I made the comment that If Women Ruled the World we would be paid the same amount as a man for doing the same job. Another poster came in and called an “Ignorance Alert” and said that that is a misconception based on a flawed study.
Now I have no idea what “study” this is…I’m just going on my own personal life experiences in the professional job market over the last 10 or so years.
So, ladies, tell me…have you ever known or felt as if a man doing the same job that you were doing was being paid more?
Do you feel it differs on whether you have a man or female boss?
In my experience out of 4 professional jobs I have held I was paid less than my male counterpart. Out of these 4 times I had a female supervisor once but a male CEO. All of the other times I reported to a male CEO.
I can’t speak for myself here but my mother used to work at a restaurant. The owner was from another country (that apparently doesn’t have laws against treating your employees like cattle) and a total misogynist. The men would get paid about 2 bucks an hour more, I guess by virtue of having a penis considering they were doing the same work as the women. That’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as this particular employer is concerned, but I’m pressed for time.
Unfortunately the bastard is still in business
My mom also helped open a Ryan’s steakhouse in which the men were not only paid more, they were fed for free, given more breaks AND allowed to use physical/verbal intimidation. I can remember my mom coming in from work at 2 in the morning having had one 5-minute break the whole evening.
Totally agree that women doing the same job as a man should get the same pay.
However I think the flawed study mentioned is one where they talk about equivalence and compare jobs that are done mainly by one sex with “similar” jobs mainly done by the other sex. This makes for some very hazy conclusions, because the same could be said for everybody male or female in the 2 seperate occupations.
An unfortunate fact of life is that bosses take advantage of workers. For the first 10 years of my working life I was walked all over (I’m a man). My idea of asking for a pay rise was " … erm er Can we talk about me getting a pay rise … what …oh … ok I’ll come back in a few months" repeat indefinatley.
What I’m trying to say is that its not just women who get shafted in this way, it can happen to anybody.
Now if i get the brush off, I find somebody willing to pay me what I think I’m worth and say goodbye to cheapskate boss.
I just started a new job in April after 7 years with the previous company. One of the last things I said to them was that they were taking advantage of one of my more mild mannered colleagues (a man). He was earning 20% less than me and was probably one of the best workers there - me included. Unfortunatley they know he will never do anything about it and so treat him like dirt. I’m well out of it but still feel sorry for him.
In some places, this could be true, but overall, I don’t think so. I think some studies are skewed to make it look as if men make more for doing the same job.
Stupid pay rate decisions are definitely not confined to the stereotypical men make more than women variety. I once worked for this idjit who told me that I wouldn’t be getting a raise that year and that the money budgeted for my raise was going to go to a co-worker who was a single mom who needed it more since I had Mr. Bugnorton to take care of me and no children to worry about…WTF??? Long story short, I now own that company and Mr. Idjit is ancient history.
Like the old saying goes “ignorance can be fixed but stupid is forever” and stupidity is not, in my experience, a profitable commodity. Allowing stupidity to proliferate, unchecked, is just…well…stupid, sort of like accepting less pay for doing the same job no matter what your sex, race or familial status. WTG Spanna!
I’m a GS-12 engineer working for the Dept of the Navy. I get paid the same as all other GS-12 engineers - actually, probably more than a lot because of longevity. I advanced at the same rate as the men here, and I don’t think I was ever denied a promotion because of being female.
I fought to be taken seriously by some of the men on the production floor, but once they knew me, they accepted that I wasn’t totally worthless. But that’s another story.
I was the poster who posted the ignorance alert in the thread referenced in the OP. Here’s why:
People like to quote a study saying that women on average make 76% of what a man makes (in 2002) as evidence that a woman “in the same job as a man” gets paid less. However, it is impossible for that study to lead to this conclusion because all the study did was to find out how much all women make on average and compare that to how much all men make on average. The study doesn’t say anything about “the same job.”
The reason that women on average make less than men is that women traditionally take jobs that pay less than jobs men traditionally take (e.g., school teachers v. about anything else). Women also leave the workforce more often than men do (to have babies), so when they come back the men in their same class have gotten raises and promotions while the women have to start where they stopped. There’s also some padding on the men’s side because those folks that make huge sums of money also tend to be men (sports stars, CEOs, etc.).
It’s OK for you to be upset that women on average make less than men do on average, but don’t muddy your POV with ignorance by throwing in the “same job” nonsense.
I’ve worked in stereotypically male jobs and found that I got treated differently and paid differently than men. I worked as a manager for three years for a bookstore: I finally quit, and they hired a guy to do the same job, except they paid him three dollars an hour more. He had the same education, and he was brand new.
Thanks for giving us your permission to be upset, Taxguy. Now I can go ahead with being upset about women still not having reached “equal but different” status, and still being treated like a second-class citizen on (not so rare) occasion.
As for the OP, in jobs where pay rates were strictly codified, I have had no problems with unequal pay rates. In other jobs where pay rates were at the whim of the (almost exclusively male) bosses, pay rates were indeed lower for women than for men. There’s also the factor of how almost-exclusively women departments are treated - the female accounting department are worked like dogs, and the male sales department are treated like gods.
And let’s not forget about intangibles like expecting all women in the office to answer the phones and do admin type work, but having no expectations like that of the men.
These are my opinions and experiences, and are completely subjective, of course. Studies can say whatever they want, but this has been my life.
It’s really sad to see how some of you gather information that you then believe to be reliable. “I felt like there was an expectation that I blah blah blah.”
TaxGuy I’m not arguing with your study or your opinion. But I’m telling you what my personal own experiences have been in 4 separate professional jobs.
I posted this, not as some sort of jab at your comment, but to find out if other women felt the same way or had experienced the same thing.
I am not saying by any means that in every single job everywhere that men get paid more than women. I am merely stating that in 4 separate jobs I had where I had a male counterpart they made more than I did for performing the exact same job.
That’s all…no beef with your study information or you.
OK, that’s cool Aries28. But (to elaborate on the snarky comment in my last post), how do you know that the guys (ALL of the guys, too, apparently) were making more than you, and how do you know that you were performing the exact same job?
Were there any women that also made more than you did?
**“I felt like there was an expectation that I blah blah blah.”
TaxGuy**, who are you quoting?
The posts in this thread have nothing to do with feeling, anyway. While the examples are, by their very nature, anecdotal, they are also (potentially) factual, quantifiable, and valid.
That being said, as a female, I’ve never been paid less than a man for doing the same job that I know of, though I don’t doubt at all that it’s a common problem. Also, spanna had a good point: it’s not just women who get treated unfairly.
My mother got her degree in chemical engineering in the late 70s from a very prestigous university in Iran. Because of various factors she didn’t get a job in her field until the mid 90s. Since then she has proved herself indispensible at her job. She’s the best in her company both in the United States and Japan, yet she didn’t get the same pay as majority of the men she worked with. Most of them were fresh out of college so they didn’t have more experience. Of course there are many factors that could contribute to her not receiving the same pay rate at first. It had been 15 years since she had gotten her degree. It also was not honored since it was from Iran. Now though she has proven herself whereas majority of the men have not. She still doesn’t earn as much as they do and puts in many more hours.
I had a professor that loved to play devil’s advocate. This subject came up several times. Some points were brought up that women tend to take more time off from work. They’re given maternity leave and tend to take more time off for children’s needs (school, sickness, etc.). There are so many factors that contribute to women making less (not that I agree with them).
There is only one time in my life that I had the SAME job as a man. In this case he was paid more money than me. We both worked for a temp agency contracted to goverment marketing and design. The only thing different about us was that he had more expierence in Excel then I did. But I didn’t need Excel for my part of the job.
A year later I was making more money then him because I was asked to return to special projects more frequently and did a good job. I ended up landing a full time paid position with the Government Agency and have been with them for 9 years (this August) In this 9 years raises have been minimal. WHereas other people in the company have recived better raises. These that have received better raises are all in higher positions than I am.
Does that suck?
My experience may be skewed by the fact that I have only worked for large corporations but where I’ve worked there were at least as many women in executive management postions as men. Heck, in my current job there are more women than men in high level management positions.
Now I admit I have no idea what they make but this corporation has very strict guidelines for pay scales and I’d be suprised to find out there was much discrepancy because I know most of my female coworkers make as much or more than me.
Again, I am not saying this happens in every instance…but only in MY personal professional experiences…
In my last job, I know for a fact that the guy that was my only counterpart was making more than me because I had access to his payroll spreadsheets along with mine and saw with my own eyes what his salary was. He also blantantly told me what he made. We performed the same job duties…in fact, I performed them actually better but he got all the glory and the pay, including a higher bonus than me.
No, there were no women making more than me. I was the highest paid woman there and believe me I fought tooth and nail to be so. I constantly had to prove myself because also, (and don’t even get me started on this…) my industry apparently thought you couldn’t be pretty and smart. You had to be one or the other. Most of the males I dealt with thought I was either sleeping my way to where I was or I had a male family member somewhere in the company. :rolleyes:
I will gladly admit that this is not the norm in most cases…however, notice my location…Alabama…and sadly, in the South a lot of male CEOs still have the good old boy mentality and the women are only there to make the coffee and answer the phones.
Obviously, as a widespread practice this should be on its way out, since it’s against federal law. However, just as obviously, this still happens in some cases.
