Earnings on Need v. Merit

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about income inequality and the wage gap.  The former focuses on the increasing discrepancy between the most affluent in our society v. everyone else, with particular emphasis on those at the bottom of the wage scale.  The latter is the term used to describe that women have historically been paid less than men, even for the same work.  Even today, though the wage gap has shrunk, various estimates seem to agree that women still only make 70+% of what a man makes in the workplace.

I think both issues are important but I wanted to flag that their underlying concerns are based on distinct theories of compensation. 

Income inequality is based on the concern that those at the lower end of the wage scale are not being paid adequately.  They aren't earning enough to support themselves and their families.  If the workers at the lower end of the wage scale were all driving BMWs and vacationing in Aspen, no one would care about income inequality.  But the driving force in the coining of that term is that some are growing richer and richer in our society while the ranks of the poor explode.  It is that imbalance that is thought to be unhealthy.  But in the income inequality debate, there is no discussion about whether workers at the lower end of the wage scale are being paid their worth. 

Walmart is held up as the poster child of contributing to an exploding underclass with workers who are often being subsidized by taxpayers via SNAP, food stamps and Medicaid.  However, Walmart is premised on a business model with thin margins.  Though their gross revenue is huge, their actual profits are relatively thin.  They make the profits they do by doing everything on the cheap.  They force suppliers to undervalue their goods, their parking lots are notoriously dark, and shopping carts often clog their parking lots because of inadequate staffing to retrieve them.  In such a business model, all of Walmart's non-executive employees are poorly compensated.

But the wage gap is different.  It is premised on the idea that people should be paid what they earn regardless of their gender.  If a man is paid X for a job, a woman should not be paid X - 30% when she does the same job.  The wage gap has nothing to do with concern about whether people are being paid a livable wage.  Indeed, the wage gap is often particularly noticeable in the glass ceiling context when elite women are paid less than their male counterparts.  Lower down the wage scale, minimum wage often sets a floor to prevent a gender wage gap.

However, the wage gap originated in the idea that men needed their wages more because they had families to support, while women who worked just for "pin money."  Women's wages were for fun amusements while men's wages put food on the table for hungry children. 

I flag this difference between income inequality and the wage gap because I think it gets to fundamental issues in our economy.  We are a capitalist society that believes we should get what we earn.  As a culture, we eschew communitarian societies and a robust safety net.  So, the concerns over income inequality (which is dependent more on the latter) and the wage gap (which emphasize the former) are in some ways at odds with one another.

 

"So, You're a Republican?"

I know the term "Red State Feminist" is confusing to many.  Some may think that embracing that label, I am indicating I am a registered Republican.  Actually, I am not.  I have lived in red states all my life, but I'm pretty progressive.

But I'm not totally out of step with the dominant values in my local culture.  Family and faith are hugely important to me.  I am a Christian who is very active in her church.  And I am now a full-time, stay-at-home mom, having left my professional career behind a year ago to focus more on my kids and volunteering at my church.  I don't really related to "Blue State Feminism," which is why I embrace the concept of Red State Feminism though I am not a Republican.

It has been said that Blue State Feminism has been dominate in shaping the modern feminist movement.  And NOW (National Organization for Women) is typically viewed as the leading organization of that movement.  NOW consistently lists as one of its top priorities access to "safe and legal abortion."  (See: http://now.org/about/our-issues/.) 

Perhaps like many women, the clichéd labels of "pro choice" and "pro life" don't adequately describe what I think is a more complex issue.  I'll explain more later, but suffice it now to say that I think that medical abortions should remain legal, but I find it a sad tragedy when women exercise that choice.  As I'll explain more later, I do not judge or condemn such women.  Indeed, some are coerced by their partners or families to seek abortion against their will.  But I find it so sad on many levels when a woman terminates her pregnancy.  And I am less conservative on this issue than many similarly situated women.  As NOW is consistently viewed as being so focused on that particular issue, it alienates many family-oriented women from its organization and from feminism more broadly.  To many people in red states, being a feminist largely means being indifferent to "unborn children" and rabidly protecting abortion rights.

Also a top priority of NOW in recent decades, the organization is a strong supporter of "LGBT rights."  I too am a supporter of LGBT rights.  But many see that as only tangentially related to feminism.  It adds to the stereotype that NOW and feminism more generally are governed by lesbians.  Again, that alienates many people in red states, many of whom cite deep religious beliefs for their conviction that homosexuality is a sinful choice.

Abortion and lesbian rights are so closely aligned with the cause of feminism in the minds of many red state residents.  They don't necessarily think feminism can involve any other issues.  So, it becomes quite predictable that feminism--or at least the blue state version of it--is DOA in red states. 

Think about how narrow the potential audience for those two key issues. 

Abortion is only a potential choice for women of child-bearing years.  The average age for the onset of menses is 12 or 13, and the average age for a woman to go through menopause is 51.  (See: http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20061107/menstruation-whats-normal-for-girls and http://www.nia.nih.gov/health/publication/menopause.)  That means that, on average, a woman could become pregnant for 38-39 years of her life time.  But the average life expectancy for women is 86.  (See: http://www.ssa.gov/planners/lifeexpectancy.htm.).  Thus, more than half of the life time of an average woman abortion is not even a physical possibility! 

The relevance of abortion is narrowed even more because most females don't become sexually active immediately at the onset of menses.  Further, contraception is widely used in the United States, which limits even more the potential for pregnancies when abortion might be considered. 

I have had many close female friends over the years, a few of which have confided that they have had abortions to terminate unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.  In every case, the pregnancies occurred when the women were in their teens or early twenties.  They had been sexually active with people they were not prepared to marry.  In several instances, the women had used a lot of alcohol and/or narcotics before realizing they were pregnant.  In those situations, the decision to seek an abortion was in part due to concern that the child would otherwise be born with severe birth defects or other health problems.

Over the years, I have also had several friends share that they considered having an abortion at some point, though they did not ultimately seek one.  In those situations, there were quite different commonalities.  These women were older (i.e., in their 30s), happily married, healthy and comfortable financially.  These women also were already mothers and loved that role.  However, the consideration of selecting to terminate their fetus was prompted by prenatal test results indicating their child had severe health issues that would be a huge long-term challenge, which they were unsure they could handle given their resources and support system. 

More frequently in my social circles, I have encountered women who struggle with infertility.  IVF and adoption issues (including the huge costs associated with both options) have been much more prominent with the women I've known. 

I flag all these points simply to note how limited appeal the issue of abortion rights is and how alienating it is to many women, particularly in red states.

Similarly limited is the appeal of LGBT rights.  Sexual minorities are just that--numerical minorities.  Though it is notoriously difficult to estimate the percentage of people in society who are gay, it is safe to say the number is less than 10% of the general population.  And the number of lesbians tends to be smaller than the number of gay men.  (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States.) 

While it is true that people who are not directly impacted by issues can be motivated by them, that happens less frequently and will generally less passion.  One tends to get more motivated to support issues, with which one has familiarity and for which one has a personal interest.  For this reason, the public's continual linkage of these two issues with feminism means that Blue State Feminism will be DOA for a long time to come.


 

Back Story Part II (College)

I went off to college when I finished high school.  I attended a massive university where it was hard initially to find my place in the sea of thousands of faces.  There were a lot of student organizations, however, and I tried a few to find my place.  I chose groups with interests aligned with mine.  One was the student chapter of NOW--National Organization of Women.  I figured I was interested in women's rights, I should get involved with like minded young women.  It didn't end up being a good fit.

Actually, I went to just one meeting.  After only a few minutes of listening to the group's leaders discuss current projects and upcoming events, I quickly realized that pretty much all the attendees were lesbians.  Even as an immature, not particularly sensitive teen, I had no problem with homosexuals.  Not to be cliché, but some of my closest friends are gay.  However, I am not.  And sitting in that NOW meeting, I really felt like I didn't fit in.  In fact, I kept wondering if the whole rest of the world knew something I did not.  Maybe "women's rights" was code for "lesbian rights."  But I was confused why that would be.  I didn't understand why I appeared to be the only straight woman in attendance.  And I was uncomfortable.  I was worried that if I spoke, somehow everyone would figure out I was not gay and I'd be unwelcome, maybe even embarrassed for having apparently violated some unwritten rule.  So, I never went back to NOW.  Interestingly, the president of that group later became the president of the largest LGBT student organization on campus. 

That was my freshman year.  As a senior, I took my one and only Women's Studies course.  I was a foreign language major and it was cross listed with my department.  I was very excited and had high hopes.  Unfortunately, I was very disappointed.  The course was not that interesting, but that was not the problem.  I learned more about the country whose culture we were studying, and very little about women's history or perspectives.  Oh, well.  But the real problem came when I was shocked to get a very low grade on a paper I wrote.  The grade itself was not even the worst part.  My writing was my strength in college.  I wrote a lot of papers for my courses.  They tended to be very well-received.  I was even told they were among the best some professors had received.  So, it was odd to me that I received such a bad grade on the paper for this Women's Studies course.  I had worked hard on it and it seemed to me to be solid.  However, the professor had not given me much feedback to explain the grade.  We had several other papers in the course, I was worried I'd bring down my GPA if I continued on that path.  I've never challenged a prof's grade or even communicated disappointment or disagreement to a prof about a grade.  But I did work my courage up to talk to this professor to see if she could give me some insight as to what I did wrong and where I needed to improve.  That was where the real lessons and disappointment over the course came.  When I spoke with her, she said that she didn't really have any specific suggestions, but she was under a lot of pressure from the university administration to not inflate grades, so she had to give a lot of low grades to avoid push back from the powers that be.  She specifically said that female professors in particular are often perceived as pushovers and she had to prove she was strong.  She was an un-tenured professor, and in retrospect she was apparently concerned about being perceived as weak by the tenure review board.

I thought a lot about her words over the semester and beyond.  I thought about whether other female professors I had had gave in to such pressures.  But then I began to realize I'd made it to my senior year with only a few female instructors.  One was near retirement when she taught me.  She was tenured, perhaps one of the few women in her department to have earned that distinction.  But she seemed to lead a lonely life with her cat.  She was an eccentric, very harsh professor.  She liked me a lot because I was always prepared.  But she was cruel and humiliated those who were not prepared or who did not have a real aptitude for her subject.  Another female instructor I had was an untenured, but brilliant prof.  I learned so much from her.  She actually tended to give overly high grades to students and was well-liked as a result.  I looked her up a few years after graduation.  Despite being highly respected, she was never granted tenure.  The other female instructors I had had were graduate students or lecturers--people who were not on the tenure track. 

So, that Women's Studies course was a bit of an eye-opener.  I had been raised in the post-Title IX period to think we were all equal.  The women's movement was over because all the major battles were over and we were on the same playing field.  It had never occurred to me this was not the case.  I was perplexed that my female professors might be judged differently from the male ones.  I had had plenty of male professors who were demanding--but not one whom I'd classify as "cruel" or who tried to humiliate students.  I had also had male professors who were very gentle and kind.  It began to dawn on me that maybe they could afford to be nice because they did not have the kind of pressures the female profs apparently had due to the way they were judged by their superiors.  By then, I didn't have many classes left prior to graduation, but I did consciously consider the gender of the instructor.  Frankly, I was hesitant to take a course with another female professor.  I am not proud of that, but I'm being honest.  I feared that out of self-preservation, the female professors would be harsher than the males.

Another gender-based realization had also slowly dawned on me in college.  My high school was a high performing magnet school with near universal college attendance.  We had all been groomed for college for years.  It was not a question of if but of where.  And many of my colleagues ended up at highly competitive, prestigious universities.  I remember seeing a list at graduation indicating where we were going and what we were studying.  There was not a real gender difference based on the prestige of the universities we had chosen.  But there was a marked difference in terms of our majors.  A significant number of the male graduates listed engineering, a few indicated accounting.  The women tended to list various liberal arts majors, a few indicated sciences.  Many female graduates were undecided.  I too was vaguely in the liberal arts camp.  Honestly, it hadn't occurred to me there was another option. 

What really struck me was all our male colleagues choosing engineering.  I'm completely sincere when I write that I had never heard of that major.  I'm not joking when I write that I thought it had something to do with working on a train.  I wasn't really sure what accounting was either, but I vaguely understood it involved business.  For years, I've thought about this marked difference in our chosen majors.  We girls sat in those same math classes as the guys.  But somehow the guys got the message about engineering as a career, and we girls did not. 

Think of the implications.  The starting salaries for engineers v. liberal arts majors is huge and disparity continues throughout one's career.  Having worked in the petroleum industry for a number of years, I have witnessed firsthand the incredible paucity of women in engineering.  There are so few that I've heard the women describe the horrible isolation they experience and plan for a change to a different career--typically staying home to raise kids or becoming school teachers.  Not only do those female engineers end up economically disadvantaged, but the whole profession misses out tremendously from a lack of a more diverse perspective.  It cannot be a good thing when a profession is so homogenous.  We overlook things when group think sets in.