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After baby-sitting, it's all downhill for women at work
By Audrey Fisch |
May 21, 2012, Monday
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THE labor market is skewed toward women. Or at least toward girls, according to my 14-year-old son. He's too young for most "real" part-time jobs, which leaves baby-sitting. And more people seem willing to hire teenage girls than boys for what, at that age, is lucrative work. That's discrimination, he says.
Little does he know how the tables will turn. While his female peers may be raking in baby-sitting dollars (and getting valuable experience in a version of the working world), he and his male peers will quickly overtake them.
A 2007 research report completed by the American Association of University Women shows that the men catch up quickly. Just one year out of college, men working full-time earn more than their female colleagues, even for work in the same field. Ten years after graduation, the pay gap widens.
In 2009, full-time working women earned an average of 77 cents for every dollar paid to men. For women of color, the numbers are even worse. African-American women made only 62 cents and Latina women only 53 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.
In New Jersey, women earn 76 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts, and college-educated women in the state earned even less: 71 cents on every dollar earned by men.
For the average woman, the pay gap translates to a lot of lost earnings: US$10,849 a year or US$430,000 over a lifetime.
Put another way, a woman would need to work on average 465 days to earn what a man earns in 365 days. Or, she would need to work until 10:30 every night.
That baby-sitting money, in other words, isn't going to bridge the gap.
Unlike the baby-sitting universe, the larger workplace discriminates against women, not men.
And in an economic climate like ours, those lost earnings can made a real difference, especially for families in which women's salaries put bread on the table and keep families in their homes.
American women now make up half the nation's work force and nearly four in 10 mothers are primary breadwinners in their families. In those households, the woman's loss affects her whole family.
This year, Equal Pay Day was on April 17. That's the day when a woman's wages catch up to her male peer's from the previous year. In other words, it's as if we have been working from January 1 until April 17 for free.
I don't know about you, but that doesn't make me very happy; it makes me tired. But don't be too tired to take action.
Contact our elected leaders and ask them to support equal-pay legislation and to do away with pay inequity.
Ask our presidential candidates where they stand on the Paycheck Fairness Act, now stalled in Congress, which would prohibit employment retaliation and improve equal-pay remedies.
Someday, I may have a grandson. I hope he, unlike my son, has equal access to the baby-sitting marketplace. But I also hope he earns just as much but not more than his female peers, both as a baby-sitter and in whatever future job he holds.
Fisch is professor of English and elementary and secondary education at New Jersey City University and a member at large of the American Associate of University Women. Copyright: American Forum
Little does he know how the tables will turn. While his female peers may be raking in baby-sitting dollars (and getting valuable experience in a version of the working world), he and his male peers will quickly overtake them.
A 2007 research report completed by the American Association of University Women shows that the men catch up quickly. Just one year out of college, men working full-time earn more than their female colleagues, even for work in the same field. Ten years after graduation, the pay gap widens.
In 2009, full-time working women earned an average of 77 cents for every dollar paid to men. For women of color, the numbers are even worse. African-American women made only 62 cents and Latina women only 53 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.
In New Jersey, women earn 76 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts, and college-educated women in the state earned even less: 71 cents on every dollar earned by men.
For the average woman, the pay gap translates to a lot of lost earnings: US$10,849 a year or US$430,000 over a lifetime.
Put another way, a woman would need to work on average 465 days to earn what a man earns in 365 days. Or, she would need to work until 10:30 every night.
That baby-sitting money, in other words, isn't going to bridge the gap.
Unlike the baby-sitting universe, the larger workplace discriminates against women, not men.
And in an economic climate like ours, those lost earnings can made a real difference, especially for families in which women's salaries put bread on the table and keep families in their homes.
American women now make up half the nation's work force and nearly four in 10 mothers are primary breadwinners in their families. In those households, the woman's loss affects her whole family.
This year, Equal Pay Day was on April 17. That's the day when a woman's wages catch up to her male peer's from the previous year. In other words, it's as if we have been working from January 1 until April 17 for free.
I don't know about you, but that doesn't make me very happy; it makes me tired. But don't be too tired to take action.
Contact our elected leaders and ask them to support equal-pay legislation and to do away with pay inequity.
Ask our presidential candidates where they stand on the Paycheck Fairness Act, now stalled in Congress, which would prohibit employment retaliation and improve equal-pay remedies.
Someday, I may have a grandson. I hope he, unlike my son, has equal access to the baby-sitting marketplace. But I also hope he earns just as much but not more than his female peers, both as a baby-sitter and in whatever future job he holds.
Fisch is professor of English and elementary and secondary education at New Jersey City University and a member at large of the American Associate of University Women. Copyright: American Forum
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