Happy Pay Equity Day!!
I bet you didn’t know that today is Pay Equity Day… or at least the internet tells me so.
I was poking around on some sites to try to learn a little more about pay inequity… and unfortunately, as I searched around for statistics on Asian American income relative to other group averages, I came up with this little footnote:
Individual earnings data for Asian/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans are available, yet they are from a very small sample and thus are not as reliable. NCPE [National Committee on Pay Equity] encourages advocates interested in additional data on Asian/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans to notify their Congressional representatives and encourage support for research in this area.
Hpmh. Ok. So we don’t know.
I think one of the biggest issues about pay equity is that the issue isn’t just about men and women (or Asian Americans and white Americans) getting paid the same in the same job. But it’s also about the value assigned to jobs that are traditionally viewed as women’s work and jobs that are traditionally viewed as men’s work. This makes more sense to me. I worry about why someone providing childcare or teaching a child gets paid so little relative to people who work in finance. Do we really value the work of the person in finance that much more than the person providing care to a young child? (I have no idea what working in “finance” actually entails. But I can definitely understand why I would want to pay some one providing care to a child more that $8.75 an hour…)
I remember seeing a graph that charted average incomes for men and women by the degrees that they earned. And I remember seeing that average incomes for men with high school diplomas were about the same as the average income for women with masters degrees. Clearly, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done before there will be pay equity.
As a woman of color and a mother, I often wonder if I have made the best career choice to be able to financially support my family. And while, it is depressing to think about how much people in other industries are making, for me, it’s not just about pay and equity. It’s also about finding work that supports what you believe in, that supports your values. And this, in many ways, is worth more than any salary. (Well, almost.)
[Oh yeah, and happy earth day too! As my daughter says, today you have to hug the earth!]
Last 5 posts by delia
- Rocket 2 U - May 13th, 2008
- Asians Rock: What's your story? - May 11th, 2008
- In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson - May 10th, 2008
- Our Month - May 2nd, 2008
- Ivy League Skills? - April 28th, 2008
i really feel you on the “women’s work” factor delia.
what comes to mind immediately for me is martha stewart. she’s essentially doing “women’s work ” “like a man.” you know, she does all this home decorating, cooking, entertaining, etc, but she’s not doing it out of the goodness of her heart, but as a way to make money. her entrepreneurship has allowed her to get crazy rich off “women’s work.”
and men hold this against her. they feel women should do women’s work because they want to, you know, cuz they LOVE it, not as a way to get paid…because society only accepts that kind of attitude in men.
i think a similar expectation exists for POC. only white people are allowed to turn anything into money. like black people can’t have a career in hip hop for anything other than a love of that culture. i’m not saying even that i’m all about souja boy and diddy, but with every black artist or label head, there’s the potential criticism for him/her not being real enough. but with like clive davis or like whatever white guy at whatever label, there’s no such criticism. it’s not expected of them.
i have a lot of thoughts about pay equity as it relates to women, POC, artists, community workers…
our system in this country - and i guess the system wordlwide - is really twisted.
this is sad:
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said yesterday that instead of the Fair Pay Act, which would allow women to demand equal pay for equal work,
women simply need more “education and training.”