Flavorwire: Today is Equal Pay Day, and you don’t have to approve of Patricia Arquette’s poorly considered Oscar-night comments to get behind her push for gender pay equity, which is far from a realized goal in America. The pay gap directly or indirectly affects most workers and their families: women in the US working full-time make only 78 cents for every dollar a man makes, while it gets worse when compounded with racial inequality: a Latina woman earns only 56 cents to that dollar.
3 comments:
I have very mixed feeling about this whole "equal pay" thing. On one hand I understand women not being payed with the equal amount of work that they give and not getting enough credit for it as men do. However, there is the reasoning that if men and women get equal pay, then men may work less hard and be able to slack off more with their work. I'm all for women and them being able to advance in society and being treated equally, however this world always seems to find a way for us to never be the same and never be happy with what we have. Watching videos in anthropology, I know even more about feminism and how it works around the world then I ever knew before. Feminism is something that is a struggle everywhere, however, in places where women are seen higher then men are because everyone has an equal view of whats going on. Here we don't have the ability to change everyones mind, so this will always be a struggle. The same can be said about racism.
Well, this is incredibly depressing. As a member of the arts community, I would hope and expect that the somewhat more progressive nature of our industry would allow more inclusivity in terms of the wage gap. Why is our industry facing the same kind of traditional attitude yet pretending to hold itself to a higher standard? Serious changes need to be made, and while conditions are slowly improving, I feel as if the only other option at this point is government intervention. Laws need to be created for us to start taking the wage gap more seriously. Which is, on one hand, incredibly frustrating that we have to take such drastic measures to prevent this kind of shameful thing from happening. I wish I could really understand why this is happening in the first place. Is it just blatant misogyny, or is there some kind of justified reason why women are viewed as less capable? Which, I obviously point out, is still misogyny.
I love how this article addresses this enormous issue not in a general view, but in the context of particular fields where the wage gap is exceptionally problematic. I specifically commend this article for addressing the wage gap in the book publishing industry, as we often overlook this industry when we discuss gender inequality in the arts. I personally feel connected to this issue in the publishing field because my mother has been working as a layout artist for a small publishing company for over 20 years now, and she still receives significantly less compensation than her male equivalent. Even though she’s gotten a raise or two over the years, proportionally the inequality is still undeniable. My mother has been with the same company since I was born, but she’s still only paid as a freelancer and doesn’t receive the benefits of paid vacation and healthcare that the man in her same position does. Equality shouldn’t be a gender-based issue it should just be a humanitarian issue. Equal pay for equal work, end of story.
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