Raiding Sociological Images is a pastime of mine as SI manages to succinctly highlight important issues in our society. One issue is gender inequality and how prevalent it remains in our society. The neat graph, along with some of their interpretation:
“First, notice that women with more education (the lighter bars in each age bracket) do worse compared to men than women with less education. That is, the gender inequity is worse in the upper classes than it is in the lower classes. Why? Well, people tend to marry other with similar class and education backgrounds. Accordingly, women with more education may be married to men with higher earning potential than women with less education. Those women are more able to make work-related choices that don’t foreground economics, since their income is less central to the financial health of the couple. They are also more likely to take substantial amounts of time out of the workforce when they have kids (working class women can’t afford to do so as easily), and we know that doing so makes a real dent in career advancement. So, perhaps ironically, women who are “richer” educationally may marry economically richer men who then allow them to deprioritize their careers.”
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5 comments
June 6, 2011 at 9:20 am
Vern R. Kaine
As far as the title of your post is concerned, while I agree that a gender bias still exists in the workplace I think the “debate” on wage inequality is pretty much over, and for many who are actually inside a company at the management level or above, it has been over for a long time.
There are many stereotypes which still need to be addressed (i.e. a woman exerting power or influence is a “bitch”) but I no longer believe that these stereotypes are reflected at all in today’s wages or that they’re somehow an instrument of male privilege. Keep in mind, too, that HR – the department responsible for creating and managing pay – is a field dominated by women.
As for this graph and its interpretation, what exactly is it trying to say? Gender “inequality” is “worse” in upper classes because those who are take more time off to have children receive less pay? I don’t care if it’s male or female, young or old, someone who chooses to “deprioritize” their careers is often going to earn less in the long run simply because their value to the organization is not as high.
The cost to replace an employee is 2.5x salary, and those costs get factored in when you have someone inside your company that doesn’t consider their career a priority over someone who does. For one, the quality of their work is usually greater both in tangible ways and the more important intangible ways that won’t show up in some study.
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February 11, 2012 at 2:57 pm
Kelly
Vern,
If you do your research and read the statistics, within Canada, women do NOT earn the same income for the same job as a man. They also do not receive upper management positions to the same degree as men.
Although women are as educated, they are NOT considered equal in the workplace.
Women do consider themselves to have a career; however, it is the male dominated workforce who oppress the political, business or careeer based decisions women try to enforce.
Women have been oppressed for far too long, only because we are physically weaker, and it is time for men such as yourself to put your own stereotypes to rest. It is time for men to realize that women are not going to tolerate inequality in the workforce nor the discrimination that follows so closely behind.
Gender Inequality is more predominant in upper classes of society since these men insist on making the money; consequently, the ability to oppress women at that level ensures a good paying job with security for themselves.
From a Women’s Perspective
Kelly
Credentials – Many years of studying, working hard and insisting on
equality for women in a progressive society.
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February 11, 2012 at 3:02 pm
The Arbourist
Thanks for stopping by Kelly, it is always nice to see a new comment on the blog, especially of the progressive, fact based sort.
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February 12, 2012 at 10:47 am
VR Kaine
Hi Kelly,
Thanks for your comment. I don’t disagree that there’s a fight to be waged in some companies with some men, some of the time over stereotypes and biases, however I don’t believe these blanket studies on wages truly account for those instances or quantify them.
With the typical company, I stand by my comment that at the end of the day, if it’s male or female, young or old, someone who chooses to ‘deprioritize’ their careers is often going to earn less in the long run simply because their value to the organization is less. That’s not coming from some guy on the Internet, it comes from the many women that I work with in the HR field who cannot admit this publicly for fear of setting their company up for a frivolous discrimination lawsuit or reprisal from the more feminist-leaning employees they work with.
Women have a disadvantage in the workplace, I agree, but from my perspective that disadvantage is 9 parts capitalism and maybe 1 part sexism, if at all. It also varies greatly by industry and type of work because in some cases that discrimination is reversed.
Arb and I often disagree on the utility of what I believe are usually biased and ambiguous statistics gathered on some national level. They’re hardly “fact” because those numbers have zero way to factor in all the relevant facts to the issue, many of which are hard if not impossible to accurate measure. For instance, asking whether someone feels discriminated at work is like asking someone if they should be paid more – everyone’s going to say “yes.” Just because a few might say “no” that doesn’t all of a sudden make that survey valid. It’s too specific an issue with too many variables to take a top-down strategy with.
Therefore, I think the only way to truly battle this issue of supposed discrimination in my opinion is from the bottom up where you can look at the people and the circumstances case-by-case, one job at a time, one company at a time. Some top-down victimization strategy that stereotypes all men and companies based on some statistics that at best can only tell half the story hasn’t worked much past the peak of the movement, and yet the movement continues to try and take the same top-down, “everyone’s an enemy” approach with little results.
If you’re personally experiencing discrimination in your workplace for the wrong reasons, I sympathize and hope it gets resolved quickly and fairly, but if we’re talking about most companies, I’m in different ones all the time every month and in about 9 of every 10 workplaces I go into, pay is based entirely on net value to the organization.and market competitiveness, not gender. In some workplaces men have more value, and in some workplaces women have more value and that’s simply because of the differences in the choices we make off the written page, and why we make them.
If you want to blame something for this then blame capitalism, not men, as it’s one of the main reasons, for one thing, why HR tells employees they are “not to discuss their salaries with others”.
The idea of “equal work for equal pay” has been a fairy tale and it always will be. Plus, it’s the wrong goal. If it’s based solely on an official job description as some people want to make it out to be, equal pay will never happen and should never happen because not all individuals or jobs are created equal. A significant part of a job description is intangible and “off the page”, as is the discretionary performance one can undertake to excel in a particular position over their internal competition within the company.
These are the intangibles that that make someone truly stand out in the job yet will never be measured or answered to honestly or publicly in some “I’m doing this for some grade or some grant” study by people who exist in sheltered, bubbled work environments from the rest of the competitive world. These intangibles will never show up honestly in any survey or study you cite whether it’s a male or female that they belong to, and yet these things account a lot for someone receiving faster promotions or greater pay – again, male or female.
Capitalism focuses on the individual over the group and rewards equal value with equal pay. Most businesspeople you run into will quickly tell you they don’t care whether someone’s black, white, old, young, male, female – they just care how much value they can consistently provide the company, and at what price.
So unless you’re talking specific, individual cases, I think the majority of the system works just fine for those who focus on their actual individual value rather than their listed “job”, and we have competition to help with the rest. The problem is that most so-called “victims” hate to consider either, and want an excuse not to which I think a lot of these studies provide.
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February 12, 2012 at 11:43 am
The Arbourist
These are the intangibles that that make someone truly stand out in the job yet will never be measured or answered to honestly or publicly in some “I’m doing this for some grade or some grant” study by people who exist in sheltered, bubbled work environments from the rest of the competitive world. These intangibles will never show up honestly in any survey or study you cite whether it’s a male or female that they belong to, and yet these things account a lot for someone receiving faster promotions or greater pay – again, male or female.
Wow. Just wow. It’s like well, sorry, the patriarchal system is really just fundamentally unknowable by those who seek to quantify it and thus since is its unknowable it must be OK? I’ve never seen the status quo defended by the idea of quantum irregularities before. So many firsts on this blog.
Capitalism focuses on the individual over the group and rewards equal value with equal pay.
As long as you happen to be hetrosexual, white and male then the above statement is generally true. Missing one of those categories and the equal work/equal pay ideal is quickly flushed down the crapper, whether you care to acknowledge reality or not.
You saw this coming Vern as in your original post you were hedging a bit anticipating my response – But a shorter version of my reply is just because *you* don’t see the corrosive effects in institutionalized sexism and racism etcetera that said corrosive effects do not exist. We’ll quibble on to the extent of patriarchy and racism as usual, but you can’t expect me to let stuff like the above get a free pass.
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