Regular readers may recall Glenn Grothman, the Wisconsin state senator awarded the position of the biggest asshole on the entire fucking planet. Well, he won’t let this status disappear! In fact, last month, he made a strong play to keep this position.
“Take a hypothetical husband and wife who are both lawyers,” Grothman told the website. “But the husband is working 50 or 60 hours a week, going all out, making 200 grand a year. The woman takes time off, raises kids, is not go, go, go. Now they’re 50 years old. The husband is making 200 grand a year, the woman is making 40 grand a year. It wasn’t discrimination. There was a different sense of urgency in each person…”
“You could argue that money is more important for men,” he said. “I think a guy in their first job, maybe because they expect to be a breadwinner someday, may be a little more money-conscious. To attribute everything to a so-called bias in the workplace is just not true.”
Seeeeeeriously?
Can you say “Success Myth”? I bet you can!
Grothman, dude. Stay-at-home fathers and fathers who have sacrificed their careers in favor of their families exist. Mothers who work jobs exist. Most families are two-income families in which it is not meaningful to call one person the breadwinner because both of them go about winning bread. The world does not look like your vision of the fifties. For fuck’s sake, the FIFTIES didn’t look like your vision of the fifties.
Let me explain this in the simplest way possible. First, the Wisconsin equal pay law involved discrimination. For instance, if a company was paying women $40,000 and men $200,000, when they were equally experienced and in similar positions, that would be discrimination. If the woman was working a less well-paid job and had less experience because she took time off to take care of her kids, then it wouldn’t be discrimination. His entire argument is completely fucking irrelevant! I mean, if there is no discrimination, then no one will be awarded money for discrimination! Why would you even bother to repeal that law? It’d be like repealing one of those weird laws about not tying your giraffe to a public lamp-post.
Assuming for a moment he is discussing the causes of the wage gap and not whether discrimination exists, I still think he has a fuckstupid argument. Because if women are always the ones taking care of kids, and the men are always the ones working really hard all the time, the reason for this is…?
a) Mysterious ladybrain reasons.
b) Mysterious gentlemanbrain reasons.
c) Probably something to do with the evolution of cavelawyers in caveoffices and their cavepaychecks.
d) Sexism.
I mean, maybe this is related to the gender system in which men’s worth is tied to their careers and their income, and women are considered to be fail-women unless they’ve produced and raised offspring (according to multiple and constantly contradictory rules about how you’re supposed to, of course). Just a guess. Maybe men don’t inherently crave money more than women, but the gender system makes it so that they are far more likely to fall victim to the Success Myth.
But, no, really, I’m sure the cavelawyers and their cavepaychecks theory is very solid too.
Personally, I’m not sure why he believes that the “urgency” is a good thing anyway. As the growing number of unemployed people shows, we really don’t need everyone to be working sixty-hour weeks; in fact, people are more productive with a forty-hour week and we may not even need that. It strikes me as very Puritan and very joy-hating: is the highest purpose of a person’s life really to work their asses off for a corporation? What about making music, or writing weird porn, or hanging out with friends, or (yes) raising a couple really cool kids?
Honestly, we should have family-friendly workplaces– for everyone, not just for parents. The flextime that helps a parent be able to take care of a sick kid is the same flextime that would help someone like me if I am too panicky to leave the house, or a person who works two jobs if one is in crunch time, or a person actively involved in volunteering if they’re organizing something big, or any of the other important but non-monetary things people might do with their lives. Not only would we be able to have two parents actively involved in their children’s lives, but we’d be able to have better quality of life for everyone.
…Wait, wait. Does Grothman think that $200,000 a year is a typical income? Man. Love to be in his world.
I find it interesting that the man being quoted thinks 50hrs a week is a long work week, while the first (I’m guessing by the name, female) commentator puts 70hrs as the lower bound of a long week. I’d certainly consider 50hrs a week quite low, and 60hrs closer to average. There was some statistics in USA today on Thursday that showed more women than men worked more than 8hrs a day, and 5 days a week. At the same time it doesn’t take into account high vs low earners.
“Cis outearn trans in all but one case. With no college degree, MTFs actually earn more than males in the same situation? That one I have no explanation for.” Small sample is the reason. Plus they surveyed the more activist type…they’re bound to be more on the working thing (as compared to controls), wether its volunteering or paid work. “According to this study, MTFs earn more than FTMs. This leads me to suspect that the source of the wage gap lies not in the workplace, but in how children are raised and the choices they make as a result.” Well,… Read more »
What about the transgender wage gap, and the effects of transitioning on earnings?
http://feck-blog.blogspot.ca/2009/01/study-finds-earnings-for-male-to-female.html
Scroll down to table 2.
According to this study, MTFs earn more than FTMs. This leads me to suspect that the source of the wage gap lies not in the workplace, but in how children are raised and the choices they make as a result.
Cis outearn trans in all but one case. With no college degree, MTFs actually earn more than males in the same situation? That one I have no explanation for.
@Danny:
That video is hilarious. The guy has never been married and has no children and at the same time, he believes he’s an expert in marriage, women’s health and child rearing. He’s like the Pope. And given the astonishing number of closeted gays in the Republican party (almost every month there’s a new one who get caught), it’s logical to speculate that he might be gay.
http://youtu.be/-Ww9ZSP6iAA
Am I the only one that’s a bit bothered by this? Sure he might be a jerk for supporting such things but at the same time how productive is to repeat rumors that he might be gay and attacking his sex life?
@Ruthi, PsyChonomics: here is an article discussing exactly the argument you are curious about and the the census bureau’s numbers, which seems to conclude that even accounting for hours worked, there is a discrepancy. The study they cite at the end – the 2007 CONSAD report – was discussed on this blog before, and it found that the pay gap that couldn’t be addressed by factors such as hours worked, field of work, etc. was 5-7%. 5-7%… out of 23% (the famous “77 cents on the dollar”). That’s the vast majority right there. How many people who tout the “77… Read more »
I think the a) through d) options in the post aren’t the best way to put it, unless you’re taking a very broad definition of “sexism”. For all that there may be those who want to explicitly ascribe a pay gap solely to some immutable biological factor, I think there’s at least as many (probably more) who not only reflexively insist it’s necessarily due primarily to sexism, but will indiscriminately and equally tar every stage of the career process with that sexism, and that both of these ideas are fairly obviously wrong. Suggesting that there are aggregate differences in male… Read more »
Study: young, single, childless women earn more than men
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html
@GemmaM and Schala You’re both right. Chances are what we’re looking at is the interplay of social psychological forces. One of the things that makes gender-studies so interesting is that the stereotype/expectation sword cuts both ways. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) tend to be gendered male (and as such carry negative connotations for women) just as developmental psychology/childcare tend to be gendered female (and as such carry a negative connotation for men). Combine both of these with a societal drive put forth on men to succeed and sacrifice with a societal drive put forth on women to be good housewives… Read more »
@Ruthi: Also from the mediamatter’s article there conclusion was that after citing a study by a group that definitely didn’t* have any agenda there was a 5% gap not traceable to other factors. That doesn’t debunk the claim of “its not all discrimination in the work place”. In fact it does sort of the exact opposite. (Well its still a correlation so really it does nothing, but so is the wage gap in the first place sooo…) Something=! everything.
*note the sarcasm
One thing that I keep thinking about, with regard to men and women “choosing different majors,” is this. Women earn more if they’re in tech positions, right? But they also face a more hostile environment, and, while they’re earning more than they would as a nurse or a teacher, they’re probably earning less relative to their peers. So tell me, which would you choose? A life where you have more money but the people around you get even more money than that, and treat you worse? Or a life where you earn less money, but have better relationships with the… Read more »
http://www.livescience.com/14705-husbands-employment-threatens-marriage.html
PsyChonomics: here is an article discussing exactly the argument you are curious about and the the census bureau’s numbers, which seems to conclude that even accounting for hours worked, there is a discrepancy.
http://mediamatters.org/research/201205020006
“The problem with this argument is that it stops just short of the interesting question. WHY does there appear to be a disparity between the genders in choice of college major? Why are men and women “choosing” different majors? The above argument might explain a fair amount of the variation in pay between genders, but doesn’t really give me any insight into the underlying mechanism that would help me better craft policy in order to decrease overall inequality.” and “Why are men “choosing” to work more hours on average than women? Would it be better to get women to work… Read more »
One of the best counter-arguments I have heard against the pay gap is on a more macroscopic scale along the lines of: “On average, men and women choose different majors in college and the majors women choose tend to pay less than the majors men tend to choose, thus the pay gap is a problem of choice.” The problem with this argument is that it stops just short of the interesting question. WHY does there appear to be a disparity between the genders in choice of college major? Why are men and women “choosing” different majors? The above argument might… Read more »
So if this guy’s point was its probably not all discrimination in the workplace, He has a point. I mean really he should have been able to say, “peeps we all know what confounding variables are. Here is this study that mediamatters dredged up showing its probably not all discrimination in the workplace.” You know if he had just gone on for like another sentence, “in fact expecting men to be breadwinners is a type of discrimination against them in the broader society, and definitely not discrimination in the workplace.” But right now it seems like he’s just reenforcing the… Read more »
People who disagree with your opinions probably think you’re an asshole, too. Does using those kinds of insults support your arguments more effectively?
I think that among women who make it to top political positions, it’s pretty common to have a husband who does most of the household work and childcare, even if he’s not a complete stay-at-home-dad. Or at least that’s what I’ve gathered from interviews with Swedish politicians.
But yeah, many women probably feel like this is “their turf” and one they don’t want to relinquish control over, just like many men probably feel that they simply OUGHT TO be at least as successful as their wives career-wise.
Clearly he is one of those few who cannot and will not envision a situation that deviates from his ideals. To him, anything else is not only less than desirable but a contradiction. Perhaps all of the families he knew growing up were like that, (or just good at hiding the ugly truth that different people are different) or perhaps he just spend his days watching “Leave it to Beaver” over and over again, or is just hyper focused on what he was taught is the TRUTH from the word of God.
“Yeah really. Why can’t a man stay home and take care of the children, so that his wife can earn $200k?”
It can and does happen, but it’s not typical that a woman will even tolerate, let alone prefer, a stay-at-home husband arrangement.
Yeah really. Why can’t a man stay home and take care of the children, so that his wife can earn $200k?
Considering that a $200K income can afford more than adequate childcare, The only circumstances that $40K would be a “fair” payment in comparison would be if the woman spent most of her actual “career” as a stay-at-home mother, or else had kids several years apart and had to completely restart her career from scratch every time she gave birth, which seems kind of ridiculous.
The problem lies when said worker dares to not show up occasionally due to having to stay home with a sick kid, or has to leave early for basketball games, or heck, even just doesn’t want the stress of working 70+hours/week. Then it becomes “well you only have yourself to blame when you get laid off/not promoted/don’t make as much as person-with-no-commitments.” A larger problem is the way such behaviors that can be harmful and definitely don’t leave time for meaningful family building are encouraged and promoted. Nobody should be the parent that never takes a day off even when… Read more »