Aeolist

suzyxisntreal:

fuckyeahgenderstudies:

Women prefer the “Mommy Track”.

Read this, please, everybody. It’s really interesting and takes a fresh look at a lot of statistics many people consistently churn out without really examining what they mean and what’s behind them.

For starters, the gender wage gap isn’t nearly as high as most of us believe. Check it out.

This is why I usually back away from the equal-pay arguments— there are other factors, like children and the fact that women disproportionately tend to hold more part-time, lower-level jobs. But my problem with Hymowitz’ idea of the “mommy track” is that she assumes everybody CHOOSES that. This is under the presumption that every pregnancy is planned— and uh, in my family, it never really is. That said, the fact that she’s saying women usually choose lower-level/part-time jobs is also kind of fucked without some serious class analysis. Seeing as the majority of low-income folks are women, and seeing that low-income women are a lot less likely to score high-paying jobs or become business owners, it doesn’t seem like they just choose to opt out. I think it’s more a product of their circumstances.

Not to mention, I have personal experience with discrimination on the job for my gender. I had to work a shitty minimum-wage barista job my first year of college, because it was all I could get. I was 1) sexually harassed by a male co-worker on the regular and 2) paid $2 less than the men who worked in the same position as me. I don’t think this is unusual in the service industry. Where women are often hired to be in “the front of the house,” or where they can interact closely with customers, dehumanization and disparity in the workplace is the norm. When people are buying “the experience” along with their food, they don’t usually mean the fancy shit hanging on the walls. The forced, darling smiles are on sale, too.

I hate these kinds of arguments because it comes from a pretty white, straight middle-class point of view that just obscures the bigger picture that is white heteronormative patriarchy. Y’all can have fun analyzing other straight white folks with degrees. (Although, I have a Bachelor’s myself, so I’m not totally innocent here.) But I think this analysis, while bringing certain important factors to light, like childcare and part-time workers, really oversimplifies a lot of things that cannot go unexamined.

(via brujacore)