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

2010 AD:
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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.

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above is an excerpt from April DeConick,

Women Yesterday and Today 1: The Wage Gap

If Your Body's Sexed Female, When You Can Vote Finally and Where

  508 BC  Don't even think about it yet.  This is Athens, Greece, for males only.

1718 to 1771 AD  Can vote in Sweden if you're also a guild member who must pay taxes.

1755 AD to 1769 AD  Can vote in Corsica unless you are married to a male or are younger than 25.

1756 AD  Can vote in the colony of Massachusetts, America, if your dead husband is the largest taxpayer in a town that is being looked to for financial support of a war effort against the Indians and the French.  Can vote, then, as "the widow [of Mr.] Josiah Taft."

1776 to 1807 AD   Can vote in New Jersey, USA, if you own at least at least £50 worth of property; can't vote after 1807 AD, when the State Constitution bans female voting to safeguard against election fraud.

1838  AD  Can vote in Pitcairn Island.

1869  AD  Can vote in Wyoming, USA.

1870 to 1887; 1896  AD  Can vote in Utah, USA (except from 1888 to 1895 when the USA Congress passed the Edmunds–Tucker Act to disenfranchise the females of Utah).

1881 AD  Can vote on the Isle of Man, if you are a woman who owns property there.

1893 AD Can vote in Colorado, USA; the Cook Islands; and in New Zealand.

1894 AD Can vote in South Australia and can run for Parliament.

1896 AD Can vote in Idaho (and Utah again), USA.

1899 AD Can vote in Western Australia.

1902 AD Can vote in Australia, if your skin is (non-aboriginal) white:  can vote in New South Wales, Australia.

1903 AD Can vote in Tasmania, Australia.

1905 AD  Can vote in Queensland, Australia.

1906 AD  Can vote in Finland.

1907 AD  Can vote in Norway, if you have enough money.

1905 AD  Can vote in Victoria, Australia.

1910 AD  Can vote in Washington (state), USA.

1911 AD  Can vote in California, USA.

1912 AD  Can vote in Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon, USA. 

1913 AD  Can vote in Alaska and Illinois (can just vote for USA President in Illinois), USA; Norway.

1914 AD  Can vote in Montana and Nevada, USA. 

1915 AD  Can vote in Denmark and Iceland (can only vote if you're at least 40 years old in Iceland).

1916 AD  Can vote in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, Canada.

1917 AD  Can vote in Arkansas, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota (for USA president only), Ohio (for this year only), and Rhode Island, USA;

British Columbia and Ontario, Canada (Can only vote in Canada if your skin is white and you're in the military or you're a relative of someone else in the military);

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Soviet Union.

1918 AD  Can vote in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany,  Hungary,  Luxembourg, and the United Kingdom.  Can vote in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada.  Can vote in Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas.

1918 AD  Can vote in the Netherlands, in Rhodesia (if your husband owns enough money and you only have one husband), and in Sweden.

1920 AD  Can vote in Belgium if your son or your husband has died in the war.  Can vote in Iceland and in the USA.

1922 AD  Can vote in Ireland.

1924 AD  Can vote in Mongolia.

1928 AD  Can vote in the UK.

1928 AD  Can vote in Ecuador.

1928 AD  Can vote in the UK.

1929 AD  Can vote in Ecuador if you have enough money.

1930 AD  Can vote in South Africa if your skin is white.  Can vote in Turkey.

1928 AD to 1936 AD  Can vote in Spain.

1928 AD  Can vote in Ceylon/Sri Lanka.

1932 AD  Can vote in Brazil, Thailand, and Uruguay.

1933 AD  Can vote in Portugal if you complete high school.

1934 AD  Can vote in Cuba.

1932 AD  Can vote in India if you have enough money and enough education.

1937 AD  Can vote in the Philippines.

1939 AD  Can vote in El Salvador.

1941 AD  Can vote in Indonesia.

1942 AD  Can vote in the Dominican Republic.

1937 AD  Can vote in France and Jamaica.

1945 AD  Can vote in Bulgaria, Guatemala, Italy, Japan, Panama, and Trinidad and Tobago.

1946 AD  Can vote in Albania, Ecuador (regardless of your income), Liberia (if you own enough property), Malta, Portugal (if you are a single parent or are married and taxable at a certain rate), Romania, and Yugoslavia.

1947 AD  Can vote in Argentina, Pakistan, and Venezuela.

1948 AD  Can vote in the Belgium (with no income restrictions), Burma, Israel, and South Korea.

1949 AD  Can vote in Chile, China, Costa Rica, India (with no income restrictions), and Syria (if you have enough money).

1950 AD  Can vote in Haiti.

1951 AD  Can vote in Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St Christopher (Kitts) and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Sierra Leone.

1952 AD  Can vote in Bolivia, in Côte d'Ivoire, and in Greece (where democracy was born in 508 BC for males only of course).

and ...

1957 AD  Can vote in Malaysia and Zimbabwe.

1958 AD  Can vote in Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Laos, and Nigeria (with no income restrictions).

1959 AD  Can vote in Brunei (in village elections only), Madagascar, San Marino, Tanzania, and Tunisia.

1960 AD  Can vote in the Bahamas, Cyprus, the Gambia, and Tonga.

1961 AD  Can vote in Burundi, Malawi, Mauritania, Paraguay, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone.

1962 AD  Can vote in Algeria, Monaco, Uganda, and Zambia.

1963 AD  Can vote in Afghanistan, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Fiji, Iran, Kenya, and Morocco.

1964 AD  Can vote in Libya, Papua New Guinea, and Sudan.

1965 AD  Can vote in Botswana and Lesotho.


1967 AD  Can vote in Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Yemen.

1968 AD  Can vote in Nauru and Swaziland.

1970 AD  Can vote in Andorra.

1971 AD  Can vote in Switzerland.

1972 AD  Can vote in Bangladesh.

1973 AD  Can vote in Bahrain.

1974 AD  Can vote in Jordan and Solomon Islands.

1975 AD  Can vote in Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Vanuatu.

1977 AD  Can vote in Guinea-Bissau.

1978 AD  Can vote in Moldova.

1979 AD  Can vote in the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau.

1980 AD  Can vote in Iraq 1980.

1984 AD  Can vote in Liechtenstein.  Can vote in South Africa if you're "Coloured" and "Indian."

1986 AD  Can vote in Central African Republic.

1990 AD  Can vote in American Samoa.

1994 AD  Can vote in South Africa if you're "Black."


1997 AD  Can vote in Qatar.

2002 AD  Can vote in Timor-Leste.

2003 AD  Can vote in Oman.

2005 AD  Can vote in Kuwait.

2006 AD  Can vote in the United Arab Emirates.

2009 AD  Can vote in the Falkland Islands.

(compiled from
http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/suffrage.htm 
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0931343.html 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/suffrage/a/intl_timeline.htm
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawstime.html
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/womenstimeline1.html
http://www.legalserviceindia.com/article/l239-Women-Suffrage.html
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/politics/womens-suffrage/world-suffrage-timeline)

If Your Body's Sexed Female, Where You Can't Study or Teach

 1450 BC   Can't study or teach in Mesopotamia since females are controlled first by fathers, then by husbands and fathers-in-law, and finally by sons.

  380 BC    Can't study or teach in Greek city states where only males have independent status in society; okay, can own slaves, but since you don't know math, you can't make transactions worth more than one medimnos of barley.

  215 BC   Can't study or teach in Rome (the empire) where the Oppian law forbids female bodies from wearing multicolored clothes or holding more than half an ounce of gold or riding in a horse-drawn vehicle in or within a mile of any town or city (again the math and counting thing).

   53 AD   Can't teach men in church, the new synagogue, or the old (in Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, Corinth)

 105 AD   Can't study or teach with men, and, therefore, conclusively can't hold any legal representation, guardianship, intercession, proxy, advocacy, or prosecution in the Roman empire (period).

  415 AD   Can't study or teach in Alexandria, the most cosmopolitan intellectual city of the known Western world, especially if you're a pagan, a philosopher, a mathematician who must certainly be the cause of the dissension between two Christian men of the Church, which must, of course, recognize the meaning of your name Hypatia and strip you naked publicly while burning you at the stake alive so as to make an example for others with bodies sexed female.

 600 to 1,000 AD   Can't  study or teach in England publicly lest you be punished as “scolds.”

1220 AD   Can't study, much less teach or practice medicine, at the University of Paris.

1390 AD   Can't study or teach in university in London; therefore, of course, can't get a license to practice medicine.

1486 AD   Can't even pretend to know how to read Johann Sprenger's and Heinrich Kraemer's “Malleus maleficarum” (“Hammer of Witches”), lest you pretend to have an argument against the thesis that females, as the weaker sex, are more likely to be witches.

1680 AD   Can't study or teach or apprentice or earn money in the Paris Opéra (and, oh, uh oh, what is La Fontaine doing so publicly the next year as if she's a real ballet dancer?!)

1770 AD   Can't learn to read or to write English poetry, not if you're female, not if you're black, not if you're a slave, not if you're young, not if you're in a new colony, not if you're named Phillis Wheatley.

1782 AD   Can't study military strategy or tactics or don a uniform (at least not on a female body) in the American Revolution -- (Hey now, where's Deborah Sampson?, and who's this new recruit Robert Shurtleff in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment now fighting so well?)

1791 AD   Can't study or teach the rights of Man and of the Citizen; and therefore can't re-write any Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (“Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the [Female] Citizen”), as if female bodies can be citizens with rights.  Your right, you crazy Olympia de Gouges, is the guillotine

1804 AD   Can't study in Paris, not even the Napoleonic Code of France, since men can tell you at home what it says:   that women—like criminals, children, and the insane—are to be legal minors. Your husband controls your property for you, so thank him; and obey him because, should he find just cause to divorce you, he gets your children.

1820 AD   Can't study or teach in the university in Colombia.
1820 AD   Can't study or teach in a seminary in the USA (and no one's letting  Emma Willard dream publicly of opening Troy Female Seminary in New York to begin teaching a rigorous curriculum to girls).

1832 AD   Can't attend college with men east of the Mississippi River (and no one's dreaming publicly of Oberlin Collegiate Institute -- Oberlin College --  in Ohio where female bodies will be admitted with other students on an equal basis).

1840 AD   Can't study or teach or be active in international abolitionism in London, where female bodies are denied entrance to the site of  the World's Anti-Slavery Convention.

1864 AD   Can't study in university in Europe (and no one at the University of Zürich is yet dreaming, not publicly anyways, of admitting a body sexed female).

1869 AD   Still can't study in Britain in university.  But if you have a learned husband, you may now own property.

1871 AD  Can't study in Japan at any level (but who knows whether next year primary education will be for girls as well as boys).

1872 AD   Can't attend college with men west of the Mississippi River (and no one's dreaming publicly of AddRan Male and Female College --  Texas Christian University -- where female bodies will be admitted with other students on an equal basis).

1876 AD  Can't attend university in Chile (until next year).

1900 AD  Can't study medicine, even with other females, in Japan (until next century when Doctor Yoshioka Yayoi founds Japan's first medical school for women).

1919 AD  Can't study as full-degree female students at the University of Oxford (not until next year).

1921 AD  Can't study or teach as members of the German Nazi Party.

1942 AD  Can't teach in college in Austria, if your name is Elise Richter, even if the rumors are you're a noted linguist; it's off to Theresienstadt  -- the Nazi concentration camp -- where you must die.

1949 AD   Can't study at Harvard Law School (not until next year).

1949 AD   Can't use your father's family's name (i.e., your "maiden" name) until next year when the U.S. Census Bureau recognizes how many females are studying and using different names.

1962 AD   Can't get tenure at Yale Law School (not until next year, Ellen Ash Peters).

1973 AD   Can't study in any U.S. service academy (until next year when the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy does its strange thing).

1974 AD   Can't be on an American jury since you can't study properly (until next year when the U.S. Supreme Court rules that females cannot be excluded from juries because of their sex).

1996 AD   Can't study in Afghanistan since the Taliban government says so; and no working outside the home either.

2007 AD   Can't teach men Hebrew in the school of theology of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (even if you're hired to be on the tenure track as Sheri Klouda was); can't study with men the new Seminary degree for females only called Homemaking.

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?