The Gender Pay Gap and FCKH8
Saturday, October 25, 2014 by Jonathan R. Gibbons inFCKH8.com released this hysterical, yet poignant, video of young girls cursing while laying out some of the various issues women still face in the United States. You may watch the video below:
Every gender issue that FCKH8 mentions is indeed very real and concerning, but at least one– and perhaps more –of the statements is exaggerated, and obviously not fully researched. My focus of criticism is on this statement:
Women make 23% less than men for the exact same f*cking work. I shouldn’t need a penis to get paid.
FCKH8 doesn’t provide a source for this statement anywhere I could find, but I suspect they took it from a statement former President Jimmy Carter made earlier this year. The problem is that the statement is not true. PolitiFact rated this claim mostly false earlier this year, explaining (my emphasis):
The number… comes from a U.S. Census Bureau study that looked at the total wages earned by male and female workers. The study found men’s total wages were about 23 percent higher than the total amount of women’s wages. But that large discrepancy was due in part to the fact that men generally work more hours. The study did not attempt to look at equal pay for the same work or the same number of hours worked.
The number does not take into account critical factors that could influence the figure, including specific occupation, time on the job and education level.
And the gap drops dramatically if you compare men and women of similar education levels, job titles, time on the job and other relevant factors.
Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis cited one survey, prepared for the Labor Department. It found that when such differences are accounted for, much of the hourly wage gap vanished. It shrinks to the low single digits. (Tharpe 2014)
Likewise, James M. Henslin explains (my emphasis):
What logic can underlie the gender pay gap? …college degrees are gender linked, so perhaps this gap is due to career choices. Maybe women are more likely to choose lower-paying jobs, such as teaching grade school, while men are more likely to go into better-paying fields, such as business and engineering. Actually, this is true, and researchers have found that about half of the gender pay gap is due to such factors. And the balance? It consists of a combination of gender discrimination (Jacobs 2003; Roth 2003) and what is called the “child penalty”—women missing out on work experience and opportunities while they care for children (Hundley 2001; Chaker and Stout 2004). (Henslin 2012, 318)
Overall this video is great. The troubling aspect of the video is the negligence of the adults who wrote the script; they clearly didn’t research all of the claims. Likewise, their push to purchase their products is suspect. Their website is devoid of actual research and helpful information; instead it’s filled with products to purchase. They say they donate the proceeds to charities.
Surely we should fight gender discrimination, but we should also fight ignorance and always pursue truth. Is there a pay gap? Sure. Is it 23%? Hardly. Such grossly exaggerated/simplified claims as, “23% of women make less for the same job as men,” confuse people and it distracts them from focusing on the far more important issue mentioned in the video: violence against women.
Recommended Charities:
Stop Violence Against Women
Human Rights Watch
Sources:
Henslin, J. 2012. Sociology: A Down to Earth Approach. (10th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Jacobs, Jerry A. “Detours on the Road to Equality: Women, Work and Higher Education.” Contexts,Winter 2003:32–41.
Roth, Louise Marie. “Selling Women Short: A Research Note on Gender Differences in Compensation on Wall Street.” Social Forces, 82, 2, December 2003:783–802.
Tharpe, Jim. 2014. “Carter exaggerates gender pay gap”. PolitiFact. http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2014/apr/04/jimmy-carter/carter-exaggerates-gender-pay-gap/
