To: WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 03:21:51 -0500
Subject: [WSFA] Re: equal pay
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Thu, 04 Apr 2002 01:22:19 -0500 Ted White <tedwhite at compusnet.com>
writes:
> You're overlooking a couple of things. First, there are damned few
> employers who don't want to pay the least they can for the work they
need.

Taken as an isolated observation, that is true. It is equally true that
employees seek to be paid as high as they can. Wages are not set
unilaterally by employers; it is the offers which are unilateral.
Employees are free to accept or reject, just as employers should be free
to accept or reject offers made to them.

> Second, when women entered the job market (post WW2), they were seen as

> "optional" employees, unlike their husbands who were seen as
"breadwinners,"
> and they were paid less in consequence (for exact same jobs, performed
at
> least as well as men). This pay gap was originally enormous (women got
60%
> of what men got) and has only slowly narrowed over time (and as the
original
> concept of "optional" employment became increasingly irrelevant). Thus
> there exists, in the minds of many employers, a "tradition" of valuing
and
> paying women less. And a resistance to paying them more.

It is true that this tradition has existed. However, there are more
optimistic ways of viewing the history. WW2 accelerated the trend towards
employment equality by putting many women in jobs which would have been
reserved almost exclusively for men, but for the war. Women showed they
could do those jobs. After the war, the government pursued an
all-but-official policy to get women out of the workforce, driven by the
fear that there would not be enough jobs for the men being brought home
from the war, and for those men made jobless by closure of war
production. But fear of a postwar depression proved unfounded.

> It runs akin to the notion that women are best employed in menial,
> scut-work positions. Thus, when my third wife, Lynda, was promoted from

> word-processor (read: secretary) to project manager, in recognition of
the fact > that she was a statistical expert, and she was responsible for
bringing in over > one third of her firm's total billing, she was *still*
asked by the company
> president/owner to type his letters for him, or to make travel
> arrangements for him. I'm sure most of the women on this list could
cite
> similar experiences.
>
> --Ted White

Employees often dislike being asked to do work they consider beneath
their skills. It's something which should be settled by mutual agreement.
If an employer persists in treating the employees with disrespect, they
will quit, and the unpleasant employer will end up having to pay more to
keep employees who will put up with that.

Ron Kean

.

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