The "Family Wage" Was Always Bullshit

This article is older, but everybody needs to read this to understand why women are denigrated in the labor force.

This is a more recent article, but it is obvious after reading the first link why women are denigrated all across the board.

The "family wage" system of men are providers and women are dependents is still alive and well despite the fact fewer and fewer occupations pay a "family wage."

Snip:

To make matters worse, when women increasingly enter a field, the average pay in that field tends to decline, relative to other fields. Levanon, England, and Allison (2009) found that when more women entered an industry, the relative pay of that industry 10 years later was lower. Specifically, they found evidence of devaluation—meaning the proportion of women in an occupation impacts the pay for that industry because work done by women is devalued.

Computer programming is an example of a field that has shifted from being a very mixed profession, often associated with secretarial work in the past, to being a lucrative, male-dominated profession (Miller 2016; Oldenziel 1999). While computer programming has evolved into a more technically demanding occupation in recent decades, there is no skills-based reason why the field needed to become such a male-dominated profession. When men flooded the field, pay went up. In contrast, when women became park rangers, pay in that field went down (Miller 2016).

Further compounding this problem is that many professions where pay is set too low by market forces, but which clearly provide enormous social benefits when done well, are female-dominated. Key examples range from home health workers who care for seniors, to teachers and child care workers who educate today’s children. If closing gender pay differences can help boost pay and professionalism in these key sectors, it would be a huge win for the economy and society.

The Jordan Petersons of the world cannot explain this.  The notion of the "family wage" explains it all.  All of it. 

Female-dominated professions should never be denigrated in terms of pay.

More Sexist B.S. from the Atlantic

You'd think the magazine would stop with the sexist hogwash after their embarrassing article about "men's rights" guru Jordan Peterson, mentioned on this blog yesterday.  But no.  Women are treated to still more trash that they "choose" to be low paid because the careers they pick are low paying.  Of course, women choose the jobs, but they don't like being underpaid one goddamned bit.  

Women don't "choose" to be low paid, you jackass. The trades are generally mind-deteriorating, unfulfilling work that causes people to wind up with physical ailments long before their time. The ONLY reasons these "skilled trades" are paid well is they are often unionized and they are almost always done by men. Stop the sexist b.s. that says so-called "women's" jobs are inferior. Jobs like teaching, nursing, librarianship, journalism, social worker, and others are very good jobs, but women don't appreciate being underpaid for them.

Of course, a lot of the "male" fields often are rife with sexual harassment against women.

Women are treated like garbage.  The fact is it doesn't matter what women do.  The male-dominated culture treats women like trash.  There is a reason for it.  The mindset says that men are providers and women are dependents.  Telling women they should go into male-dominated fields doesn't solve the problem of the denigration of women in the labor force.  The problem is the denigration of women's labor.  Many of the so-called "women's" jobs are highly skilled with a high degree of education, yet they are completely denigrated because of the notion all women are married and supported by men.  Any time women dominate a field, the pay and prestige go down.  This is SOLELY due to the notion of men being providers and women being dependents.

Sexist Academics Should Not Be Given a Forum

So-called clinical psychologist and academic from Canada, Jordan Peterson, 55, is being defended because a British interviewer caught him in lie after lie, contradicting himself constantly.  I watched the goddamned thing, and the idiot never should have been given a forum in the first place.  He is much beloved in "men's rights" circles, but he is truly an idiot.

A point-by-point takedown of Peterson and his sexist statements can be found here.

I wrote this on the Channel 4 YouTube upload, which has some 65,000 posts and over 3,000,000 views:

I was horrified that Channel 4 has allowed comments following its upload of this interview--this is not a "debate." Jordan Peterson has no business being given a forum. If he were a racist, and he likely is one, he would not be given a forum at all. It's okay, though, to spout off sexist nonsense. He is an idiot, totally out of his depth, and it makes me wonder how he ever got his Ph.D. It is pretty obvious why the pay gap, sex discrimination, the notion of the family wage, primary and secondary wage earners, and the denigration of female-dominated occupations exist, and they have nothing to do with his bogus explanations, which I have heard for over FIFTY years, back when women had markedly different workforce participation than they do now. In the U.S., the pay gap has narrowed to about 21 cents less on the dollar gap (79 cents to the male dollar), but that is solely because "male" jobs have been outsourced thanks to ruinous trade agreements and the gutting of unions than with any real progress with women's economic status. No, it is much more basic. We need to tell the truth. The sexist assumption men are providers and women are dependents lies at the root of all the rot against women in the labor force. If you as an employer see women as dependents, then you can in good conscience pay them less because they are being supported by husbands. This attitude in turn coerces women into marriage and economic dependency, which is the goal of all this. Men in turn get the all-important sexual access and free domestic labor. The reason for women's denigration in the labor force is so obvious. You don't have to read Frederick Engels or Carole Pateman's "The Sexual Contract" to see the truth. All other explanations are complete and total nonsense.


The only reason this idiot has gained prominence was noted at the end of the interview, when he spouted off his objection to pronoun thought crimes as defined by the trans mob. He was hailed as being the next anti-PC hero. It wasn't long before his woman-hating bullshit gained him a cult following among the white dude contingent who also follow their hero Donald Trump.

The "stupid man's smart person" is a good description of this character.

It Is All By Design

Of course women are more stressed out and overworked because of sex discrimination in the workplace, workplace stress especially in careers like nursing and teaching, and being stuck with jackass husbands at home.

In these cases it is because men want it that way. They underpay women to force them into financial dependence while men get sexual access and free domestic labor in return.

Women need to ask themselves if it is worth it. Yes, society has to have reproduction in order to continue, but is it worth it by denigrating what women do?

Thank God this domestic garbage was something I never had to face. It has been really hard financially, but it is extremely liberating not having to orient my life around some entitled dude.

When I Am 197 Years Old,

women will receive "wage parity" with men, according to this article which spews all kinds of nonsense as to why women are underpaid.

The ONLY way women will EVER get "wage parity" with men is if all men's pay is cut down to women's levels.

THAT is the only reason women are even making as much as they are against men, for women's pay is denigrated all across the board, across all occupations. The wage gap has closed only because of outsourcing of male-dominated jobs and weakening of unions. It is not so much women are making more but that men are making less.

The report is here.

I don't need to read the same old horseshit about lifestyles and "career choices." They are LIES. The only reason women make less is because men as a group have rigged the economic system so that women are dependent financially on men in exchange for sexual access and domestic service. The two-tier wage system of primary and secondary earners, the notion of the "family wage," are reflections of this.

It doesn't matter what fields women enter--they are denigrated. It doesn't matter if they never marry or have children--they still have no wage parity with men, and this is reflected in their impoverished status in retirement. If women dominate a field, the pay and prestige go down.

Nobody wants to tell the truth about this because it is too uncomfortable to face the reality that women's work is denigrated because men as a group do NOT want women to have lives independent of them.

It Has NOTHING to Do With Women's "Choices" or "Lifestyles"

Women are paid less than men because they are women, and this is true throughout all occupations. Women-dominated occupations get denigrated in pay because women do them.

It is all because of the notion of the family wage and it is also to coerce women into marriage, therefore giving men that all-important sexual access to women.

People keep avoid the obvious.

According to a new analysis published Tuesday by left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), women’s average earnings ten years after they enrolled in college are lower than men’s average earnings six years after enrolling. While it takes some people longer to graduate than others (and there are, of course, some dropouts) the primary takeaway is this: Two years after graduation, men generally earn more than women who have been in the workforce for six years.

And these are Ivy League graduates, supposedly the best of the best, and the wage gap still exists.

It is a Start on "Equal Pay" for Women

The new law is better than nothing, I suppose.

Employers in Massachusetts will be barred from forcing prospective employees to divulge how much they were making at their last job. The change, effective in 2018, is part of a sweeping new equal pay measure Republican Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law on Aug. 1.

The law's goal is to prevent women from being stuck in a cycle of low salaries.

"What happens to people over time is if, in that first negotiation — or those first few jobs out of high school or college — you are underpaid, then you really get a snowball effect," says Victoria Budson, who directs the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and who advocated for the new law.

However, it does nothing to rectify what is at the core of sex discrimination in the workplace, and that is the concept of the "family wage."

The fact is it isn't enough for women to have equal pay. They need to have female dominated jobs recognized as being of equal value to similar work dominated by men. As long as a male dominated culture starves women in order to "encourage" them to marry by having a family wage system, little improvement will be seen in women's economic status. Women should be able to have lives independent of men and not have to prostitute themselves through marriage in order to have a roof over their heads.

Being a never-married straight woman in this society is an intensely political act, whether these women realize it or not.

Life Can Be Shit Economically For Women Living Alone

It's all part of a rigged economic system, something I have written about for years on this blog and elsewhere. It has been fodder of feminist writing since the 1960s, but it bears repeating:

Most women do NOT take time off from the labor force in any significant way these days. Who can afford "caregiving" unless you are well-to-do? Any policy proposal talking about giving "credit" to people who do not need it is missing the point, to say nothing of the fact we women who have worked all our lives are being required to subsidize people who can afford to drop out of the labor force to "care" for relatives. The real reason women, especially never-married women, fare so poorly in middle and old age has to do with the concept of the "family wage." It is the notion that men are breadwinners and women are dependents. Men are seen as needing the higher pay because they have families to support, while women are seen as not needing the money as much as men because they have a man to support them. Women's pay is denigrated regardless of occupation, with women-dominated occupations poorly paid as compared to male-dominated jobs of the same education and skills. When women begin to dominate a male field, the pay and prestige go down immediately. That is because women are seen as "secondary" wage earners, and employers feel they in good conscience can underpay women because the difference is supposedly made up by a husband's salary (never mind the reality of millions of women there is no man in the picture). Furthermore, underpaying women helps "encourage" them to jettison independent living in favor of marriage. It reeks of prostitution rather than real choice. Our economic system is heavily rigged against women, especially women alone. If anything happens in terms of a job, everything they have worked for is gone overnight. There is no buffer of a man's income to cushion that blow.

More women are falling through the cracks, especially if they are past 55, which is considered past their expiration date in terms of being in the labor force.

A book I have started reading is a book I overlooked when it came out. It is called The Sexual Contract, published in 1988 and written by a now-retired UCLA academic, Carole Pateman. She was born in Britain in 1940. She is less well-known than other writers or feminists who have covered much of the same ground. In this book she wrote about this concept of the "family wage." Of course, it forms the basis of sex discrimination in the workplace. It cannot be denied. Despite gains by women over the decades, women are still heavily disadvantaged in the labor market. In fact, they are perhaps more dependent on men than ever (and vice versa) for a decent lifestyle thanks to outsourcing and destroying of well-paid, unionized jobs as pushed by the poisonous neoliberal ideology.

Anyway, I started reading Pateman's book. The book is a little bit dry, as are most academic works, but she makes a lot of good points.

Nothing has changed in the 30 years since it was published.

On a similar note, I went to a retirement planning seminar the school district's investment outfit put on, and the presenters were talking about all of the various things people need in order to have a decent retirement. Of course, I started Oregon public employment, part-time regular employment, when I was 59, so I will not be vested in Oregon PERS until 2019, when I am 64 years old. Maybe some district will hire me on a part-time certificated basis, as I do not want to work full-time anymore, but those jobs are extremely hard to come by. My pension would be much higher and I would not have to work as many years to get the monthly payout. Under NO circumstances do I want to ever have a cash payout. I have a monthly pension through Nevada PERS that I started taking five years ago. It isn't much--$318 a month and subject to WEP when I get Social Security next year--but after the third year of getting it I got annual COLA increases. By the time I hit 71, the small amount will start to snowball significantly when the 5 percent annual increase kicks in, assuming I don't kick off first. Similarly Oregon's would increase, but since I am on the Tier 3 program, it won't be quite as good as those who got on Oregon public employment and qualified for Tier 1 and 2 (people are designated a "tier" depending on when they were hired).

Anyway, there wasn't a whole lot that was relevant to my case. At one point the presenters talked about how 33 percent of the average retiree's income comes from work. In other words, those who are "retired" on the average cannot ever retire. I don't believe that many people are so lacking in interests and hobbies they are masochistic enough they want to remain in the labor force in some way.

Most of these people work because they have to.

Just like me, and I will likely have to until I can't physically do the work anymore.

Women's Pay is Denigrated

Why is this a surprise?

There is a reason why this is true, and I have been saying this for years while most "experts" appear puzzled about it. The reason the pay and prestige declines have nothing to do with women's skills, education, or perceived lifestyles of dropping out of the labor force to take care of kids/parents. It is because of the concepts of the family wage and primary and secondary employment. Anybody who researches this at all knows this is true.

It is the belief that since all women are married or will get married, they don't need the money the way men do because women are supported by husbands. Employers denigrate women's employment in traditionally female jobs as well as within male-dominated occupations because they believe these women are supported by men. They feel they can underpay women in good conscience. Of course this has nothing to do with reality: women who dare live independently of men are screwed every which way economically and face old age in destitution; never-married women fare the worst of all because they have to do it all without the buffer of a second income and aren't eligible for SS spousal or survivor benefits. They typically are not homeowners or are beneficiaries of life insurance policies, benefits married women more often than not have.

The "family wage" concept, pushed by labor unions after the second World War, said that since men support families, they should make enough money they can do so. These "family wage" jobs, which had little to do with skill or education, were reserved for men. These jobs were considered primary wage or primary earner jobs. Women, it was seen, worked for extras, so they were secondary earners making secondary wages. THIS concept underlies ALL sex discrimination against women in the workplace. It has no basis in the reality of women's lives, but women as a group pay a terrible economic price for this concept. It ain't rocket science, folks.

I Am Living Proof of This

Older women are being forced out in more and more numbers and find they have a lot more trouble getting another job.

And if they are like yours truly, once they do get jobs, they will never be able to retire because they were forced out earlier.

It Ain't Complicated

It is NOT "complicated." It has to do with the fact there are two kinds of jobs in this economy: primary wage jobs and secondary wage jobs. These are based on the notion of the "family wage." The primary wage says there is a breadwinner, the man, while the secondary wage says that person is a woman, who is being supported by a man. To put it bluntly, this has NOTHING to do with women's skills, women's education level, women's alleged dropping out of the labor force for years at a time---which almost NEVER happens these days unless the women are wealthy--it has to do with the belief that women don't need the money as much as men do because they are supported by men. Men, on the other hand, need more money than women because they have families to support or will have families to support. WHY do people need to lie about this and claim it is "women's choices" or "lifestyles" when in fact it is SEXIST ideas of how women live their lives motivating the pay differential?

If this were not true, jobs that women primarily do would not be paid less than what men do in work of similar levels. Every single time an occupation is dominated by women, the pay and prestige goes down. Why? Because of the idea they don't need the money because husbands support them. This attitude is why women, especially never-married women, far so poorly in old age.

My rant is over this article "celebrating" International Women's Day by asking why women continue to earn less money than men.

This is Sex Discrimination

Why would her husband be offered a job at the same place after he did the same thing his wife did? This is not equal treatment at all:

But James said she was humiliated after being pulled into her supervisor's office last fall, where she was asked if she was pregnant and then was let go. After James lost her job, she claims the school offered a position to her now-husband, even though they were aware he'd had sex before getting married, too.

During a news conference featured in a KTLA report, James said she felt she was treated unfairly.

"I was unmarried, pregnant and they took away my livelihood," James said.

I would say this was a case of the school not wanting to bother with somebody on maternity leave, using the excuse of her engaging in premarital sex. On top of that, assuming the school knew she was having sex with somebody they hired and she was planning to marry, the school felt her place was in the home, while he was "entitled" to have a job since he was going to be supporting a family. He did decline the offer, so at least he did the right thing.

It's totally illegal no matter which way you slice it.

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