Haters: What To Do When Your “Friends” Are No Friend To Equal Pay

We all have one. And some of us have more than one. That distant family member, who you only see at weddings and funerals. That sort of a friend-of-a-friend from college, who you don’t really remember, but he must be ok because you have friends in common. Or that old neighbor who you used to babysit for and help shovel snow.

So when the friend request pops up on your computer, you don’t feel like you have much of a choice. Saying no makes you feel like one of the jerky kids on Forrest Gump that deny Forest a seat on the bus. So instead of saying “taken” you take the plunge and say “accepted.” Who doesn’t want more “friends?”

But now you have a problem. That “friend” of yours sees all of your posts and you see all of theirs. So one day as you are just shooting the breeze checking out random pictures of babies and puppies, you come across posts that deny that the wage gap for women exists. Every progressive bone in your feminist body wants you to respond. But what if you don’t say the right thing? To provide some good solid back-up, here is a list of what the “haters” have been saying and how you can respond:

• What the haters say: The wage gap doesn’t exist. The 77 cents number is wrong.

• How you can respond: It is a fact that fact that the typical woman’s earnings—when she works full time, year round—are just 77 percent of her male counterpart’s earnings (i.e., the 23-cent wage gap). This number comes from calculations based on the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey data. This wage gap results from several factors including systemic discrimination, caregiving responsibilities, occupational segregation, and workplace discrimination. Court cases continue to demonstrate that wage discrimination persists. The wage gap persists in nearly every occupation and research shows that even controlling for factors such as education, hours on spent the job, and time taken off work for caregiving responsibilities, a significant portion of the wage gap is unexplained. It is critical to address the factors that contribute to the wage gap and women’s overall economic insecurity.

• What the haters say: The wage gap is because of women’s choices.

• How you can respond: Women typically are paid less than men in the same occupation. This is the case whether that occupation pays high or low wages, and whether a woman works in a traditionally male occupation, a traditionally female occupation, or an occupation with an even mix of men and women. Numerous studies show that even when all relevant career and family attributes are taken into account, there is still an unexplained gap between men’s and women’s earnings. For example, a study of college graduates one year after graduation determined that women earned only 95 percent of what men earned, even after accounting for variables such as “job and workplace, employment experience and continuity, education and training, and demographic and personal characteristics.” That gap only grows over time. For more info on this, check out the testimony from Heather Boushey from Center for American Progress.

• What the haters say: The Paycheck Fairness Act would require employers to cut the salaries of their male employees.

• How you can respond: The Equal Pay Act (that is, the law the Paycheck Fairness act would amend) prohibits employers from lowering the wages of men to make up for discrimination against women. In fact, the first paragraph of the Act states: an “employer who is paying a wage rate differential in violation of this subsection shall not, in order to comply with the provisions of this subsection, reduce the wage rate of any employee.” The bill does nothing to disturb this longstanding rule.

• What the haters say: I heard that young women make more than young men in cities. Wasn’t there an article in the Times about that?

• How you can respond: This New York Times article cherry-picked a very specific woman: women from certain cities, unmarried and without children. The truth is that over the course of a woman’s career, the wage gap widens. So although in certain circumstances the wage gap is small or even closes, this is not the reality over the long-term. Women’s lives are not frozen in time. They grow older. And many have children. Overtime, the wage gap adds up and greatly effects women’s long term economic security.

So now you have what you need to respond. Although the wage gap doesn’t have as many ”haters” as other issues, it’s good to have what you need to respond in your back pocket. Or you could always just defriend or ignore and continue checking out those baby pictures. Aren’t babies so cute? It’s all up to you.

This blog is part of the #HERvotes blog carnival.