“Fixing the women” not enough to overcome pay inequity
August 10, 2007 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, feminism, parenting, exploitation
Ann Bares of Compensation Force has written several good pieces recently about the notion of comparable worth and the push for pay equity. This notion has been getting a lot of press lately in the wake of several new studies which show that women earn less than equally-qualified, equally-experienced men do, even before they begin to marry or have children.
The research shows that one reason women don’t earn as much is because they don’t ask for it. Therefore, the logical solution may seem to be the one many experts have concluded: that is, women need to be trained to be more assertive in order to overcome the disadvantage they have due to a difference in genetics and/or upbringing.
Not so, according to a new Harvard study. In a series of experiments, researchers discovered, over and over again, that men and women get different responses when they try to negotiate a higher salary. A reluctance to be assertive, therefore, may be an appropriate learned response, if being assertive — by simply asking for more — may actually hurt a woman’s career.
And those who penalize women the most for asking for more? Other women. To be fair, women tended to penalize both sexes more for attempting to negotiate. Apparently, as a sex, we’ve internalized our lessons only too well.
It is a dangerous over-simplification to focus exclusively on “fixing women” so that they learn to negotiate more like men; moreover, doing so only perpetuates the problem society has always had with stigmatizing female wage-earners.
Nor (inconveniently enough) is it quite right to place the full responsibility for fixing the problem on employers, either.
The problem that needs addressing most is the whole social environment in which the risks of negotiating are demonstrably higher for women. Some of the salary inequities may seem small, especially as many insist on placing full responsibility for those inequities — still — on the shoulders of the women concerned.
But we’ve already been there. We already hold women “responsible” for damaging their own careers by choosing to be the sole-caregivers for their children or elderly parents. Which they must do without paid leave. And without resorting to damaging their spouse-and-co-parent’s career as well. (the highest paid workers of all are married men… most of whom are also fathers. Interesting?)
As small as the real, “after-adjusting-for-female-foibles” salary inequities may be, even differences of a few percentage points over the lifetime of a person’s career can add up, literally, to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And that, in this USA of 2007, is simply not acceptable.
