The day after the executive director of RedState Women
babbled about being busy and juggling things when asked about equal pay remedies, Texas Republicans sent out their executive director to try to fix things by at least being prepared for the question. Her answer, while better on style,
wasn't much better on substance:
"Men are better negotiators," Beth Cubriel said on YNN’s "Capital Tonight." "I would encourage women, instead of pursuing the courts for action, to become better negotiators."
Right. Okay. Just negotiate! Never mind that you might not know what to ask for because, without passage of the
Paycheck Fairness Act, it's easy for employers to keep pay information a secret. And even if you know exactly what you want and are prepared to negotiate, it's not that simple—at least,
not if you're a woman:
... research shows that initiating negotiations while female can be dangerous business. In a 2007 study, Linda Babcock and Hannah Riley Bowles found that men and women were less likely to want to both hire and work with women who asked for raises; the go-getting femmes were perceived as demanding and uncollegial. Raise-seeking men, on the other hand, faced no backlash at all: Not only did the study participants tend to grant them lots of (hypothetical) perks, but socially their images went untarnished.
Also included in the Paycheck Fairness Act, the pay gap remedy that Republicans have been blocking for years? Funding for training women how to negotiate salaries.
But what if negotiation fails? What if an employer is simply determined to pay women less than men? Republicans don't have an answer beyond "don't take it to court." Which means their real answer is that pay inequities should continue. When you cut through the dodging and obfuscation, that's what Republican spokespeople are saying, again and again and again.
