Also-- we didn't adopt the current rather 'traditional' system of a single wage-earner because we WANTED to do things this way.
No.
We needed a parent home full time due to our child having special needs. Ergo, which of us should stay home?
The one with the inferior EARNING POWER.
My degree and expertise is every bit as marketable as DH's. But he makes about 15% more than I do, and the gap, of course, widens each year because of his additional industrial experience, which I lack.
My point is that our initial choice there was a result of the income disparity.
Seems like a good time to reprise this.
If this is simply about "women's choices" then
where does the REAL* income disparity come from?
* real as in comparisons of apples to apples here-- meaning same age/experience/job descriptions, or close to identical.
(And this was
very real. My former employer settled with its female faculty members for MILLIONS in back pay as a result-- my DH was hired three years after I was, and yet he earned ~10%
more than I did in
base salary. He actually had LESS classroom experience than I did. So why?? A: he was
male.) Our employer actually had a rule that we
could not discuss our remuneration with our colleagues... Hard to enforce in a household with a single joint bank account, however-- so we knew. We had colleagues (also married couples) that knew, too. But it was hidden from most faculty just what that "gap" looked like. But it existed.
This is NOT about "women's choices" as often (IMO) as it is about those in power structures
assuming what those choices WILL be.
In other words, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. IE-- if you hire someone and say, "I'm pretty sure that because you were unemployed, you're probably lazy, so I'm only going to pay you half of what I'm paying your co-workers," then guess what? You probably
will get an employee who isn't too concerned about being an especially 'hard' worker.
In two income households, decisions about
who takes responsibility for life's snags is often made on the basis of
whose job pays better. That's not rocket science, it's a simple financial decision. You choose to inconvenience the employer of the person whose remuneration/position is most easily replaced or omitted.
The notion that this is about the choices of individual women is deeply flawed for a second reason, too. It does NOTHING to explain why wages
flatten with respect to cost-of-living and wage increases across the employment market
when the field becomes a female-dominated one. It certainly doesn't explain why women who DO NOT take the "Mommy Track" are punished in some instances almost as if they
had. (This is the 'well, we knew you would eventually' argument... which often DOES result in a women leaving the position/field out of sheer disgust or anger over unfairness.)
Interesting ideas to consider? Of course. But I don't think for a moment that these can be summed up in nice little sound bites, or that a return to some mythical 'traditional' system would fix it all.
