found a great article on a new survey on gender, sexism, attitudes, and the persistant gender gap in pay between men and women. Very intersting stuff. check this out:
Organizational psychologists Timothy Judge and Beth Livingston found that men who reported holding traditional views (that is, that women belong in the home, while men earn the money) earned on average $11,930 more annually for doing the same kind of work as men who held more egalitarian views. The reverse was true for women, to a much smaller degree. Female workers with more egalitarian views (that men and women should evenly divide the tasks at home and contribute equally to their shared finances) earned $1,052 more than women who did similar jobs but held more traditional views.
The effect was starkest, however, when researchers compared women’s salaries to those of men, while also taking into account their gender-role biases. Men with traditional attitudes not only earned more than other men with egalitarian attitudes, but their annual salary was $14,404 greater than women with traditional attitudes, and $13,352 greater than women with egalitarian attitudes. Put differently, men with traditional attitudes made 71% more than women with traditional attitudes, while egalitarian-minded men made just 7% more than their female counterparts.
Time Magazine, Sept 22, 2008.
This is groundbreaking because it suggests that the pay gap in gender has as much to do with social conditioning, what people are taught to expect, and how they view themselves as it does with overt societal gender bias. In other words, people who teach their daughters to defer and not be assertive about their rights are actually harming their ability to earn a competitive salary over the course of their lives.
The section on why ‘traditionally’ minded men make more then egalitarian men was also really interesting to me. The idea that men who view women as equals are actually rewarded with less pay for their work is perhaps not as shocking as it should be, but still a big deal. It’s as if society says to them “oh, so you believe a woman is just as good as you? we’ll just treat you like one then.” However you explain it that’s some powerful negative reinforcement. The researcher’s hypothesis that it might be at least partly the result of men who view themselves as the primary breadwinner being willing to take bigger risks and be more assertive when negotiating pay also reminded me of something I posted a while ago that also looked at risk and rewardds in relation to gender. Interesting stuff.
So what do ya’ll think? How should we interpret this information, how is it useful to folks looking to build towards gender equality? and what in the world can we do we do about the fact that teaching men to view women as their equals seems to harm their earning potential?
Posted: September 23rd, 2008 under gender & feminism.
Comments: none
