Men's Lack of Choice and the Pay Gap

Men's Lack of Choices and the Pay Gap
By Denise Noe


Martha Burk has written, "women working full time, year round, still
make only 76 cents for ever dollar that a man makes." Then she
attacks "naysayers" who claim that the difference is due to a tendency
for women to choose jobs that have less risk and says "Tell that to
the women cleaning toilets at the airport or caring for HIV patients
in hospitals every day."

Is a woman cleaning toilets in as much danger as a man hanging off the
side of a garbage truck or being hoisted in a lift so her can trim the
tops of trees? While there may be some risk in caring for HIV
patients, are nurses as apt to be injured or killed on the job as
construction workers, miners, and firefighters?

She had also attacked the argument "that motherhood - not sex
discrimination - is the real culprit" and added, "If that's so, we all
need to take a hard look at why the workplace punishes women for being
mothers, but fatherhood carries no economic risk at all."

Perhaps this is not a case of the workplace punishing mothers, but of
culture granting few choices to fathers. Mothers typically can choose
to stay home with the baby full-time, combine caring for the child
with work outside the home, or continue to work full-time after a
birth.

When men become fathers, they usually spend more time away from home
than before in order to support their families rather than cutting
back on outside work to be with babies. Is this because men possess
more delicate sensibilities than the rougher, grungier women and so
are more averse to dirty diapers and spit up? Since men do not get
pregnant or give birth, this is possible but the high representation
of men in jobs such as garbage collector, sewage worker and plumber,
occupations in which the worker gets dirty and can be assaulted by
foul odors, tends to belie the hypothesis. Warren Farrell in The Myth
of Male Power claims that the majority of men he has talked to said
they would take time off from work to be with their newborns but only
if the family would not suffer financially. Even if their wives
worked outside the home, the men he interviewed still felt the
ultimate burden of financial support was on their shoulders. Thus,
they suppressed their true desire to be with their young believing it
was for the good of their wives and children.

The Fair Pay Act that Burk touts has languished on Capital Hill
because it is anything but fair since it means that people must be
paid on basis of what some experts determine are equal "skill, effort,
responsibility and working conditions, even if the actual work is
dissimilar." The demand that apples and oranges be treated
identically is hardly fair. In a free market, capitalist system it
would also seem simply unworkable.

The truth is that there are many day-to-day discriminations against
men that go largely unnoticed and unremarked. Nightclubs often allow
women in free while men pay cover charges. When a man and woman are
in a restaurant, serving persons in restaurants may automatically take
the bill to the woman. Men who cannot take the heat of the labor
market do not have the option of getting back to the kitchen. Indeed,
the fact that men have no respectable "out" from the labor force is
reflected in how disproportionately men are represented among those at
society's very bottom. Roughly 85% of the homeless are men as are the
vast majority of the imprisoned.

Perhaps the difference between male and female pay rates decrease will
when men have more choices so they do not feel trapped in the labor
market.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Mens Lack of Choices and the Pay Gap
    ... Martha Burk has written, "women working full time, year round, still ... being mothers, but fatherhood carries no economic risk at all." ... promotion that requires relocating to another state than women. ...
    (soc.women)
  • Re: Mens Lack of Choice and the Pay Gap
    ... Martha Burk has written, "women working full time, year round, still ... mothers, but fatherhood carries no economic risk at all." ... Men who cannot take the heat of the labor ...
    (soc.men)
  • Re: "Mens Lack of Choices and the Pay Gap"
    ... Martha Burk has written, "women working full time, year round, still ... being mothers, but fatherhood carries no economic risk at all." ... this is possible but the high representation of men in jobs ...
    (soc.men)
  • "Mens Lack of Choices and the Pay Gap"
    ... Men's Lack of Choices and the Pay Gap ... Martha Burk has written, "women working full time, year round, still ... being mothers, but fatherhood carries no economic risk at all." ...
    (soc.men)
  • Mens Lack of Choices and the Pay Gap
    ... Men's Lack of Choices and the Pay Gap ... Martha Burk has written, "women working full time, year round, still ... being mothers, but fatherhood carries no economic risk at all." ...
    (soc.women)