Today, April 12, is Equal Pay Day. As more households rely on women as the partial or primary breadwinner, what will happen when more men start to choose a family-friendly career path?
Today, April 12, is Equal Pay Day, a day that symbolizes how much longer women would need to work to earn what men earn (two extra days per week and three extra months per year). According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, women earn, on average, just 78.2 percent of what men earn. But despite the government data, there is still much confusion around the wage gap.
You may have heard the $0.78 figure is inaccurate. That’s somewhat true. For women of color, the gap is even greater, with African American women earning approximately 67.5 percent of what men earn and Latina women earning just 57.7 percent. You may have heard the wage gap has closed and that women are actually out-earning men. Technically, it has narrowed—from 77.7 percent. That’s a whopping half a cent. And there is indeed a segment of the female population out-earning men. In some U.S. cities, single, childless women under the age of 30 earn more than men by up to 17 percent. But when those women have children, the wage gap gets complicated.
Most likely you’ve heard the wage gap has nothing to do with discrimination and everything to do with choice. Those who opposed the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill designed to strengthen the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and that was shot down by the Senate this past November, say women make personal choices that lead to lower pay. They tell you that women choose to take time off to have families and if they return, that they choose the mommy track at work. And then they ask you, if women aren’t working as long and hard as men, why should they get paid the same amount?
But while it may look like women are opting out of the rat race so they can take Junior to Gymboree, the reality is what might look like a choice is actually a compromise. American businesses have made it close to impossible for two working parents to balance, or even afford, work due to inadequate family-leave policies, cost-prohibitive child care, and too few sick days. And in every family, something’s got to give. Many women leave the workforce or reduce their hours because their husbands earn more than they do and it’s the only way they can manage the household.
Which leads us to the other thing you may have heard about the gender wage gap. Perhaps you’ve heard you should care about fair pay for the sake of your daughters, your nieces, your grandchildren. Because nothing motivates a man to support women like making the world fair for his darling daughter, right? That’s sweet, but you should care about fair pay because it affects you in two ways. First, two-thirds of all U.S. households rely on a woman’s salary at least partially, and in one fifth of all marriages wives out-earn their husbands. When those female breadwinners bring home 23 percent less than their fair share of pay, the entire family suffers. Expenses like health care, grocery bills, and mortgage payments don’t discriminate based on gender.
And second, as more households rely on women as the partial or primary breadwinner, what will happen when more men start to choose a family-friendly career path? Women know from experience that fighting gender discrimination of any kind in the workplace is potentially career-ending, risky business. But if men and women work together to change the policies that pit family against work, we can start to affect positive change. Both men and women have a vested interest in closing the gender-based wage gap.
This week the Paycheck Fairness Act is expected to be reintroduced in Congress by Representative Rosa DeLauro and in the Senate by Senator Barbara Mikulsi. Support it—for your family and for you.
—Photo eszter
Liz O’Donnell is the founder of Hello Ladies, named one of the top 100 websites for women by Forbes. Her byline has appeared in The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, The Tampa Tribune, The Glass Hammer and Skirt!.
About Liz O'Donnell
Liz – all things that have costs also have benefits.
What monetary value / benefit would you place on being closer, spending more time with, watching / being, with your chidren, as they grow?
If we’re going to use a mathematical equation for comparison, we should include all the relevant costs and benefits.
Though I don’t discuss this very topic with many retired people, my hunch is that any life regrets they may have, have little to do with the amount of hours / pay they spent / received working in a cubicle.
I share your hunch – but I don’t see how this relates to the wage gap.Are you making a connection?
I would like thee to be some appreciation for the benefit of raising children, and similarly, some appreciation for the cost of being less present in that same activity. We often discuss the cost of taking time away from work to raise children, and how that impacts one’s wage and career status. We then attempt to measure that impact. Putting aside the thorny concept of how much of our life’s choices are more persuasion than coercion, or maybe flipped on instances, my question is to how do we value the pleasure we derive from a certain activity against its cost. This discussion always seems to be about the cost side of the equation for the one spending more time raising the children and the benefit side for the one doing less so of that activity. My hunch, again, is that it is so because the analysis is more political than rational. I understand it’s difficult to value, but for once, I’d like to see a pay wage discussion state something like: yes, but we estimate the monetary pleasure derived from watching and being more present as your children grow to equal 15 cents on the dollar. It sounds rather silly in a way, but we have no issues making those types of judgments during other decision making moments in our lives.
In short – I don’t see how we can rationally talk about gaps, any gaps of any sort, without that sort of appreciation and understanding.
I’d like to offer the fact that if the wage gap were reduced and women were able to make the same amount as men, then parents (as a whole) would be better able to spend time with their children. The wage gap and parenting go hand in hand. Many are forced to work more hours because they simply can’t afford not to. If men and women are paid on an equal scale, not only will children have more time to spend with their mother, but they’ll have more time to spend with their father, which is equally important. To say that decreasing the wage gap would amount to women spending less time with their children is simply illogical. The reason many don’t devote more time to parenting has a lot to do with the fact that on the wage they support themselves on, they really just can’t afford the time off work.
Just a comment:
It seems you have a misunderstanding of what the wage gap is really about.
This article gives a slyly implied agreement that their is no direct gender pay discrimination going on (women do not literally get paid 76cents on the dollar for each hour worked to each hour men worked).
When a detailed analysis is done (by some of the largest most detailed analyses to come out recently) it shows that when factoring in women’s choices (for flex-time, working in-doors, not working on-site for several months like oil rig worker or commercial fisherman and other family-friendly choices) the unexplained wage disparity (that may be due to discrimination) dwindles to 2%.
Here is the largest report ever done with the most variables controlled for as far as men & women’s different work/life balance choices:
ht tp://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf
(to view, remove the space in the beginning).
All this article states is that women don’t choose to make family-friendly choices, they are forced to, and also that work-places need to facilitate the ability of women to make more career-minded choices over family-minded choices (like in-house daycare, or day-care reimbursement).
If the actions called for in this article were implemented, it would simply mean that women would be working as long of hours as men to reduce the wage gap.
In other words reducing wage gap means LESS caring time w/the kids, not more.
This article doesn’t agree there is no direct gender pay discrimination. It merely addresses some of the commonly-heard arguments about the gap. Gender discrimination is a factor. And penalizing women for having children is part of that.
Saying that penalizing *women* for having children is itself gender discrimination.
It is also misleading; a man who makes the same choice will be penalized the same or perhaps even worse if his employer gives him less slack than he might to a woman for making the same chices.
Hello Ladies,
This study doesn’t debunk the idea of there being direct gender pay discrimination and I didn’t claim it did.
However, I did make a mistake in stating the study claimed to work down the undefined (possibly due to direct gender pay discrimination) down to 2% after controlling for choices.
It actually states that after controlling for choices the remaining unexplained gap is reduced to 4.8% to 7.1%
Here is the headline from the study:
“There are observable differences in the attributes of men and women that account for most of the
wage gap. Statistical analysis that includes those variables has produced results that collectively
account for between 65.1 and 76.4 percent of a raw gender wage gap of 20.4 percent, and
thereby leave an adjusted gender wage gap that is between 4.8 and 7.1 percent.”
And it continues:
“Research also suggests that differences not incorporated into the model due to data limitations
may account for part of the remaining gap. Specifically, CONSAD’s model and much of the
literature, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics Highlights of Women’s Earnings, focus on
wages rather than total compensation. Research indicates that women may value non-wage
benefits more than men do, and as a result prefer to take a greater portion of their compensation
in the form of health insurance and other fringe benefits.”
So we’re left with even MORE controls that a future study may take to get even further into the details– and reduce the “unknown” causes (that may be gender discrimination) even further.
Also, I have made the point already that in many ways women are getting a deal when men break themselves down to earn more.
Men who earn more because they are much more likely to engage in several of the high-compensation factors (like):
Working in inclement weather
putting themselves at risk of injury or death
exposure to chemicals and pesticides
working jobs that have mandatory overtime
working at jobs that have you on call
re-locating for work
long commutes for work
leading a team
working against a hard deadline (with job or promotions hanging in the balance)
travelling on planes for work
Men are 95% of on-the-job deaths (on-the-job deaths are about 5000 per year on average but it fluctuates. This means for every 4750 men dying on the job 250 women would do so). Men are also 95% of on-the-job injuries.
Men die on average 7 years earlier. How much of this is due to work-related illnesses like black-lung, asbestos poisoning and other issues?
In many ways women are getting a deal, because in my opinion men are selling their bodies cheaply by getting only double the salary (of let’s say retail work or administrative assistant) to become a miner and have his chance of death move from 2 in 100,000 (in those jobs to) 115 in 100,000 not to mention the high risk of injury that may lead to chronic pain, or lung related problems.
Also, men who break their bodies and minds to earn more typically do this to attract a (female) mate or for his wife and family. In other words the man’s good fortune is also his wife’s but the high price he pays for that very slight extra money is his alone.
The wage gap doesn’t even RATE being called “a mountain out of a molehill”.
The only discernible reason I can see for feminists to constantly talk about the wage gap is to stir up anti-male hatred (you can see this being done on feministing.com when they show 50-80 year old tv or print ads that show classical sexist attitudes about women–they have no point but to stir up anti-male hatred and re-invigorate the believers).
Only by using the single metric of money can you arrive at the conclusion that the only victims of socialization of carer / provider roles is women.
When you examine other metrics (like men’s disposability and much poorer health) it becomes clear both sexes are victimized with the meter ultimately tipping to the side of men victimhood.
If it was 11 women who died (instead of men) in the BP explosion that caused the pipe rupture and leak–I bet all of America would know their names.
For those truly concerned about the wage gap I would recommend to actions:
Support legislation (federal or state by state) to enforce deaths/injuries due to flagrant worker safety violations as felonies w/real prison sentences and fight for paternity leave equal to maternity leave.
Strangely, fighting for men can help women too. I thought that is what feminism was about breaking down gender roles and fighting stereotypical roles for ALL?
“In many ways women are getting a deal, because in my opinion men are selling their bodies cheaply ..”
Speaking of which, it’s worth noting that prostitution isn’t included in most wage-related and work-injury related statistics.
Probably coz it’s illegal, like drug dealing related shootings are not included right?
I imagine the pay differential is a product of both systemic things and women’s choices. I’m am not about to blame it all on women for making less than men on average, but I have often wondered if anyone has compared the women who make the payroll decisions to the men who make payroll decisions.
– When women have influence over what female employees make, are they more generous than male bosses?
– When women are self-employed, do they charge clients/customers as much as men do? Do they aim for paying themselves as much as men do?
I honestly don’t know the answers to these, but my guess would be that many women sell themselves short. It’s overstated to say that women just need to demand higher salaries and just need to stand up for themselves, but I think there’s an element of truth to that.
There is plenty of discussion about the need for women to negotiate starting wages and ask for raises. Many agree this is a factor in the wage gap. Still, there are systemic factors too.
We never take into account non taxable income streams, the combined wage, alimony and child support represent a massive male to female cash and asset transfer that wage gap analysis does include.
The refusal/failure of women to negotiate wages and raises is probably a systemic factor, if it derives from socialization. A person can decide to override his or her socialization, but it is a higher levle of difficulty form most other choices.
I don’t even necessarily think that it’s a matter of socialization (as in women are taught in an under-the-radar fashion by society that fighting for your wage is un-ladylike).
I think it has more to do with most people (men too) avoid conflict unless it is necessary. Many women marry men who make more than themselves for whatever reasons. I think subconsciously if the man makes 55%, 60%, 80%, or 95% of the family wages both parties know that it is his salary that is considered the one that is indispensable.
That being the case, men probably fight harder for the salaries from a simple stand-point of NEED. When a woman is relatively certain that her income is secondary/optional than it gives her an out to dodge the responsibility of avoiding the conflict of this discussion.
I don’t think it’s socialization of women, but an avenue for women to avoid confrontation, and a necessity for men to execute the confrontation due to choices men & women make in career and mate selection.
If 70% of women in couplings were suddenly making 55% to 95% of the family income (i.e. were in men’s shoes) I am certain that this trait (not to negotiate) among women would evaporate.
I think that we will see more workplace changes participate more with their children and are able to really weigh priorties of money/time. Men are understanding how conflicting it is to worry about the needs of a sick child and a staff meeting, a concern women have been dealing with for years. I think there will be a noticeable shift in the way we do business. I actually hope that it changes the way the economy works altogether. We can certainly find better ways to move money around than what we have going now.
I think if men and women work together on work/life issues we will see positive changes.
I saw an episode in a Japanese TV series where the main character attends a very importnat dinner with a prospective clinet, decades older than him, and when he gets an urgent call that his little brother, whom he is raising, is in the ER, he leaves the dinner suddenly. At the time it’s considered a huge misstep. Later he gets the accoutn and the old man explains that it is only because he decided to leave on a family emergency. Then old man explains he is sick of the modern obsession with work over a person’s basic humanity.
Irony – there is a story in the Records of the Historian, which may be common knowledge in Japan, with the same moral.
Liz, I was struck by the data in the March, 2011 report issued by the White House Council on Women and Girls, which reported that the aggregate total number of hours worked on the job and in the home by the average man now exceeds the number of hours worked on the job and in the home by the average woman. I don’t believe this has received any press. If true (and why would Valerie Jarrett issue a falsehood on this subject) men are actually now contributing more to family support and nurturing than women (not a lot by the way, only about 40 minutes more a week if memory serves), but still noteworthy.
I must say I always resented the fact that I had to spend more time away from my kids when they were young to cover at work for maternity leave by by female professional colleagues. Since I was a professional, on salary, I wasn’t compensated (and the women were held harmless in partner-track expectations). I rationalized it on the grounds that my female colleagues husbands were in the same boat at their jobs. My wife saw it for the BS it was. The law firm even had the gall to ask me to speak to a Globe reporter about how father friendly they were because they “allowed” me to use a whole week’s vacation time (i.e., give up actual vacation) when our second daughter was born. I demurred.
For all the young guys out there: don’t buy into sacrificing time with your kids for your career. Believe me, they will throw you away like a squeezed orange when you are 50 (apologies to Arthur Miller). And it doesn’t matter if men or women run the organization. The managerial class are all relentlessly focused on short term profits and matching organizational results to their personal compensation deal. Carly Fiorina was no day at the beach from what I hear about life at HP.
FRank,
I just looked at the report again. http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/Women_in_America.pdf
The difference in time is tiny. Men’s average day’s add up to 10.3 hours and women’s to 10.2, Men spend more time on labor market work, and women on home/family work.
“When those female breadwinners bring home 23 percent less than their fair share of pay, the entire family suffers. Expenses like health care, grocery bills, and mortgage payments don’t discriminate based on gender.”
Thank you! Employers act like female salaries are inferior to that of male salaries and think female salaries are used for frivolous things, like eating out. Well, women have families to support, too!
but female breadwinners dont take home 23% less than male breadwinners, the wage gap is made up by women that live off the family wage, which is a combined wage so there isn’t really a gap at all.
The pay gap is an illusion, the women that are taking taking the time off (married women) that make the gap, are actually on the family wage, which is a combined wage. So an amount has to be subtracted from the aggregate mens total and and amount has to be added to the female total to see the real gap.
I don’t think that the gap in taxable income that is there can be fixed without oppressing people more, in Sweden they have one of the largest wage gaps in Europe despite all the “equality” measures. You cant legislate against personal choice.
Except that there’s one problem with that: the women doing this aren’t “taking time off”: they are moving from one paid job to another unpaid job.
How much is that “free” childcare worth, Mark? It should be worth something, in dollars and cents, because if one partner wasn’t doing it, the other would need to take “time off” from their paid job to do it or hire someone to do it.
Thaddeus, thats a false claim made in your rush.
Its not an unpaid job, they are on a combined wage, and maternity and paternity leave is paid by their work.
In Sweden they have a system where they can use each other leave, usually the mother use the fathers paternity leave as well as their own, the gender ideologues considered forcing the couples to make the “correct” decision about but decided better of it.
Plus the stay at home has more rights over the property and the child.
Combined wage? Never heard of such a thing (in Sweden or anywhere else in Scandinavia)
It’s true that in Scandinavia, couples get to share parental leave. As you say most couples still let the mother take most of the leave – and when ask, a majority of couples give as a reason that the mother makes less and so less income is lost when mother takes time off (few have full compensation for the entire parental leave). In addition, men are still under pressure to not take leave in many industries.
To counter that, Sweden (along with a few other countries) have instituted parental leave reserved for the father. No, no-one is forced to take leave, but the leave is lost if the father is not using it. This is having dramatic cultural effects, with father suddenly taking parental leaves in huge numbers, which again is changing both work and family attitudes. It shall be interesting to see if this in time will also have affect of the wage gap.
Lars, the research here has indicated that the best way to close the gap might be to give fathers as much freedom as is given to mothers but as you say there are expectations of men in the work place and on top of that there is “mommy blocking”, mothers that don’t want to share the time off with the child.
By combined wage I mean family wage, they are taxed as a unit and the female tends to have more control over the money that comes in as well as has the security of keeping the property despite the fact that she is directly engaged with wage / tax work. To not take those facts into consideration and ignore the fact that the wage/tax worker can be dismissed on a whim can paint a misleading picture.
edit
has the security of keeping the property despite the fact that she is NOT directly engaged with wage / tax work. To not take those facts into consideration and ignore the fact that the wage/tax worker can be dismissed on a whim can paint a misleading picture.
Mark, no matter what neologism you want to place on it, having and raising a child is not “time off”: it is a job, pure and simple.
Per Thaddeus:
Except that there’s one problem with that: the women doing this aren’t “taking time off”: they are moving from one paid job to another unpaid job.
How much is that “free” childcare worth, Mark? It should be worth something, in dollars and cents, because if one partner wasn’t doing it, the other would need to take “time off” from their paid job to do it or hire someone to do it.
———–
This is truly broken logic and BLATANTLY one sided.
When this caregiving-parent needs a break and burdens a loved-one to baby-sit while she runs errands are they also deserving of compensation from the caregiver parent–or is it something that is freely given out of love? If the babysitting family member is not due compensation other than gratitude from the caregiver parent, then why is the caregiver parent due more compensation (other than gratitude) from the provider parent ON TOP OF being given the rare & golden opportunity (especially in this day and age) to forego work outside the home and spend their time bonding with the children?
To turn your argument around if the provider wasn’t there, then the caregiver-parent would have to work AND child-mind, just as you mentioned the provider-parent would have to do if the carer-parent wasn’t there. What’s your point?
While this article talks about women/mothers being coerced into choosing options that make her earn less, there is absolutely no discussion about coercion of men into choosing options that make him earn more. ***WHY NOT?***
As per this article:
ht tp://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3318366/Wealth-is-key-for-marriage-study-claims.h tml
Women place a premium on a mate’s wealth and status.
And this ABC video & article about a women who became the breadwinner when hubby lost his job:
ht tp://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7088747&page=1
She states: “I lost so much respect for him”
If staying home to watch the kids is such noble work, then why do women resent the men in their lives who do it?
The obvious answer is this:
The idea that work outside of home is some kind of bed of roses is largely a smoke screen. Caring for your own kids full-time is more fulfilling and easier than about 95% of paid work, and women know this.
If dollars are the only measure of what makes a victim, then of course women will be top victim when looking at work/life balance choices. Believe it or not, there are OTHER criteria of victim status besides $$ when discussing work/life choices.
Men are 95% of on-the-job deaths and injuries. Men are 80% of all suicides (how much of that is work-related either directly, or in-directly as a result of getting fired and his family “losing respect for him”). As a brief aside, look at Jimmy Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. Talented artists all. But they were more than that. They were all fanatical performers who’s fast lifestyles and frentically paced careers lead them to untimely deaths.
The performer role kills! Men are not women’s oppressors, but their emancipators. Men earning more share their wealth as a loving sacrifice to women so that they are freed from the rat race, and able to have more free time to bond with their children. Women are loved for who they are, men are loved for what they can provide (i.e. dehumanized).
It’s time to start looking at the BIG PICTURE. We have to stop having a gut knee-jerk reaction just because an article, organization or law puts the word “women” in front of it. It’s time to start thinking about how men are victims too. Solving gender issues necissitates that we solve gender issues for all–not just women.
It’s time to stop denying the relevant experiences of oppression, powerlessness, and disenfranhisement of 49% of the population (i.e. men).
Men are:
80% of all suicides
80% the targets of all violence
95% of on-the-job deaths and injuries
90% of the homeless
90% of the incarcerated
live 7 years shorter
enjoy $1 on male-specific disease research to every $7 spent on women
The only thing the “wage gap” proves is that men like taking care of women, and women like being taken care of by men.
Any activist who concerned about the wage gap should fight for more worker protection laws (like being able to prosecute worker deaths as a felony instead of in most states it is mostly a misdemeanor meaning prosecutors won’t bother).
This would help save male lives and make occupations safer for women to enter.
If prosecutors could have filed serious criminal charges for the deaths of the 11 men who died in the BP oil spill when the rig broke apart, then maybe companies would proactively make things safer and the break wouldn’t have happened. Ditto for the Exxon Valdeus and Chernobyl incidents. The cause was found to be worker exhaustion in both, and the workers were 100% male.
Any activist who who is concerned about the wage gap should fight for paternity leave laws equal to maternity leave (with teeth in the law for companies who fire fathers who actually take the leave). Creating a gap in high-education fast-paced work-places from men tending to the caring role, will leave a void for women to fill.
As painful as it sounds, helping men will in the long run help women too. It’s time to stop thinking that we can address gender problems by only passing laws that give more power and privileges to WOMEN only.
The Department of Labor’s Time Use survey shows that full-time working women spend an average of 8.01 hours per day on the job, compared to 8.75 hours for full-time working men. One would expect that someone who works 9% more would also earn more. This one fact alone accounts for more than a third of the wage gap.
Choice of occupation also plays an important role in earnings. While feminists suggest that women are coerced into lower-paying job sectors, most women know that something else is often at work. Women gravitate toward jobs with fewer risks, more comfortable conditions, regular hours, more personal fulfillment and greater flexibility. Simply put, many women—not all, but enough to have a big impact on the statistics—are willing to trade higher pay for other desirable job characteristics.
Men, by contrast, often take on jobs that involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions (which is also why men suffer the overwhelming majority of injuries and deaths at the workplace). They put up with these unpleasant factors so that they can earn more.
Recent studies have shown that the wage gap shrinks—or even reverses—when relevant factors are taken into account and comparisons are made between men and women in similar circumstances. In a 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30, the research firm Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8% more than their male counterparts. Given that women are outpacing men in educational attainment, and that our economy is increasingly geared toward knowledge-based jobs, it makes sense that women’s earnings are going up compared to men’s.
h ttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704415104576250672504707048.html
Liz:
You have some fallacies in your article.
When discussing your main debate point you seem to give an implied agreement with critics of standard wage gap terminology that the wage gap is not *DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTABLE TO GENDER DISCRIMINATION*, but rather work/life choices that women make which means they earn less. Then you add in the kicker that what seems a freely given choice by women is actually coerced by society (which I accept that point, provided people start understanding that men are coerced into choices that make them earn more–I’m always surprised by how often feminists say women aren’t 100% responsible for their choices but men always are 100% responsible: doesn’t that equate women with children and men with adults?)
But then you fall right into the standard language of the wage gap being 100% the result of DIRECT GENDER DISCRIMINATION as in this sentence:
“When those female breadwinners bring home 23 percent less than their fair share of pay, the entire family suffers. Expenses like health care, grocery bills, and mortgage payments don’t discriminate based on gender.”
Using the term “23 percent less than their FAIR SHARE OF PAY” denotes an imbalance of DIRECT GENDER DISCRIMINATION.
I think your readers deserve an honest clarification from you.
Do you believe that the 23% wage gap is all, mostly, some, little, or none attributable to direct gender discriminatory pay imbalances?
Because I could point you to many studies that show when women’s work/life balance choices are taken into account by researchers, the wage gap disappears.
Actually I meant inconsistencies, not fallacies.
Sorry
I believe gender discrimination is a factor.
Don’t women make 80% of all major purchasing decisions? Don’t advertisers market to women primarily because they know that’s who spends the bucks? Look any couples closet and I ‘ll bet the woman has significantly (an order of magnitude) more clothes/shoes/accesories than the man. Maybe we should make November 15 “equal spend day for men”. this would be the day that men are finally able to spend some of their own money on themselves.
.
Well probably they are “coerced” into that too.
Actually I am not joking. Clothing choices are personal, but anyone who has gone through midle school knows they are not private – everyone has an opinion and they enforce them on you.
In an office job there are defintied expectations on clothing, to the point of dress codes. For men those expectations are decently clear and pretty simple – black, cordovan and brown shoes; black, blue, gray suits, a variety of shirts and a greater variety of ties. For women the expectations still have not broken free of the old days where well-off women were expected to have an array of clothes and various colors of shoes. Women could simplify this by imitating men’s more severe dress habits, but they would meet resistance from expectations as well as perhaps their own vanity.
This is the 3rd job I have had where a woman has gone on maternity leave – used up sick time – kept her position on hold – made her entire time pick-up the slack… only to never return to the job. Perfectly acceptable in my book. But, please don’t be offended if we don’t give you the plumb projects, and the leadership opportunities… and perhaps a bit less pay. By the way — last time I checked — there was certainly no lack of female leaders in business, politics, or family life. The complaints are hollow. Women leaders are just as likely to pay a women less — Because it’s a business decision.
Uhhm – Backstabbing, poorly skilled at working in team, undermining and undercutting colleagues… all likely reasons why someone might get paid less. Taking a 2 plus year pause in your career – might slow your wage growth – Another wage growth depressor – constantly calling in sick – to deal with kid issues (cuz you divorced your husband or had a kid out of wedlock). Finding ways to create conflict with other women in the office to the point of ostracising and bullying – miiiight affect your wages. All that being said -I expect wages to even out soon because I’ve seen more and more how nasty office behavior is being rewarded now-a-days.
This website is soooooooooo offensive to me as a man. The URL and “About” suggestion (intentionally in my opinion) make it sound like it’s a place where “typical” men can come together and have their voices heard.
In reality, it’s a feminist-approved anti-male website littered with feminists and male Uncle Tom. It is the equivalent of a bunch of White Nationalists running a website called “The Good Black People Project”.
For shame.