Feminists have been talking about the "wage gap" for years. You know, the one where women make only about three-quarters of what men make. Now, many men (and some women) are insisting that the "wage gap" is a myth. "You have to adjust for experience, tenure, and types of work," they say. "Women take time out of the workforce to raise kids, so of course they don't have the same work experience or time on the job, therefore of course they don't get paid as much as men with more work experience."
It's true that women take time out of the workforce to raise children more often than men do. This is partly due to expectations that they will do so, and partly due to the fact that they are likely to be the lower-wage earner in a two-career family. It becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: Women get fewer promotions (and thus, fewer or smaller raises) because their employers consider it more likely that they will leave the workforce - meaning the employer won't see the same "return on investment" as he would for a male worker. Therefore, when it's time to choose who stays home, income considerations dictate that it will be the woman who does so. How convenient.
The "time out" factor is the main reason women have lower lifetime earnings than men, meaning lower pension and Social Security benefits. It is also the main reason more elderly women live in poverty. In 1997, the poverty rate of elderly women was nearly double the poverty rate of elderly men: 13.1 percent for women, 7.0 percent for men. Isn't that a nice "thank you" to our moms for staying home with us?
It should be noted, too, that the "time out" argument highlights how very little we value "mother's work" - and would seem to fly counter to the assertion of traditionalists (often the same people who deny the existence of the wage gap) that mothers should stay home with the children. After all, it is not as if the woman is in a coma for two or three years. Many of them are active in volunteer organizations or learning new skills to avoid having to pay someone else to do things for them... the very necessity of running a household with more expenses (children) with less income requires good management skills. Many of the things stay-at-home moms learn and do would be considered valid "work experience" on any resume - if they were being paid for them.
The second argument the scoff-mongers trot out is: "Even if women do continue working full-time after having children, they don't work as many hours as men working full-time. They take time off to take the kids to the doctor, pick them up from school, don't work as many nights and weekends... how can you expect employers to pay them the same?" In other words, the wage gap is all women's fault, caused by the choices they make about balancing work and family. To put it bluntly, they're saying that the main reason that women are losing out on the wage and promotion "goodies" is because they take time off to deal with family responsibilities, and men don't.
What bunk. And it's bunk on so many levels! Most of the people who make this claim don't cite any figures for how much time women take off to deal with child and family-related matters - and with good reason: A 1995 study by the department of Labor found that women aged 24-45 (the child-rearing years) working full-time averaged 41 hours per week (and women's hours were on an upward trend at the time the study was done). Men aged 24-45 working full-time averaged 43.3 hours per week. By my calculations, that means that women work about 5 percent fewer hours than men. This is supposed to explain a 25 percent drop in pay? That seems to be a rather hefty penalty for running the kids to the doctor a few times a year, don't you think?
Like the "time-out" argument, this also highlights the low regard in which traditional parenting is really held. Yes, our society persists in giving lip service to the notion that being an attentive and conscientious parent is a good thing - but then severely punishes the people who do so (I'd call a one-quarter reduction in income "severe," wouldn't you?). Not only do the wage-gap skeptics see no contradiction between the two, they then scoff at those who have the gall to point out that the "penalty" is grossly disproportionate to the actual "offense" of a couple of hours a week.
What about comparing secretaries with CEOs, as some wage-gap mythologists complain? They argue that the average wage gap - because it is based on all workers in all job categories - is primarily due to the fact that there are more men working in highly paid occupations than women working in highly paid occupations. (As my teenage nephew would say, well duh! That's part of the problem.) There are real questions about whether women truly choose to work in lower paid occupations, or are forced into them by lack of alternatives. But we'll let those questions be, for now, and look at the argument that when we compare the pay of women and men working in the same jobs, the wage gap virtually disappears. Ok, let's see about that.
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