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March 28, 2005
Pitting Women Against Each Other Again
Sheelzebub at Pinko Feminist Hellcat cuts to the chase on an article discussing differences in pay between white women, black women, Asian women, and Hispanic women. The article begins with these two paragraphs:
Black and Asian women with bachelor's degrees earn slightly more than similarly educated white women, and white men with four-year degrees make more than anyone else.
A white woman with a bachelor's typically earned nearly $37,800 in 2003, compared with nearly $43,700 for a college-educated Asian woman and $41,100 for a college-educated black woman, according to data being released today by the Census Bureau. Hispanic women took home slightly less at $37,600 a year.
Buried in the article is this tidbit:
A white male with a college diploma earns far more than any other similarly educated man or woman -- in excess of $66,000 a year, according to the Census Bureau. Among men with bachelor's, Asians earned more than $52,000 a year, Hispanics earned $49,000, and blacks earned more than $45,000.
That's the real story, not pitting women against each other based on their respective salaries. Sheelz doesn't mince words:
The stories feature a shoddy theory: being a minority and a woman is a "great commodity" to employers, and may therefore be worth, oh, four thousand dollars more than a White woman.
But you're not worth $25K more. Which is how much more a candidate would get if she were a White guy. But that's not featured in the story. The news is more interested in a battle over crumbs.
So let's be realistic about who is considered to be a real commodity here, and cut out the media distortion and patronizing drivel.
Posted on March 28, 2005 at 01:56 PM | Permalink
Comments
Isn't it also possible that white women are more likely to be stay-at-home moms by choice, or working only part time by choice?
Average in a few extra zeroes, and the average can drop a bit.
Posted by: Richard Bellamy at Mar 28, 2005 2:06:33 PM
Trish,
Are any of these statistics broken down by age and profession? Are they weighted so that people with only bachelor's degrees are being counted? Lawyers and doctors have bachelor's degrees, after all.
Even if people with advanced degrees are eliminated, putting all workers with bachelor's degrees into the same category lumps together teachers, social workers, civil engineers, journalists, marketing and advertising executives, nurses, actors, and stock brokers. There's a wide disparity of incomes there. And I see among them several female dominated fields and several male dominated ones, and the male ones pay a whole lot more.
So do the statistics compare black women stockbrokers' pay to white women stockbrokers' and both to male stockborkers' pay, making sure that everybody being compared is at the same stage in their careers?
I'm sure there are discrepencies and inequities but are these numbers showing them or are they actually showing that Americans value their stockbrokers and engineers far more highly than their teachers and nurses? (Which in effect is valuing men's work more highly than women's work, of course.)
Posted by: Lance at Mar 28, 2005 4:38:34 PM
"Isn't it also possible that white women are more likely to be stay-at-home moms by choice, or working only part time by choice?
Average in a few extra zeroes, and the average can drop a bit."
Remember those figures factor in a lifetime of earnings after receiving a degree. So if you earn a degree late in life, like late 20s early 30s or even like myself in my 40s...the degree isn't worth as much over the lifetime of earning you have left...
That's what I found out anyway...
Today I would say women in their early to mid 30s who are thinking about returning to school and it's going to take them 6 to 8 years (on a p/t basis) to get a BA; well they MIGHT be better off thinking about starting their own business instead of running to school for a BA...
Particularly if they are going to take out loans to enable themselves to complete the BA...a small-business loan could be a better investment for them over the earnings lifetime they have left...
Posted by: NYMOM at Mar 28, 2005 4:52:28 PM
Lance, I don't know how the salaries broke down, but you made a good point. We don't know age, number of years in the job, professions, additional training, etc. Mentioned in the article were black women who hold more than one job, so these salaries are not necessarily coming from one job. I only know that these are not entry level, just-out-of-college jobs because, in those cases, men and women start out earning at about the same levels. Plus, even though men and women marry and bear children, it's the women who overall take on the work of childcare, and that affects their career path, opportunities, and salaries (as in they fall). The article focused on comparing the salaries of minorities and women and only offhand mentioned the much higher salaries made by white and minority men.
Posted by: Trish Wilson at Mar 28, 2005 5:25:09 PM
It sounds like a very dishonest article, even leaving men out of it entirely. Without noting what sorts of jobs are being compared and how many hours are being worked, there is no way to know what those salary comparisons are really comparing. If black women are earning more because they are working two jobs or because more of them have to work full time because their black husbands do not make as much as white husbands whose wives can then afford to stay home or work part time then being black certainly isn't worth MORE than being white.
And if Asian women are earning more because more of them are going into technical and scientific fields (which I believe is the case) then it has nothing to do with affirmative action, which seems to be the article's unstated target.
Journalists are very, very, very bad with statistics.
Posted by: Lance Mannion at Mar 28, 2005 6:31:25 PM
"Plus, even though men and women marry and bear children, it's the women who overall take on the work of childcare, and that affects their career path, opportunities, and salaries (as in they fall)."
Yes and there was an estimate that even as little as five years out of the workforce or a particular field can have a significant impact on your earnings...
Posted by: NYMOM at Mar 28, 2005 11:07:37 PM
So I guess we can conclude that being female is a much greater hindrance to getting the job you want than being black or asian. So reasonably we would expect gender to be the number one employment diversity issue or our age. It isn't.
And as for the whole women-staying-home line, yeah a lot do and they make our society a much better place for it. They should be rewarded, not punished for it and the skills they bring should be valued properly.
In any case in the UK the statistics are that women receive 72% of the money that men do for the same work. So its not about lifestyle choices, its about prejudice.
Posted by: Cruella at Mar 29, 2005 4:03:01 AM
