If Your Body's Sexed Female, Mind the Gap

Imagine the gap between the train door and the station platform being greater for you, if your body's sexed female, than for everybody else (i.e., for those whose bodies are sexed male).  Now, wouldn't that be absurd?

And yet, historically and currently, the gap between what a woman earns, because she's a woman, and what everybody else earns (i.e., men) is absurdly great.  Here's the latest:

No where among developed and developing nations has the gender wage gap been greater for women than in Korea (Catherine Rampell at Economix, HT Michael Kruse at Kruse Kronicle; go here for the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Index with worldwide rankings).

Given John Hobbins's comments this week, I wonder why Korea. 

Hobbins has asserted that "Korean Christianity remains strongly complementarian [i.e., male is the leader over females] in the pulpit and the home: hardly surprising, given the compatibility of New Testament teaching with traditional Korean mores in that sense."  Hobbins is trying to argue that "complementarian" Christianity is "the primary cultural slope on which cultural change has occurred in South Korea."  He is attempting to debate the claim made by the Economist that, in Korea, it's been the "forces of modernity" that "first exacerbated [gender] prejudice--then overwhelmed it."  Hobbins cannot bring himself to acknowledge that "complementarian" Christianity is one of the forces of modernity.  (But it is.)  Hobbins likely won't bring himself to acknowledge the co-incidence between male-over-female cultural teachings and the persistent gender wage gap in Korea.

It's approaching a quarter of a century now since Korea passed its Equal Employment Opportunity Act, in 1988, which guaranteed protection by gender in employment, and still there's little improvement.  If you ask Koreans why, the answer typically is that it's the woman's choice.  But at least one Korean economist has compared "individual women’s rational choices" against "gendered devaluation and social closure"; and Dong-ju Lee concludes that "sex segregation" and "male chauvinism or social closure" have likely been "the most important mechanism[s] generating women’s low income and low economic status" in Korea since 1997.  As we all know, economic theories and speculations offer only so much in explaining co-incidence of societal attitudes and wage conditions.  (And yet, there remains this nagging suspicion of a causal co-incidence, as the person whose body's sexed female must continue to mind the gap between herself and everybody else.)

If Your Body's Sexed Female, How You Should Fare in the Marketplace, How Fair?

2010 AD:
------>

Women are now 50% of the workforce [in the USA, one of the world's oldest democracies to include females in voting]. On average [nonetheless] women earn 77 cents to every dollar earned by men. Just one year (!) out of college, women already earn less than their male colleagues earn, even when they work in the same field with the same degree. At ages 66 and older women are twice (!) as likely as men to be poor. It has taken 40 years (!) to begin to close the wage gap by a meager 12 cents.

What is really alarming is just how much the wage gap widens the older women get. One year after graduation, women average 80% of the salary their male counterparts are earning. Ten years later they are earning 69% of the salary of their male counterparts. Even when researchers control for all the known factors that can affect earnings (hours, occupation, parenthood, etc.) their research shows that one-quarter of the pay gap remains unexplained. Over time, this unexplained portion of the pay gap grows larger and larger.

The AAUW has an interactive map HERE where you can hover over any state and find out the wage gap stats closer to home. It is sad to view these stats. Among college grads, women in Texas are earning 70% of what their male counterparts are earning. In my home state Michigan, it is even worse: 68%.

Last year, President Obama began to work on this problem by signing into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The second part of this legislation has been stalled in the Senate, but it will finally receive its hearing. On March 11, the Senate will hold a hearing on the Paycheck Fairness Act, which is an update of the 46-year old Equal Pay Act. If you want to read more about this legislation or if you want to send your senators a letter to support this legislation, go HERE (AAUW website page). They have set up the website so that it is very easy to create and send your message, either via email or on letterhead. It took me two minutes.

I will come back to this topic again since April 20th is Equal Pay Day. And HERE are some pay equity ideas for action for that day if you want to make the problem more visible around your local area.

All stats are taken from AAUW.

----

above is an excerpt from April DeConick,

Women Yesterday and Today 1: The Wage Gap

Equal Pay in the UK? Not yet!

April 28th was Equal Pay Day in the USA. At that point, women here, on average, earned just 78 pennies to each Dollar men here, on average, made.  Given that a man and a woman started working the same job on January 1, 2008 in America -- then April 28, 2009 symbolized how far into 2009 the woman had to work to earn, finally, as much as the man, who stopped his work on December 31, 2008.

Today is Equal Pay Day in the UK.  Think there's equal pay there yet?  Think again.

It's depressing and sad, but read more here and here and here and here.

Unequal Future: Alarms in the Academy (then in your Home)!

What contrasts! Here are two unequal perspectives on women and men in American universities (and on what that may mean to you).

Today, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. sounds the alarms on his blog:
There's "the emergence of a new American matriarchy"! "Ideological feminism can only applaud this reversal of history. Yet, truth be known, even many social liberals must find the trend worrisome." What now about the "biblical model of marriage and gender relations" and "the rightly ordered family and church"? "What about our own sons? Are they being encouraged toward education and leadership in the home, the church, and the culture? If not, we will surely reap what we sow." And "In reality, most people are likely to experience the intuition that this is not a good development. A look into the future is truly troubling."
"Is Matriarchy the Shape of the Future?"

Today, blogger telbort alerts readers at "Feminist Philosophers":
"We know things were bad for women and minorities in philosophy thirty or more years ago. We also know from Sally Haslanger’s paper that they aren’t all that good now. But reading some of the comments coming from those that aspire to staff philosophy departments for the next thirty years, the future doesn’t look all that rosey either." And still we hear "a lot of white male philosophers . . . complaining that women and minorities who get these jobs are doing so purely by dint of their gender or race and at the expense of their more qualified white male counterparts ('Its reverse discrimination I tell ya'). And the men are still arguing these claims: "girls can’t do metaphysics" and "the real reason women aren’t getting jobs easily and need 'reverse discrimination' to help them out is because hard-core philosophy is abstract, and women prefer things with material results."
"The Future State of Equality in Philosophy"

Whose rhetoric is closer to yours? Whose reality? Whose future? Is there some false binary here, some false binaries? How will the shape of the American university shape where you live?