Wage and Gender

[jacib]

Perhaps someone will find the link to the original thread where we started this, but there was something interesting in the Times today: Women Say Their Marriage is Richer For It. (I should point out growing up my mother always made more money than my professor father). It reminded me of something Roll Right was talking about in another thread.

[hip2btriangle]

now while we're all fretting about adcom decisions, THIS is a productive way to waste our time. doing what we do best -- yammer on about sociology as it happens!

i find this quote particularly interesting:

"Kristen W. Springer, a sociologist at Rutgers, has found that among men in their 50s, having a wife who earns more money is associated with poorer health. Among the highest earning couples in her study, a husband who earns less than his wife is 60 percent less likely to be in good health compared with men who earn more than their wives."

the way the story is written, it's almost suggesting that if women make more the result will be that their husbands' health will deteriorate. in my own family, when my mom started becoming the breadwinner and my dad's business started to fail -- sure, he went through some tough times emotionally, got depressed, his health deteriorated. these are things that happen when your career feels like it's going down the tube. but perhaps it's more that career success for men is hinged closely with their (healthier) sense of self?

[hip2btriangle]

also, a "discussion" page with professors/practitioners on this issue and the "mancession" (this term really riles me up, by the way) and "alpha wives": http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/alpha-wives-the-trend-and-the-truth/

the responses by a lot of these professors are really quite good. really enjoyed kathleen gerson's response in particular:

"Whether or not the decline of the traditional couple is “new” news, is it bad news or good? Many worry that the rise of women workers undermines men’s sense of self and pushes them to leave women in the lurch. While this sometimes happens, such a scenario underestimates the resilience and flexibility of women and men alike."

i think this reflects a real confidence in newer (gendered) arrangements of couples.

i do think the news does play a pretty cruel part in all of this though -- the title is kind of obnoxious. just because you're the breadwinner, does it mean you're the alpha in the house? why does making the money imply that you're the sole/primary leader of the family arrangement?

[Roll Right]

I'm just posting something from a previous thread, but I want to make sure everyone is starting on the same wave-length.

Here's some evidence against ongoing gender discrimination out of a very good book called the Meritocracy Myth. You'll see that seadub is right, its 79 cents on the dollar. I was mistaken about the numbers being just about equal. But this isn't due to ridiculous discrimination practices, as Jacib pointed out. And the closing wage gap is actually due to the falling wages of men. And no, its not getting worse. In fact its getting better.

"In 2007, the median earnings for full-time, year around female workers was 79 percent of the median hourly wage of male counterparts, whereas in 1970 it was only 60 percent (US Bureau of the Census 2007). However, the rate at which the male-female wage gap has declined has slowed in recent decades, perhaps indicating that the most blatant forms of wage discrimination have largely been eliminated, but remaining subtler forms may be more difficult to overcome. In addition, much of the recent wage-gap reduction is due to the falling wages of men rather than the increasing wages of women. Also, the gains relative to male incomes have been experienced mostly by upper class women, whereas incomes for lower-class woman have remained stagnant. (Massey 2007, 240; Mishel, Bernstein, and Allegretto 2007, 163)."

This has to do with the male domination in upper level management and CEO/partner positions. This is where things get really interesting. Male partners in firms are unlikely to take female lawyers under their wing, as they don't want to risk their reputations by allegations of sexual harassment or sexual misconduct. They don't want to start rumors around the office, basically. Also there is a king shit affect that Ellis Cose identified, highly successful women who have convinced themselves they got as far as the did alone, and are unwilling to support other women in lower level positions because of it. Frankly the pay gap we see right now is largely due to two factors, 1)birth (as you mentioned), 2) Old men holding on to their positions of power and high pay. When they die, the next in line for many high powered white collar jobs are women. heres some numbers here:

"By 2005, women earned 58 percent of all bachelors degrees, 60 percent of all master's degrees, and 49 percent of all doctoral degrees (National Center for Education Statistics 2007a). Women have also achieved parity or near parity in professional degrees in law (48 percent), and podiatry (45 percent), and they have far exceeded men in earning degrees in optometry (59 percent), pharmacy (67 percent) and veterinary medicine (77 percent)...Likewise, women are rapidly closing the gaps in degrees in the male-dominated field of engineering..."

So this all really makes sense. Consider the time line..the increase in wages since the 1960's is due to a flood of women into high paying technical/professional positions. The number of women gaining higher degrees will create a huge influx of females in hiring processes to replace old men who pass their jobs off after retirement/death. The fall in pay for men is likely due to their minority status in the education field. The wage gap is probably closing also because the men who are dominating the labor market in high paying positions are slowly dying off, hence the drop in wages as well.

[Roll Right]

Yeah, this whole alpha crap is bothersome. Frankly, money should have little to do with who calls the shots in a relationship. I tend to think to the ideal type, an egalitarian relationship of equal say and equal responsibility. It's important to get away from this obsession with salary earnings and who's buying the milk at the end of the day. We're going to end up creating a stereotype of women with high earnings, the "dominant domineering wife who runs the show". Isn't that what men have been criticized over for years?

[jacib]

Yeah, this whole alpha crap is bothersome. Frankly, money should have little to do with who calls the shots in a relationship. I tend to think to the ideal type, an egalitarian relationship of equal say and equal responsibility. It's important to get away from this obsession with salary earnings and who's buying the milk at the end of the day. We're going to end up creating a stereotype of women with high earnings, the "dominant domineering wife who runs the show". Isn't that what men have been criticized over for years?

Growing up in my household, I think the division of labor was key to success. My mother and father ended up in charge of different domains, but not necessarily the typically gendered male/female ones. My father was in charge of bills and organizing household repairs, traditional male responsibilities, mainly because he is better at taking care of those regularly scheduled things. My mother did laundry because she thought my father did a really bad job at it. My mother was in charge of buying us clothes, until my older sister took over that responsibility in high school, first for herself, then for me. All those are the traditional gender roles. However, my father had a more flexible schedule so he was the one who picked us up from after school programs and took us to soccer/basketball. He also was more in charge of organizing childcare. My mother liked music more, so she was the one who dealt with our music lessons. My father probably cooked four nights a week, my mother one. My mother, the main wage earner, wasn't always home for dinner, so she fulfilled the typical male role of a parent whose appearance at dinner was special occasion complete with different rules. Mom helped us with math/science homework, dad with everything else (I think that was my choice though... I just intuitively understood who to ask about what). My fathers cleaning never met my mother's standards so every two weeks or so a nice woman came and cleaned our house. That was the only example of the classic paradigm of a woman of color being brought in to do the household work that the mother no longer had time to do after working outside the home. We had no family in the area so the kids couldn't be sent off to relatives, but there was (as I mentioned) an affordable after school program that took care of us until my father could pick us up at 5:00 (which meant my father had to finish his last class at like 4:20 probably).

Anyway, the point is, in my family no one was "in charge of the family" but rather, each parent took responsibility for different sectors, not necessarily following gender norms. I teach in Turkey now, and many of my students have working mothers. It's so much fun to tally on the board how many hours their mothers work at home and how many hours their fathers do. Their fathers average like 15 minutes a day, their mothers much more. The men can cook meat (basically barbeque) and eggs (a special kind of Turkish scrambled eggs called menemen). Rarely did the men know how to do laundry. Their mothers continued to clean their rooms even after they were in their twenties. The women were optimistic but also realistic, "I would be nice if men did more, but..." while the men generally did not recgonize it as a problem or just laughed it off. One woman nearly made me cry (the same week I met her husband and beautiful four year old daughter) by saying "In marriage, a man loses his freedom and a woman her happiness". When I protested she explained to me that this was not a traditional Turkish saying but rather came from Oscar Wilde. Anyway, it reminded me of how much has changed in America. I think that successful relationships with two wage earners, especially if the two are earning comparable salaries requiring comparable levels of education and experience, require a redistribution of household work. And it's not that one person is the master of the house, but rather, each parent is a master of certain household work subcommittees. I can't cite the works right now, but that's definitely been both my subjective experience as a child of such a household and the experience suggested by the empirical evidence I've encountered.

Another key to success was at least one partner needed to have time flexibility in order to take care of children. One of the main reasons I wanted to be a professor is that it offered enough flexibility that I feel would allow my partner to pursue any career, no matter how time intensive. My father's ability to work from home, be ready to pick us up at 5:00 (when after school ended) everyday, and take care of us in his office on sick days all allowed my mother to work crazy, unpredictable emergency room hours.

Neither of them has to do with wage per se, but flexibility and household work I feel are the two big non-wage restrictions on what work is even possible with kids. (sorry if that was a little incoherent and rambling, but my main point was there are I'd say two more big factors in raising kids, and that so far mostly women have had to make sacrifices and take the job with more flexible hours, but as women get more educated, I think more and more, we'll see the two approaching equilibrium, probably starting with white collar families [class is another huge issue that no one has touched on]).

[hip2btriangle]

re: jacib:

i agree, i think that we really have to recognize that our complaining about the way things are in the U.S. is quite a privilege. we don't have to look far to realize that things are much worse off and/or more complicated elsewhere.

but i do think there are some warning signs, here. any argument about how "men just can't do laundry" or that one gender just does something better i really think is a confused muddle of justifying existing gender arrangements. i think it's a result of essentializing the male gender to just assume that they naturally don't know how to do laundry, and enjoying the roleplay of creating and reproducing such a category. it may be sad that some women laugh off their husband's inability to do housework, but if men suddenly changed and did all the housework and female-typical tasks...would they still be attractive, authentic men? the explosion of articles on the mancession and all this craziness is a result of how these shifts affect our understandings and conceptualizations of gender. i mean, it feels like sometimes that the mere THOUGHT that a woman is the breadwinner would imply that she is TAKING OVER! (re: alpha female), and seems to imply that there may be a crisis brewing.

i agree that a lot of this is complicated and enmeshed in regional history, politics, existing gender arrangements, and the real challenges of maintaining a home and a family, but i just hope that the end result is by and large a restructuring of gender within families and a new understanding of what it can mean to be "male" and "female" (or rather, that it really shouldn't matter).

[jacib]

Regarding the "Alpha Wives" thing, I've talked to my old man about this and he says that, especially in the past, people would talk to him and say, "You know.. doesn't it bother you... you know... a little... that your wife makes more than you?" And my dad was basically like "Shit no! Why on earth would it bother me to have more money?" Growing up in a house like I did, I don't know, I guess I just never got why it would, and I would guess that's definitely the way society is moving. My dad would also add that a lot of his own academic success was afforded to him by his wife's salary: at an early point in his career, because of my mom's salary, he was able to take an extra semester off and finished his first book, which really helped him get all the jobs he's had since then. The two wage earners, particularly in the white collar context, have certain advantages. Like the fact that my mother could also take time off to earn a master's degree, between the family savings and my father's salary.

[hip2btriangle]

Regarding the "Alpha Wives" thing, I've talked to my old man about this and he says that, especially in the past, people would talk to him and say, "You know.. doesn't it bother you... you know... a little... that your wife makes more than you?" And my dad was basically like "Shit no! Why on earth would it bother me to have more money?" Growing up in a house like I did, I don't know, I guess I just never got why it would, and I would guess that's definitely the way society is moving. My dad would also add that a lot of his own academic success was afforded to him by his wife's salary: at an early point in his career, because of my mom's salary, he was able to take an extra semester off and finished his first book, which really helped him get all the jobs he's had since then. The two wage earners, particularly in the white collar context, have certain advantages. Like the fact that my mother could also take time off to earn a master's degree, between the family savings and my father's salary.

sigh. if i want to be a prof., i'm going to have to marry rich, aren't i?

[jacib]

re: jacib:

i agree, i think that we really have to recognize that our complaining about the way things are in the U.S. is quite a privilege. we don't have to look far to realize that things are much worse off and/or more complicated elsewhere.

but i do think there are some warning signs, here. any argument about how "men just can't do laundry" or that one gender just does something better i really think is a confused muddle of justifying existing gender arrangements. i think it's a result of essentializing the male gender to just assume that they naturally don't know how to do laundry, and enjoying the roleplay of creating and reproducing such a category. it may be sad that some women laugh off their husband's inability to do housework, but if men suddenly changed and did all the housework and female-typical tasks...would they still be attractive, authentic men? the explosion of articles on the mancession and all this craziness is a result of how these shifts affect our understandings and conceptualizations of gender. i mean, it feels like sometimes that the mere THOUGHT that a woman is the breadwinner would imply that she is TAKING OVER! (re: alpha female), and seems to imply that there may be a crisis brewing.

i agree that a lot of this is complicated and enmeshed in regional history, politics, existing gender arrangements, and the real challenges of maintaining a home and a family, but i just hope that the end result is by and large a restructuring of gender within families and a new understanding of what it can mean to be "male" and "female" (or rather, that it really shouldn't matter).

Oh no you misunderstood me. My mother's argument was that my father can't do laundry well, not men can't. My father frequently washed his own clothes, but he simply has different standards than my mother does (she made sure to rub out all the stains, use softener, put all the delicate on handwash, properly use bleach, etc) so he never washes her clothes, and when the kids lived there, she did all of that, too. However, she made sure I could do laundry (to her standards, not my father's) starting in high school. It wasn't about the male and female spheres, it was about what they were good out. My father did more hours of household work than my mother, particularly in terms of cooking (he has dinner on the table when she gets home), and was certainly more responsible to childcare when we were young. Laundry was actually the main weekly thing she did.

I think it in the end does need to be what the individual does well. Sometimes it will fall into traditional gender roles, sometimes it won't. Most men today I believe know how to do laundry, at least. In my house growing up, my father took care of all the bills (so in my head it's a traditionally male task, but forgive me if it is not). Last time I lived with a woman, she did. Now I live with a man, and I have to because he's absolutely crap at it (we got our internet cut off last week, and I had to go get it turned back on). I think these are more fluid responsibilities that honestly do depend on the competencies of the individual.

Re: Turkey. It's clear, though, that it's moving the same way the US was 20, 30 or maybe even 50 years ago. The whole world, I believe, will eventually go through these same growing pains. Education, especially in the urban areas and especially at the post secondary level, is equalizing here too. Everything else will eventually have to follow after that.

[jacib]

sigh. if i want to be a prof., i'm going to have to marry rich, aren't i?

No, not at all. We definitely had some family friends in academia, and at least one of my friends' fathers was the sole bread winner. But more often the two partners seemed to hold roughly equal position. I believe this is especially true in places where cost of living is lower (like college towns). I got the impression at my (private, urban, prestigious) undergraduate institution that a high proportion of professors were main wage earners (or equal earners) in their families, but I don't know exactly what caused that impression. I didn't meet too many of their spouses.