So it turns out that Mommies are still underpaid and guess what? It’s all the fault of feminists! Yup no doubt about it, couldn’t possibly be due to discrimination dating back to the dawn of patriarchy. According to The Atlantic,
New data shows that, despite feminists’ best efforts, women have still failed to reach equality in the job market.
Wow, like I feel so inadequate. The NYT continues the bashing here:
Women and men with similar qualifications — age, education, experience — are much more likely to be treated similarly today than in the past. The pay gap between them, while still not zero, has shrunk to just a few percentage points.Yet once you look beyond the tidy comparisons of supposedly identical men and women, the picture is much less sunny. There are still only 15 Fortune 500 companies with a female chief executive. Men dominate the next rungs of management in most fields, too. Over all, full-time female workers make a whopping 23 percent less on average than full-time male workers…
…The fact that the job market has evolved in this way is no accident. It’s a result of policy choices. As Jane Waldfogel, a Columbia University professor who studies families and work, says, “American feminists made a conscious choice to emphasize equal rights and equal opportunities, but not to talk about policies that would address family responsibilities.”
In many ways, the choice was shrewd. The feminist movement has been fabulously successful fighting for antidiscrimination laws that require men and women to be treated equally. These laws have not eliminated the blatant sexism of past decades — think “Mad Men” — but they have beaten back much of it.
As a result, outright sexism is no longer the main barrier to gender equality. The main barrier is the harsh price most workers pay for pursuing anything other than the old-fashioned career path.
“Women do almost as well as men today,” Ms. Waldfogel said, “as long as they don’t have children.”
And just how problematic is that? According to Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Moms Rising,
The wrinkle here is that according to the U.S. Census over 80% of US women have kids by the time they’re 44, which means the majority of women hit an economic Maternal Wall and don’t “do almost as well as men.”
Blame it on the feminists? What a load of poop.
Disclaimer: I wrote this post while making dinner for my family, go on, try to pull off that trick you male CEO’s!
