Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Men's Rights Memes Episode 22: Mind the Gap


Hello and welcome to episode 22 of Men’s Rights Memes, the show where I subject myself to the idiotic rhetoric of the Men’s Rights Movement, because apparently I hate joy. Without further ado, here is this episode’s offending image.



As Season One of Men’s Rights Memes draws to a close, it is only natural that we would find ourselves facing down the most pervasive MRA myth out there. Frankly, I’m surprised it took us this long.

The idea that the wage gap is some evil feminist conspiracy is one that I’ve heard over and over. That's the real zombie in that situation That's the myth that just won’t die. Well, today I’m here to shoot it in the head.
 The generally accepted statistic is that women make only seventy percent of what men do, and while the reality is a lot more complicated than that, a pay gap does still exist. It varies by industry, and in some cases there is a gap that favors women. But those are few and far between, and the bottom line is that the wage gap is both real and biased against ladies. 

(NOTE: I will be periodically referring to statistics and studies and whatnot throughout this episode. All the relevant info will be linked below, in the further reading section).

Now that I’ve prematurely dealt with all the ‘sources, please,’ douchebags, we can begin.

To start us off, I’d like to look at the literal amount of money made in the US. According to the US Census Bureau, in 2010, women made eighty-one cents for every dollar that a man made. So it is demonstrably the case that women do make less money than men. But the thing that a lot of people leave out is that these numbers don’t take into account things like skill, job choice, education, experience, number of hours worked, and so on.

For example, it’s been argued that women care more about balancing work and family than men do, and often they have to due to having children. Thus, many of them take lower-paying jobs that provide the flexibility necessary to facilitate that balance. Also, a 2008 survey concluded that women on average have less work experience than men, and the pay gap fluctuates depending on the industry and the age and the marital status of the person involved.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BSL, women who work as bakers or teachers make more on average than their male counterparts, though it’s worth noting that these are both traditionally feminine roles. Further, women in their twenties experience a smaller wage gap than older women, or sometimes none at all. This has a lot to do with the fact that women are graduating college at a higher rate than the previous generation.

So what we need to do is find out how much a woman with the exact same qualifications, occupation, marital status, experience, etc is making compared to a man. Luckily, a lot of folks have already explored that. The US government did a study in 2003 which controlled for experience, education, hours worked, and occupation, and found that on average, women are still making twenty percent less than men.

Another study concluded that starting salaries for female college graduates are less than they are for men in the same fields. And while I did mention a couple of industries which favor women monetarily, they are the exception rather than the rule. And while, again, women tend to have less work experience than men, many studies have found that a year of work experience pays off at a higher rate for men.

Even when you control for work experience, studies still find that there is a significant portion of the wage gap that remains unexplained. Also, jobs dominated by women, such as nurses and secretaries, tend to pay less than those primarily controlled by men, like construction workers and engineers.

According to a testimony before congress by economist Randy Albelda, “Economists have explored the gender pay gap for many decades, and produced hundreds if not thousands of articles and reports to explain the reasons for the gender pay gap. No matter how sophisticated and complex their models, they always find that some portion of the wage gap is unexplained...”
The fact of the matter is you find no good study or report that claims that women make the same amount of money as men for doing the same job. That’s just not the truth. Overall, there’s somewhere between a ten and twenty percent gap in pay, even when you take into account things like occupation and family status.

Now for the fun part: talking shit about MRAs on the internet. I’ve seen entirely too many  articles where people claim that the wage gap isn’t a big deal, because women still make eighty to ninety percent of what men do. That’s fucking ridiculous. Even if ninety cents is better than seventy, and it is, that’s still not fair, and it’s certainly not acceptable.

And even if you claim that the gap is still the result of choices women make, we have to think about why they make those choices. I think society’s overall attitude towards women comes into play here. What is that attitude? Well, many studies have shown that society on the whole considers women less competent than men. For example, one study showed that women were less likely to be replied to by an employer than a man, even if they had identical resumes.

Still another study showed that men received significantly higher customer satisfaction scores than women even if their performance was roughly the same.

As psychologist Alice Eagly puts it, “Perceived incongruity between the female gender and leadership roles leads to two forms of prejudice. (a) perceiving women less favorably than men as potential occupants of leadership roles and (b) evaluating a behavior that fulfills the prescriptions of a leader role less favorably when it is enacted by a woman.”

So basically women who act ‘feminine’ are looked upon as less competent than men, and women who are more assertive are penalized for not acting ladylike enough.

But clearly sexism is dead, and the wage gap is a myth.

Further Reading:
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