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How the Gender Pay Gap Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by square Space. Start
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Speaker 1: square Space. Set your website apart. Welcome to Stuff you
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Speaker 1: Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
0:22
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W
0:25
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. So it's stuff you should Know.
0:29
Speaker 1: Oh is this coming out on Equal pay Day? I
0:34
Speaker 1: don't think so. Well. Equal pay Day may have come
0:37
Speaker 1: and gone by now, but it was April twelve, two
0:39
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen, that's right. And do you remember when we
0:44
Speaker 1: did our this Day in History weirdo series or video
0:48
Speaker 1: series that was pretty great? It was a little odd.
0:50
Speaker 1: It was Lynch I in I was, but one of
0:53
Speaker 1: the one of the ones that we did was on
0:57
Speaker 1: um uh Lily Ladbetter. Yeah, and I think it was
1:01
Speaker 1: on Equal pay Day. I think I remember it. Um.
1:06
Speaker 1: But Equal pay Day, for those of you not in
1:08
Speaker 1: the know, is a day in the United States UM
1:13
Speaker 1: where working women who work full time, year round would
1:17
Speaker 1: have to work until to get the equal amount of
1:21
Speaker 1: pay that their male counterparts got for the year before. Right,
1:24
Speaker 1: So it is two thousand sixteen. So take our pay
1:28
Speaker 1: for two thousand fifteen, and we'll don't take our pay.
1:31
Speaker 1: We want to keep that. But take a man's pay,
1:34
Speaker 1: a real man's pay from a woman in the same
1:38
Speaker 1: position would have to work. I mean it changes every year, right,
1:42
Speaker 1: the date, Uh, if the amount of pay changes, are
1:46
Speaker 1: the paid disparity changes, right, But the significance of that
1:49
Speaker 1: date would be like a woman has to work until
1:51
Speaker 1: April whatever to the following year to make as much
1:55
Speaker 1: as the man made in the previous year. Right. I
1:57
Speaker 1: think I just basically said the same thing you said,
2:00
Speaker 1: just in a weird way. And this is this is
2:02
Speaker 1: nothing new. Actually, this idea that there is a disparity,
2:06
Speaker 1: a pay gap, if you will, between men and women
2:10
Speaker 1: in the United States, and actually it's around the world, um.
2:13
Speaker 1: And the idea behind it is that women's work is
2:17
Speaker 1: just inherently less valued than men's work. Um. And there's
2:22
Speaker 1: a lot of debate over this. Barack Obama in the
2:25
Speaker 1: State of the Union address in I don't remember the year,
2:29
Speaker 1: said it might have been his last one where he said, um,
2:33
Speaker 1: women make of what men make, and that's not okay.
2:38
Speaker 1: We need to do something about that. Kind of sounded
2:40
Speaker 1: like Obama, thanks man, thanks look at you like I
2:45
Speaker 1: looked up for a minute. I was like, your President
2:46
Speaker 1: Obama in the room. You really did look up. You
2:49
Speaker 1: guys couldn't see it, but Chuck really did look up.
2:51
Speaker 1: That was good. Uh. This Uh, the National Committee on
2:54
Speaker 1: Pay Equity is who um, who began holding equal pay
2:59
Speaker 1: day right in but UM apparently was it in a
3:04
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty is when they started kind of gathering data
3:07
Speaker 1: on this. Yeah. I think the Bureau of Labor Statistics
3:10
Speaker 1: really started looking at it hard in the fifties. But
3:13
Speaker 1: the paid disparity goes back way further than that, basically
3:17
Speaker 1: to the beginning of the country. Yeah, so when people
3:20
Speaker 1: started working and earning money, and when women were even
3:23
Speaker 1: allowed to work. We need to do an episode just
3:26
Speaker 1: on wage labor in the origin of it, the history
3:28
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, it's super fascinating interesting. So go back
3:33
Speaker 1: in time, some things used to be a lot worse.
3:35
Speaker 1: Believe it or not. UM. Women earned thirty cents on
3:39
Speaker 1: the dollar in the early at the dawn of America, UM,
3:43
Speaker 1: when we were farming mainly UM. During the Industrial Revolution,
3:47
Speaker 1: things got a little bit better about fifty UM up
3:51
Speaker 1: to UM. But here's the distressing thing. Um, in nineteen
3:57
Speaker 1: sixty three, Congress pass the Equal Pay Act, and since
4:01
Speaker 1: then it was about six for a little while, but
4:04
Speaker 1: in the eighties they climbed up to and then thirty
4:08
Speaker 1: years later it's only climbed up four percent. It's basically stagnated.
4:14
Speaker 1: It's very much leveled off. And the sad thing is
4:17
Speaker 1: is what you're seeing then is as men's wages grow,
4:21
Speaker 1: women's wages aren't growing. Then, Um, it's a it's and
4:25
Speaker 1: it's a big deal. It's a big problem because, um,
4:29
Speaker 1: women are losing out on a tremendous amount of money
4:32
Speaker 1: over their lifetimes. Um, just for what seems to be
4:36
Speaker 1: gender discrimination. And I want to say now before anybody
4:40
Speaker 1: just loses their mind, there are a lot of theories
4:43
Speaker 1: behind this, and gender discrimination is one of them, but
4:46
Speaker 1: none of them are actually proven necessarily. No, And like
4:50
Speaker 1: most things, I think it's probably a combination of many,
4:53
Speaker 1: many things, most likely. But as I was saying, whatever
4:57
Speaker 1: the cause, women are losing out on a lot of money. So,
4:59
Speaker 1: for examp, will check in two thousand eleven, five year
5:03
Speaker 1: old woman earned about five grand less per year than
5:06
Speaker 1: her male counterpart. And this is just woman who worked
5:09
Speaker 1: full time, year round, man who worked full time, year round,
5:13
Speaker 1: age five and in five grand, you're like, yeah, that's
5:17
Speaker 1: that's a lot. You can see a lot of movies
5:19
Speaker 1: with five grand. But when you add it up over
5:22
Speaker 1: the woman's career and by the time she makes us
5:25
Speaker 1: the sixty five, she will have lost out on four
5:28
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty thousand dollars in wages compared to her
5:30
Speaker 1: male counterpart. Yeah. That if if that remains consistent throughout
5:34
Speaker 1: her career, that's a lot of dough. That's a lot
5:36
Speaker 1: of movies. Uh. And this is uh, these are white women.
5:39
Speaker 1: It gets much worse if you go across the races. Um,
5:43
Speaker 1: an African American woman, the figure dips to sixty percent
5:48
Speaker 1: sixty point five. Hispanic females even worse. Uh. And by
5:52
Speaker 1: the way, we can say male and female because we're
5:53
Speaker 1: talking about studies here. Yeah, layoff, um fifty four percent
5:58
Speaker 1: fifty four point six for Hispanic women, and only Asian
6:02
Speaker 1: women did better than white women, uh, with eighty three
6:06
Speaker 1: point five percent of what their white male counterparts made. Yeah.
6:10
Speaker 1: And I openingly, if you look at the earners in
6:13
Speaker 1: the United States, white men are not the top Asian
6:16
Speaker 1: men are actually the top earners. They earn on average
6:19
Speaker 1: in two thousand, fourteen hundred and thirteen point five percent
6:23
Speaker 1: more than white men. Uh huh. Interesting. Um, And there's
6:28
Speaker 1: I want to say something to also the equal pay
6:31
Speaker 1: day where a woman would have to work too to
6:33
Speaker 1: make the way. Just that's a white woman would have
6:36
Speaker 1: to work to April twelve. If you are an African
6:39
Speaker 1: American woman, you would have to work until June to
6:43
Speaker 1: make the what the average or the median pay of
6:46
Speaker 1: a white man for the year before Latino woman all
6:49
Speaker 1: the way into October. Yeah, so it's like it almost
6:52
Speaker 1: I mean it's almost like twice as long. Alright. So
6:55
Speaker 1: here is um, here's how it's determined. And this is
6:58
Speaker 1: one of the one the problems with trying to get
7:02
Speaker 1: behind the reasons because it's one thing to to talk
7:04
Speaker 1: about this stuff, but what unless you can make change
7:07
Speaker 1: and help this out, then it's just talking about it,
7:10
Speaker 1: like to make a difference, you need to really understand
7:13
Speaker 1: the underlying problems. Oh yeah, yeah yeah. But I think
7:17
Speaker 1: step one is what's being done now and has been
7:19
Speaker 1: done since shining a spotlight on absolutely and I think
7:23
Speaker 1: step one is being undertaken still that we're trying to
7:26
Speaker 1: understand it. But yeah, it's definitely it's definitely not settled. Like,
7:30
Speaker 1: here's the problem, right, So one of the problems and
7:34
Speaker 1: trying to is data and getting really good data. Um.
7:37
Speaker 1: The way they get the pay gap figure is they
7:41
Speaker 1: take all the women working full time, year round, find
7:44
Speaker 1: their median salary. It's not an average median is in
7:47
Speaker 1: the middle, um. And then they take that same calculation
7:50
Speaker 1: for men and they say, well, subtract us too, and
7:53
Speaker 1: this is the wage gap. Okay, so that's actually the
7:57
Speaker 1: the earnings ratio. Right, So when you see something, uh,
8:00
Speaker 1: women make sevent of what men make, it's very frequently
8:04
Speaker 1: in this article does it all over the place, it's
8:06
Speaker 1: called the wage gap. That's not the wage gap. That's
8:09
Speaker 1: the earnings ratio. The wage gap would be yeah, yeah,
8:13
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But it's it's confusing, like
8:16
Speaker 1: because if you think about you're like, wow, the wage
8:17
Speaker 1: cap is sev the wage gap is. The earnings ratio
8:21
Speaker 1: is seventy. But people tend to use that bigger number
8:25
Speaker 1: because it's more eye popping when you're a media mogul, right,
8:29
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Absolutely, uh So a lot
8:32
Speaker 1: of people will say that that just that calculation is
8:35
Speaker 1: too broad to draw a conclusion, and it probably is.
8:39
Speaker 1: You need better data for sure. Um. And this article
8:42
Speaker 1: even points out that, you know, you can't take that
8:44
Speaker 1: one statistic and and say this is all you need
8:48
Speaker 1: to know about pay inequality. Like, I don't think anyone's
8:51
Speaker 1: saying that, no, well, dummies. So but the one thing
8:56
Speaker 1: that does so unfortunately is it gives critics a chance
8:59
Speaker 1: to holes in it and dismiss it outright. Um, you know, yeah,
9:04
Speaker 1: because they're saying, okay, let's let's take a step back here.
9:08
Speaker 1: You're taking the median salary for all of the men
9:13
Speaker 1: who worked in the United States full time, and then
9:17
Speaker 1: you're taking the median salary for all the women who
9:21
Speaker 1: worked full time in the United States throughout the entirety
9:23
Speaker 1: of two thousand and that's comparing apples to oranges, they say.
9:28
Speaker 1: And one, there's a number of reasons why they say
9:31
Speaker 1: you're actually comparing apples oranges. There's a lot of different
9:34
Speaker 1: um jobs that are being done, there's a lot of
9:37
Speaker 1: varying educational backgrounds, there's a lot of different experience backgrounds,
9:42
Speaker 1: and you just can't compare the two. So let's not
9:44
Speaker 1: talk about this again. Okay, right now? What this the
9:46
Speaker 1: follow up should be. So let's drill down further and
9:50
Speaker 1: get better data and talk about it even in a
9:52
Speaker 1: more detailed way, which some people are doing, which we'll
9:55
Speaker 1: get to. Um. This was fascinating to me about job
9:59
Speaker 1: clustering or occupational clustering. I know about job clustering. Uh,
10:06
Speaker 1: of all working women are employed in just twenty fields. Uh,
10:11
Speaker 1: it's crazy. It is crazy. Um. If you look at
10:14
Speaker 1: men um, about thirty to thirty work in the top
10:17
Speaker 1: twenty occupations for males, which are you know, we're talking
10:22
Speaker 1: a lot of times managerial and supervisional roles, but also
10:27
Speaker 1: roles that are more physically demanding two and may pay
10:29
Speaker 1: more yeah, or more dangerous sometimes, Like they make the
10:32
Speaker 1: point that you'll probably find a man uh working as
10:36
Speaker 1: like a long haul trucker, although we've heard from quite
10:38
Speaker 1: a few women who who are doing it. Large March.
10:40
Speaker 1: Have you not seen Big Adventure? Have you seen the
10:43
Speaker 1: new one yet? Not yet? Is it good? I haven't
10:45
Speaker 1: seen it yet. I can't wait. I'm kind of afraid to.
10:47
Speaker 1: I did see Stitches the Clown though, and it's got
10:50
Speaker 1: like a one star rating and usually on Netflix that
10:53
Speaker 1: means like stay away for real, but for you it
10:55
Speaker 1: means dig in. Well I read I read about it
10:58
Speaker 1: online too. It may be kind of interested. I don't
11:00
Speaker 1: think I know what that is. It's an Irish black
11:03
Speaker 1: comedy horror movie. Um, about a clown that was murdered
11:08
Speaker 1: that comes back from the dead to take his revenge
11:10
Speaker 1: in the most gruesome and gory ways. Problem Taylor made
11:14
Speaker 1: for Josh Clark. But it's it's hilarious too, Like it's
11:17
Speaker 1: meant to be tongue in cheek to check that out. Um,
11:21
Speaker 1: we're talking about how, uh some women are in the
11:25
Speaker 1: trucking industry. That's right, but the cluster of occupations for women, um,
11:30
Speaker 1: generally speaking pay less than the cluster of occupations uh
11:34
Speaker 1: that men prefer. Yeah, here's the thing. When you take
11:38
Speaker 1: a woman in the trucking industry salary and compared to
11:41
Speaker 1: a man in the trucking industry salary, it's it's still
11:44
Speaker 1: going to be less. And then conversely, when you look
11:47
Speaker 1: at a man who who has entered a female dominated field,
11:53
Speaker 1: say like nursing, they're still gonna probably make more than
11:56
Speaker 1: their female counterparts. Yeah, elementary school cheach as human resources administrators.
12:01
Speaker 1: The pay gap is only one per cent um, but
12:04
Speaker 1: it's still there. No, exactly, it's still there. Like literally,
12:07
Speaker 1: if they compared same experience, same uh, same job, working
12:13
Speaker 1: the same amount of hours, almost always across the board,
12:16
Speaker 1: men will still make more. Even like you said, if
12:18
Speaker 1: it's nursing, which historically people might think is a job
12:22
Speaker 1: that more women prefer. Uh. What you're talking about the
12:24
Speaker 1: chuck is called occupational gender segregation, and that in and
12:29
Speaker 1: of itself is a big problem here. It's saying, um,
12:33
Speaker 1: but we here in the United States really tend to
12:35
Speaker 1: value the work that women do less than the work
12:38
Speaker 1: that men do. Just by saying these jobs that are
12:42
Speaker 1: traditionally women women staffed are um just traditionally paid less.
12:47
Speaker 1: That whole field is yeah, and it's and it's not
12:49
Speaker 1: like the nineteen thirties and forties and fifties where it's
12:52
Speaker 1: like you just go be a secretary now and we'll
12:54
Speaker 1: take care of the business. But there's still it's still
12:57
Speaker 1: there to a certain degree. I mean, there are more
13:00
Speaker 1: women who work as secretaries and men um But I
13:03
Speaker 1: just want to get back to that stat real quick.
13:05
Speaker 1: When we were talking about the even when you compared
13:08
Speaker 1: apples to apples, men still made more. I mean it's
13:10
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, two to um five and thirty
13:15
Speaker 1: four occupations tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and
13:19
Speaker 1: seven out of the five thirty four paid women more
13:22
Speaker 1: than men. Yeah, seven seven, Uh, and apparently the most lucrative.
13:27
Speaker 1: If you're a woman, you want to make more than
13:29
Speaker 1: a man, Uh, you should be a respiratory therapist, because
13:33
Speaker 1: their salaries are six point four percent higher than men's
13:36
Speaker 1: in their field. Should we take a break, yes, all right,
13:39
Speaker 1: we'll be back with more staggering stats. So chuck, you said, um,
14:01
Speaker 1: if you compare apples apples, it's a few percent. The
14:04
Speaker 1: beer of Labor statistics. Um, they like to throw a
14:07
Speaker 1: little wrench in the works. They surveyed like five hundred
14:10
Speaker 1: and thirty four occupations, you said, um. And when they
14:14
Speaker 1: do their statistics, they use weekly salaries rather than um
14:18
Speaker 1: annual salaries, and they actually come up with a less
14:20
Speaker 1: pay less of a pay gap. But one of the
14:23
Speaker 1: things the internet has given us, one of the great things,
14:26
Speaker 1: is crowdsourcing. And um, there are a lot of companies
14:29
Speaker 1: that crewe data as almost like a byproduct or maybe
14:33
Speaker 1: the real under the table product of what they're doing.
14:36
Speaker 1: One of those companies is glass Door, where you can
14:39
Speaker 1: go look for job listings but also rate your employer,
14:42
Speaker 1: rate the company, and it's basically the masses UM reviewing employers.
14:48
Speaker 1: You know, it's a pretty cool idea. UM and glass
14:51
Speaker 1: Door did a study in two sixteens, just came out
14:54
Speaker 1: this month as a matter of fact, and they surveyed
14:57
Speaker 1: five hundred and five thousand employee The last few of
15:01
Speaker 1: labor statistics thing I saw was like fifty people. This
15:04
Speaker 1: is like half a million employees and their salary reports
15:08
Speaker 1: and found that if you compared women who are equally
15:13
Speaker 1: qualified in the same position at the same company as
15:18
Speaker 1: a man, uh, they still made on average five percent
15:22
Speaker 1: less and in among computer scientists, which I guess as
15:26
Speaker 1: developers and stuff. Um, the pay gap was the worst
15:31
Speaker 1: for a woman in the same position equally qualified at
15:34
Speaker 1: the same company as a man. And this is like
15:36
Speaker 1: brand new data that just came out. Well. One of
15:39
Speaker 1: the reasons they say, um, this is ongoing is that, uh,
15:43
Speaker 1: maybe women don't know that they're not making as much
15:45
Speaker 1: as their male counterparts because we still are in a
15:50
Speaker 1: I guess society, or at least a work environment most
15:53
Speaker 1: times where you're not only not encouraged to talk about
15:56
Speaker 1: your pay, but some companies like prohibited. Yeah, you can't
16:00
Speaker 1: talk about your pay your fellow employees, right, And I mean,
16:03
Speaker 1: I guess, as draconian as it is, you can kind
16:06
Speaker 1: of understand where the company is coming from because they
16:09
Speaker 1: want to get away paying their workforce as little as possible,
16:12
Speaker 1: so they don't want their workforce comparing salaries and realizing
16:15
Speaker 1: that people are being paid substantially different stuff. Right. Still,
16:19
Speaker 1: it's mean to to say, like, no, you can't talk
16:23
Speaker 1: about your salary that we pay you to this other person.
16:27
Speaker 1: Be quiet, you know. And there's been a lot of
16:29
Speaker 1: reform that we'll talk about it as far as that's concerned.
16:32
Speaker 1: But that's a big thing is there appears to be
16:35
Speaker 1: among a lot of women this idea and I'm sure
16:38
Speaker 1: a lot of men too don't realize this as well,
16:40
Speaker 1: that there there is a gender paid disparity. And part
16:45
Speaker 1: of the reason why is because of a lack of transparency. Yeah. Um,
16:48
Speaker 1: last year, um, last May, those woman named Lauren voss
16:52
Speaker 1: Winkle got on Twitter and said, here's a new hashtag,
16:55
Speaker 1: um talk pay t a l k P A y
16:59
Speaker 1: and said eat out your job titles, how experienced you are,
17:03
Speaker 1: where you've been in life, and what your salary is. Uh.
17:05
Speaker 1: And then at talk pay ann came out, which is
17:08
Speaker 1: a probably smarter way. It's it's anonymous UM and about Well,
17:13
Speaker 1: there were a lot of tweets, but most of them were,
17:16
Speaker 1: of course, people just you know, complaining, and I'm sure
17:19
Speaker 1: there were plenty of rolls too, but just you know,
17:22
Speaker 1: complaining about the situation, which is fine. But about actually
17:26
Speaker 1: tweeted their actual salary. UH. And a lot of people say,
17:29
Speaker 1: this is kind of one of the first steps is
17:31
Speaker 1: at least getting the information out there. UH. So a
17:34
Speaker 1: woman might say, wait a minute, you make four thousand
17:37
Speaker 1: dollars more than me for no reason at all. And
17:40
Speaker 1: there are websites to um where you can compare things.
17:43
Speaker 1: There's one called uh pay scale and one called comparably.
17:49
Speaker 1: It's a little awkward title. It's beautiful. It makes sense.
17:56
Speaker 1: I believe you mentioned some of the things that are doing. Uh,
17:59
Speaker 1: the the government is doing um. President Obama signed an
18:03
Speaker 1: executive order in two thousand fourteen, so that's when, as
18:07
Speaker 1: you stay the union address must have come UM. He
18:12
Speaker 1: barred federal contractors from punishing an employee for comparing their salary,
18:17
Speaker 1: and a memorandum on those same contractors to submit data
18:22
Speaker 1: compensation data if there was any to see if there
18:26
Speaker 1: was any wage discrimination going on. Right, So, if you
18:28
Speaker 1: worked at a company that was a government contractor and
18:31
Speaker 1: you're a woman who suddenly got an unexpected raise and pay,
18:34
Speaker 1: you may have had something to do with that maybe.
18:36
Speaker 1: So UM. California actually also is leaning the way on this.
18:41
Speaker 1: They uh, what is his name, Jerry Brown, the governor
18:44
Speaker 1: the second time around UM he signed into law this
18:49
Speaker 1: this UM Act that prevents companies from punishing employees for
18:53
Speaker 1: talking about their pay, their salaries UM. And it mandates
18:59
Speaker 1: at first man dated same pay for the same work,
19:03
Speaker 1: which is actually the language in UM the Civil Rights Act.
19:07
Speaker 1: Title seven of the Civil Rights Act says you have
19:09
Speaker 1: to pay people the same pay for the same work,
19:12
Speaker 1: regardless of their UM gender, of their UM race, of
19:16
Speaker 1: their religion, any of that. They still have to get
19:19
Speaker 1: the same pay. Uh. And women are protected by that
19:22
Speaker 1: as well. But you know that was nineteen sixty three,
19:26
Speaker 1: I think. And the specificity of the language same work
19:32
Speaker 1: for same pay is it's it's so specific that it's
19:36
Speaker 1: just easy to get around you just say, well, it's
19:38
Speaker 1: not the same work. I'm not going to give these
19:40
Speaker 1: people the same title or whatever. Um with the California
19:45
Speaker 1: legislation kind of opened that and said you have the
19:47
Speaker 1: same pay for the substantially same work, you know. Yeah,
19:52
Speaker 1: and the Equal Pay Act of nineteen sixty three specifically
19:55
Speaker 1: says employers may not pay unequal way just to men
19:58
Speaker 1: and women who perform job that requires substantially equal skill,
20:02
Speaker 1: effort and responsibility, and that are performed under similar working
20:05
Speaker 1: to conditions within the same establishment. And then it goes
20:09
Speaker 1: down to break down what is defined as skill effort, responsibilities,
20:14
Speaker 1: working conditions, and establishment. So it definitely gets like way
20:17
Speaker 1: more specific, which is good. And apparently the reason why
20:21
Speaker 1: California is leading the way on this is because Silicon
20:23
Speaker 1: Valley is one of the worst defenders out of all
20:25
Speaker 1: of them. That's where that's California, that's sure. They also
20:30
Speaker 1: signed a fifteen dollar minimum wage into law recently too. Yeah,
20:35
Speaker 1: should we talk more about Lily lead Better, Yeah, because
20:38
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to talk uh wage equality law,
20:43
Speaker 1: you've got to talk Lily lad Better. So she worked
20:47
Speaker 1: for good Year Tire and over the years, I think
20:50
Speaker 1: she worked there for nineteen years. She was given low
20:53
Speaker 1: rankings and annual performance in salary reviews pretty consistently in
20:57
Speaker 1: low raises compared to her fellow ployees. So she sued them,
21:02
Speaker 1: and a jury initially said you win three point five
21:06
Speaker 1: million dollars and then a district year was like, what,
21:09
Speaker 1: we can't afford that, Uh, goodyear, I'm sorry. UM. District
21:15
Speaker 1: judge later said, let's reduce that from three point five
21:18
Speaker 1: million to three hundred and sixty thousand, and good year
21:22
Speaker 1: was like still, well they did because they appealed UM.
21:26
Speaker 1: Basically what they did was they cited a title a
21:28
Speaker 1: Title seven provision. They said any discrimination complaint needs to
21:33
Speaker 1: be made within a hundred eighty days of the of
21:37
Speaker 1: the bad deed, basically of the conduct of yes of you.
21:42
Speaker 1: They give you your first paycheck and it's discriminatory pay
21:47
Speaker 1: then you have a hundred and eighty days. So this
21:49
Speaker 1: lady worked for eighteen and a half years longer then
21:53
Speaker 1: she could have submitted a Title seven complaint, which is
21:58
Speaker 1: b s that's right. And they basically eventually said, well,
22:02
Speaker 1: what you can do is you can only sue for
22:05
Speaker 1: the last days worth of discriminatory conduct and then it
22:10
Speaker 1: went to the Supreme Court of the United States and
22:13
Speaker 1: she lost by five four vote. Uh, basically holding to
22:17
Speaker 1: that claim that it was time sensitive. Yeah, it's just
22:22
Speaker 1: I mean the idea that, like you get your first
22:25
Speaker 1: paycheck and you just immediately go, well, this is discriminatory.
22:29
Speaker 1: Even that stick. Right. This woman worked for nineteen years
22:32
Speaker 1: without realizing it, and the reason why she finally did
22:35
Speaker 1: come to understand it was because a coworker passed her
22:38
Speaker 1: an anonymous note um telling her so at a retirement Basically,
22:43
Speaker 1: so she had been played for a sap basically by
22:46
Speaker 1: good year as far as the lower courts are concerned,
22:49
Speaker 1: for nineteen years. But because nineteen years earlier, in nineteen
22:53
Speaker 1: seventy nine, she didn't immediately recognize that she was getting
22:56
Speaker 1: less pay. So, like you have to basically be inspector
23:00
Speaker 1: Cluseau the first time you get paid to to get
23:05
Speaker 1: a successful Title seven complaint cleared by the court. It's
23:09
Speaker 1: just ridiculous. Uh. In descent, I love reading the Supreme Court,
23:14
Speaker 1: like when they actually, you know, write why they find
23:17
Speaker 1: it in favor or not. It's really interesting stuff. Uh.
23:20
Speaker 1: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in her descent called it out
23:24
Speaker 1: of tune with the realities of wage discrimination and quote
23:27
Speaker 1: a cramped interpretation of Title seven incompatible with the statutes
23:31
Speaker 1: broad remedial purpose end quote. So basically, like the whole
23:35
Speaker 1: purpose of this, like, you're just shirking the whole purpose
23:38
Speaker 1: of the strant to begin with. Yeah, the purpose isn't
23:40
Speaker 1: to protect corporations from lawsuits. It's so that you keep
23:44
Speaker 1: employees from getting screwed over by their employers. So again
23:47
Speaker 1: Obama came in with another thing signed into law of
23:50
Speaker 1: the Lily Ledbetter Act, which said, we'll stick to the
23:54
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty days thing. But that's from the last
23:57
Speaker 1: discriminatory paycheck. So she could have found out at her retirement, um,
24:03
Speaker 1: gotten her last paycheck and had six months to sue
24:06
Speaker 1: for the whole shebang, her whole career basically, and probably
24:09
Speaker 1: would have one had that law been an effect at
24:12
Speaker 1: the time. All right, well, let's take another break and
24:15
Speaker 1: um we'll talk a little bit more about this right
24:17
Speaker 1: after this. All right, So, uh, what are the reasons
24:39
Speaker 1: behind this? They're myriad, They're myriad, They're myriad, and um,
24:44
Speaker 1: the thing is, critics of the gender pay gap say
24:49
Speaker 1: this is not a discrimination, like employers are not saying
24:52
Speaker 1: like you're a woman, I'm gonna just you know, treat
24:55
Speaker 1: you poorly compared to your male counterparts. That doesn't happen.
24:58
Speaker 1: It may happen, but it's not happening on a systemic scale.
25:01
Speaker 1: But if you look at the explanations for this, and
25:05
Speaker 1: economists have investigated this and thought long and hard about
25:08
Speaker 1: it and argued over it and really drilled down into
25:11
Speaker 1: it rather than stop talking about it, right, um, it
25:15
Speaker 1: would be what's still going on is still ultimately gender discrimination.
25:20
Speaker 1: It's just not this nefarious handlebar mustache version of it
25:24
Speaker 1: that people look for because everyone wants a smoking gun
25:28
Speaker 1: or a gotcha moment, you know what I mean. But
25:30
Speaker 1: when you look at the explanations and the reasons behind
25:33
Speaker 1: purportedly the gender discrimination gap or the gender pay gap,
25:38
Speaker 1: it is still discrimination based on gender most likely and
25:41
Speaker 1: race too. Like we we shouldn't. We don't mean to
25:45
Speaker 1: undermine that or diminish that at all, Like it's even
25:48
Speaker 1: worse based on race. You know. Um, there was a
25:54
Speaker 1: Freakonomics podcast episode. Mr Dubner did a great episode in
25:58
Speaker 1: January of this year, um that I listened to and
26:02
Speaker 1: he got um and you know, fre economics. It seems
26:04
Speaker 1: like they kind of get to the real reasons behind things.
26:07
Speaker 1: This was called the True Story of the Gender Pay
26:09
Speaker 1: Gap UH, and he sat down with a few people.
26:12
Speaker 1: One of them was Claudia Golden. She's a econ professor
26:15
Speaker 1: at Harvard. So the long and short of it is,
26:18
Speaker 1: after reading UH and listening to this, was that Claudia
26:22
Speaker 1: Golden and others economists have tried to compare apples to
26:26
Speaker 1: apples more and found that there are many, many reasons
26:31
Speaker 1: why there is a pay gap um, but they can't
26:35
Speaker 1: prove that discrimination is the leading cause, and they think
26:39
Speaker 1: that it's probably one of the minor causes. Well, yeah,
26:43
Speaker 1: it's most likely not a major cause at all. Like
26:45
Speaker 1: when you look at that that mind boggling gap ratio um,
26:53
Speaker 1: when you start comparing apples to apples, most of it vanishes,
26:58
Speaker 1: but there is a mysterious three four five that can't
27:02
Speaker 1: be accounted for by things like experience or educational background
27:07
Speaker 1: or what have you. Well, yeah, and that's three. I
27:11
Speaker 1: mean that's too much, you know, any percent is too much.
27:14
Speaker 1: Like if there is, if if there is gender discrimination,
27:16
Speaker 1: going zero exactly, Thank you, you just said it so succinctly. Um. So,
27:24
Speaker 1: one of the theories that people say, um, is that
27:28
Speaker 1: men are better at bargaining for their salary and asking
27:31
Speaker 1: for raises and getting tough in that room and demanding
27:34
Speaker 1: the raise and valuing their work more. In valuing their work. Um.
27:38
Speaker 1: And there may be some truth to that. But um.
27:40
Speaker 1: This economist from Harvard says, well, if that were true,
27:44
Speaker 1: then you would be able to look at men and
27:47
Speaker 1: women right out of college with the same degree getting
27:50
Speaker 1: the same job. The men should be making more money.
27:53
Speaker 1: And she said when you look at that, they actually
27:56
Speaker 1: make almost the same thing. Right. The gender pay gap
28:00
Speaker 1: is less earlier on in the career. Right. But even
28:04
Speaker 1: if there is that small bit right there at the beginning,
28:08
Speaker 1: if you start out lower, your raises over time and
28:11
Speaker 1: your promotions over time are gonna be lower. Two. And
28:14
Speaker 1: that can actually accrue and make the gap wider by
28:18
Speaker 1: the end of the career, which is what you see, right. Yeah,
28:20
Speaker 1: And what she contends. And this other woman and Marie
28:23
Speaker 1: Slaughter who is a public policy scholar who wrote a
28:26
Speaker 1: book called Unfinished Business, and Mr Dubner sat down with
28:30
Speaker 1: her too, and they kind of peg it down to
28:33
Speaker 1: it seems like two things. Um. And Mary Slaughter calls
28:37
Speaker 1: one of them the care penalty. Um. And it's not
28:40
Speaker 1: just having a baby and staying home with a baby.
28:42
Speaker 1: It's women are more likely to care for their parents
28:45
Speaker 1: when they get old. Um. Of a sibling that needs help,
28:49
Speaker 1: like you know, they they have cancer and they need
28:51
Speaker 1: to come live with you. And I need to take
28:52
Speaker 1: time on work to care for my brother's sister, and
28:55
Speaker 1: especially children when when you have kids. Um, there is
29:00
Speaker 1: most assuredly a care penalty because they found that men
29:03
Speaker 1: sometimes work even harder after they have a baby. Right,
29:07
Speaker 1: they're staying away from home, maybe staying away from home,
29:10
Speaker 1: or maybe it hits them like I need to work
29:11
Speaker 1: harder to make more money now, whereas women falls to
29:14
Speaker 1: more like you know, I want to care for this child. So, UM,
29:18
Speaker 1: I'm gonna select a job that will pay less because
29:22
Speaker 1: it's either part time or it offers more flexibility. Um.
29:26
Speaker 1: And then I saw another interview with um Golden right
29:29
Speaker 1: is their name? Um, and she pointed out that, uh,
29:33
Speaker 1: if women are if women are more likely to get
29:38
Speaker 1: a job that's closer to home that's more fulfilling, say
29:41
Speaker 1: than um, something a man is looking for, then there's
29:44
Speaker 1: going to be more competition for those jobs, which is
29:48
Speaker 1: going to drive wages down just from supply and demand theory. Yeah,
29:52
Speaker 1: she calls it temporal flexibility women. Men tend to favor
29:57
Speaker 1: income growth way more than women do, whereas women tend
30:02
Speaker 1: to favorite temporal flexibility more. I want to be near
30:04
Speaker 1: the house so I'm not stuck in my car, so
30:07
Speaker 1: I can be around my family more, so I can
30:09
Speaker 1: be you know, a better member, a better family member
30:14
Speaker 1: basically overall, which is you know, it seems like men
30:18
Speaker 1: don't care as much about that, right and and I
30:20
Speaker 1: mean the most overt example of this is childcare, where
30:25
Speaker 1: especially in the US, um you're lucky to get X
30:30
Speaker 1: number of days off as a father, as a as
30:33
Speaker 1: a woman, you're you're you get a guaranteed three months off,
30:38
Speaker 1: twelve weeks off by federal law. Men there's no guarantee whatsoever,
30:44
Speaker 1: so you may get zero off. And that reflects this again,
30:47
Speaker 1: this gender bias, if not outright gender discrimination, that does
30:50
Speaker 1: tend to set some women back because even if they're
30:53
Speaker 1: just out for three months or something, they're they're missing
30:56
Speaker 1: out of the flow of their career. And there you
30:59
Speaker 1: couldn't go on work trip, so we're gonna send uh,
31:01
Speaker 1: you know exactly, So they're missing out on future promotions,
31:05
Speaker 1: future raises UM and future experience and all of those
31:09
Speaker 1: things count for future um income wages. Yeah, and I
31:16
Speaker 1: want to rephrase what I just said that men don't
31:19
Speaker 1: care as much about being a good family member. What
31:22
Speaker 1: I meant to say is men might have a different
31:24
Speaker 1: outlook on what is being a better family member, and
31:28
Speaker 1: in that case, it's going out and working harder to
31:30
Speaker 1: make more money. Oh yeah, does that make sense? Sure?
31:33
Speaker 1: Because I get roughed up for being too hard on
31:35
Speaker 1: white men, right, I do. We get emails all the time, Chuck,
31:39
Speaker 1: why do you hate white men? I don't know. I
31:41
Speaker 1: don't hate what I'm I am a white man, and
31:43
Speaker 1: it's not self loathing. No. I love myself and I
31:46
Speaker 1: love you, thanks man. Uh. And it's just kind of
31:49
Speaker 1: warm in here. So temporal flexibility is one of the
31:52
Speaker 1: big things. And um and actually Golden says that if
31:58
Speaker 1: women were allowed to work flexible hours of their choosing,
32:03
Speaker 1: then the she believes that the the gender pay gap
32:07
Speaker 1: might actually vanish right well, and um a Marie Slaughter said,
32:11
Speaker 1: if you if you take the other big one is
32:13
Speaker 1: the care penalty. If you take that off the table
32:16
Speaker 1: and you don't have any caregiving obligations at all. Uh,
32:20
Speaker 1: it climbs to about but there's still that five right,
32:25
Speaker 1: you know, Like, where is that coming from? I think
32:27
Speaker 1: that's it. I think it's got to be discrimination. I
32:30
Speaker 1: can't remember her name, but I was reading an interview
32:32
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic with a Cornell economist who studies this,
32:37
Speaker 1: and she was saying, um, that if you look at Europe,
32:40
Speaker 1: there they're much more um even they're equal with their
32:45
Speaker 1: um their paternity leaving their maternity to leave actually and um,
32:51
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's it's old enough to have
32:55
Speaker 1: like had a demonstrable effect. But um, I wonder if
32:59
Speaker 1: if having something like that here in the US, where
33:02
Speaker 1: I don't remember the country she cited some skin and
33:05
Speaker 1: even country obviously. UM. But the the men are given
33:10
Speaker 1: like a family is given an a lotted amount of
33:13
Speaker 1: paternity or maternity time, and X amount of it has
33:18
Speaker 1: to be paternity, and the dad can either use it
33:21
Speaker 1: or not, but the mom can't take that on. So
33:24
Speaker 1: it's kind of like you're gonna spend some time with
33:26
Speaker 1: your kids or not. But to you, um, and so
33:29
Speaker 1: there's a lot more guys taking that than there was before,
33:32
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot more equality and caregiving. Which
33:36
Speaker 1: if it's gonna be, you know which ways America is
33:39
Speaker 1: gonna go. Is it gonna be women need to spend
33:42
Speaker 1: less time at home and get into the workforce more
33:44
Speaker 1: or men need to spend more time at home caring
33:47
Speaker 1: for the kids and make the whole thing more of
33:49
Speaker 1: an equal thing, you know, and then maybe that will
33:52
Speaker 1: erase some of the pay gap for sure. They m
33:56
Speaker 1: in the same fre Economics episode. They kind of close
33:59
Speaker 1: with asking Ms Golden what her like, what kind of
34:02
Speaker 1: legislation would like, how can you fix this? Like more laws,
34:06
Speaker 1: more laws, And she had a pretty good idea. She
34:08
Speaker 1: was like, you need to start at like the school level,
34:11
Speaker 1: because you send your kids off to school, and what
34:13
Speaker 1: happens is they get out at two or three o'clock
34:16
Speaker 1: and unless you have you know, I want your kid
34:19
Speaker 1: to be a latch key kid, someone's gonna need to
34:21
Speaker 1: be home with them. Uh. And then there are a
34:24
Speaker 1: lot of times out, like for a couple of months
34:26
Speaker 1: during the summer, so someone needs to be there. Then,
34:29
Speaker 1: so she argues for lengthenings, extending school days in school,
34:33
Speaker 1: the school year such that it doesn't require that one
34:38
Speaker 1: of the family members to have to like take off
34:41
Speaker 1: work or take a part time job, yeah, instead of
34:43
Speaker 1: a full time job. Well, I remember when I was
34:45
Speaker 1: a little kid, my mom was home and until I
34:48
Speaker 1: entered I guess kindergarten. Yeah, my mom quit teaching to
34:52
Speaker 1: raise all three of her kids up until I was
34:55
Speaker 1: like fifteen, and then she went back to work as
34:57
Speaker 1: a and then so I mean, how much further back
35:00
Speaker 1: can her in their careers where our moms staying home hugely,
35:04
Speaker 1: You should not be penalized for raising two stellar sons. Yeah,
35:08
Speaker 1: and I have to say in a stellar daughter, Um,
35:12
Speaker 1: it's kind of personal. But like my parents got divorced,
35:15
Speaker 1: and so divorce proceedings can get ugly, and a woman
35:19
Speaker 1: in a divorce court says, well, I took off uh
35:23
Speaker 1: like eighteen years to raise my children, and now I'm
35:26
Speaker 1: going back to school at a much lower wage than
35:29
Speaker 1: I would have because like that needs to be valued.
35:33
Speaker 1: And uh, it's tough, man, you know it is. It
35:37
Speaker 1: is tough. Like we said, if there's any percentage it's
35:40
Speaker 1: based on gender discrimination or race discrimination, that's too much. Agreed. Uh, Yeah,
35:47
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do what the answer is.
35:50
Speaker 1: And I guess the reason why we can't say here's
35:52
Speaker 1: the answer because we don't fully understand which of these
35:55
Speaker 1: factors it is or what combination. You know, yet, we
35:57
Speaker 1: should just go sit down with all our fellow podcasts
35:59
Speaker 1: are and talk about what we all make right. We
36:01
Speaker 1: should um, there's something else I know as to chuck
36:04
Speaker 1: um if we keep going at the same rate. So
36:08
Speaker 1: there's actually a huge jump from nineteen eight and nine
36:14
Speaker 1: of the pay gap that had been there before vanished,
36:17
Speaker 1: And it was because women that had entered the workforce
36:19
Speaker 1: starting in the sixties gained the kind of experience to
36:22
Speaker 1: where like their wages were reflecting those of men. That
36:26
Speaker 1: was that's one theory behind it. But then after that
36:28
Speaker 1: it's stagnated. It's been stagnant pretty much the last decade
36:31
Speaker 1: or so UM and apparently at the pace that it's
36:34
Speaker 1: going now is when um parody for white women will
36:41
Speaker 1: be reached. It's very frequently called like women won't reach
36:43
Speaker 1: gender or gender parody until that's white women. If you
36:49
Speaker 1: are African American, it would be sometime towards the end
36:52
Speaker 1: of the next next century for an African American woman
36:55
Speaker 1: to reach parody with white men, and around the world
36:59
Speaker 1: this is an issue as well. Apparently women around the
37:02
Speaker 1: world make on average half of what men do around
37:07
Speaker 1: the world half half Eddie, Yeah, half, and so the
37:14
Speaker 1: average woman in the world by three um would eat
37:18
Speaker 1: would reach pay parody. Uh. Well, I have one final
37:22
Speaker 1: stat here, just depending on what state you live in,
37:24
Speaker 1: it's gonna make a big difference. Washington, d C leads
37:28
Speaker 1: the way as far as the smallest gender pay gap. Um,
37:34
Speaker 1: they're earnings ratio. Women are at of men. Okay, Georgia.
37:42
Speaker 1: Our own state of Georgia is on the list, and
37:48
Speaker 1: if you are a woman living in Louisiana, you have
37:52
Speaker 1: the distinction of living in the worst state in the
37:55
Speaker 1: United States at the scant earnings ratio. Wow, pretty low
38:01
Speaker 1: SOT pay gap there. Uh and huge thanks to uh
38:07
Speaker 1: for I was able to lean on that fre Economics
38:10
Speaker 1: episode so heavily. To Stephen Dubna, that was a really
38:14
Speaker 1: good episode. Yeah, that was nice of him to send
38:16
Speaker 1: you a gold thumb drive with it. That was very nice, guys, Stubbs. Yeah.
38:23
Speaker 1: Uh Well, if you want to learn more about this
38:26
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, you know, gender pay gaps and pay
38:29
Speaker 1: disparity and wages, that kind of thing that tickles economists fancies.
38:33
Speaker 1: You can type those words into the search bar at
38:36
Speaker 1: how staff works dot com. Since I said search parts
38:38
Speaker 1: time for listener. Now, I think it was a little
38:43
Speaker 1: clumsy in that one, So apologies to people what I
38:47
Speaker 1: just felt that was a little clumsy in that if
38:48
Speaker 1: that's how I felt in the Tornadoes episode. Really, there
38:51
Speaker 1: was a lot of points I wanted to get across
38:53
Speaker 1: the right way, and that's usually when I find myself
38:56
Speaker 1: saying things exactly the wrong way. Well, you corrected yourself
38:59
Speaker 1: on that one thing, right, Well I tried. Um, all right,
39:02
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this, uh nostalgia immediate nostalgia. Oh yeah,
39:08
Speaker 1: from Jason Tardy. O. Wait, hey, guys, I was recently
39:12
Speaker 1: listening to The Nostalgia Show while going on a trail run.
39:15
Speaker 1: I didn't get a chance to finish it, and later
39:17
Speaker 1: I went to listen to the podcast again. I started
39:19
Speaker 1: over from the beginning and I skipped ahead to find
39:22
Speaker 1: where I left off, and I was hit with instant
39:24
Speaker 1: nostalgia of that trail run. Certain phrases I heard you
39:28
Speaker 1: say during my run, We're tied with images of the
39:30
Speaker 1: beautiful trail every time I skipped ahead, I saw a
39:33
Speaker 1: different image and could remember exactly where I was when
39:36
Speaker 1: I had previously heard you say that phrase had brought
39:38
Speaker 1: up warm feelings of happiness of the trail while listening
39:41
Speaker 1: to you, guys, I don't know if that's nostalgia. Thanks
39:46
Speaker 1: for everything you do. I wish you all the best.
39:48
Speaker 1: You've been a great distraction while training for my marathon,
39:51
Speaker 1: driving long hours on the road as a performance artist,
39:53
Speaker 1: in keeping me sane during the craziness of having my
39:56
Speaker 1: wife go through breast cancer while still keeping the house
39:59
Speaker 1: clean with two kids. So, Jason Tardy of Auburn, Maine,
40:03
Speaker 1: hats off to you, sir, and best of luck to
40:05
Speaker 1: your wife and good luck hearing for those kids. Yeah,
40:10
Speaker 1: best wishes, guys. Yeah, we will instantly nostalgize you whenever
40:15
Speaker 1: you want nice. If you want to get in touch
40:20
Speaker 1: with us, like Jason did, you can tweet to us
40:22
Speaker 1: at s Y s K podcast. You can join us
40:25
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
40:27
Speaker 1: can send us an email to stuff Podcasts at how
40:30
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at
40:32
Speaker 1: home on the web Stuff you Should Know dot com
40:39
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
40:42
Speaker 1: it how stuff works? Dot com