I don't hate you, but I think your logic is flawed and faulty. You pick a competitive area where anecdotally you observed women slacking and you extrapolate from there. I have seen and heard of plenty of loading decks where weak men (and they're out there, too) would fare know better than the slacker women you describe. Yet, interestingly enough the only time that I ever hear the suggestion made that work should be measured in pallets hefted and loaded in an hour or plasma TV's, etc., it is never the 125 lb. male weakling against the 200 lb. trim male workhorse, it is always the example you cite. My answer to you is in part than on a crew being paid for physical work, no one should be paid to sit on her or his ass. In 40 years on this Earth, I've seen both sexes slacking it. When I was younger and better conditioned, I know I surprised the hell out of my then-boyfriend's uncle by keeping up with the "boys" trimming trees and scrub oak overhanging the roadway into camp, cutting it down, and clearing it out. I kept up with two big men for several hours, if not in muscle, certainly in vigor and determination. I've had 2 babies since then, gained a few pounds, and couldn't do that if I tried! But most of the time, even in a physical job, the boss does not pay per item moved or by tonnage moved, s/he pays by the number of hours *worked.* If both sexes are working equally hard and are equally skilled or unskilled, then the pay needs to be the same. If the boss is paying by item moved or tonnage, a man's upper body strength advantage is literally going to pay off.
You next jump from an unskilled setting to comparing surgical assistants to surgeons...? Well, hell no, the surgeons assistant should not make what the surgeon does. But will you at least concede that there is a bit of unresolved gender stereotyping going on with you in order for you to cast the surgical assistant as a female (as you must for your question to me to work) and the surgeon as a male? I think it more appropriate to state (not ask, STATE) that equally skilled surgical assistants of both genders should be paid the same, just as equally skilled surgeons of both genders should be paid the same. [The dynamo who took out my gall bladder laparascopically when I was about 22 weeks into pregnancy with my first daughter was a woman. Great hands, great nerves. I had no post-surgical contractions, no hernia during or after the pregnancy, healed beautifully, and my darling Anna was born the usual way a week after her expected due date.]
Most liberals are also for equal pay commensurate with equal performance. But we want the laws enforcing equal pay and the investigations that give those laws meaning to have some damn teeth. I do not pretend to know all of the ins-and-outs of the Ledbetter case, but I do know she performed a job where she was not outmuscled by men because her job required a great deal of reliance upon machinery that could be used as easily by women as by men. Similarly, in my own field of law, while I would never complain about making less than a man or a woman who has been out there slogging in the prosecutorial or criminal defense trenches longer than me (as have our Chief Deputy and the Deputy D.A.'s in our two other offices), I would raise holy hell if I were making less than a man of the same experience (a decade essentially). But just because my boss isn't that kind of a jerk, they are out there -- in industries having nothing whatever to do with upper body strength, lifting plasma TV's, or moving pallets, in industries where arguably females enjoy an advantage with their supposedly better verbal skills, etc. ;-)
ECONOMY | The Gender Pay Gap
July 30, 2008
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers
ECONOMY | The Gender Pay Gap
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act (EPA) into law, making it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who perform equal work. At the time, women earned 59 cents to every dollar earned by men. Today, a pay gap persists, as women earn 77 cents to every dollar that men earn. The Institute of Women's Policy Research found that this wage disparity will cost women anywhere from $400,000 to $2 million over a lifetime in lost wages. An April Senate report found that in contrast to previous slowdowns, the current economic downturn "is hitting women harder than men. They are suffering more job losses and larger reductions in wages than the general population." Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) have introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA), which will strengthen current laws against wage discrimination. The bill passed the House Education And Labor Committee last week and is scheduled to come to a floor vote later this week. As DeLauro urged, "The marketplace alone will not correct this injustice -- that is why we need a legislative solution."
UNACCEPTABLE STATUS QUO: While the wage gap has narrowed throughout the 20th century, gender-based financial disparities between are, in many cases, growing. Unmarried women, for example, earn only 56 cents for every dollar that married men make. In the last year, the unemployment rate among adult women workers increased 20 percent, in contrast to a 17 percent increase among adult men. As women get older, the wage gap broadens: females aged 45 to 64 earn only 71 percent of what men earn, a pain exacerbated by the necessity to prepare for retirement. In the current subprime crisis, despite their better overall credit scores, women are over 30 percent more likely to have expensive subprime loans and are at greater risk of facing foreclosure. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) noted, "Between 1963 and now, the wage gap has narrowed by less than half a cent a year. At this rate, it would take about another 50 years before men and women reach parity in pay in this country." Currently, there is not a single state in which women have gained pay equality with men.
RESTORING EQUALITY: The Paycheck Fairness Act would "close loopholes that have allowed employers to avoid responsibility for discriminatory pay" and strengthen accountability in the workplace. The legislation increases penalties for sex discrimination in pay unless the company has a business-related reason for the inequality in wages. The PFA puts gender discrimination sanctions on equal footing with other forms of wage discrimination such as those based on race, disability, or age, allowing women to file lawsuits for compensatory and punitive damages. The bill also prohibits employers retaliating against employees who share salary information with their co-workers. The legislation also strengthens opportunities for women. The Act requires that the Department of Labor "improve outreach and training efforts to work with employers in order to eliminate pay disparities" and "creates a new grant program to help strengthen the negotiation skills of girls and women."
STALLING EQUALITY EFFORTS: Failing to note the persistent inequalities between men and women, congressional conservatives claim the Paycheck Fairness Act is "unnecessary" because the Equal Pay Act "already makes wage discrimination illegal" and complain about "increased litigation costs." Conservatives seem to be worried about employers being required to pay women a fair wage, but PFA simply closes loopholes in existing law so that fair pay laws can be better enforced. Furthermore, conservatives' record on equal pay is dismal. The PFA received its first hearing in 2007 -- after progressive captured Congress -- while the legislation sat in conservative-controlled Congress for a decade. While the bill enjoys the support of 230 House co-sponsors and 22 Senate co-sponsors, conservatives have consistently mounted vigorous efforts to stall equal pay legislation. In April, Senate conservatives blocked cloture on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have rectified the Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear "that made it much harder for women and other workers to pursue pay discrimination claims." Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has recommended that President Bush veto the PFA.
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raves posted Jul 31, 2008 02:50AM GMT
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raves Aug 01, 2008 03:36AM GMT
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raves Aug 01, 2008 07:14PM GMTI'm talking averages here. I don't speak of weakling men, or weakling women. Nor do I speak of super strong men, or super strong women. I'm talking average. The average man is far superior (physically) to the average woman. I had this argument with my mom the other day. I would say that I am an average man when it comes to strength. However, my mom is above average in physical strength. We arm wrestled, lol, and my point was proven. So, with that said, read on.
My "unloading pallets" analogy was simply to show this: women, and remember, we're talking averages, may very-well be able to unload a truck full of paper. Sure. But will you not concede that a man could do it faster? More efficiently?
Now once again, remember, in office settings all is fair. I get it. We're talking physical, and let's be real, most blue collar jobs require physical labor.
Here's my problem. You say that people are paid in hours worked, and you are absolutely right. However, back to my paper analogy. If a dude can get a truck unloaded in 45 minutes, and a woman can do it in an hour, then from a man-hours standpoint, the man is more efficient because he can spend the fifteen extra minutes working on another task. Then, after that new physical task, he move on to another and another. If a person can get more done in an eight hour shift than another, shouldn't that person be compensated as such?
My Navy story was true, and it was a Navy-wide epidemic. Not just in my little workplace. Physically, the women got less work done for the time spent. Bottom line. I saw it on a daily basis. Then, there were the women that whined about cramps and shit when they were on their period, and would get doctor's notes for those few days and get off of work. Then that's even LESS work they are doing for the same salary. I'm not saying they all did it, but it was a common enough occurance to see it as a problem.
If I were a business owner, why in the world would I want to pay ANYBODY, male or female, the same ammount as someone else that gets more work done? -
raves posted Jul 31, 2008 02:40AM GMTStacey, do you really think more laws are the solution? How about if we get rid of a law, like the income tax law, where both men and women can keep the fruits of their labor?
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raves Aug 01, 2008 03:45AM GMTCuz, don't even try to get me going down that primrose path in a modern society...? First off, this issue does not in any way, shape or form require new laws to be drafted. It requires laws presently on the damned books to be enforced by stodgy old men like John McCain who are not so inclined. Second, in a modern society, with the military industrial complex that none other than Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about, not to mention an infrastructure of roads and bridges that is freaking falling apart, an FDA that has had more food scares in the last eight years than I can remember in the last twenty preceding them, how my dear friend do you propose paying for the things our country and our citizenry need if we do away with the income tax? Don't get me wrong... I'm listening. I don't like the tax man. The tax man cometh and I piss, moan, and pucker up (and I don't mean my mouth) as much as the next person... But I do recognize that we are now well and truly in the soup. So in answer to your question to me, equal pay for equal work does not require new laws (the Congress is attempting to pass a law, just so I don't appear dodgy, because the good old Supreme Court refused to interpret the old one the way it had been interpreted up until the Lily Ledbetter case, so this legislation is meant to set that straight), and I think we are stuck with the income tax.
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raves +1 Aug 01, 2008 04:13PM GMTYes Stacey, we are stuck with it. But if people were really aware of just what does happen with that money a change may be forthcoming.
Excerpt from the Cover Letter to the Grace Commission Report:
"Resistance to additional income taxes would be even more widespread if people were aware that:
One-third of all their taxes is consumed by waste and inefficiency in the Federal Government as we identified in our survey.
Another one-third of all their taxes escapes collection from others as the underground economy blossoms in direct proportion to tax increases and places even more pressure on law abiding taxpayers, promoting still more underground economy -- a vicious cycle that must be broken.
With two-thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt and by Federal Government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government."
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The easiest example I can give you is this: in the Navy, I was an Aviation Ordnanceman. I loaded bombs on airplanes, as well as maintained and fixed the aircraft weapons system if there was a problem. We had a few different women that worked with us, and overall, they were a drag. They actually hurt us, rather than helped us. Bombs are heavy. Very heavy. Test equipment is heavy. Even loading bombs with a hand-cranked hoist was no easy task for a man, much less a woman. We would be loading bombs, and the women would just be watching us work, because they couldn't lift them. When we had to lug heavy test equipment up to the flight deck, who do you think carried it? There was no "equality" because it was impossible. Us guys did all the physical stuff, and the girls sat around and watched. They assisted as much as they could though. But should a surgical assistant make as much as a surgeon his/herself? No! We did all of the extreme physical work, and a fair share of the rest. Meanwhile, the girls' paychecks were the SAME, because the Government practices equal pay. That is not right, and I firmly beleive in a business owner being allowed to pay them differently if they perform differently in the workplace. The same scenario mentioned above can be applied to ALOT of businesses. Take Best Buy. Can the average woman lift a 42" plasma TV by herself? Probably not. How about offloading 20 pallets worth of fifty pound boxes of paper? Probably not. So, because she can't do that, she has to ask for help, right? Sounds simple, but how many wasted manhours would that cause a year, costing Best Buy more money. It's just stupid.
I'm all-for equal pay as long as the job performance is equal, but if it's not, then too freakin' bad.