Value | Crates and Ribbons.
I was actually moved enough to post a thought 😉 I do have 2
questions for you if it’s okay. Could it be just
me or does it give the impression like a few of the comments
come across like they are coming from brain dead people?
😛 And, if you are posting on other social sites, I’d like to keep up
with everything new you have to post. Could you list every one
of your social sites like your Facebook page, twitter
feed, or linkedin profile?
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This is nice and all but it needs to be less of a blog post and more of an actual academic research paper with credible sources to be taken seriously.
It also need only concern itself for different wages for the exact same jobs in the exact same hours for people with the same education and similar age (and maybe even race to take racism into account) or the results will be biased.
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Is no one going to mention that the Carol Schmidt statistic/quote is over 30 years old and is being used to justify current numbers and attitudes?
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Makes me wonder if the current poor state of education in the US is due almost entirely to sexism. We decide to start hiring female teachers because we can get them for cheap, we turn the industry “female”, we start to assume that the product they peddle (education) is just as low in value as women are in general.
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Pingback: Today in sexism: Patriarchy’s Magic Trick: How Anything Perceived As Women’s Work Immediately Sheds Its Value (feimineach)
I agree with some of the critical commenters here, this blog post makes wonky use of sources, at the very least the conclusions are not well supported by the one source of statistics it has. I do think the author is on to something though. More examples need to be accumulated (and, optimally, be compiled into an academic paper, maybe a meta study or something like that).
One probably more relevant example because it’s from the US and virtually free of other possible economic causes for the difference in perceived worth is computer programming. It’s also especially interesting as it illustrates the same process, but in the reverse direction.
In the 1940s and 50s, implementing theoretical mathematical problem solutions into concrete computer algorithms was perceived beneath electrical engineers and (male) mathematicians. So they hired mathematically educated women for that. These women were paid and treated along the lines of secretaries.
As computer science emerged from mathematics and electrical engineering as a separate field, more men became programmers from the mid 1950s onwards, and wages skyrocketed. Nowadays, coding is considered one of the most inherently male intellectual exercises there are, with the believe that women just aren’t cut out for it still rampant among the ranks of neckbeard coders.
Coincidentally, as more women are again allowed to enter the field, wages are on the decline.
I’m sure it’s possible to compile countless more examples and demonstrate a statistical significance. In fact I’m surprised it hasn’t been done before.
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In european eastern countries, doctors are paid by the state, not private funding (during communism, whatever your studies were, all income was comparable). Economy has open to a capitalist system. Public doctors still get low incomes. Those who have private practices have much better incomes!
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We’re going to get some fine experimental verification of this soon. From next year, there will be more women than men working as doctors in the UK. If your thesis is correct, their pay and prestige will then nosedive.
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