RESOURCES

Gender in Business

Women continue to earn an average of 76 cents for every dollar earned by men, meaning that it takes women almost 16 months to earn what men earn in a single year. That's why Equal Pay Day always falls in April. This year, April 20 marks the date that women, counting from January 2003, will pull down as much in earning as men had by December 31 last year.

The answer to this glaring inequity is clear. The pay gap could be closed with a simple amendment to the federal tax code establishing a pay gap tax credit. This tax credit would be equal to the gender pay gap faced by working women. The tax credit is necessary because of the pay gap's stubborn persistence over decades of social and economic change.

Heather Boushey, Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.
The Boston Globe, April 20, 2004
Narrowing the Pay Gap

Other cultures evince very different patterns of talk associated with gender—and correspondingly different assumptions about the "natures" of women and men. I don't put a lot of store in talk about "natures" or what is "natural." People in every culture will tell you that the behaviors common in their own culture are that their way of talking is a natural response to their environment, as there is always an equally natural and opposite way of responding to the same environment. We all tend to regard the way things are as the way things have to be—as only natural.

Deborah Tannen
Talking from 9 to 5

As for the fallacy of female supremacy, the gains made by women through struggle and implementation of policies such as affirmative action point to the necessity of broader systematic change. But if female supremacy is a fallacy, does this mean that men go unhurt by gender inequalities? No. Men and boys are hurt when their families suffer because pay inequity causes their mothers, grandmothers, sisters and aunts to lose income, get fired, face hiring discrimination, are refused pensions, don't have equal Social Security benefits, lose out on promotions or have limited access to higher education. Additionally, if the average woman loses $523,000 in income in her life, does this mean that the average man is enriched by $523,000 in his lifetime? If pay inequity costs women $200 billion yearly, does this mean that men are enriched by $200 billion? The answer is no. These billions are savings in labor costs to employers. Employers enjoy the profits of male supremacy and gendered divisions among working people. So it makes sense that the right tries to portray the benefits of progressive social change toward equality as bad. It cuts into their bottom line.

Joel Wendland, Managing Editor
Political Affairs, March 2004—PoliticalAffairs.net
Reversing the "Gender Gap"