March 30, 2005: Gender and Work
The male/female wage earnings gap
What is the wage earnings gap? When we talk of comparing women’s earnings with men’s earnings, we find that no matter how we measure them, women’s earnings are below those received by men. In 97% of the occupations for which data is available, women’s median weekly earnings are less than men’s earnings. Very often men’s earnings are used as the "yardstick" to measure women’s and we say women’s earnings are a percentage of men’s. The earnings gap is the difference between this percentage ratio and 100%.
How large is the earnings gap? It depends what measure you are using: hourly wages, weekly wages, or annual income.
Hourly and weekly earnings do not differentiate whether or not the individual worked full-time or year-round. It should be noted that women are employed fewer hours in the week and fewer weeks in the year than their male counterparts. Less time at work contributes to a part of the earning difference when women’s weekly and annual earnings are compared with men’s.
Comparing 2003 median weekly earnings for full-time workers, women made 76% of what men earned. (Same as it was in 2001)
The wage gap between women and men declined significantly between 1975 and 2003.
Reasons:
Women are taking advantage of the legal right to equal opportunity as established in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
They are moving out of low-paying historically female jobs into higher-paying professional and administrative jobs with greater possibilities for promotion over their working lives.
However, an important reason for the narrowing of the gap in previous years was the result not of women’s wages rising, but of men’s real wages falling so that they were closer to women’s wages.
When we look the 45-year period as a whole, women’s real earnings have increased by 1.2% each year while men’s earnings have grown by only .9 %.
Of course, race and ethnicity are important intervening variables.
African-American women earn just 65 cents to every dollar earned by white men, and for Hispanic women that figure drops to merely 54 cents per dollar.
Explaining the Wage Gap –
Obviously, race compounds the wage gap.
What reasons have been suggested for the differences in earnings between women and men?
One consistent observation that can be made is that female-dominated occupations usually pay significantly less than male-dominated occupations.
Dual Labor Market – characterized by one set of jobs employing almost exclusively men and another set of jobs typically viewed as secondary, employing almost exclusively women.
Research indicates, in fact, that occupational segregation alone accounts for about 20 to 40% of the difference in men’s and women’s earnings.
Occupational segregation by sex is the single largest cause of the pay gap between the sexes.
Occupational sex segregation refers to the degree to which men and women are concentrated in occupations in which workers of one sex predominate.
Historically, women have "crowded" into a few occupations. In 1997 the six most prevalent occupations for
Women were, in order of magnitude, schoolteachers (except post-secondary teachers), secretaries, cashiers, managers and administrators, registered nurses, and sales supervisors and proprietors.
Industry sex segregation – a form of occupational sex segregation in which women and men hold the same job title in a particular field or industry, but actually perform different jobs. For example – waiters in an upscale restaurant vs. waiters in a diner.
Establishment sex segregation occurs when women and men hold the same job title at an individual
Establishment or company, but actually do different jobs. Again, women’s jobs are usually lower paying and less prestigious. For instance, it is not uncommon in a law firm for women to be concentrated in the family law division, while men dominate the more lucrative corporate and commercial law department.
Occupational resegregation -
Sex-integrated occupations become resegregated with members of one sex replaced by members of the opposite sex as the predominant workers. For example, originally banks hired males as tellers. Today, bank tellers are usually women. Another area is veterinarians. Women comprise the largest group of graduating veterinarians. In both cases, the wages of resegregation has resulted in lowering wages.
We could also look at the categories of the labor market. Labor market segmentation, a term that refers to the division of jobs into categories with distinct working conditions. Economists generally distinguish two subcategories, which they call the primary and secondary sectors.
The primary sector includes high-wage jobs that provide good benefits, job security, and opportunities for advancement. The upper level of this sector includes elite jobs that require long years of training and certification and offer autonomy on the job and a chance to advance up the corporate ladder. Access to upper level jobs is by way of family connections, wealth, talent, education and governmental programs (like the GI bill, which guaranteed higher education to veterans returning form World War II). The lower level of the primary sector includes those manufacturing jobs that offer relatively high wages and job security (as a result of unionization), but do not require advance training or degrees.
The secondary sector includes low-wage jobs with few fringe benefits and little opportunity for advancement. Turnover is high in both levels of this sector because these workers have relatively few marketable skills and are easily replaced. For decades, the majority of women of all racial –ethnic groups, along with most men of color were found in the secondary sectors.
Human capital theory – It has been argued that women choose these occupations because there tends to be less skill obsolescence for workers who leave and reenter the labor force. It has also been argued that the educational commitment for employment in these fields is less than in some others, and workers can have more time at home for other responsibilities.
Human capital theory explains occupational sex segregation in terms of women’s free choice to work in jobs that make few demands on workers and require low personal investment in training or skills acquisition based on the assumption that women’s primary responsibility is in the home.
Many employers, economists, and public policy makers acknowledge that "women’s work" almost always pays less than "men’s work," but they maintain that the reason particular jobs have become female-dominated is because large numbers of women have freely chosen to enter them. Central to their argument is the assumption that women’s primary allegiance is to home and family; thus, they seek undemanding jobs that require little personal investment in training or skills acquisition so that they can better tend to their household responsibilities. In other words, women choose to invest less than men in employment outside the home do, so they get less in return. This explanation is called human capital theory.
Renzetti and Curran point out that the flaw in the human capital theory is that it fails to distinguish between self-imposed job restrictions and structurally imposed ones.
Kimmel "Socialization cannot explain why a sex-segregated labor market emerged, why each sex is allocated to particular types of occupations, and why the sex typing of occupations changes in particular ways over time." Instead we need to think of sex segregation as the outcome of several factors - "the differential socialization of young men and women, sex-typed tracking in the educational system, and sex-linked social control at the workplace, at the hiring stage and beyond”
Another reason for the wage gap as people age has to do with the different experiences of women and men in the labor force. When men enter the labor force, they enter for good (barring lay-offs), while women occasionally take time out for childbearing and parental leave. (11.5 years out of the paid labor force because of care giving for women compared to 1.3 years for men) In fact women who drop out of the labor force have lower real wages when they come back to work than they had when they left.
Motherhood wage penalty - After controlling for years of job experience – under the assumption that working mothers may accrue less employment experience because they take more time off from work for childbearing and rearing than working women without children – Budig and England found a penalty of 5 percent per child. The penalty was higher for married women with children than unmarried women with no children, and very little of the penalty could be explained away by low wages attached to “mother-friendly” jobs – i.e., jobs with flexible hours, few travel demands, no evening or weekend work hours, on-site day care, and the ability to make phone calls while working to check on children. Instead they conclude that the penalty stems from either the effects of motherhood on worker productivity or discrimination by employers.
Accessibility – When better-paying jobs open for women, they enter those areas, example, construction, shipbuilding, coal mining. However, research has documented male workers’ efforts to exclude women from certain occupations.
Employers’ reliance on informal networks to recruit new employees usually preserves sex segregation, especially in already segregated workplaces, because such networks themselves tend to be composed of individuals of the same sex. “Comfort, chemistry, relationships and collaboration” were cited by the Glass Ceiling Commission.
Different rewarding of occupations -what Kimmel calls Income Discrimination - what appears to us simply as paying people doing different jobs is actually a way of paying different genders differently for doing roughly the same jobs with the same skill levels.
William Bielby and James Baron "men's jobs are rewarded according to their standing within the hierarchy of men's work, and women's jobs are rewarded according to their standing within the hierarchy of women's work. The legitimacy of this system is easy to sustain in a segregated workplace." Stated simply, "women's occupations pay less at least partly because women do them."
Much of the wage gap has to do with the different and unequal rewarding of “women’s occupations” and “men’s occupations.”
Wages have been tied to assumptions about gender and about race and ethnicity as well.
Although some women may still choose to enter historically female jobs as a personal solution to the difficulties of combining work and family life, this explanation cannot account for the persistence and breadth of the wage gap.
Neither can the difference in pay be explained by differences in the skill requirements or the responsibilities of the jobs women and men hold.
Looking at all factors, such as hours work, work experience, work continuity, self-imposed restrictions on work hours and location and rates of absenteeism taken together could only account for less than a third of the wage gap between white men and white women and only about a quarter of the wage gap between white men and black women.
Level of education does not explain the wage gap.
Study after study show that women make less than men in the same occupation with the same education. Example, study on engineers, study on lawyers. In fact, in 1995 white female college graduates working full-time year round earned on average about $500 less than white male high school graduates working full-time year round.
Instead, the major factor in differences in compensation should be referred to as the “femaleness” of a job. Not only do women do different work than men, but the work women do is paid less and the more an occupation is dominated by women, the less it pays.” (Exception would be nursing)
Ideology has played a part in this. Employers and employees alike, women as well as men, have devalued the work that women do. Moreover, race interacts as well. The Glass Ceiling Commission (1995) reported that while male managers characterized women workers as “not tough enough” and “unwilling to relocate.” They described Black men as “undisciplined, always late,” and Hispanic men as “heavy drinkers and drug users who don’t want to work,” unless they are Cuban. Kennelly (1999) found that white employers typify the woman worker in general as a mother, a role they associate with being frequently late or absent from work. She found that white employers associate black workers generally with tardiness, low education and skill, laziness and belligerence. Black women, in particular, were stereotyped by white employers as single mothers, a group typified as unskilled and uneducated.
Statistical Discrimination – employers do not hire anyone who is a member of a group they think has low productivity, regardless of an individual applicant’s qualifications or intentions.
The Impact of Femaleness on Wages –
Until recently, it was accepted practice to pay men more; their wages were said to reflect no only what their jobs were worth but also their status as breadwinners for their families. A woman’s wages, when she worked for pay, were regarded as a supplement to those earned
Assumptions about gender continue to saturate the current structure of compensation.
Examples – the job requirements of physical therapist were found to be considerably more complex than those of the male job of senior broadcast technician, but the physical therapist earned $35 less per month than the technician.
Licensed practical nurse was rated as of equivalent complexity to photographer, a historically male job. The difference in the pay for these two jobs was approximately $350.00 per month, or $4,2000 per year.
Job evaluation is a set of procedures for systematically ordering jobs as more or less complex for the purpose of paying wages. Jobs are described and assessed in terms of their characteristics – usually grouped as relevant skill degree of effort required, amount of responsibility, and extent of undesirable working conditions. Wages rates are based on these assessments of job content. Wages are based, then on job requirements. Individuals performing the job are assumed to have the required knowledge, skills, and character to perform competently.
There is gender bias in job evaluation (Steinberg)
Four major sources of gender bias remain in virtually every traditional job-evaluation system currently available to employers.
First, the prerequisites, tasks, and work context of jobs historically performed by women have been ignored or taken for granted. For example working with mentally ill or retarded persons or with dying patients is overlooked as a stressful working conditions in compensation plans, while working with noisy machinery is not. Working outdoors is considerable an undesirable working condition, but working in an open office area without the ability to close a door for privacy is not.
Another example, is that a child care worker earns $304 less per week than a truck driver and $475 less than a mail carrier
Frequently overlooked characteristics in traditional job evaluations include the ability to communicate complex and technical material to non-technical audiences, the human relations skills necessary for working crisis situations, the skills and effort involved in active listening or in performing multiple tasks simultaneously. The responsibility of protecting the confidentiality of records, the ability to represent the organization through communication with the public, and regular exposure to disease and incontinence are not included in the evaluation process.
Second, job content is perceived on the basis of gender stereotypes. Evaluation systems confuse the content of the job with stereotypic ideas about the characteristics of the typical jobholder.
For example, authority is associated with masculinity and thus with historically male work, while the exercise of authority that is associated with the female work usually remains invisible. Male managers are perceived as running offices and departments. Yet the daily work of a departmental or personal secretary in actually running an office remains invisible, especially if she performs her work competently. Line-authority is paid better than expertise authority.
Another example – firefighters vs. fight attendant. The emergency skills of the flight attendant, while not as complex as those of the firefighter, remain invisible and uncompensated.
Margaret Mead noted that the value of an activity may be lowered simply by its association with women
Third, the content of women’s work is recognized in the job –evaluation systems but is assumed to be less complex than that of men’s work. Women’s and men’s jobs, for example, both require perceptual skills, but men’s jobs are more likely to require spatial perceptual skills and women’s jobs are more likely to require concentration and sensory skills. Why is it that spatial skills are considered more complex than sensory skills?
Women’s and men’s work both require human-relations skills, but those associated with men’s work (especially administrative and managerial positions) often involve the kinds of power and control associated with supervision. Those associated with women’s work often involve emotional labor associated with influence over, educating or taking care of others. Job-evaluation systems define power and control over others as involving more complexity than influence and emotional labor.
Fiscal responsibility historically is treated as involving high degree of responsibility;the greater the fiscal responsibility, the higher the complexity rating of the job and the higher the wage. But these same systems fail to recognize responsibility for client well being as a job responsibility.
Fourth, some job-evaluation systems treat the job content associated with female jobs in a way that actually lower wages. The work is negatively valued. The more an incumbent is required to perform the content, the less the incumbent earns.
One study of the effect of femaleness on wages found that working with difficult clients and dying patients actually lowered pay independent of other job content.
There may be other factors that are difficult to measure that also affect women’s career decisions. To what extent have women been denied the opportunity to find employment in other occupations? Have they been fearful of entering occupations where few women are employed because of lack of knowledge about the field, or fear that sexual harassment may be a factor? These are aspects that are difficult to quantify.
Sexual harassment – According to Michael Kimmel sexual harassment is one of the chief ways that men resist gender equality in the workplace. Sexual harassment was first identified as a form of sex discrimination and litigated in the late 1970s. Catharine MacKinnon argued that sexual harassment was a violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil rights Act.
Quid pro quo
Hostile environment
"Harassment is a way for a man to make a woman vulnerable," John Gottman, a psychologist
1991 - "reasonable woman standard" This case changed all the rules, since the intention of the harasser is no longer the standard against which the crime is measured - now it's the effect on the victim.
Both private and public sectors lose millions because of absenteeism, reduced productivity, and high turnover of female employees. - Estimate of $189 million a year.
March 1998 - the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that men could be the victims of sexual harassment from other men, even when all the men involved are heterosexual.
Glass Ceiling - refers to the invisible barriers that limit workers’ – typically women workers’ and racial and ethnic minority workers’ – upward occupational mobility.
This concept assumes that women have the motivation, ambition, and capacity for positions of power and prestige, but invisible barriers keep them from reaching the top. For example, in 2002, 16% of corporate officers in Fortune 500 companies were women.
The glass ceiling occurs under a variety of circumstances. Corporate management may be either unable or unwilling to establish policies and practices that are effective mechanisms to promote workplace diversity. The company may not have adequate job evaluation criteria that allow for comparable worth criteria, or they may rely on traditional gender stereotypes in evaluation.
Perhaps the most important element that reinforces the glass ceiling is the informal effort by men to restore or retain the all-make atmosphere of the corporate hierarchy. Equal opportunities for advancement would disrupt the casual friendliness and informality of the homosocial world at the top - the fact that those with whom one interacts share similar basic values and assumptions.
Women report feeling excluded from informal leadership and decision-making networks, and they sense hostility from their male co-workers.
The General Accounting Office of the US reported that the majority of women managers were worse off, relative to men, in 2000 than they were in 1995.
Research has suggested dramatically different experiences when women are the tokens in a largely male work world, and when men are the tokens in a largely female occupation.
Christine Williams said men ride a "glass escalator." - Looked at nursing, librarianship, elementary school teaching and social work.
Findings:
Many of the men perceived their token status as males in predominantly female occupations as an advantage in hiring and promotions.
Some men described being "tracked" into practice areas within their professions that were considered more legitimate for men. Example administration and planning in social work as opposed to direct care.
Some men are effectively being "kicked upstairs". The effect of this "tracking" is the opposite of that experienced by women in male-dominated occupations.
Men in nontraditional occupations face a different scenario - their gender is construed as a positive difference. Therefore, they have an incentive to bond together and emphasize their distinctiveness from the female majority. Example - the male nurse can hang out with the male doctor, but the female doctor can not hang out with the female nurse.
Openly gay men may encounter less favorable treatment at the hands of their supervisors.
Many of the men interviewed who had female bosses also reported high levels of acceptance - although levels of intimacy with women seemed lower than with other men. In some cases, however, men reported feeling shutout from decision making when the higher administration was constituted entirely by women.
It appears that women are generally eager to see men enter 'their" occupations. Indeed, several men noted that their female colleagues had facilitated their careers in various ways (including mentorship in college). However, at the same time, women often resent the apparent ease with which men advance within these professions, sensing that men at the higher levels receive preferential treatment that closes off advancement opportunities for women. But this ambivalence does not seem to translate into the "poisoned" work environment described by many women who work in male dominated occupations.
Discrimination - It appears unlikely that men's underrepresentation in these professions is due to hostility towards men on the part of supervisors or women workers. The most compelling evidence of discrimination against men in these professions is related to their dealing s with the public. Suspicions: Male nurses are gay - male librarians are wimps, male elementary school teachers are pedophiles
Unlike women who enter traditionally male professions, men's movement into these jobs is perceived by the public as a step down in status. This particular form of discrimination may be most significant in explaining why men are underrepresented in these professions. The negative stereotypes about men who do "women's work" can push men out of specific jobs.
Zimmer critique of "gender neutral theory" - argues that women's occupation inequality is more a consequence of sexist beliefs and practices embedded in the labor force than the effect of numerical underepresentation per se. This study suggests that token status itself does not diminish men's occupational success. Men take their gender privilege with them when they enter predominately female occupations; this translated into an advantage in spite of their numerical rarity.
What are the consequences of blatant and overt discrimination?
Feminization of Poverty for mothers with children. 24.9 percent of white female-headed households live below the poverty line, while 40.8 percent of African American and 43.7% of Latina female-headed families were below the poverty line.
The majority of women who head households are working. In fact Edin and Lein found that working mothers fared worse financially than mothers on welfare because some of benefits like Medicaid might not be available to them as well as child care benefits since they are not on welfare. It must be mentioned, though, that given the change of welfare reform, welfare is temporary and limited. (Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act of 1996)
Elderly women – About 58% of the population aged sixty-five and older is female, but females constitute about 75% of the elderly poor and elderly women are 76% more likely than elderly men to be poor. Race is again an intervening factor. The poverty rate for elderly black women who live alone is triple the poverty rate for elderly white women who live alone.
Calasanti and Selvin note that “[g]ender relations play out over the life course and through retirement such that men’s and women’s experience of this time differ in critical ways: in terms of income and the meaning of retirement. When combined with sensitivity to race and class, we find that the “golden years” await only a select group of predominantly White and privileged men. Many women, men of color, and members of the working class must continue a range of productive activities in retirement, in both the formal and informal economy, unless poor health precludes this.” In addition women continue their unpaid domestic labor and care of their spouses, their children and grandchildren.
A lifetime of economic patterns impacts on women. For example, women are less likely than men to be employed in jobs that have private pension plans. According to one recent report, 25 million working women have no pension plans, and among those who do, most will receive about half the benefits men receive because their earnings are lower.
In addition, since women earn less than men, their Social Security benefit will be lower. In fact, only about 33 percent of retired women currently receive Social Security benefits based on their own work histories, since the benefits they receive as a spouse are about twice as much as what they are entitled to as individual retirees.
Calasanti and Selvin analyze the impact of gender and race on social security. They note that gender and race inequities in both paid work and family have been embedded in Social Security since its inception.
Originally Social Security covered only those who contributed to the program – specifically, retired workers. It was based on the assumption of the male breadwinner, female homemaker model and that men would be able to provide the “family wage.” This excluded minority and working-class men whose jobs were not included in the definition and who could not make a “family wage.”
A racial bias embedded in the original Social Security legislation excluded occupations typically held by people of color, particularly agricultural labor and domestic labor.
At the same time the reproductive labor of women caring for home, children, and spouse had no value. When wives and widows were added as beneficiaries in 1939, their eligibility was non-contributory. That is, it was not based on their own contributions as workers but on their marital status. They were only entitled to half the main benefit amount.
Further Social Security reinforced women’s subordination by distinguishing between deserving and undeserving women. Widows could collect Social Security based on their spouse’s work histories, but divorced women could not.
Eventually Social Security allowed divorced women to collect benefits if they were married for at least ten years (late 1970's)
Social Security pays some dual-earner couples lower benefits than it pays to a traditional couple in which the man earns that amount alone.
Being continuously married to the same person is more important for a women’s retirement income than for a man’s. Women who had been continuously married to the same person had a monthly average retirement income of only $82.52 less than similar men. By contrast, women whose marital history was interrupted receive an average of $356.35 less than men with interrupted marital histories.
There is a cumulative impact based on how Social Security benefits are calculated. First, benefit levels are tied to earnings; the more one earns, the greater the likelihood that one will receive the maximum benefit. Women tend to be clustered in a relatively small array of low-paid jobs, a factor which deflated their Social Security benefits.
Second, benefits are also based on the earnings of the best 35 years of work. Due to family obligations, women are far more likely than men to have worked fewer than 35 years and thus have years of zero earnings included in the calculation., Thus, women who leave the labor market usually receive less pay upon their return and lower Social Security benefits later on. Men’s ability to have, on average, only one zero year out of 35, compared to women’s average of 12 zero years.
“Pension plans treat men’s labor as more valuable and reward it more highly than women’s in retirement, despite the fact that men’s ability to engage in more highly paid labor likely relied upon women’s reproductive work – that is, the primarily domestic work involved in maintaining people.”
Intersection of gender and race - Despite legislative changes that have broadened coverage to almost all workers, still only 83% of Blacks aged 65+ (men, 81% and women 84%) and 74% of non-white Hispanics (me, 77% and women, 72%) received Social Security in 1996 compared to over 90% of White men and women.
Lack of Social Security coverage also jeopardizes health in later life. In addition to the loss of pension benefits, Medicare benefits automatically accrue only to those who receive Security. If one in ineligible for Social Security, one also does not receive Medicare.
Black women are far less likely to have been married at least ten years. As a result, they are less likely to qualify as dually entitle than are White women. At the same time, Black men as a group receive much lower wages than do White men. As a result those Black who would be able to opt for a spouse’s benefit are also less likely to find that is appreciably higher than their own retired worker benefit.
Class and Social Security – Working-class members enjoy less job stability than do middle-class worker. As a result they receive lower benefits due to the impact of number of years of continuous work on payment levels. Second, benefit levels are tied to past earnings through a progressive formula, which means that while people with low lifetime earnings receive a higher replacement rate (their benefits represent a larger percentage of their previous earnings), people with high lifetime earnings receive higher absolute benefit amounts. Overall, then tying benefits to past earnings advantages high-income workers.
Ways to eliminate gender inequality in the workplace
Legislation for Equality in the Workplace
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act – forbids discrimination in hiring, benefits, and other personnel decisions (such as promotions or layoffs) on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, or religion, by employers of fifteen or more employees. (exception is a bona fide occupational qualification)
Title VII has been implemented and enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 2 to 3 million dollars a year has been awarded each year between 1992 and 1997 to those winning cases filed with the EEOC.
Executive Order 11246 (Affirmative Action) – applies to employers who hold contracts with the federal government. It states that employers may be fined or their contracts may be terminated or they may be barred from future contracts if discrimination is found. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance in the Department of Labor monitors compliance.
These two pieces of law have resulted in allowing men to become flight attendants and eliminating state so called “protective legislation” (such as requiring women to be unmarried, discrimination against pregnancy, etc)
Unfortunately since 1993, it has been more difficult to prove discrimination. The employee must provide direct evidence of discrimination (witnesses, letter or memo). Under Republican administrations, the budget and staff of the EEOC and OFCCP have been reduced. They have opposed class-action suits in favor of individual victim cases.
Equal Pay Act of 1963 – The Equal Pay Act prohibits employers from paying employees of one sex more than employees of the opposite sex when these employees are engaged in work that requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility and that is performed under similar working conditions. The benefits of a law designed to provide equal pay for equal work are limited since men and women are largely segregated into different jobs and predominantly female jobs are systematically devalued.
Other ideas – integrating lower-level positions first so there is a diverse pool from which to promote internally; waiving seniority requirements for promotion for women and minority job holders; expanding job posting throughout a workplace so that workers will be made award of position openings in areas that may not be closely elated to the ones in which they are currently working; setting up mentoring programs and establishing job “bridges” so that career paths in different areas may be connected.
Comparable worth – equal pay for different jobs of similar value in terms of factors such as skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions. Comparable worth requires, instead, that dissimilar work of equivalent value to the employer be paid the same wages.
”Achieving pay equity would not only put an extra $2,500 to $5,000 per year in the paychecks of those performing historically female work, it would empower them in other ways as well. It would make visible and positively reward the productive contribution of women’s labor. It would also empower women in their families, because contributions to family income have an important impact on family decision making. Pay equity is a matter of economic equity. “ Steinberg
20 states and 1,700 local jurisdictions have adopted comparable work policies (1300 are in Minnesota!)
Elimination of the "mommy track" - a new and subtle way that workplace gender inequality is reproduced.
"Family friendly workplace policies " on-site childcare, flexible working hours and parental leave that allow parents some flexibility in balancing work and family life. But Kimmel reminds us that in the United States, we continue to think of these reforms as women's issues. Work in the US is still organized under the assumption that worker are men, who, if they have children, also have a wife at home to care for them. Most employers, as well as most employees, continue to view childcare needs as a “private” rather than a business matter.
Family and Medial Leave Act – requires employers with fifty or more employees to offer both women and men up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave following the birth or adoption of a child or to care for a sick child or family member.
Good, affordable child care is hard to find. Infant care ranges from $4,000 (in a home) to $8,000 a year (in high-quality day care) in Eastern region of U.S. (statistics provided by State of Connecticut)
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