No matter which statistic you'd like to
take as fact, the gender wage gap is shrinking. The only question is
when, if ever, will it achieve parity?
The White House says for every dollar a
man makes a woman makes 77 cents.
According to Pew Research Center, women
earn about 84 percent of what their male counterparts make and
younger women are expected to earn 93 percent.
If you can believe that.
For sure, it's a difficult concept to
wrap one's head around. Since 1963, when President John F. Kennedy
signed into law the Equal Pay Act, which stipulates employers cannot
discriminate between employees based on gender, folks have been
trying to figure out what – exactly – parity should look like.
Some will argue that we're not really
tabulating comparable jobs. How can we ever find fairness if we have
to take into account that women suspend their careers an average of
three years to tend to the business of life and family.
It has been estimated that women
generally earn $400,000 less than their male counterparts during the
course of their careers. But are we really comparing apples and
apples or are we comparing astronauts and airline attendants?
That's so sexist, you say. I just shrug
my shoulders.
I know what it's like to go to college,
work for a few years, gain experience, earn a couple of dollars in
raises and then find out, over after-work drinks that newly hired
male coworker, without any experience or college education earned .50
less per hour than I did, and $2 more than the college-educated,
non-experienced woman I had recommended for hire three months
earlier.
And the kicker? When I asked my boss
about the disparity, It was I who had broken the sacred trust of wage
secrecy.
Which, in my opinion, was the kiss of
death to any hope of equal pay for equal work.
“The world is crazy,” my mom would
say. “People talk about sex until they're blue in the face, but
money? It's taboo.”
In the late 1960s, when my parents were
starting down their separate career paths – mom a registered nurse,
and dad a craftsman for AT&T Long Lines – they made the exact
same salary. For a time their wages even stayed in lock-step.
Before they married, my mom had bought
her mother a house, her brother a car, and she had helped her sister
pay for college. She was a genius at finance. She could save a
fortune without seeming to have pinched a penny.
My dad's money, on the other hand,
burned a hole in his pocket.
By the time they married, she had paid
his (minor) debts, taken over the family finances and everyone was
happy.
By the late 1970s, her wages had
stagnated while his had risen steadily. She ended up staying home
with the kids, working only sporadically and always part-time.
Yet, if someone were analyzing how
mom's stewardship of the bank accounts contributed to the family's
overall wealth, they'd likely find she was the engine that not only
could, but did.
My mom was always more of a Suze Ormon
type than a Gloria Steinem, though.
She didn't see herself as the victim of
a gender gap, certainly not in the same way my generation views this
divide.
She made wage parity. We've made wage
parodies.
Without being able to talk about money,
what we end up with is an inside joke.
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