The problem with positioning this as a gender issue is that it erects a giant Somebody Else's Problem Field around the issue. It makes it sound like employers are deliberately paying women less because they are women, then you realize that you don't know of anywhere where that's happening. Somebody else's problem! You read the story, then sneak a look at the paystub of your opposite-sex colleague with the most comparable job description and experience and see that you're earning more or less the same. Somebody else's problem! If you're male, it automatically labels to the story as Other. Somebody else's problem! If you're unionized or otherwise have everyone's pay governed by the same unbendable rules. Somebody else's problem! If you're an employer, you think "But I pay my male and female employees the same!" Somebody else's problem!
The headlines make it sound like women are getting paid less because they're women, but that's not what it is.
“As the report shows, the jobs women hold in Canada today mean they get paid less,” the labour congress said in a release. “These jobs also mean fewer women are able to access benefits through the federal government's Employment Insurance program.
The jobs women hold. It's not the fact that the employees are women, it's the nature of the jobs. So let's look at the recommendations:
The report makes several recommendations:
• Change employment standards so that full-time hours and part-time hours get paid the same when the same work is done.
• Raise the minimum wage to at least $10 an hour.
• Improve public pension plans so women, who live longer, aren't penalized for taking time away from the workforce to care for children.
• Improve access to quality and affordable child care; the report says two-thirds of women with children under the age of six are working outside the home.
If we take gender out of these, we have some pretty good issues.
Part-time workers get paid a less for the same work than full-time workers! So if you come to realize you could get by on 60% of your salary, you couldn't get paid 60% for working three days a week! Injustice!
The minimum wage is far too low! Imagine making only $8 an hour! In today's rental market? With today's gas prices? Injustice!
Pensions penalize you for taking time away from work, even if you make it up later! So if you decide to take leave without pay to make your movie or care for your elderly parents or do your graduate degree or take care of your children or travel the world, it will fuck up your pension and your entire retirement forever! Injustice!
There isn't enough affordable child care, and that makes life difficult for parents! Injustice!
These are all issues that could conceivably affect a lot of people. A wide range of people can identify with these scenarios. They feel like it's their own problem, not somebody else's problem, and you tend to care more about things that affect you than things that are somebody else's problem.
For example, you might have noticed that when I was making issues out of the four recommendations, I was a bit vague on the child care one. That's because I'm childfree and child care doesn't affect me. It's Somebody Else's Problem, so I haven't been able to sum up the focus to learn about the issue well enough that I can articulate it in my own words; and if I can't articulate an issue in my own words, I'm certainly not going to be in a position to lobby for change. And that's exactly what's happening to all these important labour issues because they keep getting slapped together under the headline "Women are paid less than men!" and thereby promptly hidden behind a Somebody Else's Problem field.
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