Speaking of women not getting paid for the work we do, I have noticed that a few articles have popped up in the last couple of days regarding compensation for family care givers (SAHM’s *cringe*) as well as the shameful wage gap between women and men who work outside the home. The current pay gap is 23-24 cents. It never ceases to shock women that women make 76-77 cents for every one dollar a man earns in the same job. Some men? Not so much the shock.

These articles may be motivated by Equal Pay Day on April 24. Good on them. Here is some stuff that I found interesting and particularly heart-breaking (see The Feminine Face of Poverty) but I recommend following the links to read them all.

The Feminine Face of Poverty by Riane Eisler

Women are entitled to know that statistically women worldwide are far more likely to be poor than men. Even if you’re a guy, this “women’s issue” is about your mother and your grandmother. It’s about your sisters and it’s about the future of your daughters.

Consider that in the United States women over the age of 65 are twice as poor as men in the same age group. And there’s a reason poverty so disproportionately hits women. Most of these poor women were, or still are, caregivers. And we’ve got an economic system that gives no visibility or value to this essential work when it’s done in the home.

In fact, according to economists, the people who do the caring work in households, whether female or male, are “economically inactive.” Of course, anyone who has a mother knows that most caregivers work from dawn to dusk. And we also know that without their work of caring for children, for the sick, and for the elderly, there would be no workforce, no economy, nothing.

Will Women Ever Get Paid What They Deserve? by Martha Burk

The pay gap is still a stubborn problem, with women who work full time year-round making 76 cents to a man’s dollar. Though it consistently polls No. 1 with female voters in election years, politicians don’t seem motivated to do much about it.

Some people say pay disparities between women and men are an illusion — women just like to choose jobs that pay less because they’re not as risky or have shorter hours. But the data don’t back up these claims. Even when researchers take into account such factors as part-time work or time out of the work force to care for kids, the numbers show that men make more. […]

The Fair Pay Act, a bill that would help narrow the gap, has grown old bouncing around Capitol Hill since the early 1990s, never receiving as much as a hearing. […]

…Chief Justice John Roberts, who dismissed the concept in the FPA as a “pernicious” redistribution of wealth, saying, “Their slogan may as well be ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to her gender.’”

Womenomics Revisited (I can’t find an author listed)

Were more women in paid employment, according to a run of recent studies, the world would be better off. The waste is surely worse in poor countries than in rich ones. A report this week by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific concludes that sex discrimination costs the region $42 billion-47 billion a year by restricting women’s job opportunities. A gap of 30-40 percentage points between men’s and women’s workforce participation rates is common. The poor state of girls’ education costs a further $16 billion-30 billion. And those are just the economic costs, before violence against women and access to health care are counted.

[…]But rich countries undervalue women as well. Just look at the gap between male and female employment rates in America, Japan and western Europe…
None of this would matter much if low female employment rates and the output forgone were purely a matter of choice … Many women would like to work, or to work more, if they could find affordable child care; subsidies for child care, not surprisingly, tend to raise the probability that a mother returns to work.

(Bold mine)

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