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Speaker 1: From housetop works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Molly got a
Speaker 1: little quiz for you. See see how much you've been
Speaker 1: following the news? Can you tell me the first major
Speaker 1: piece of legislation that Barack Obama signed? And I'll give
Speaker 1: you a hint. It is not the Stimulus package. Wow.
Speaker 1: I bet a lot of people think that it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is not Stimulus. Well, I actually know because I
Speaker 1: know what we're going to talk about today. Um. It
Speaker 1: was actually the Lily Leadbetter Fair Pay Act. Right on
Speaker 1: January two thousand nine, President Obama made good on one
Speaker 1: of his campaign promises to decrease the gender wage gap
Speaker 1: in the workplace by signing the Lily lad Better Fair
Speaker 1: Pay Act. So maybe we should talk about who Lily
Speaker 1: Lidbetter is. Yeah. I think she's pretty fascinating. I think
Speaker 1: she'll definitely be a female name that will go down
Speaker 1: in history. Here's what happened. Philly led Better. She is
Speaker 1: from Alabama and she worked for the good Year Tire
Speaker 1: and Rubber Company from nineteen seventy nine. She put in
Speaker 1: a long time, she worked her ears, and but then
Speaker 1: she's gonna take early retirement. She was an area manager
Speaker 1: and I guess what I read happened is that right
Speaker 1: for she was going to retire, someone kind of slipped
Speaker 1: her a little piece of paper that showed her what
Speaker 1: everyone else in her position, who are male, made. Uh.
Speaker 1: And she realized that all these years good Year had
Speaker 1: been paying her far less than the other fifteen male
Speaker 1: area managers fifteen and this, I mean, this is over
Speaker 1: almost twenty years. Yeah, and so she as I think
Speaker 1: she should have took good Year to court and said
Speaker 1: this was wage discrimination. If all the males made this much,
Speaker 1: I should have made this much too. She want to
Speaker 1: be compense I did for all the money that she
Speaker 1: wasn't that she was owed. She felt like she was
Speaker 1: owed right, and the jury agreed with her. But as
Speaker 1: things happen, the case ended up in the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, it's been sort of a controversial decision.
Speaker 1: But the Supreme Court ruled again fully led Better, saying
Speaker 1: that she should have filed her claim within an eight
Speaker 1: days of when the alleged pay discrepancy started. So basically
Speaker 1: that gives her going back to like let's say nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, when she first gets hired. That gives her
Speaker 1: six months to figure out what everyone else is making
Speaker 1: and to figure out if there's a gender wage gap there.
Speaker 1: And if we're talking about fifteen other area managers, that
Speaker 1: would be a pretty it would be a hard thing
Speaker 1: to find out. I mean, I have no idea what
Speaker 1: you make, Molly, and honestly I don't want to know
Speaker 1: freedom and I've been working here for a year exactly.
Speaker 1: There's it just seems really hard illogical that you could
Speaker 1: expect someone to find out within six months of their
Speaker 1: starting pay how much everyone else is making and whether
Speaker 1: any discrepancy is in fact even due to your gender. Right,
Speaker 1: So the Supreme Court or had to toss out the case.
Speaker 1: Lily Ledbetter decided to keep fighting against gender wage discrimination,
Speaker 1: even though she mean, she's never going to get this
Speaker 1: money back from good Year, but thanks to her work,
Speaker 1: she has paved the way for a lot of other
Speaker 1: people to get there do wages right. Here's what happened. So,
Speaker 1: after all her campaigning, and she did make a lot
Speaker 1: of campaign stops for Barack Obama when he was campaign
Speaker 1: for president. On January nine, she was there when he
Speaker 1: signed into law this Pay Act, which basically expans the
Speaker 1: statue of limitations for lawsuits. So basically you can discover,
Speaker 1: you know a little bit, you don't have just six
Speaker 1: months to figure out if you're being paid less. Now,
Speaker 1: people on the other side say this is just gonna
Speaker 1: encourage lawsuits, that women are gonna start coming forward and
Speaker 1: claiming that they'll do all this money. And it's not
Speaker 1: just women, it can be it can be men as well,
Speaker 1: but sort of wage discrimination. But what Lily Liberter has
Speaker 1: really become a symbol of is sort of the female
Speaker 1: side in this gender wage gap. But then you've got
Speaker 1: people saying that there's not a gender wage gap. Right,
Speaker 1: What's going on with that? Kristen? Now, my I think
Speaker 1: we need to clarify. When people here gender wage gap,
Speaker 1: you immediately think of maybe National Women's organization, people picketing outside,
Speaker 1: you know, for feminist causes. It definitely is the feminist platform.
Speaker 1: But the fact of the matter is the gender wage
Speaker 1: gap exists. I mean, it's not feminism, it's math, lays
Speaker 1: and statistics. Um. Alright, Molly, here we go according to
Speaker 1: the beera of labor statistics. Can we really argue with
Speaker 1: them or no? No, The meeting wage in two thousand
Speaker 1: seven for women was eight of that for men. So
Speaker 1: if you went to the dollar store, yep, you can
Speaker 1: only have eighty cents. Yes, exactly, Well, perfect perfect analogy.
Speaker 1: Percent means now, some people argue that we've made a
Speaker 1: lot of progress. The gender wage gap has definitely narrowed
Speaker 1: since nineteen nine when the BLS started recording wage data,
Speaker 1: and at that time, women made sixt of what men made,
Speaker 1: So we've gone from six from nine two seven. That's okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's a lot. But Molly, really is it a lot?
Speaker 1: I mean that's like twenty years, that's one percent a year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're kind of kind of just inching forward. So let's
Speaker 1: break this sun a little bit to understand maybe why
Speaker 1: the gender wage geap exists. Because it is illegal for
Speaker 1: businesses to pay men and women different amounts for the
Speaker 1: same work. That went that came into law long time
Speaker 1: ago nineteen sixty three with the Equal Pay Act, So
Speaker 1: what's going on here? Well, Kristen, that was six three,
Speaker 1: which makes me think that maybe there weren't that many
Speaker 1: women in the workplace, So that might have been how
Speaker 1: the gender wage gaps started, was just there weren't that
Speaker 1: many women, you know, in positions of that were similar
Speaker 1: to men. Basically, right, that could be. But also if
Speaker 1: we look at education for instance, now women and men
Speaker 1: both get about the same amount of bachelor's degrees, but
Speaker 1: according to the US Census Bureau, men with degrees make
Speaker 1: an average of twenty six thousand dollars more every year
Speaker 1: than a degree holding woman. So the same level of education,
Speaker 1: they're still making more. So something is still off. So
Speaker 1: maybe it has to do with the jobs that we're picking.
Speaker 1: Maybe we're just going into the wrong things. We need
Speaker 1: to start becoming hedge fund managers or something. It's possible
Speaker 1: because the fields that do attract the most women, like
Speaker 1: education healthcare, just pay less um. So basically you do
Speaker 1: kind of fault yourself on what you pick. I mean,
Speaker 1: that sounds awful, but then it becomes a trade off
Speaker 1: on do you want a job you love that pays
Speaker 1: less center. But even in these female dominated fields, I
Speaker 1: guess what I'm concerned about is women sell to work
Speaker 1: harder to make the same and to get the same promotions.
Speaker 1: I found this really interesting statistic from the National Center
Speaker 1: for Education Statistics that said that women who are teachers
Speaker 1: have to work three years longer as it teacher than
Speaker 1: a male in terms of getting to the promotion of
Speaker 1: principle right, and in sectors such as education and healthcare
Speaker 1: that attract about a third of all female employees, men
Speaker 1: still make more money on average than women in those
Speaker 1: female dominated sectors. And as you move up the ladder
Speaker 1: from you know, move up the pay scale, the gap
Speaker 1: only widens, which surprised me because you would think the
Speaker 1: more money that you start making, the higher that you're
Speaker 1: moving up in the world, the more that's going to close.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't. The exact opposite happens, and only in
Speaker 1: the bottom of earning levels do women outnumber men. But Kristen,
Speaker 1: let me play devil's advocate. I don't want to sound
Speaker 1: like we're just a bunch of winy females. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think that they're it's specifically a sexist discrimination thing,
Speaker 1: do you know. I don't think that it is. For
Speaker 1: the very fact that all these statistics are coming from
Speaker 1: US Census Bureau beer of Labor Statistics. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: they're not. You know, acknowledge that it exists, and it
Speaker 1: also holds up among different races, and so it's not
Speaker 1: just a problem for women, but for people of other races. Right.
Speaker 1: The gender wage gap is actually the narrowest in between
Speaker 1: minority men and women. But that's because black and Hispanic
Speaker 1: workers are making the least amount of money. So that's
Speaker 1: where and when I talked about that bottom incomes, that's
Speaker 1: where a lot of those employees are falling. Okay, so
Speaker 1: now I'll play devil's advocate again. Okay, are these men
Speaker 1: just working harder? Are they just doing a better job?
Speaker 1: Are we really just maybe not very good employees? Well, Molly,
Speaker 1: I don't think that you can necessarily judge on quality
Speaker 1: of work, but the time on the clock does make
Speaker 1: a difference. And statistically, men work more, and by work,
Speaker 1: I mean work for wages more than women, right, And
Speaker 1: studies have shown that the more you work, the more
Speaker 1: you're gonna make. So if you're working, you know, a
Speaker 1: week with let's say ten hours overtime, you're gonna make more.
Speaker 1: But women may not have a luxury to do that
Speaker 1: because of motherhood. Right, the family gap. This has sometimes
Speaker 1: been referred to as family gap. And basically that means
Speaker 1: that it's not like you're working less. You basically have
Speaker 1: a four Uh. I was about to say a forty
Speaker 1: hour day, but there's not forty hours in a day,
Speaker 1: no matter how much we might like it, a twenty
Speaker 1: four hour day, because you go to work nine to
Speaker 1: five and then you go home and you've got kids,
Speaker 1: take care of dinner, to make, et cetera. And it's
Speaker 1: all this unpaid work that women are racking up in right,
Speaker 1: and that unpaid work has been referred to as the
Speaker 1: second shift. So maybe the reason why not as many
Speaker 1: women are working full time or over time is because
Speaker 1: they you know, they can't stay at the office because
Speaker 1: they gotta go pick up little Johnny and Susie and
Speaker 1: take them home and put their dinners in the microwave.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's not just Johnnie and Susie's dinner
Speaker 1: she's gonna making. She might be making Mom and Pops
Speaker 1: dinner too. Because I was reading, uh something from the
Speaker 1: Bureau of Labor Statistics that said that with the aging
Speaker 1: baby boomer population coming up, American women, about of them
Speaker 1: are going to have one parent living with them as
Speaker 1: well as one child at least one child aunder age
Speaker 1: of twenty one, So all of us is adding up
Speaker 1: to smaller and smaller paycheck um. For another dismal statistic
Speaker 1: to add to this lovely stew um, a study in
Speaker 1: from the American Sociological Review calculated that American women experience
Speaker 1: a seven percent wage penalty per child. So you're just
Speaker 1: getting dinged if you just want to put a guilt
Speaker 1: trip on your child, Yeah, show them your paycheck, Johnny.
Speaker 1: So you better take care of me when I'm old, exactly.
Speaker 1: But Molly, on the upside, there are two things that
Speaker 1: might help us. Name them college education, okay, and waiting
Speaker 1: to have a little Johnny. Really, yes, A study in
Speaker 1: the Review of the Economics of the Household found that
Speaker 1: college educated women who waited in to have children until
Speaker 1: after thirty did not experience a wage penalty. But you
Speaker 1: know that's only one study. But still, but Christie, I
Speaker 1: just find that really frustrating that the only glimmer of
Speaker 1: hope you have offered me this entire podcast is that
Speaker 1: I just shouldn't have children to thirty. That is just
Speaker 1: that's just wrong. I think I think that it should
Speaker 1: just be more equitable. Well, Molly, let's you know, let's
Speaker 1: just break it down. You know, we have we have
Speaker 1: three things to think about when you're entering into the workforce,
Speaker 1: your job choice, how much time you're going to spend
Speaker 1: on the clock, and when you're gonna have kids. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you could just solve those problems, then you know
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about the wage gap. Oh, Kristen,
Speaker 1: I went for tips from our real financial advisor just
Speaker 1: because you're so doom and gloom today. Okay, these are
Speaker 1: from CBS Early Show financial advisor Ray Martin. A man man,
Speaker 1: all right, Molly, but a man have to say about this.
Speaker 1: These are his stance for how women can address the
Speaker 1: wage gap. But one of these you did I pick
Speaker 1: up on? You need to seek career counseling while you're
Speaker 1: in college so that if you are an education major,
Speaker 1: you kind of understand what you're yourself into. If you're
Speaker 1: an English major, you have to kind of understanding yourself into.
Speaker 1: In journalism classes, they told us pretty much hourly that
Speaker 1: we weren't going to make more than twenty dollars a year.
Speaker 1: So so if your pity, if your priority is money,
Speaker 1: then you know, start taking math and science classes. Um My,
Speaker 1: next tip from Ray Martin was too if you do
Speaker 1: choose a company, to look at how female friendly it is,
Speaker 1: and you can do this by going to UH ratings
Speaker 1: like the Working Mothers one hundred Best Companies lists and
Speaker 1: see how they value time off. Because, as we heard,
Speaker 1: if you're getting this seven percent dan with your children,
Speaker 1: you need to work at a company that's going to
Speaker 1: support you when you have these children, so you don't
Speaker 1: have to wait to have all Johnny and Susie, whose
Speaker 1: sounds absolutely adorable by the way, Yeah all right, um,
Speaker 1: you guys can't see if it. Christen just made an
Speaker 1: awful face when I talked about Johnny and Susie. But Kristin,
Speaker 1: how about this. We've talked about this before. When you
Speaker 1: get that first job off, what should you do negotiate
Speaker 1: your right because a lot of this wage gap might
Speaker 1: be just women not starting off on the same footing
Speaker 1: as men. That's a very good point, Molly, thank you,
Speaker 1: and so I will make another one. Another tip from
Speaker 1: Raymartin is to join organizations that will help you as
Speaker 1: a woman. So if you're in a particular field, let's
Speaker 1: say engineering, there are tons of like women in engineering
Speaker 1: groups that can help you figure out how to succeed.
Speaker 1: They'll promote you, you can get involved and just really
Speaker 1: pat up that resume. And then Raymartin's last tip kind
Speaker 1: of disappointed me. It was sort of like an if
Speaker 1: all else fails kind of thing. He says, if all
Speaker 1: else fails, just save more, because you're not making us much.
Speaker 1: Burn Burn. It's harsh, Molly, with all of this talk
Speaker 1: about money, might be a good time to switch gears
Speaker 1: for a second and think our sponsor, audible dot com.
Speaker 1: You can't get one free download by going to www
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Speaker 1: And if you want to sign up and do that,
Speaker 1: I have a recommendation for you. It's called Women in
Speaker 1: a Labyrinth of Leadership is an article from the Harvard
Speaker 1: Business Review. And while I always trust Kristen's recommendations, I
Speaker 1: have one too. It's nice Girls Don't Get the Corner
Speaker 1: Office and Nice Girls Don't Get Rich by Lows p. Frankel.
Speaker 1: And these books are conveniently available in a box set
Speaker 1: at Audible. So again, if you want to check these out,
Speaker 1: the u r L is www Dot Audible podcast dot com,
Speaker 1: slash mom, and you get your first download for free,
Speaker 1: and since one of those tips we just gave was
Speaker 1: to save more, I think free downloads will definitely help. Well.
Speaker 1: It's nice to know that we have these free downloads
Speaker 1: and some support from the Oval Office with the Lily
Speaker 1: Led Butteract. And I think the most important thing, Christen,
Speaker 1: is just to be aware of it. Don't let someone
Speaker 1: tell you know that the gender wage gap doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: because clearly you have enough studies. If anyone asks you
Speaker 1: if a gender wage gap exists, just tell them. Kristen
Speaker 1: from stuff mom never told you gave you about a
Speaker 1: hundred statistics that proved it from the government, all right,
Speaker 1: mollly from the government. I didn't make these up. I
Speaker 1: know you didn't, Kristen. And if you want to see
Speaker 1: all of Christian sources and documented extensively, you can check
Speaker 1: out this article she wrote called is their gender gap
Speaker 1: in the Workplace? It's at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And if you'd like to email us about the gender
Speaker 1: gap or any other ideas, suggestions and comments you have,
Speaker 1: you can email us at mom stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for moralness and thousands of other topics.
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