I received, by email, an article about possible reasons why women do in fact make as much as men for the same work, and that women, if they're not making as much as men, can easily do so if they make the right choices. Apparently, the author of a book called "Why Men Earn More" thinks that there are 25 things that women can do if they want to be as successful as men. Basically, they must, in the long run, choose what we think of as prototypical male choices: work longer hours, choose to work in higher paying fields, and my favorite: be more productive. Women, apparently, trade higher pay for quality of life, and if they want to make as much as the boys, they have to stop doing this.
I appreciate (no, that's lie, I don't) the sentiment of the article, but I think it's a horribly flawed argument. It's flawed because the system is flawed. Nobody should be working 80 hours a week--man or woman. We're handicapping women because they refuse to do so (because many women work a 40 hour week at home on top of the 40 hour week they put in at the office, and not very many men do the same)--because they choose to have families, but not handicapping men for the same reason. The system is inherently sexist (and racist, I might add). The author makes the argument that the system cannot be sexist, because if it was, women would be hired more often than men. You could pay them less, and thus, have a price advantage over your competitors.
But I think that's bullshit. Sexism isn't logical like that. Just like racism isn't logical. It's a system designed to keep out people who "don't belong" and it has nothing, really, to do with profit. I'm having a really hard time putting this into words--but the gist of it is, we're really ass-backwards when it comes to employee rights and the work week and women in the workplace. Oh, we pretend we're really great at all that, but we fucking suck at it. We are forgetting how to have leisure time. An eighty hour week leaves NO time for a life. We need to kill a system that's demanding this of workers, no matter who they are. We need to kill a system that is so greedy that it's no longer about profit, but about obscene, dirty profits.
And listen, it's not a coincidence that women hold more low-paying jobs. Who fucking designed those jobs? A long time ago, some white man did. Because you can bet it wasn't a black man, or a white woman, or a black woman who decided that teachers should hardly make enough to live. And frankly, you can tell me up and down and twice on Sunday that being a teacher is easy because the hours are good, but I know you're wrong (teachers work loooong hours; the job does come home with them; have you ever graded papers? I have.). The job is undervalued because WOMEN traditionally did it. That's a fucking bad reason, and think for a second about how much you pay the people who take care of your kids all day long. Who maybe spend more time with your kids than you, because you're working an 80 hour week. It's the same story with librarians--who should be paid less than teachers, but who still teach--and nurses (who make less than doctors, but do most of the caring). And you can find plenty of other professions like this.
This author seems to think that men should get a pat on the back for doing jobs that no one else will do, and so they get rewarded financially. But no one wants to be a teacher. Teaching shortages are common all over the country. And fuck you, to the author, because the real people doing the jobs no one wants to do are the immigrants, who cut your lawn and clean your toilets, for peanuts. No white kid wants to be a landscaper (unless he owns the landscaping company) and no white kid wants to clean hotel rooms. And the jobs he mentions--roofing, prison guarding and coal mining--these aren't high paid jobs! In some towns, prisons are the only industry, and so you guard because you have to. And I have news for this guy--the people doing roofing and coal mining--they're not suburban white guys. They don't have 50,000 dollar cars and flat screen TVs. Yeah, women don't do that kind of work, but neither do white men named one of the 100 most influential thought leaders. Middle class men don't do that work anymore either. It's the people who are so marginalized in this country by the ruling class that they'll take any fucking job, if it'll put food on their table.
What this issue is, really, at its heart, is a class issue. The worse a job is, the lower class the person is doing it. And make no mistake about it, in this country, women are a separate and lesser (yes! lesser) class than men. (And yes, there are exceptions. But this is generalizing, and so I recognize that this is not ALL situations, but most.) We pretend we're not a classist society in the US, but we are. We totally are. So frankly, lumping coal miners and CEO's together as a group and saying that they're proof that women can make as much money as men if they make the right choices--well, that's fucking ridiculous. The jobs are nothing alike, and the people who do them are nothing alike. And make the choices to work those jobs for totally different and uncomparable reasons.
(And I can't even talk about the jobs we value most in this country because I could go on forever: actors? sports stars? CEOs? I hate to be a bitch, but who's making that money? MEN. There are highly paid female actors, but pitifully few, compared to their male cohorts. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. The millionaires should be the teachers and cops, the fire fighters and the people who save lives. Not the men who save goals and hit home runs. And female athletes? That's still for the glory, baby, and a way smaller paycheck.)
Anyway, I could talk about this until my hands cramp up, but I'm done for now. I need sleep and some nice Puffs Plus to wipe my red nose on.
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