I was punched in the face during my morning commute by Morning Edition’s oh-so-fresh take on that age-old problem, women making more money than men. ‘Cuz as we all know, the womenfolk TOTALLY have all the money and all the power.
OH WAIT. NO THEY DON’T.
See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for incontrovertible evidence. If you can look me in the face (or the blog, for that matter) and tell me there is no gender pay gap (not to mention racial pay gap), then I don’t want to be your friend anymore.
So, in light of any reasonable human being’s assessment of the facts, why the big story? NPR should have access to all the same statistics that a schmo like me has, right? But instead, they staidly teased the story thusly: “We’ll hear how marriages have changed since the 1970s, and how the fact that the growth of women in the workplace is TURNING MARRIAGE ON ITS HEAD!!!” The smarminess in the announcer’s voice was actually palpable.
The entire segment was built on anecdotal stories, not facts, figures or scientific studies. They interviewed a few whiny dudes who were all, “Man, it sucks not being able to tell my wife how to spend her money, since she makes so much more than I do. But it’s awesome having a sugar mama!”
They paid lip service to the ACTUAL, DOCUMENTED FACT that women make less than men on average by dedicating an entire fragment sentence to that. At the end, right before the “commercial” break where they name off all the call letters for every single NPR station in the entire Pacific Northwest.
Color me idealistic, but when a news organization starts covering “stories” I see teased in all caps on the covers of checkout-line magazines like Cosmo (when it’s not covered up to protect our young’uns fragile eyeballs from the corrupting POWER OF BOOBIES), I lose pretty much all my respect for them. Sure, some women make more money than their husbands. This is not news, nor something we can draw reasonable conclusions from without a great deal more study. To top it off, the way the story was presented it was grossly misleading: Interviewing a bunch of whiny assholes does not a news story make.
If you feel like having your mind polluted, read the full story here.
UPDATE: The New York Times covers this “story,” too, going so far as to call those unfortunates who’ve wound up making more money than their menfolk “victims.” Victims! Seriously! They close with this carefully chosen quote intended to scare ladies who might try to set their sights on a high-paying job:
“Ms. Zielinski … said her best friend, a man, told her once: “ ‘You are confident, have good credit, own your own business, travel around the world and are self-sufficient. What man is going to want you?’ ”
Thanks for visiting my blog! Yes, it would certainly be a disaster if women started making what they were worth as workers, wouldn't it! NPR sure gets on my nerves sometimes too.
The thing with NPR and all its derivations is that it is billed as THE progressive news organization, and that's simply not the case. It just feeds self-congratulating liberals while carrying forward the status quo. It makes me cranky when I notice the hypocrisy, because then my own ability to self-congratulate is threatened. Naval-gazing and commuting, I'm afraid, just do not work well together.
Agreed. It's not news. It's an anomaly.I remember revealing my salary to a male coworker and him being aghast saying, "I don't even make that much." He had no reason to believe he had more training or experience (or negotiation skills which were really to thank for the higher salary) than I, so why did he assume he should be making more than me?In the same company, I was also asked when inquiring about a promotion/raise, "what does your husband do?"Fortune 500 company touted for its' commitment to diversity. Ha!
Because he's a man, of course! We ladies should stick to painting crockery and embroidering.And OMG I think that's the most unprofessional negotiating tactic I've ever heard of. First of all, they assumed you had a husband. Second of all, they were trying to say that they should base your salary on how much you "needed" rather than how much you were worth. ARGH! I hope you no longer work for them!
Oh and almost all F500s toot their own diversity horns. What people outside the PR industry rarely know is all their "diversity" resides on their shop floors. The corner offices and board rooms are still reserved for old white men from Ivies.