Month: March 2016

How Unmarried Women Are Driving Positive Change in the United States

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recent article in New York magazine, Rebecca Traister reports this important change: “in 2009, for the first time in American history, single women outnumbered married women. Today, only around 20 percent of Americans ages 18–29 are wed, compared to nearly 60 percent in 1960.” Traister points out that this change represents a radical upheaval that cuts across classes and races. It was made possible by the social movements that came earlier— abolition, suffrage, the labor fights of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the civil rights, women’s, and LGBT rights movements of the mid-twentieth century—but is not, itself, an intentionally politicized or conscious movement. It is just that as a result of these earlier movements, women have internalized the assumption that it is acceptable, and the best choice for them, not to be married: that they are whole people able to live satisfying lives on their own or in community if they don’t happen to meet someone they want to legally bind themselves to. Nonetheless, this shift is driving profound change in politics and in the political agendas of our legislative and presidential contests. Consider the potential impact of this statistic for the 2016 elections by Page Gardner, as cited by Traister: “For the first time in history, a majority of women voters are projected to be unmarried.” Traister points out that this means single women, at both the high and low ends of the earning spectrum and across race, have a set of common needs not yet met by government. These needs require a major revamping of the civic institutions that still operate on the assumption that women are financially dependent on men, and that men are the breadwinners and women are the unpaid, or low wage, family caregivers. For example, think about school letting out in the middle of the afternoon—what is the assumption about who is available to pick up the children? These assumptions were never true for most African American women, and now a majority of all women have shared interests and the potential political clout in the voting booth to drive a new social contract for women that includes the following:

  • Stronger equal pay protections
  • A higher federally mandated minimum wage
  • A national health-care system that covers reproductive intervention
  • More affordable housing for single people
  • Criminal justice reforms
  • Government subsidized day care programs
  • Federally mandated paid family leave for both women and men
  • Universal paid-sick-day compensation
  • Increases in welfare benefits
  • Reduced college costs
  • Quality early-education programs
We are at a moment in history when we have the potential to unify to make change. In order to realize this possibility, though, we must each do our part by registering to vote and voting for candidates who support these policy changes. What changes are you seeing in families and for women that reflect this new reality of single women outnumbering married women?   Image courtesy of photostock at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

How to Close the Gender Wage Gap

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The gender wage gap is persistent. Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times reminds us that fifty years after President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, women still earn only 79 cents for every dollar men earn in the United States, and the gap in different occupations varies. Miller notes that women who are surgeons earn 71 percent of what male surgeons earn. I have written in a previous article about differences in pay for different racial/ethnic groups, with recent research showing that Hispanic women in Massachusetts make 56 percent of their male counterparts’ salaries. In her article, Miller offers ideas that are starting to generate interest and be tested by a few state governments and private employers for closing the gender wage gap. I believe these ideas are promising:

  1. Publish everyone’s pay. Miller notes that “when employers publish people’s salaries, the pay gap shrinks.” President Obama required federal contractors to report salaries by gender in 2014, and the state of California passed a law to require municipal governments to publish salaries. A few pioneering companies have done the same with very positive results. Salaries got corrected and/or aligned.
  2. Coach, or curb, negotiation. Miller notes that “men are paid more partly because they’re more likely to ask for it. When receiving job offers, 51.5 percent of men and 12.5 percent of women ask for more money.” Miller is basing her information on the work of Professor Linda Babcock who also notes that women are penalized, deemed unlikeable, and often not hired for negotiating like men. Consequently, women need coaching on how to negotiate differently to be effective. Best of all, Miller suggests, would be to ban negotiation all together and set the salaries for positions, with a small range to allow for differences in experience.
  3. Don’t rely on previous salaries. Women get stuck in a lower-wage cycle when pay for a new job relies on an employee’s previous salary. The Massachusetts State Legislature is currently considering a bill that prohibits employers from seeking job candidates’ salary histories. More states should pass legislation like this.
  4. Make it easier for mothers to stay in the workforce. Affordable childcare, paid sick days, and paid parental leave need to readily available so that women can more easily stick with their careers.
  5. Build flexible work places. Miller notes that the pay gap is greatest in occupations with the least flexibility, such as medicine and finance.
  6. Change the law. Federal legislation languishing in the US Congress called the Paycheck Fairness Act would require companies to report salary data, give grants for negotiation training and make class-action lawsuits easier—but it has been stalled for a long time. It does not yet have enough support to move it forward.
The gender wage gap can be eliminated. We know how to do it, but we need to put more pressure on organizations and our government to do the right thing. Do you know of companies or state governments that are pioneering efforts to eliminate the wage gap? Let us hear your examples of what’s working. Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

Voting for Hillary: Why Is There a Generational Divide among Women?

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I have been watching the 2016 presidential campaign unfold with great interest. As a feminist, I care about whether candidates have progressive positions and a demonstrated track record of improving the lives of women and girls of all races, ages and, nationalities. Hillary Clinton seems to me to have the best record of demonstrated commitment to these issues, so I have been curious about what appears to be a generational divide among Democratic women: in the New Hampshire primary, women under thirty voted for Bernie Sanders four to one. What are the reasons for this divide? Here are my hunches and the perspectives of a few other authors.

This Is a Mother/Daughter Generational Grudge Match

Susan Faludi writes that the generational grudge match between older and younger women has been present in every era since women won the right to vote in 1920. This makes sense to me when I remember my own judgmental rejection of my mother’s life choices as a younger woman. Faludi lays out examples of this dynamic in the 1920s and in second-wave feminism, as noted by the feminist poet Adrienne Rich, who wrote about matrophobia among second-wavers. Third-wave feminists declared, “we’re not our uptight mothers” in defining their feminism, and some third-wavers declared that they could not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2008 “because she reminds me of my mother.” This dynamic is troubling if it creates blinders about issues important for improving the lives of women.

Young Women Feel They Live in a Post-Feminist World

I know that there are many young feminist activists, yet Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports that many millennial women, ages eighteen to twenty-nine, feel that gender is no longer important. Many (not all) take for granted the gains made for women by older generations, and their concerns are different—for example, student debt, jobs, LGBT rights, and flexible gender identities. Where they might find a transgender candidate exciting, they don’t see the big deal about a woman becoming president.

Years in the Workplace Change Your Perspective

Jill Filipovic writes that the explanation for the generational divide among women who support Hillary Clinton may come more from our different life experiences. She notes, “more time in a sexist world, and particularly in the workplace, radicalizes women.” It can take about ten years in the workplace before the realities of gender discrimination become clear. These realities are not yet part of the world of millennials. Their current world is one in which:
  • In university environments, there are more female than male students.
  • In high school, girls tend to outperform boys academically.
  • Title IX regulates roughly equal treatment of women and men in school athletics.
  • Women attend graduate school in roughly equal or greater numbers than men.
  • College-educated women see only a tiny pay gap when they are first hired.
But by age thirty-five, these same women are making significantly less than their male peers. And once they have children, women are treated as incompetent, have a harder time getting hired, and are paid significantly less than men. It takes time for these experiences to accumulate, and millennial women haven’t had enough time in the workforce yet to get radicalized.

We Hold Women Leaders to Different and Tougher Standards

I have written in previous articles about our discomfort with strong women and about the different expectations we have of female leaders. We expect male leaders to be assertive and decisive, but we are uncomfortable if women behave that way. Gail Sheehy describes the ambivalence that many baby boomer women feel about voting for Hillary. Sheehy quotes a female political leader as saying, “A lot of women vote from a compassionate, nurturing place, and those are not qualities you feel from [Hillary Clinton].” Really? Think about it. Don’t we need our commander in chief to be tough, assertive, and decisive? Let’s hope we can stay focused on who will be the best leader for the whole country, and who will best meet the needs of women and girls of all ages, races, and nationalities. It’s so important.   “Hillary Clinton” by Llima Orosa is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0  ]]>

Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family by Anne-Marie Slaughter: A Book Review

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In her book, Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, Anne-Marie Slaughter takes us a step further down the road to understanding why progress continues to be slow for gender equality in the workplace and what needs to change. While three years ago Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In, triggered an important national conversation about the challenges women face in the workplace, it was criticized for focusing too narrowly on solutions for privileged women and too little on the different needs of working-class women. Sandberg’s book was also criticized for putting too much of the responsibility on individual women for not “leaning in” enough to progress in their careers. Slaughter takes this conversation to the next level and argues that we must take the blame off of individual women and broaden the conversation to include the issues faced by women at all income levels and in all occupations, as well as acknowledge the restrictions placed on men’s life choices by existing gender stereotypes and workplace and societal structures and policies. Slaughter suggests that we need to change our lens to talk about competition versus care or breadwinning versus caregiving, instead of talking about work-life balance. When we use this lens and this language, we begin to shift the focus from work-life balance being a middle-class women’s issue to a focus that is more inclusive and that leads to broader strategies for change. In fact, Slaughter notes that the problem is not only that there are not enough women at the top of organizations, it is also that there are too many women at the bottom—62 percent of minimum wage jobs are held by women—and some common threads cause the problem at both ends of the income ladder. Slaughter argues that the real problem is that competition, the human drive to pursue our self-interest, is valued over care, the human drive to put others first. Women and men are motivated by both competition and care. The problem is that competition, or “breadwinning,” has been defined as more valuable and as the domain of men. The domain of caregiving has been defined as women’s; discrimination against and devaluing of caregiving provides a common thread linking the experiences of women at the top and at the bottom. Here are some examples of the link provided by Slaughter:

  • A young female lawyer or banker who begins to work flexible hours to be home with her kids for dinner, or who works part time, or who steps out of the workforce for a while to be a full-time caregiver is quickly disqualified from advancing in her career. Joan Williams describes this as hitting the maternal wall. Neither her advancement nor her earning capacity will ever recover.
  • A single mother who has no choice but to be both the sole breadwinner and family caregiver is likely to be in a low-wage job with no sick leave or childcare benefits. Half of single mothers in the United States make less than $25,000 a year, and being a single mother is the single best predictor that a woman will end up in bankruptcy or poverty in old age.
  • In our society, caregivers are among the lowest-paid American workers. Low-income African American and immigrant women are heavily overrepresented in the most poorly paid care jobs.
Slaughter suggests that the solution is not to devalue competition, but to elevate the value of care in some of the following ways:
  • We need to raise the pay and benefits of care jobs to reflect a valuing of caregiving work.
  • We need to let go of old gender stereotypes and expand our language to include same-sex parents and gender identities beyond male and female.
  • We need to expand our language to talk about working parents or working caregivers rather than working mothers.
  • We need family-friendly policies, like flextime, that are more than lip service and that do not penalize the caregivers, women and men, who need and want to use them;
  • We need careers redefined to reflect the demand to customize jobs to meet the requirements of workers in different life phases without penalty.
  • Our government needs to invest in an infrastructure of care that includes subsidized high-quality and affordable childcare and elder care, paid family leave, and other supports for caregiving.
While Slaughter does not provide many specifics about how to enact the many big changes that are needed, this book is worth reading to understand more about the next steps on this journey of change that we are all on.]]>