~ Yesterday was “Equal Pay Day.” It’s April 20th because the average woman’s wage is 77% that of the average man’s wage for the ‘same job’ – therefore, for women to make as much as men do in a year, they would have to work until April 20th of the following year.

~ I have spent a lot of time recently learning about the wage gap and getting different sides of the story. I want to share some of what I’ve learned, and to share a few thoughts on the matter.

      1) The belief that women make 77% for the “same work” as man is most certainly false. To make the point, let’s look at how the data is collected: The U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics creates this number by asking what your gender is, how much you are paid, and what your job title is. The resulting number is that women are paid 77% of what men earn in the same time period for ‘same work.”‘ Does anyone besides me notice the glaring lack of controls used in this study? An honest gander at more in depth studies of this issue will show you that, any time a characteristic is controlled between men and women (say, number of years in the workforce), the wage gap gets smaller. So no, for the 77% statistic to hold, women and men are not equal workers doing equal jobs.

      2) The belief that women are not discriminated against is most certainly false. Extreme “anti-feminists” will often argue that, when you control for all factors like the one mentioned above, that you will entirely eliminate the wage gap. I don’t think this is true – women and men are certainly treated differently to an extent, and we need to keep focusing on the differing treatment in order to dispel it.

      3) This last point has to do with two different phrasings that I used in the preceding paragraph. Notice that the first sentence says “discriminated against” and the last sentence says “treated differently.” It upsets me that the wage gap is always referenced in the former sense as opposed to the latter. It belies the biggest myth of all: The belief that more money is always better. It is only with this assumption clasped firmly in hand that people can say that the wage gap discriminates against women while discriminating for men.

~ This error in thinking prevents us from asking some powerful questions: Why is it important for men to earn so much money? Could it be that men feel defined by how much money they make? Are some prisoners to their careers? What kinds of things might a man sacrifice in order to make more money – health, sleep, family time, dignity? Once we start asking these questions, we might discover the true nature of the wage gap:

~ Money isn’t everything, and it always comes at a price.

~ I went to Starbucks this morning to grab a sandwich and a cup of coffee. I’ve been to this starbucks a few times so far, so I’m starting to know some of the people in there. When I went in this morning, there was a nice guy in there who I got to know over a discussion about photography. There was a woman I hadn’t seen before working at the cash register.

~ While waiting, I was stretching my arms and neck to relieve some of the post-couch-moving soreness that I’ve had since yesterday. This started a little conversation about it:

     Me: I moved my couches yesterday with the help of two guy friends, now I’m pretty sore. My apartment’s got a pretty annoying entrance which makes moving the couches really frustrating.

     Her: Yeah, I had an apartment with a front door like that. I had to carry everything through the garage to get it into the house.

~ At this point there was a momentary lull in the conversation, in which the guy was evaluating the possible pros of moving to make up for its inevitable muscle pains. Then,

     Him: I gotta say, one nice thing about moving is the opportunity to feel a little manly, ::begin comical, tongue-in-cheek gesticulation:: ya know, planning the strategy, heavy lifting, and so on.

~ And then before I could even chime in with agreement,

     Her: ::small groan:: I moved everything myself, thank you very much.

~ I wish I had said something in this moment, but I was a bit taken aback by her sudden offense. As was he. It got awkward, and no one said anything further. He obviously felt kind of upset, most likely because she mistook his statement to be “moving is men’s work, women aren’t good at it,” when in reality thats not what he meant. He was essentially just saying, “this is my personal perspective on moving, perhaps you feel the same way?”

~ And the answer to that is yes, I do feel the same way. In fact the only time, in this modern age, that my muscles even matter anymore is when someone needs a heavy object to be moved. The rest of the time my muscles pretty much only serve to make me burningly hot and way too hungry, as a result of the higher metabolism that they incur. So if an opportunity arises to make use of them, I’ll do it (and do so happily!)

~ Ultimately the real frustration of the moment was that, because of the snappy quick-to-judge comment made by the girl, we were both rendered incapable of trying to clarify the misunderstanding. It honestly felt that any continuance of the topic could have resulted in a meltdown.

~ In related news, it’s still true that assumptions make an ass out of u and me.

~ There’s been a stir today about a Louisiana Walmart selling black barbies for 50% the price of the white version. People are pretty upset about this, and even a sideways glance at popular social websites (facebook, reddit, etc) reveals that a lot of people see this as some kind of racist gesture, as though Walmart is implying that black people are less valuable than white people. Here is the “scandalous” picture:

~ Before I start, two caveats:

     – I’ll admit – on its face, this picture looks pretty bad.

     – I don’t like Walmart very much.

~ With that said, I really feel like people are making a big deal out of nothing. A Walmart spokeswoman, Melissa O’Brien, responded to the accusations with this pretty sensible answer: “to prepare for Spring inventory, a number of items are marked for clearance. Both are great dolls. The red price sticker indicates that this particular doll was on clearance when the photo was taken, and though both dolls were priced the same to start, one was marked down due to its lower sales to hopefully increase purchase from customers.”

~ The stories and comments I see from people are really ignorant I feel – “Walmart is saying black people are worth less! What racists! Corporations are heartless!” However, assuming that this price difference is caused by customer purchasing habits (very likely, given how profit-oriented Walmart is), then this situation could have only played out in three different ways, and each way is the customers’ fault, not Walmarts. I’ve given these in order of most business-like to most “politically correct.”

     1) Exactly as it did. Walmart stocks even numbers of black and white dolls, the black dolls fail to move off the shelves, and so they lower the price to encourage customers to buy them. The “scandal” is that Walmart looks like it is valuing black people lower than white people.

     2) Walmart guesses in advance that the black dolls won’t sell as well as the white dolls, and so buys less. By modifying the supply, demand can be kept equal. Prices therefore remain equal. The “scandal” is that Walmart has assumed that people wouldn’t want to buy black dolls.

     3) Walmart stocks even numbers of black and white dolls, the black dolls fail to move off the shelves, but they keep the prices artificially equal in spite of this (this seems to be what people are expecting Walmart to have done). The “scandal” is that the black dolls now look worthless, because no one wants to buy them. This option also includes a little bonus “scandal” – all the black dolls in the trashcan after Walmart is forced to throw them out.

~ Really all three of these scenarios have an obvious reason – little girls want dolls that look like them, there are more white girls in this country than black girls, white dolls will be in higher demand, and higher demand means higher prices.

~ I wish that people would calm down about this. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for people to hate Walmart, lets not lose focus on that!