Bush to Veto Equal Pay for Women

24 thoughts on Bush to Veto Equal Pay for Women

1. :: Puke ::

   I can’t honestly think of a response to this that does not involve the frequent and harsh use of expletives.

2. Good catch!

   I’ve been following this bill since Hillary Clinton inspired it (Rosa DeLauro credits Hillary with the idea). The really neat thing in it is that it includes a small pot of money for training women and girls to negotiate for better pay and benefits.

   Also, don’t lose heart. It passed the House by a 247 – 178 margin, which is enough to override a veto. Let’s see if the Senate can do the same.

3. Can we please get some real facts on disproportionate pay?

   “Forty-five years ago, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act (EPA) into law, making it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who perform substantially equal work. At the time of the EPA’s passage in 1963, women earned merely 59 cents to every dollar earned by men.”

   There’s a slight problem with these facts from the National Women’s Law Center. Each individual statement may be true, but putting them next to each other invites the reader to reach a false conclusion: Women were earning merely 59 cents to every dollar earned by men DOING THE SAME JOB. Note that the statement doesn’t actually make this claim, because it’s almost certainly false, it just hopes you miss the nuance.

   A vast number of companies are so mechanical in their pay structures that different pay for men and women would be extremely tough, if not impossible. For instance, virtually every law firm reports their starting salaries to the National Association of Legal Professionals, and generally give lock-step raises based solely on seniority. No room for unequal pay. I’ve also worked for Kaplan Test Prep, and again, the same story. Uniform starting salaries and lock-step advances based purely on seniority. And, I’ve worked as a research assistant and as a teaching assistant, and earned the exact same amount as the women. Why? Pay is so many fields is mechanical and supervisors often have very little, if any, discretion.

   But yet it is true that women are on average earning less than men. So if they earn the same pay for doing the work, how could this be? Because they’re not doing the same work! When they do the same work, they usually get the same pay. However, they’re often just not doing the same work. Some of it is choice, some of it is institutional sexism.

   If women are less likely to get promoted, then yes, they will earn less. But, if they don’t get promoted, they’re not doing the same work. They’re earning less for different work. The argument should then be that women need equal opportunities at getting the good work!

   But, let’s not leave out the choice aspect either. Women are currently receiving 60% of college degrees. But, men still make up the majority in fields like engineering, business and economics, and it’s these fields (which at most universities women are just as free to get into) which lead to the higher paying jobs. The women-heavy areas, such as English literature, education and gender studies (while certainly very noble fields of study, I know, I did English and philosophy) tend to not be that profitable.

   So, while we need to give women the equal opportunity to rise through the ranks fairly, we also have to realize that choice does play a significant role in the equation.

   And one final issue. This was discussed in my behavioral economics class last year, so I thought I’d share. There’s a problem that shows up if you demand equal pay. Generally if you’re expecting less pay, you’re going to invest less in your skills (because rational people don’t invest in things that won’t pay off). I’m not blaming women for investing in their career skills less, because if you think you’re not going to get as good of a salary as a man doing the same thing you ought to invest in less. But, hopefully you can see the viscous cycle: you invest less because you’ll likely earn less, but then you’ll earn less because you’ve invested less.

   But, take heart! There is a solution. Give the equal pay legislation a 4 year delay. Have it say: “Equal pay, starting in 4 years.” This tells women who in school, or about to start, or considering going back, or who are wondering if they should subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, “If you invest in your career skills, we’ll make sure you’re taken care of.” So now the rational choice is to invest equally with men, and employers will actually be able to offer equal pay for equal work.

   And just some personal facts: I’m starting at a midsized law firm in New York this September. There are 12 new associates starting at the same time. 5 are male, 7 are female. The hiring committee at the firm has 2 women and 1 man. All 5 members of the recruiting staff are female. Two of them are new and replaced women who had left in the last year. I work in the corporate department and we have a partner and an associate who work to coordinate assignments for the whole department, both are female.

4. If you remove “unjustifiably” from that quote, it sounds all dandy to me!

5. But, take heart! There is a solution. Give the equal pay legislation a 4 year delay. Have it say: “Equal pay, starting in 4 years.”

   Um. WTF?

   Wouldn’t passing an equal pay law without the delay send the same damn message?

   Women’s lives are not something to be toyed with to make equality feel a little more palatable to you.

6. I also love how Bush is in a huff because this law would cover pay gap when the discrimination “wasn’t intentional.”

   Does he understand what the word “discrimination” actually fucking MEANS? You don’t have to twirl your mustache as you bellow “Ha HA, I’ve got those little [women/poc/gays/etc.] NOW!” for it to be an act of discrimination. The person who turns away black customers for hir store and says it’s because they’re too noisy or they scare other (white, thus more desirable) customers is still discriminating — sie doesn’t have to cackle as sie says “I just don’t like black people!!” for it to be discrimination.

   Gah.

7. hopefully you can see the viscous cycle

   Hmm, I definitely see something thick and oozy. It looks like . . . entitlement!

   you invest less because you’ll likely earn less, but then you’ll earn less because you’ve invested less.

   There are other reasons for “investing less” that are more common, better documented, and don’t come from Uranus, though. Children, sweet though they may be, are often obstacles to women “investing” more. No one’s gonna tell Pops he’s a shit parent if he wants to take night courses towards a graduate degree in addition to working full-time, but ask any woman who’s done the same thing what the repercussions were for her doing it.

   This tells women who in school, or about to start, or considering going back, or who are wondering if they should subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, “If you invest in your career skills, we’ll make sure you’re taken care of.” So now the rational choice is to invest equally with men, and employers will actually be able to offer equal pay for equal work.

   . . . because women require incentives in order to make rational choices to “invest equally with men.” Right. I pity the woman who changed your diapers, took your temperatures, fixed your meals, helped with your homework–I pity her for not having invested EQUALLY WITH MEN. Maybe if she’d had some incentive to make a more rational choice, I wouldn’t be reading this contemptuous drivel right now.

8. DerekSpade: “Equal pay, starting in 4 years”

   I don’t see how the delay would help – in the case of the bill motivating women to invest in career skills, wouldn’t passing the same bill immediately provide the same incentive? Also, if you think there is some problem with the bill that would cause negative consequences, wouldn’t those be just as likely to present four years from now?

9. A vast number of companies are so mechanical in their pay structures that different pay for men and women would be extremely tough, if not impossible.

   And yet they managed to do it to Lily Ledbetter for 20 years. Are you saying that she is the only woman in the past 20 years who hasn’t been paid the same as her male peers? All of the women who claim that Wal-Mart refused to pay them the same as their male peers are all lying?

   Oh, and my friend who was told to her face that she would not be promoted to a manager position with Continental Airlines because they would only hire a man for that position would like you to fuck off. That was 10 years ago, so we’re not talking about something that happened in the 1950s.

10. …even when a disparity in pay was unintentional.

    Oh, gosh, I didn’tmean to pay you less money. It’s a nervous affliction. I see a woman and I say to myself, “Let’s pay her less money.” It’s a reflex, conditioned by 50,000 years of manhood. (Unless you’re a devout Creationist. Then it’s about 1,700. Or whatever number you people want it to be. Plug it in, I don’t care.) But because I didn’t intend it, you can’t punish me for it. So there. Nyaaaaaaaaah.

11. i asked this over at feministing and no one answered, I don’t agree with most of dereks post other than his first point. Why do people take the 77 cents on the dollar or 63 cents on the dollar and make it seem that women are getting paid 77% in the same exact job? This is not what the stat says, its an average of male income vs female income. There are a lot of reasons behind the difference, many of them talked about here and at many other blogs. I just simply dont get why some people choose to misrepresent the stat as saying “women on average get paid 77% of what men get paid for the same job” as opposed to what the stat really says, women on average earn 77% of what men do and then go into the whole discussion of why that is and how you can shrink that gap if you take all the factors into account (though not get rid of it entirely)

12. I like what dananddanica just said about the stats being misinterpreted. Statistics are like that. When a biased person, regardless of the position of that bias, comes up with statistics, I’m leery of them. It’s almost impossible to find unbiased stats.

    What works for me is personal experience. If a person describes a real-life situation of unequal pay for equal work, to me that’s valid. If a lot of people come forward with them, then we can guess, that’s right guess, how commonplace it is. This is more valuable that all the stats we’re sometimes overwhelmed with.

13. Interesting bill.

    So much of it is focused on the legal system: who can sue, with what proof, and why. Many of the changes would be quite successful but I am curious to see how it works in enforcement; the courts have a way of changing bills sometimes.

    Personally, I don’t like the social engineering aspects which are based on the concept that there is an objective, rather than market defined, “value” of a particular position. But that is only a portion of the bill; most of it seems like a pretty good idea.

14. Why do people take the 77 cents on the dollar or 63 cents on the dollar and make it seem that women are getting paid 77% in the same exact job?

    Because sometimes, they are. You might want to read this post at Ampersand, which has a pretty good explanation of the issues. It’s a multipart series, so you should be able to get all of your questions answered.

    The main thing is that the wage gap isn’t for all women — it’s for women with children. Single women without children earn the same as their male peers, but once a couple has children, the man’s salary goes up and the woman’s goes down. And it can’t be fully accounted for by time taken off. Even a woman who only takes six weeks off after giving birth has a gap in her wages for the rest of her career.

15. Hasn’t this been discussed before? Many feminist activists misleadingly use statistics to make it seem as though women get paid less for the same jobs. That is just not true and would be illegal under current law.

    Is it all accounted for by time taken off from childbirth? No. But what about accounting for hours worked? Men work more hours on average and are more likely to pull overtime. What percentage of women are only working part time? It’s more than men.

    We already know independently that 75% of the pay gap is explainable by non-discriminatory factors.* That means that –of the 23% gap, only 25% is even possible discriminatory related–. So of the total paygap, only possibly 5.75% is related to discrimination. Not quite the crisis it’s made out to be.

    *Source: American Association of Academic Women Educational Foundation report of 2007.

16. Here’s another good link to check out… especially because she mentions raise discrimination:

    How about college-educated women? Their starting pay is about 80 percent of their male colleagues (tailoring off to 69 percent a mere ten years later). Some of the difference does correspond to the fact that women are less likely than men to ask for higher pay. But here’s the rub: research shows that when women do ask for a raise, they’re likely to be punished for it. As Hannah Riley Bowles from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government put it, “What we found across all the studies is men were always less willing to work with a woman who had attempted to negotiate than with a woman who did not.”

    And that’s not the main problem with the “women don’t ask” theory. In most jobs, women have no right whatsoever to negotiate over pay. They may also have no right to know what anyone else is making. From car dealerships to retail stores, law offices to telecommunication firms, employees are required to sign a statement acknowledging that “discussing salary with colleagues” is a “fire-able offense.” In some cases, these provisions are a cover so women won’t know they’re making less than their male colleagues.

    And I like this part, simply because it shuts down people who say that women do different work…

    Even within the same jobs, men and women don’t earn the same rate. But mostly, men and women still do different jobs – and women’s jobs pay less simply because women perform them.

17. mnemosyne,
    no, they never are unless in some specific jobs and times it comes out to 77%. I’ve read a ton on the wage gap, a guest poster at this very site linked the alas stuff not too long ago, Alice was her name if i remember correctly. Wage gap day is I think in April, tons comes up then too plus all the literature available out there on it. It goes beyond the simple 6 weeks post-pregnancy and thats why as a person with feminist leanings (not good with labels) i find it so fascinating.

    What I was getting at though was in the MSM, in the comments sections of feminist blogs and many other places, the 77 cents on the dollar stat is indeed promoted as being fully “77 cents on the dollar for the same job”, this is simply not the case, the gov’t numbers behind the 77 cents clearly state this isnt the case, its an average versus an average and its from 2004 at that. If we look at subsets of the general population we will see the numbers fluctuate, as with the 63 cents on a dollar for minority women on average but that number isnt as bad if minority women are compared to minority men, especially if you look under 34. In no way am i claiming wage discrimination doesnt exist, I know it does from studies and from anecdata but the 77 cents on the dollar stat is misued entirely too often by well-meaning people, I can only guess its because it fits into a larger narrative and sounds good, I’m not sure.

    It bothers me though that posters on blogs or in other places dont correct people who think about the 77 cents on the dollar stat incorrectly or use it to represent something it doesnt when that kind of thing wouldnt stand with other numbers/reports. At the end of the day, its an average vs. an average, the reasons why the womens and mens incomes are different are legion and they are fascinating and represent many facets of the patriarchy but one shouldnt say it means women make 77% in the exact same job, with the same experience, work history, etc, it doesnt, that women could be suffering from wage discrimination but it wouldnt necesarily be 77%.

    danakitty- one problem with the same jobs thing is the experience bit. for many reasons, some personal choice, some institutionalized to hurt women, on average a woman at say 35 will have less years/months of experience in her job than a man, so in that case, its the “same” job and they are performing equally well but the man is making more for having been fucked over by his gender straitjacket and not being able/feeling he can ever miss work, that is changing thankfully and the feminist movement has a huge hand in that but its not so simple. if you wish check the very report the 77 cents on the dollar comes from and look at what they say about men and women and work experience in the same position, its a fascinating read overall and worth taking the time. in my mind it deflates the argument of “same job” a little but strengthens the case for how we are fucking everyone over with our current system.

18. If you’re in an organization that will not pay you equal pay because you are a woman YOU NEED TO LEAVE. Take your talent elsewhere.

    I think this legislation will make things MORE difficult for women not less. It opens up room for lawsuits, hey, if you take 6 months off for maternity leave–for two or three kids, and your male coworker doesn’t and he *justifiably* gets more money, you might sue…

    What you’re left with is either no maternity OR a corporate culture that doesn’t want to hire women.

19. Amandaw: The point in the delay is to address the problem of what happens if you employ men and women of different skill levels. If you expect that you will earn less money than your male counterparts (and assuming you’re a rational actor) then you’ll invest less time and money in becoming skilled. Assuming men and women have equal potential, if women have less incentive to invest in their skills, we should expect to see on average women with a lower skill level. This makes equal pay for equal work incredibly difficult because men and women are likely not dong exactly the same work. It can’t be fairly implemented immediately in most sectors of the economy. A delay allows employers to treat differently skilled employees differently, but also provides the right incentives for there to be equivalent skill levels between men and women.

    ilyka: How much money would you spend on an education that would earn you $40,000 a year? Would you spend more on an education that would earn you $50,000 a year? A rational actor will always invest more when the payout is expected to be higher. Men expect to make more money than women, so they invest more in their careers. Forgive me for assuming that different results lead to different incentives.

    Mnemosyne: Did I say that no one pays different amounts? No. I simply stated that in many businesses it is extremely difficult to do so. Your friend at Continental’s experience is exactly my point. The problem is often that women are denied the opportunity for better work, which is different from “equal pay for equal work.”

    And finally, if any of your are enterprising enough, why don’t you just start opening up businesses and offer women 95% of what men would be making. You’ll instantly pull women away from other companies, depriving them of cheap labor, all the while keeping your costs lower than the companies who are now only able to employ the more expensive men.

20. The bill would unjustifiably amend the Equal Pay Act (EPA) to allow for, among other things, unlimited compensatory and punitive damages, even when a disparity in pay was unintentional. …In addition, it would require the Department of Labor (DOL) to replace its successful approach to detecting pay discrimination with a failed methodology that was abandoned because it had a 93 percent false positive rate. Thus, if H.R. 1338 were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.

    Obviously, Bush has never been prone to mischaracterizing government studies, government statistics, or government intelligence, so I’m sure he has a valid and well founded reason for oppossing the bill.

21. wow, feministe has changed if derek wins this thread….

    oh and derek you are a poopy head. 😀

22. Why yes, Derek Spade, I shall open a business! And pay my employees whatever I want! I’ll even discriminate against teh menz to make a point!

    Fabulous idea!

23. “A delay allows employers to treat differently skilled employees differently, but also provides the right incentives for there to be equivalent skill levels between men and women.”

    I still don’t get it. Is your concern that if the bill is implemented immediately employers would be forced to pay less-skilled women an equal amount for the same job as more-skilled men?

    If that’s the case, the delay still doesn’t make skill investment the more rational choice – a woman who saw that the bill was coming in 4 years, would realize that in four years, she’ll get equal pay for X job if she meets the minimum skill requirements: so meeting the bare minimum would mean the highest payoff for lowest investment.

    Or is the idea that the delay will motivate enough women to be skilled that there will be a big enough pool for employers to not hire (or pay less) less-skilled women, and still not be charged with discrimination, because they’ll be able to give preference to skilled women instead?

    In that case, your delay would lead to something similar to the prisoner’s dillema (if we’re still talking about idealized rational actors) – if all women don’t invest in skills, they get the best scenario (high pay for low investment), but if some don’t invest while others do, the non-investers are hosed (not getting hired/low pay), while the investors get the second best outcome (high pay for high investment), and if all women invest, they all get the second to worst outcome (competition lowers pay and raises investment for all hired).

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