Wondering Why There Is Still A Wage Gap? It’s My Fault.
I have a confession to make: I am the reason for the wage gap.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a narcissist. I can’t take responsibility for all of it. And I certainly couldn’t have done it alone. I would not have achieved what I have without the help of sexism in the workplace, but I’m a little hurt that you think sex discrimination should get all the thanks.
It warms my heart that the media is finally starting to give credit where credit is due.
For example, this article by Arianna Huffington, which takes issue with our “always on” culture for “pushing women out of the workplace.” I was pleasantly surprised to read a wage-gap article which acknowledged that not all the disparity between women’s and men’s income is because of discrimination — that a part of it results from the choices made by individuals such as myself. And I agree wholeheartedly with the criticism of a culture that expects employees always to put their professional lives ahead of their personal lives.
The problem is this argument suggests that the workplace can easily change to accommodate the needs of parents, both male and female. But the whole structure of the modern workplace is at odds with that goal.
Authors Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas point out, in their book Dark Horse that, since the industrial revolution, ours has been a culture of standardization. This does not mean, merely, that we standardize the manufacture of products. We also require that human beings tailor themselves to fit the needs of the workplace. To adapt to whatever our inflexible mindset has decided is the One Right Way to do anything. (Because there is always only One Right Way.)
Stop me if you’ve heard this one:
Once upon a time, we had a society where it was believed that a woman’s place was in the home. Working outside the home was not the One Right Way to be a mother and was something which was only done out of economic necessity. Moms, who were employed because of financial need, were seen as objects of pity. Those who did so just because they wanted to, as objects of stern disapproval.
As the years went by, society recognized the injustice of this. More and more professional avenues opened up for women. Employment and motherhood were no longer viewed as incompatible. Lest you think this means we started celebrating the diversity of ways that families choose to care for their children, let me remind you that the standardization culture does not allow for that. It only allows for replacing the old One Right Way with a new, hip, reimagined One Right Way.
Suddenly, it was not employed mothers, but at-home mothers who were the problem. They just wouldn’t get with the program. For a time, at-home moms only represented something vaguely archaic and distasteful. “If that’s what you want to do,” society said, “then, hey, knock yourself out. Just don’t expect your diaper changing and carpool driving — your ‘women’s work’ — to be valued or respected.”
Of course, this was before I — and my fellow at-home-moms — started getting proper credit for the damage we were doing to society. Arianna Huffington thinks the solution to the at-home mom problem is to make the workplace more attractive. To offer better child care and maternity/paternity leave. To change the expectation that employees will work twelve-hour days. But is this really enough?
Andrew Biggs, in a (tongue-in-cheek) article in Forbes, offers a more radical solution: “Gender Pay Gap Solution: Ban Stay-At-Home Moms.” Biggs points out:
If we really want to equalize pay between men and women, we need to equalize their work experience. But in many cases, the only way to do that is by overriding mothers’ preferences regarding what is best for their kids.
Biggs was being intentionally funny, in order to make a point about the impossibility of complete equality of outcomes. Meanwhile, Australian columnist Sarrah Le Marquand was completely humorless when she suggested, in a 2017 editorial column, that being an at-home mom should be against the law, once children are in school full time. Responding to the ensuing “hysteria” (her term, we’ll leave the Freudian analysis for another day) following her pronouncement, Le Marquand had this to say:
Only when the tiresome and completely unfounded claim that “feminism is about choice” is dead and buried (it’s not about choice, it’s about equality) will we consign restrictive gender stereotypes to history.
Unless, I suppose, those gender stereotypes say that at-home mothering is about, “nappies, play-doh, and a strict adherence to only leaving the family home during the hours of 9 am to 5 pm to attend playgroup or a similar non-work sanctioned activity.” But, nevermind.
I’m glad she cleared up that whole “feminism is not about choice” thing. Because I’m afraid that many people are laboring under the misconception that choice is exactly what feminism was supposed to be about.
This is especially true of my generation. I was in elementary school during the Free to be You and Me 1970s (millennials, you can look it up). In the 80s, I attended the hippie-dippiest high school (we called the teachers by their first names) in the hippie-dippy Washington, D.C. suburbs. I grew up in an era when girls were told we could be whatever we wanted — that we shouldn’t let anyone take away our choices. We were never told that there was an asterisk next to that statement.
Of course, the asterisk was always there. It’s just that no one thought it needed pointing out. After all, once the No Gurlz Allowed sign was taken off the treehouse, what girl in her right mind would go back to playing with dolls? What woman would trade the corporate world for “nappies and play-doh”?
Quite a few, as it turned out, which caught both the powers that be, and the moms themselves, off guard. Because no one ever told us that — far from being the grown-up equivalent of playing with dolls — being an at-home mom is more like juggling flaming dolls while walking a tightrope and doing calculus.
Karen Thompson Walker, the author of The Age of Miracles, wrote recently about how surprised she was by the intellectual nature of motherhood. In an essay titled, “Motherhood as an Intellectual Pursuit,” she says:
It’s a simple idea, I guess, that these two parts of myself, the intellect and the mother, would turn out to be so intertwined, and yet, I am ashamed to say that it came to me as a surprise. There is plenty of cultural space devoted to the cult of motherhood as a kind of an endless act of self-sacrifice and devotion. . . Why this cultural blindness to the notion that mothering makes use of the brain?
In the 1980s, the organization Mothers at Home (now Family and Home Network), published a book titled: What’s a Smart Woman Like You Doing at Home, which addressed this same issue. As it turns out, not much has changed in thirty-plus years.
In an era when everything from T.V. viewing choices to cancer treatments are tailored to the specific individual, why do we still think there is only One Right Way to be a woman or to be a mother?
Many, many mothers successfully combine motherhood and career. They love their jobs and would hate being home full-time. There’s nothing wrong with this. No Doubt, Le Marquand and others would jump down the throat of anyone who suggested that there was anything wrong with it. But the inability to celebrate that choice, without insulting those who make different choices, is nothing more than intellectual laziness.
If feminism isn’t about choice — if the only purpose of feminism was to replace one compulsory option for women with another — then what was the point?
So, go ahead. Blame me for the wage gap. Sorry, not sorry.
