I’m tired ya’ll. It’s been 50+ years since the Civil Rights Act, Equal Pay Act and Roe v. Wade. We are still fighting the same fights our grandmothers fought and we are losing ground. Since we can no longer depend on SCOTUS and rights given by Congress can be taken away perhaps it’s time to talk about a new Equal Rights Amendment. One that clearly includes bodily autonomy.
First a humble ask for community assistance this month. I take a monthly injection shot manage inoperable NET tumors. I am disabled and on a fixed income. The copay for Lanreotide with Medicare is $1100 per month. I have half of that available but my daughter who usually helps me simply can’t this month. I need help with the remaining $550. If anyone could help I would really appreciate it.
paypal.me/SCarpio
Venmo @Stacey-Carpio
Cash app $g2ghawaii
This is a speech I gave recently to a group of college students. Hopefully it won’t make your eyes glaze over.
Let’s talk about a case study taught at many business schools. Howard is “a venture capitalist, former entrepreneur, and proficient networker. He is a friend of Bill Gates and was close to Steve Jobs. He maintains one of the most extensive networks in Silicon Valley” After studying the case, business school students were asked to evaluate Howard’s job performance. “They rated him as highly competent and effective. They also said that they liked him and would be willing to hire him or work with him.” Now Howard is a fictional person. These are all the very real accomplishments of Heidi Roizen. Heidi Roizen is a woman. When the students were given Heidi’s file with the exact same accomplishment’s they find Heidi as competent and effective but no longer like or want to work with her. Heidi violates social norms and faces a penalty. She has agency professionally, but people don’t like women who violate social norms. Whether or not you are liked plays a huge part in hiring, performance appraisal, raises, and promotions. Generally, women are considered likable or competent but not both.
You may be asking yourself how is this relevant to my life in 2024. Don’t we have laws against discrimination in hiring and paying women less than men? Well yes, yes we do but the legal remedies are ineffectual at best. The US Census showed in 2019 women working full time made on average 82% on the dollar as full-time men in the same professions and for women of color the pay gap is substantially larger. Lauren Collins of the New Yorker writes “American women effectively work from January 1st through March 15th of each year for free. Over a lifetime this results in an average cumulative pay gap of $590,000. The gap has actually increased since the Covid pandemic.
This example applies in the political arena as well. How many times have we been told that of course I’ll vote for a woman just not that one (or that one…..). When asked to give a reason the conversation gets uneasy and it ends up as a vague “I don’t know, I just don’t like her.”
Pay inequality and discrimination have been a subject of debate since the passage of civil rights legislation including The Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What shouldn’t be a political issue is. And at this point do we need to enshrine those rights into the U.S. Constitution by passing the Equal Rights Amendment?
In 2019, Cathi Herrod of the conservative Arizona Policy Institute argued against the ERA and used political culture war issues to deny that further legal action is needed. She argues for traditional family roles for women and that current law already protect women’s rights. Of course, rights given by Congress can be taken away.
The example of Lilly Ledbetter brought this to the legal forefront. Lily Ledbetter worked for Goodyear Tires for 19 years as an Area Manager. Before she retired her salary was fifteen percent less than the lowest paid male Area Manager and forty percent less than the highest paid male Area Manager. She sued for pay discrimination and a jury found in her favor. However, Goodyear appealed to the Supreme Court and the court decided to roll back years of precedence and threw out the case because Ledbetter had not sued within 180 days of the first instance of discrimination. Therein lies the problem. Women cannot depend on federal laws that make it difficult to impossible to redress all the issues of pay inequality and discrimination.
The Equal Pay Act has been unable to close wage disparities in the 50 years it has been in effect. To claim a violation of the Equal Pay Act the employee has to know and prove the salaries of men that perform the same job.
Some justify the pay gap based on the perception that women work less hours than men, are less educated, chose different career paths, are less committed to their job or that women don’t negotiate well. The argument that women are less educated in the workforce has largely been discredited.
Career paths or job segregation is a leading issue when trying to analyze pay gaps. For example, nursing and education have a majority female work force but these jobs still experience pay gaps by gender. “When the proportion of women performing a previously male dominated job increases, wages for that job decrease.”
Negotiation of salary is another issue that contributes to pay inequality. Negotiating for higher salaries is an important skill for women to know. People that don’t negotiate get paid less and it has a snowball effect.
Pay transparency has the bonus of allowing women to know salary ranges and what high versus low performers make. According to Orley Lobel in the 2020 Columbia Law review; “The new path of pay equity is to correct knowledge disparities in three key ways: (1) inducing more information about salaries, including protecting the exchange of information among employees; (2) reducing information that reflects existing biases by preventing employers from relying on, or even asking about, salary histories of new hires; and, (3) requiring broader explanatory information from employers about pay disparities by broadening the comparisons from “equal” work to “substantially similar” or “comparable” work, shifting the burden to employers to produce reasons for disparities that exist in their salary structures.
Women do tend to work fewer hours during the whole of their career. Though the statistics provided here take that into account and the pay differences are based on full time workers in similar jobs. This does bring us to the idea that women will not take their job as seriously and may leave or reduce their hours once they begin a family.
In 2016, Iris Bohnet, co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School said “Gender equality is not just a numbers game. Numbers matter, but how those numbers come to be and how they work with each other is quite possibly more important”. Most instances of inequality result from unconscious biases. Behavioral job design is another tool in our toolbox to address pay inequality and discrimination. It should be used alongside equal rights laws. Making work and family life compatible is also an imperative.
Sometimes gender bias is clear as in the case study of Howard Roizen. Unconscious bias is not the only type of gender inequality. People do discriminate against women and are fully aware that discrimination is the intent. These people will continue to do so until the consequences or penalty of discrimination overcome any benefit.
Pay inequality is still a moral hazard in the United States because of biases, inflexible job design and ineffectual legal remedies. Designing all jobs with the consideration that half of the positions could be held by women appears to be a forward way of considering job design.
In 2009 Jack Welch gave the keynote speech at the Society for Human Resources Management annual convention. It was a townhall event where he was asked questions from the audience. All was well until Gwen Ifill asked him what his thoughts were on work life balance. His answer was: “Bullshit. There’s no such thing as work life balance.” He said that if women want to take off time to have children, then they would not reach the corner office.” The majority woman audience collectively gasped. Then he went on to say if women didn’t like it, they should just start their own businesses. The thing to keep in mind is he wasn’t asked about women taking time off to have children he was asked about work life balance for all employees. His answer was a signal to women. The way work is designed and accepted by the corporate world is inflexible and antiquated. It is still based on the idea that a generic worker will have someone at home to provide free labor so that said worker can work and never have a need that inconveniences the company.
Now is not the time to be weary. Now is the time to act.
1. Vote Blue! Vote in every election!
2. Get involved. Call your elected representatives.
3. Support your labor unions.
4. Support the women you work with. Don’t gate keep pay information.