Well, let's see. For starters,
it is literally illegal. Seriously, if a woman is being discriminated against in the work place based on pay, all they have to do is call up a lawyer. They will take that case pro bono and win it easily. As for how the pay gap is calculated, it makes little sense. It takes the total earnings of men and the total earnings and women and compares them. Except, the vast majority of the top 1% (which own about 20% of the wealth) are men. Old, white men. That are in no way, shape, or form, representative of the average man. It also does not take into account that more women work part time than men. Men tend to be more aggressive in wage negotiations than women are. Men tend to take more dangerous and better paying jobs than women do. More men tend to enter into higher paying college degrees (ex:
Sciences & Engineering) than women do, in spite of the fact that women enter post-secondary more often than men. There are also examples of entire job sectors where women hold a distinct advantage due to cultural images of how men and women behave. (Ex: If a male teacher is accused of rape, that pretty much ends their career, even if they're proven innocent.)
I'm not talking out of my ass either, you can read that 95 page report for yourself if you want.
At the end of the day, there's about a 96% gap between men and women when all factors are accounted for. So I'm not going to pretend that there isn't a gap. That gap, however, is absolutely, pathetically minuscule. It should be something to celebrate. It also varies depending on career and age group. For instance, single, unmarried, childless women make
more than men in some areas of society. Race has a higher impact than sex, and it's also still very much illegal thanks to the equal pay act of 1963.
At the end of the day, I'll take a page out of choice feminism in explaining a lot of this. Women have the choice to have children
or pursue a career. There are hundreds of thousands of businesswomen who work just as hard as men and who make just as much as their male coworkers, if not more in some cases. You, however, cannot "have it all" as it's been so said time and again. Childbirth is a stressful, time consuming process, and so is raising children. It will impact the career of women who choose to have children, more-so than men, and that's the result of biological factors that are entirely outside of anyone's control--not the patriarchy, not the wage gap myth, and not sexism. Unless one wants to start accusing nature itself of being sexist.
The people who trumpet the wage gap want absolute equality between the genders, regardless of what individual choices you make. That someone who works part time at a starbucks should make as much as a doctor who spends eight years in medical school and works overtime at the hospital. It's the same nonsensical pseudo-communist crap that promises to give you everything in exchange for taking away all your choices. Fact of the matter is, life is all about choices. You open one door, and another closes. You want children? It'll cost you. If you're a man, you'll probably have to be the main breadwinner and you'll end up giving up a lot of fun toys and vacations to give your kids diapers and access to education. If you're a woman, you'll probably have to be the one who has to take time off work or even temporarily leave their career to spend time with and nurture their children, especially in their infancy.
You can, of course, always flip that on its head. Men can stay at home, women can continue their careers. However, men and women are biologically different. Just look at the differences in what their primary sex chemicals do: Estrogen in women, testosterone in men. Compare the effects those chemicals have on the psychological makeup of men and women and then look at the general distribution of jobs taken by men and women in the workforce. It lines up.
So, no. I have to say there isn't a wage gap, at least, not the kind that is often screamed loudly about. What little gap there is, is the natural result of random chance and mother nature playing their parts. Some areas, women will do better, others, men will do better, and in some neutral grounds, it will flip with each passing decade.
Ok after thinking (and fetching my sword heh heh), I have a slight counter-argument.
I think that some of the points you raise are valid, but I feel that some things are not addressed.
Yes, discrimination based on gender in the workplace is illegal, but only if it can be
proven. One only needs to look at how much men outnumber women in certain positions (as you've pointed out) to show that men are often picked for higher ranking jobs – sometimes it's because they're better for the position, but sometimes it's because they're judged as being better for the job due to certain prejudices. For example, men are often still chosen for leadership positions over women, like directors and producers (
here are some more statistics for you that follow this – most notable of which is that only two women directed one of the top 100 films last year), while women are more likely to be chosen for "artistic" or "emotional" positions like screenwriters and dance choreographers. There is no way to fully prove all of these cases of prejudice because of how tragically deep they infiltrate our society. Hell, why do you think so many girls' toys still focus around child-rearing and playing house, and boys are encouraged to bottle up their emotions and "act tough"? And sadly there is plenty of data showing the wage gaps that exist between male and female workers that share the same positions. Please look at these statistics compiled by the
American Association of University Women – it starts in 1974, which was when the bill you discuss was passed, and it does show improvements, but there are still plenty of progress left to be made.
There may be some outside factors that often are not taken into account with these statistics – for example, if a women chooses to split her life between career and child-rearing, or if the woman herself is just not as good at her job as her male counterpart. But I don't particularly like the idea that a woman choosing to be a working mom should halt her career or stagnate her income, particularly when men being fathers does not have the same effect. You say so yourself that…
"If you're a man, you'll probably have to be the main breadwinner and you'll end up giving up a lot of fun toys and vacations to give your kids diapers and access to education. If you're a woman, you'll probably have to be the one who has to take time off work or even temporarily leave their career to spend time with and nurture their children, especially in their infancy."
Why is this still an assumption on so many peoples' parts? This whole idea of one parent being the "bread winner" is antiquated. It came from a time when men were the only ones working, the only ones bringing in money, or at least most of it since the most women could be in the olden days was a secretary. The only reason men do often bring in more money now is because…well, as shown by those statistics, they often do get paid more, whether because they're encouraged to move up in the ranks more or because of some unspoken bias. In my family, my mother was the "bread winner" – she was the educated one, she was the older one, and yet she was the one who mostly took care of me too. And to be blunt, I wish my father had been more active in my life that just throwing money at me. PARENTS SHOULD RAISE A CHILD, REGARDLESS OF THEIR GENDER, and I mean in
all ways. Fathers should have to take time off work or leave their career to spend time with and nurture the children just as much as mothers do. I know you address that roles can be switched, but I'm saying that they shouldn't have to be – parenting should be a two-way street, and I'm sick of the old-fashioned notion that only one should stay at home and take care of the kids and one should be focusing on career. If one chooses to stay at home, fine, but that is a joint decision by the parents, and it is certainly not an assumption that the parent's boss should make. The workplace has no business trying to guess which part of a couple is the one who
deserves more money. Why must they decide to give more money to
anyone because they're married or because they have a kid? Why must they decide to give more money because they assume that the man must provide for a family? If companies truly want to be equal, then they truly will focus on the
quality of the work – not their gender, not their marital status, and not whether or not they have children. And if they want to provide more because they want to help their worker raise their family, then they must do it across the board – no presumptions about the man being the "bread winner" and any of that nonsense.
I also think bringing estrogen and testosterone into the mix is a little unnecessary. Yes, men are from Mars and women are from Venus and all that, but I would really say that the whole idea of gender roles is one that is taught by society at large, not by genes. Sex and sexual orientation are genetic, yes, but gender is an idea. The dictionary definition of gender is this –
"Gender – the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones)."
After all, not all cultures in history had women as subserviant to men. In most ancient religions before Christianity and the like, there were many powerful goddesses, and most started with some variant of Mother Earth – a
female deity. In our culture, we are taught about gender through media that is then reinforced by our parents' and societies' prejudices. For example, we are taught that men shouldn't cry, because if they do, they are weak. We are also taught that women should not have a lot of sex, because they'd be seen as "easy." We are taught that men should be strong, competitive, and aggressive; we are taught that women should be nurturing, gentle, and passive. This isn't to say that our culture isn't getting better at creating more balanced role models in the media for boys and girls, but these ideas still persist. Yes, men have testosterone – but it is society that tells them it is okay to act out on the aggressive impulses that the testosterone encourages in them. And it is society that teaches us that that kind of aggressiveness automatically makes for good leadership, rather than the "gentle," "nurturing" aspect that is promoted amongst young girls. Rather than making the argument that men are just better suited to or tend to prefer these jobs…why not just say, "Screw it, let their work speak for itself!"?
I promote equality amongst the genders, but I would never say "that someone who works part time at a starbucks should make as much as a doctor who spends eight years in medical school and works overtime at the hospital." I just think that if a woman and a man are working at the same hospital and they both work hard, they should have equal pay and equal consideration for moving up the ranks. I, as well as many others who discuss the wage gap, simply want equal pay (and equal opportunity) for equal work, and sadly there is a gap between genders, races, etc. when it comes to both.